CANADA

CLC Affirmative Action

Labor challenges
sex discrimination

By MIKE PHILLIPS

OTTAWA — Canadian Labor
Congress president Dennis
McDermott opened the CLC’s
Affirmative Action Conference,
Sept. 25, with a call on the trade
union movement to incorporate
Strategies for implementing af-
firmative action into labor’s
fightback.

McDermott told the more than
500 participants in the Sth Bien-
nial CLC Women’s Conference
that the assumptions and stereo-
types on which discrimination
against women is built ‘‘have be-
Come an essential part of the fab-
n¢ of our employment and educa-
tion traditions and of our social
institutions’’ and as such ‘‘part of
the system.

“Because of that’’, McDermott
Said, ‘tour challenge and our re-
Medy must be system-wide and
Institutional in scope.”’

The theme of the four-day con-
ference was ‘‘making affirmative
action work’’. Interest in the con-
ference was so intense, or-
ganizers say, they had to limit at-
tendance to the more than 500
‘who pre-registered because of
lack of space. The conference
Was slated to end Sept. 29.

The format combined speeches

om prominent leaders in the
‘labor and women’s movements,
and a series of panels and work-

‘Shops: focussing on developing
Strategies for implementing af-
‘firmative action.

Speakers included CLC
Secretary-treasurer Shirley Carr,
Judge Rosalie Abella, who
Chaired a royal commission on
€quality in employment, Chaviva
Hosek, president of the National

Action Committee on the Status
of Women.

While congratulating women
for lobbying and forcing the fed-
eral government to include the
equality amendment in the Cana-
dian rights charter, McDermott
noted, there is much yet to be
done to bring the rights enshrined
in the Constitution into meaning-
ful reality for women.

The fight to implement affirma-
tive action must be carried on at
the collective bargaining table and
in organizing the unorganized,
McDermott said. He noted that 42
per cent of the work force is fe-
male while women make up only
30 per cent of the trade union
membership.

‘‘At the same time as we are
fighting for affirmative action we
are also faced with major battles
for basic union recognition on one
hand, and against deregulation,
privatization and management
demands for concessions on the
other,”’ he said. .

The fight for work place equali-
ty, McDermott said, needs to be
reflected in labor’s overall
fightback, and organizing drives
should address the important is-
sues associated with affirmative
action.

‘‘We must highlight specifics
that will make affirmative action
work,’ McDermott told the
gathering. In this he included the
need for adequate day care, paid
parental leave, with accumulated
seniority during leave periods,
eliminating discriminating and

sexist language from contracts, °

pro-rated benefits for part time
workers, and equalized base rates
for men’s and women’s jobs.

Seniors hit de-indexing
of family allowances

By BRUCE MAGNUSON —

NORTH BAY — Senior citizens from coast
to coast are flexing their political muscle, this
time against the Mulroney government’s move
to erode family allowance benefits. Only two
days after Health and Welfare Minister Jake
Epp opened debate in parliament on a bill that
will mean family allowance payments no longer
increase in step with the annual rate of inflation,
Charles McDonald, president of the National
Pensioners and Senior Citizens’ Federation,
told 236 delegates of the largest seniors’ group in
Canada, here for their 41st annual convention at
Ramada Inn, that he had forwarded the follow-
ing telegram to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
and Finance Minister Michael Wilson:

‘*Last spring senior citizens and all Canadians

spoke with one voice to protect seniors’ pen-
sions from inflation. Today we join our children
and their children in a common plea to protect
families and children from the erosion of their
family allowance benefits. We urge you to re-
consider a proposal to partially de-index family
allowance benefits”’.

The telegram received unanimous and en-
thusiastic approval of the representatives of
‘*two-and-a-half million’? elderly citizens of
Canada from all provinces.

As the Tribune went to press, Mulroney had
moved to close the debate on family allowance
de-indexing. If successful the Bill would go to
second reading as early as Sept. 30.

On September 19, the convention adopted a
resolution calling upon the federal government
‘*not to place the major burden of deficit reduc-
tion on those who are least able to afford it.”
Convention delegates expressed deep concern
about all plans to reduce benefits available in
hard won universal social programs.

The convention adopted a resolution calling
for a greatly expanded Canada and Quebec Pen-
sion Plan to cover all workers, including part-
timers, whether presently covered by Employer
Pension Plans or not. This expanded plan should
include quarterly indexing, plus survivor bene-
fits of at least 75 per cent of original entitlement.

Together with assured full benefits from the uni-
versal Old Age Security pension, this new ex-
panded wage-related plan should provide 75 per
cent of the average industrial wage and, with
CPP/QPP survivor benefits to continue in the
event of remarriage.

The convention also demanded that univer-
sality must not be reduced by direct or indirect
government action. It called for no means test to
be applied to currently untested benefits en-
joyed by old age pensioners, and said all
government pensions paid to senior citizens
must, in total, always be above the official pov-
erty line.

