Bargaining.

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sector — 1981

In its proposals for a bargaining platform for the
80s, the Public Service Workers Bureau of the
Communist Party of Canada projects a number of
Suggestions workers in the service industry should
consider in current contract talks.

As the crisis of capitalism deepens, new and —

more difficult problems are placed before the Trade

Union Movement and all unions in the public sec-

tor.

’ The recent Public Service Alliance of Canada
(PSAC) clerks’ strike and the Canadian Union of
Public Employees, (CUPE), hospital workers

strike bear witness to a new militancy among pub-
lic sector workers aimed at getting rid of old ° ‘class
partnership” policies and so-called “essential

services legislation that strip workers of their

fundamental right to strike, while arbitrating them
into the poor house. Bie

Working people as a whole are faced with in-
flation, price gouging and massive tax concession
to corporations by governments picking the
people’s pockets. Meanwhile taxes for home-
Owners continue to soar unchecked, and tenants
also get stung as rent gouging passes the soaring tax
levy on property on to their monthly rental pay-
ments. The net result of these anti-people policies
is to further drive down workers’ real wages.

Along with inflation, workers are constantly
being faced with big-business-government inspired
cutbacks in education, health care, housing, day-
care and social services in general, which not only
affect our living standards but also swell the ranks
of the unemployed. 3

‘Analysis

ses -As big-business.and governments work hand in

hand to drive down living standards and bloat the
coffers of the big corporations, the technological.

’ revolution is bringing about the loss of thousands
of jobs through: the introduction of the micro-
processors and other computer-controlled robots
in offices and factories.

It is against this offensive by the corporate estab-
lishment and its governments that workers in the
public sector must fight back. The fightback must
be conducted at the political level as well as by an
all out effort at the negotiating table, to stop and
reverse the employers’ offensive. Every public
sector union, indeed all unions, should be co-
ordinated in their bargaining demands and should
include demands ‘for:

@ a substantial wage increase that will generously
exceed the anticipated inflation spiral of 12% for
1981; iets

e a 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay;
e acost of living adjustment (COLA), to fully pro-
tect wages against the ravages of inflation and
monopoly profiteering;

e full consultation and agreement with the union
on the introduction of all new technology;

© aone-year agreement in all sections of the public
sector; ;

@ equal pay for work of equal value and an end to
sex-discrimination; _

e aclause banning contracting out of union work,
coupled with language forbidding layoffs;

e and, the unrestricted right to strike for all public
sector workers.

‘If we are going to make any progress at all
against the current anti-labor offensive, to roll back

-the real wages of public sector workers, every
union must make these issues the number one
cause in the 1981 round of negotiations. .

Public sector workers must see the limits of col- ©

lective bargaining in fully protecting their living
standards. New government policies at all three
levels are needed to end inflation, unemployment,
economic decline and the constitutional crisis.

Mass political action by labor around its own
program to end this crisis and put Canada back to
work is what is needed. Public sector workers and
their unions can and must continue to play a big
role in this process.

Right to strike challenged
by Ryan and Co. in Quebec

MONTREAL — Claude Ryan wants to make the right
to strike for health care workers, and possibly for all
public sector workers in Quebec, *‘symbolic’’ so as to, in
his words, protect the rights of the whole population.

‘Everyone agrees the right to health as well as the right
to education are fundamental human rights. But in
Quebec, prior to the Quiet Revolution of the 60s, one
needed cash money to be accepted into a hospital, orelse
risk a refusal of service whether it was essential or not:
As for the classical colleges and even the secondary

schools they were mostly for the privileged.

‘There weren’t any powerful trade unions or massive
strikes in the public sector during this period. Nothing
but the ‘‘hand of god’’ guided the schools and hospitals
through Duplessis and his cohorts, acting on behalf of
the most profitable monopolies and transnational
corporations. What governments don’t have to spend in
their budgets on services to the people they can dish out
to corporations in increased subsidies.

It was the trade union movement and the political left
which succeeded in forcing concessions from the state

when it decided to modernize itself with the Quiet Rev-.

olution. :

It was the trade unions and the political left, which
yesterday as today, are concerned about the health and
education of the working people and certainly not the
sanctimonious Claude Ryan, Quebec’s pale version of
the yahoo cowboy — Ronnie Reagan.

When the labor movement negotiates in the public and
parapublic sectors, which represent almost half of the
Quebec Budget, it is fighting not only for the wages and
working conditions of its members, but also for the im-
provement of the quality of services given to the public.
And there’s no doubt at all that without the unfettered
right to strike there is no possibility whatsoever ina
system like ours for serious negotiations.

Ryan seems to wanta sort of counter revolution which
certainly won’t be a quiet one. He would grant the
‘‘symbolic right to strike’’ in the health sector, according
to Quebec Liberal Party platform co-ordinator Lina Al-
lard. # a

He would be ready,.according to Jean Allaire of the
Liberal Party’s legal commission, to decertify and strip
of the Rand formula, unions engaging in an “‘illegal
strike’. This would apply to strikes during the life of a
contract and not connected with contract renewal.

