LABOUR

—

Conference pushes boycott organizing

The B.C. Fed boycott conference dem-
onstrated that there “is the resolve and
commitment among our members” to carry
on the fight against Bill 19, federation secre-
tary Cliff Andstein said Tuesday as confer-
ence organizers prepared to wind up the
three-day meeting.

More than 400 unionists from across the
province took part in the three days of
workshops and plenary meetings, many of
which were addressed by guest speakers
involved in organizing campaigns both in
this country and the U.S.

Andstein said that the registrations for
the conference were higher than expected
and brought together affiliates and non-
affiliates, including many rank and file
members.

“Now we want those people to go back to
their labour councils and back to their local
unions,” he said. “They’re the people who
will have to get the message out.”

And that ‘message, he told the opening
session, is that the labour movement will
only hold on to the right to organize
“through the strength of our membership
and our willingness to fight.”

Much of the first day of the conference
was focussed on the organizing campaign
announced earlier by the B.C. Fed, with
federation president Ken Georgetti emphas-
izing that for the last several years t the trade
union movement has been “out of
character — we're settled back into a siege
mentality.”

For the first time, the unionized sector of
the work force in the province had fallen
below 40 per cent.

Significantly, the decline in union organi-
zation began in 1959 following the passage
of the first Social Credit government’s anti-
labour bills and although the trade union
movement gained some ground under the
NDP government, mass unemployment
and increasingly restrictive Socred legisla-
tion have cut steadily into union ranks over
the last decade.

Georgetti emphasized that the organiz-
ing Campaign was not just an adjunct to the

boycott campaign but would signal a new
approach.

Two U.S. union organizers also brought
the message to conference delegates that the

CLAYOLA BROWN...
Reagan anti-labour regime.

- organizing under

trade union movement has to organize
under new conditions — which are fre-
quently hostile to labour.

Clayola Brown, a Black organizer with

the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile.

Workers and the director of education and
civil rights for her union since 1976, told
delegates that ACTWU realized in 1981
when U.S. President Reagan smashed the
air controllers organization, PATCO, “that
it was going to be open season on working

people. ;
“It was a Signal that any time workers

came to the government for protection or

_justice, they weren’t going to get it,” she
said. ““We realized then that we had to
organize in a different way.”

She cited the successful campaign to
organize the plants owned by textile giant
J.P. Stevens during which time ACTWU
organizers had to work closely with com-

The B.C. Federation Sunday con-
demned as racist the comments by

and Supreme Court Justice J.V. Clyne
that Canada should remain a “white
country.”

A statement by federation president
Ken Georgetti was read to resounding
applause from some 400 delegates to a
B.C.. Fed conference on Bill 19 which
opened Sunday just as participants were
reading newspaper reports of the former
judge’s remarks.

“For a leading member of the com-
munity to make such blatantly racist
statements bring shame to every Cana-
dian woman, man and child,” Georgetti
stated.

In a widely-publicized interview Sept.
18, Clyne said that Canada should devise
immigration policies to ensure that Eng-
lish and French-speaking whites remain
the dominant majority and that Canada
does “not have too much of an influx
from other parts of the world. é

“I don’t think that should happen,
quite frankly,” he said. “I’d not want to
see us cease to be a white country.”

Clyne is a member of the racist Immi-

has published ads in papers across Can-
ada as part of the increasingly strident
campaign by right wing groups against
non-white immigrants, particularly from

Clyne’s racism condemned

former MacMillan Bloedel chairman:

" tion,” he said. “If we listen to these peo-

gration Association of Canada which

Asia and Latin America.

The content of the ads — and Clyne’s
comments — are anecho of those made
by groups such as the ultra-right
National Front in Britain which have
exploited anger over poverty and unem-
ployment to foment anti-immigrant sen-
timent.

Georgetti’ s statement also noted that
the expressions of bigotry and racism are
increasingly coming from Prominent
people.

“I cannot help but be alarmed by the
growing number of people in Tespected
positions, including the premier of this
province, who are making the most
alarming statements about immigra-

ple, it appears that all we want in this
country is rich white people who speak
English or French. That is simply not
true and I do not believe for one minute
that the working people of this country
will abide such outrageous racism.”

He warned, however, that the com-
ments by Clyne make it clear that “there
are those working among us who will ”
promote racism.

