Overtime, tag relief keeps

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Forced over-
time and the introduction of tag
relief were two important local is-
sues keeping Ford Canada work-
ers in Oakville and Talbotville on

*the bricks while the United Auto
Workers prepared to ratify a mas-
ter agreement with the number
two auto maker.

Pickets went up in both loca-
tions several hours before the of-
ficial Ford strike deadline at mid-
night Oct. 23. The strikes showed
auto workers’ frustration over
Ford’s continuing barrage of
temporary layoffs while, at‘ the
same time, speed-up and harass-
ment on the shop floor are step-
ped up. ;

Among the unresolved local is-
sues at the bargaining table are the
demand the company stop fore-
men from doing hourly rated jobs,
that Ford not introduce the hated
system of tag relief in Oakville,
and that overtime be on a volun-
tary basis instead of the forced
overtime workers in Talbotville
are currently.subjected to.

Under Ford’s proposed tag re-
lief system, the current 10-minute
breaks in the morning and after-
noon when production lines are
stopped and the workers enjoy
the breaks together, would be
folded into the two 18-minute per-
sonal relief times workers now
take individually during the day.

The company wants the sytem
because it means there isn’t a
break in production. The workers
oppose it because they see it as
more killing speed-up.

Register for Picket Duty

As the Tribune went to press
Oct. 25, local UAW leaders at the
bargaining table and on the picket
line were determined to stay out
as long as Ford refused to clean
up the local demands.

The strikes erupted on the
background of an early morning
tentative settlement between the
UAW Ford Bargaining Council,
and the company. UAW director
for Canada Bob White, said the
proposed pact would track the re-
cent settlement with GM Canada,
on economic issues and most
benefits.

That settlement repeated the
traditional 3% per year wage hike
over a three-year pact, with the
only improvement being in the
Cost-of-Living Allowance in the
third year. For the first two years,
the COLA formula remains the
same, producing one cent an hour
increase for every .3 rise in a
combined Canada-U.S. con-
sumer price index (CPI). The
formula will change in the third
year to one cent an hour increase
for every .26 rise in the combined
CPI.

UAW negotiators stressed the
main gains were won in pension
improvements. COLA adjust-
ments for retirees’ pensions were
won for the first time and benefit
increases negotiated. A retiree,
with 25 years service, for example
gets an immediate pension in-
crease of $72.50 a month rising to
$123.75 Wuring the life of the con-
tract.

However despite GM’s $26-
million profit picture in the first

Ford locals out during talks ile
Vis

six months of this year, and -

Ford’s showing, among Fortune
Magazine’s top 500 industrial
companies with a take of $1.588-
billion profits in 1978, both com-
panies were able to force the
union to chip in 14 cents from

each member’s COLA over the
three years to ‘“‘help’’ the com-
panies pay for the total benefit

In reporting the GM settlement
earlier, the Tribune incorrectly
stated that the 14 cents diversion
from the COLA, which will not be
recovered by the workers, would
fund the pension increases.

Not Entire Cost

As was pointed out by union
spokesmen, this diversion could-
n’t begin to cover the entire cost
of the pensions, but the question
remains, given the comparatively
better financial health of Ford and
GM over their employees, how
the company could successfully
make a case with the bargaining
committees that auto workers
should foot part of the benefit bill.

Like GM, Ford workers will get
a total of 26 personal paid holi-
days scheduled throughout the
agreement. However, of these
only 22 fall within the life of the
agreement which will expire in
late September 1982. White indi-
cated the union was trying to get
Ford to schedule 23 PPHs before
the contract expiry.

At the 3:00 a.m. announcement
of the tentative Ford settlement,
White noted the corporation’s
stubborn efforts to push talks
right up to the strike deadline. He
said the discussions centred on
Ford’s insistence on imposing the
recent Ford-U.S. auto settlement
in Canada, while the UAW in-
sisted on the GM Canada pattern.

He said the union got Ford’s
agreement to issue a similar letter

to the one GM has signed on the
question of doctors opting out of
the Ontario Hospital Insurance
Plan (OHIP). Ford also gave the

union a letter agreeing to recog- _

nize the UAW in any new plant it
starts up in Canada.

The company agreed to recog-
nize the UAW in the new Windsor
engine plant under construction.
The UAW also won a form of paid
educational leave similar to the
plan operating at GM.

The tentative pact will cover
some 15,000 Ford workers in five
locals throughout the provinces,
if it is ratified by the UAW mem-
bers on Oct. 28.

Hamilton labor protests barring |
Peace Congress from OFL meet

HAMILTON — Hamilton and
District Labor Council delegates
heard a moving and eloquent ap-
peal October 18, from UE Local
550 President Joe Scofield on a
peace and disarmament resolu-
tion unanimously adopted and
forwarded to the Ontario Federa-
tion of Labor.