There is no way, however, that the Quebec people will
let Ryan return them to the days when hospitals were
more successful in administering the last rights than in
saving people’s earthly lives, nor to the days when stu-
dents at Quebec’s schools brought the teacher an apple
so that he would give them an easy chapter of the catech-
ism to memorize.

It is a fact that ex-Parti-Québécois minister Pierre-
Marc Johnson, for his part since the fall of 1979, author-
ized three back-to-work laws in the public and para-pub-
lic sectors. The new labor minister Pierre Marois should
do better considering that he couldn’t do any worse.

After a good deal of wavering, Quebec premier René

From
Montreal

Hervé Fuyet

Lévesque on television recently declared “‘the right to
strike in the public sector ought to be maintained be-
cause banning it would not be respected by the workers
and that the key to the best possible solution in the
context of negotiations depends on the maintenance of
essential services.”

The courageous hospital workers’ strike in Ontario
against an anti-strike law and injunctions, supports
Lévesque’s first point. Pressure will need to be put on
the PQ government, if it is re-elected, so that it won't
play around with “essential services’’ as a cover for
strikebreaking. 2

In fact, hospital workers in consultation with doctors
of their own choice if necessary, are perfectly capable of
determining which services are really necessary.

This question must be clarified in public opinion be-
cause a well-oiled campaign is being orchestrated these
days against the right to strike. People like La Presse’s
Roger Lemlin and Pierre Paledeau, Quebec’s tabloid
king, are using shameful methods in exploiting a person
like Claude Brunet and his provincial committee of in-
valids to sway public opinion against the right to strike.

It is a shame that the energy of this committee isn't
directed at the government to secure better quality of
health services in Quebec.

The labor movement aims to tighten the solidarity
which once in a while weakens between public sector -
and private sector workers and among the three Quebec
central labor organizations. The Communist Party of

‘Quebec does everything in its power to strengthen this

unity which is going to be crucial in the struggles which
are to come.

The Jan. 29 meeting which brought together the Con-
federation of National. Trade Unions, the Quebec
Teachers Central and a wide range of other trade union
organizations representing some 400,000 workers was
very encouraging.

. As the late Jean Paré of the United Electrical workers
(UE) said in 1973 when the government of the day was
attacking the right to strike with bill 89: “‘It is clear that
the discretionary powers left in government hands will
make an already complicated situation even more dif-
ficult, and all with the goal of eliminating the right to
strike in the public service and to a certain degree in the
private sector. The right to strike is an integral part of the
democratic rights won by the working class after long
and hard struggles.

‘* All attacks against this right represent an attack not
only against organized workers, but against the entire
working class.”’

NFU wins labor support for
demand to retain Crow rate

nation of the family farm as well as

REGINA — Farmers from Alber-
ta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
have won support from organized
labor in their three-day lobby in Ot-
tawa, March 2-4, pressing the federal
government to refuse the CNR’s
demand for increased freight rates
through the Crows Nest Pass.

The Saskatchewan Federation of
Labor, Feb. 27 pledged its support
for the lobby organized by the Na-
tional Farmer’s Union, (NFU) on
the eve of the lobby’s passing
through Regina. :

The NFU lobby was planning to
submit its brief to the federal
government March 3, asking Ottawa
not to surrender to the Canadian Na-
tional Railways’ and other big busi-
ness interests demand. NFU presi-
dent Ted Strain estimated when
plans to organize the lobby were re-
vealed that more than 90% of Cana-

dian farmers would support retaining
the Crow rate.

‘*There’s no doubt in our view that
the thinking of the vast majority of
farm people is to keep the Crow, and
the job of our delegation will be, not
only to discredit the positions of the
Commodity Coalition and the West-
em Agricultural Conference, but to
drive home the reality (to the federal
government) of the true farm con-
sensus of where farmers are really at
on this issue’’, Stain said.

Nadine Hunt, president. of the
SFL said Feb. 27, the retention of
the Crow’s Nest Pass freight rates in
transport of prairie grain is vital-to
the concerns of both workers and
farmers in Saskatchewan. :

‘‘Their abolition as proposed by
corporate transportation and agri-
business interests’’, Hunt said,
“‘could very well result in the elimi-

thousands of jobs in the public and
private sectors of the prairies.” _
In the federation’s recent annual
legislative brief to the provincial
New Democratic Party government,
the SFL urged the government to
press for the continuation of -the

Crow rates. The federation also call-
ed on the Blakeney government to
press for a reversal of policy by the
feds on rail line abandonment; up-
grading the Ports of Churchill, Man.,
and Prince Rupert and Vancouver,
B.C., to improve the export of grain
and potash; and, the elimination of
all discriminatory freight rates
against the west.

Wishing the NFU every success
with their lobby of federal politi-
cians, Hunt placed the SFL “*behind
the NFU 100% in their fight to retain
the Crow.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MARCH 13, 1981—Page 7