“Clearly, we must re-dedicate our-
selves to fighting the J.V. Clynes of the
world for if we do not, then their twisted
racist view of Canada will prevail.

“We cannot and will not tolerate that
happening,” he said.

12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 23, 1987

munity and church groups and mount a
continent-wide boycott.

“We found out that we weren’t going to
get anything but a flit on the behind from
government — if we were going to survive,
we had to do it on our own.

“We also found out that if you don’t have
the community on your side, you’re sunk,”
she said.

In an address Tuesday, United Farm-
workers vice-president Dolores Huerta told
the conference that the union had been
compelled once again to go back to the
community after California governor
Deukmejian refused to enforce state labour
relations laws and allowed corporate grow-
ers to flout regulations on safety, labour
rights and the use of pesticides with impun-
ity.

In doing that, she said, “it has re-
energized our organization.

“Our members are fighting and they’re
active. That’s what we need to do — to go
on the offensive ... to win labour’s rightful
place.” :

In a direct reference to the campaign by
B.C. unionists against anti-labour legisla-
tion, Huerta warned delegates, ““when they
go after the labour movement, they’re going
after the leadership that comes from work-
ing people — and you can expect a totalit-
arian government to follow.”

Delegates also heard from Ray Haynes,
the secretary-treasurer of the B.C. Fed dur-
ing the labour’ movement’s boycott in the
early 1970s of Bill 33, the Mediation Com-

.mission Act, brought down by W.A.C.

Bennett.

He emphasized that the boycott at that
time had been accompanied by widespread
strike action and defiance of injunctions by
labour leaders, many of whom went to jail.

And like that boycott campaign, the
labour movement may again face confron-
tation, he warned.

Haynes was also one of several unionists
leading workshop discussions as unionists
debated union organizing under the new
conditions, conducting the boycott cam-
paign and working out strategies for various
union sectors. The workshops and the sub-
sequent reports to the conference were
closed to the media, however.

Andstein said in an interview that he and
Georgetti would be following up the con-
ference with visits to labour councils and
local unions to carry the campaign and par-
ticularly the boycott to local union mem-
bership.

Throughout the campaign, he ae the
federation would be pressing for the repeal
of Bill 19 and its replacement by fair labour
legislation.

“The boycott is central to the fightback
campaign,” he told delegates in opening the
conference, “‘but by itself it won’t do it. It
won’t put pressure on the government and
it won’t frighten employers.

“It is only part of the strategy to organize
new workers, and to conduct educational
campaigns,” he said.

At the same time, he said, “the boycott
makes sure that the illegitimacy of Bill 19 is
kept before our membership and before the
government and employers.

“We do not recognize the legitimacy of

Bill 19 — and we will not,” he said.

Move against
privatization,
council urges

| The Vancouver and District
Labour Council wants the trade
union movement to move quickly
set up a working committee to tackl
impending government privall
tion programs. :

Delegates ot the VDLC vot
Sept. 15 to call on the council exec
_ tive to “establish a committee to t

into the CLC campaign and
develop a complementary local
_ campaign to oppose the privatiza
tion, free trade, de-regulation a
de-unionization programs of both
_ federal and provincial governmen

The resolution, endorsed unani
mously by delegates, authorized th
committee “to work with ... affi
lates, non-affiliates and communi
_ groups” and to organize variou:

| actions, including public meetings.
_ demonstrations and pubicity cam:
_ paigns.
Fishermen’s Union delegate Jok
_Radoseyic cited the actions being
carried out against free trade
_ brewery workers and auto workers
in Ontario, calling them an example
of the approach that unionists in this
_ province should take. <
_ “They realized that what is com-
“ing will put them out of busi-.
ness — and that they should do
something about it, ancluding job.
action,” he said.

In this province, “we will soon be :
facing the government's privatiza-
_tion program,” he warned, pointing
to Intergovernmental Affairs Minis-
ter Stephen Rodgers’ huge list of |
companies and services that will be
oe for sale. :

“We're talking about Es
_— campsites, electrical power, gov.
ernment services, you name it. _
“It’s time to wake ourselves u
_and wake up the public,” he said. -_
_ Marineworkers vice-president Bill

COS en eae
_ tions that we had at the CLE con
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our sights on fi reine the cs wing -
_ agenda that’s cons, SOW re. a

- So a fg ose ss es os

GRIBUNE

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