When the convention ended September 20, it
had dealt with 94 resolutions covering pensions,
health, housing, tax reform, disarmament, en-
vironment and many other items.

No Star Wars!

On the matter of world peace the convention
resolved: —

e that all nuclear weapons be banned from
Canadian territory (land, sea and air), and their
transit on or over Canadian territory be -
prohibited.

e that we urge the federal government to de-
sist from any and all funding for theoretical and
applied weapons research at Canadian educa-
tional institutions, and that these monies be
used or diverted to socially beneficial research.

e that there be absolutely no Canadian par-
ticipation in the so-called SDI or Star Wars pro-
gram, but that Canada instead assist in every
way to help bring about arms control agreement
in the current arms talks in Geneva, and at the
up-coming summit meeting between U.S. and
Soviet leaders, also in Geneva in November.

This Canadian seniors’ convention -was
hosted by the Golden Age Club and the City of
North Bay, Ontario. The seniors’ movement is
growing rapidly across Canada, as indicated by
the presence of 84 delegates and visitors from
Nova Scotia alone at this year’s convention.

Next year the Federation will meet in
Lethbridge, Alberta, and in 1987, in Sydney,
Nova Scotia.

AFL sets strategy for shorter hours

CALGARY — The Alberta Federation of Labor
has taken the first steps in gearing up its affiliates
for co-ordinated bargaining strategies against con-
cessions and for shorter hours.

The 107,000-member AFL became the first pro-
Vincial labor central, Sept. 19-21 to take up these
central planks in the Canadian Labor Congress
Action Program, when it sponsored an Economic
and Bargaining Conference which drew 140 dele-
gates.

Participants included CLC executive vice-presi-
dent Dick Martin, who opened the conference with
an address on the CLC fightback campaign, Sam
Gindin of the United Auto Workers, National
Union of Provincial Government Employees pres-
ident John Fryer, John Calvert of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees, and AFL research
director Jim Selby.

“We see this as the beginning of the process that
will eventually lead us to co-ordinated bargaining
in Alberta’, AFL president Dave Werlin said last
week. Confident of success, Werlin recognized
however it would require ‘‘a lot of patience, time
and effort’? to achieve.

Shorter Hours, More Pay

“‘We want to arrive at a situation where every
union in this province goes to the bargaining table
determined not to yield to concessions, and that
Includes rejecting zero increase agreements’,
Werlin said.

“In due course we should get to the point where *
€very union in Alberta is fighting to win shorter

Werlin added that the federation intends to fol-
low up the results of the conference with a school
jointly planned for this fall with the CLC.

Enquiries have already arrived from other
federations seeking to duplicate the conference
and asking for copies of its documents. “‘It indi-
cates there’s not.only a need, but a demand out
there for the trade union movement to organize
more of this kind of thing’, Werlin said.

At the heart of the conference workshop dis-
cussions were six background papers focussing on
the fight for shorter hours as key to rolling back
massive unemployment.

190,000 Jobs

They complemented panel discussions which
covered the map from the need for co-ordinated
bargaining to counter the co-ordinated employer
attack on working people, to the role of central
labor bodies in developing such strategies and the
public sector unions’ fightback against government
cutbacks and deregulation.

The background papers dug into the arguments
for reducing work time, the advances in achieving
shorter hours by the European trade union move-
ment, why increased labor productivity should
lead to shorter hours with no loss in pay, the corro-
sive impact massive unemployment has on the
economy, and the link between shorter hours and
job creation.

‘One paper showed how banning overtime
beyond the regular 40-hour work week would
create 190,000 full time jobs. Estimates of the cost

of massive unemployment to Canadians, taking
1983 as an example ranged from $75.5-billion, (or
22 per cent of the Gross National Product), to
$105.7-billion.

“The Way to Go”

The latter estimate, made in a recent study by
CUPE researcher John Calvert was based on total-
ling the costs of lost production, wages and taxes,
with the cost of the unemployment benefits paid
out. It excluded welfare payments which are
loaded on to the system as unemployment con-
tinues to soar.

The papers also showed how worker pro-
ductivity per capita has increased three-fold since
1945 while real wages have not kept pace with
increased productivity, and unemployment has
worsened in the past decade.

The only winners have been the corporations
whose profits have grown steadily. While labor’s
share of the national income dropped 3.5 per cent
between 1977-80, profits increased 4.9 per cent.
Real wages dropped six per cent between 1971-83,
and last year decreased by almost another full per-
centage point.

Werlin said the delegates were unanimous in
their enthusiasm for the conference and the vision
it raised for a more militant fight, not only to beat
concessions but to open the way for breaking new
ground and making advances.

“‘Co-ordinated bargaining strategies for shorter
hours and better pay, that’s the kind of thing we

‘should all get involved with, instead of bankrupt

schemes like quality of work life’’, Werlin said.

__ hours with increased take-home pay.”’
Poa home pay

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 2, 1985 e 11