Speaking to the resolution,

Scofield expressed his ‘“‘concern

and shock ai the report on the
Canadian Peace Congress’’ in
which the OFL had refused the
Congress space for a display at
the upcoming OFL Convention.
‘‘The OFL had space for the in-
surance companies, they have

Alberta’s meat packing
industries threatened

By J. FELIX

_ EDMONTON — The city’s
meat packing workers received
another blow October 18, when
Canada Packers Co., announced
it was chopping 120 of its 645
workers on Jan. 25.

Earlier this year, Burns Meats
Ltd., shut down its hog opera-
tions here dropping 400 jobs, and
the future of Gainers Meats Ltd.,
is uncertain.

Canada Packers is moving its
cattle kill operations to plants in
Lethbridge, Calgary, Red Deer
and Moose Jaw, but only 30 jobs
at these plants will be offered to
the Edmonton workers. Industry
sources have described the lay-
offs and shifts of operations as
‘economy measures’? made
necessary by. technological
changes and plant upgrading.

Two Tory cabinet ministers
came to the defence of the indus-
try in the legislature. Agriculture
Minister Dallas Schmidt called
the layoffs a necessary ‘‘corpo-
rate decision’’, and predicted that
cattle buyers and producers will
be unaffected. Labor Minister
Les Young praised Canada Pack-
ers for giving advance notice of
the layoffs, unlike Byrns which
did not.

New Democratic Party leader
Grant Notley warned that the
‘*‘dramatic downturn”’ in the Ed-
monton meat-packing industry
could remove competition in the
area, possibly leaving Swift
Canadian Co. as the only inte-
grated meat-packer in the area.
He ‘called on the government to
stop ignoring the situation.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— NOVEMBER 2, 1979—Page 8

‘*The Tories couldn’t care less
what happens to workers here,”’
said Kimball Cariou, Edmonton
organizer of the Communist Par-
ty.

“The government has been
talking for years about diversify-
ing the Alberta economy, but out-
side of big loans to companies like
Gulf Oil, and providing infrastruc-
ture for these monopolies in their
activities, they have done nothing
to develop or protect industry
here.’’ Cariou pointed out that
Canada Packers, which made
$20.9-million in 1978, and $18.1-
million the year before, does not
need to ‘“‘economize”’ at the ex-
pense of the workers who created
those profits.

Last April, an article on the
meat-packing industry appeared
in the Edmonton Journal, written
by Winston Gereluk of the Al-
berta Union of Provincial Em-
ployees. He pointed out that
Canada is fast becoming a net im-
porter of food, including meat,
largely because of decisions by
large corporations to change their
operations.

In the last 18 years, he wrote,
job creation in food processing
has risen only 35%, compared toa
100% increase for all job creation.
According to the Conference
Board in Canada, he wrote, 850%
more capital is needed to create a
single job in the petroleum indus-
try than in the food and beverage
industry. The Alberta Govern-
ment, he concluded, is ‘‘open to
the charge of being little more
than a spokesman for an industry
which has been anything but a re-
sponsible corporate citizen’.

AND HOW'S MY LITTLE SANDY? DID Ywumse =|
YOUR DADOY, WHEN I WAS WORKING ALL

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space for the book peddlers — but
there is no space for peace,”’ he
said.

“Tf the trade union movement
continues to show indifference, if
we continue to allow the arms
race to escalate and escalate and
escalate . . . if we allow some man-
iac to push the-button, there will
be millions dead,’’ he continued.

“There is too much indiffer-
ence. There is contempt, I mean
contempt, for church groups and
others fighting for peace and dis-
armament. There is contempt for
women’s groups, for the Voice of
Women, for the Canadian Peace
Congress and the Hamilton Peace
Council, and many others. But
what a wonderful thing it would
be, ifthe OFL were to start a peti-
tion on peace and disarmament,
like they’re doing now on medi-
care, and then give it to Broad-
bent to introduce into parliament.
What a wonderful thing that
would be’’, he concluded.

Scofield’s comments were
warmly greeted by delegates who
were obviously moved by his ~
simple and straightforward-appe-
al. The resolution’s three parts
called for the ratification of SALT
II, condemned the building of the
neutron bomb, and proposed a
world conference on disarma-
ment be convened by the United
Nations at an early date.

In other business, Council was
treated to a showing of the film,
The Struggle Continues, which

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_ity to CUPW on the incarceratio!,

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graphically portrayed the Ca Yo
dian Union of Postal Workers:
long struggle for union recog
tion for the rights to strike ant
bargain collectively, and in the ify
terests of. its 24,000 members:
The film was followed by
adoption of a resolution calling of
the OFL to defend CUPW and il
president Jean Claude Parrot, ane
condemning any government at
tempts to rescind or prevent tht
right to strike from being utili
by all workers in the public or p :
vate sectors. 7

As well, “‘a message of solida 1

of J.C. Parrot, who is in jail t&
night’’ ~-was unanimously e}°
dorsed and sent to the union’s 1
tional offices.
Council’s Political Actio! J
Committee introduced resoll
tions reaffirming the right ®
teachers to strike and bargain CO
lectively under Bill 100 (current)
under attack by the Ontario Li”
erals), and support for the wor
ers at Radio Shack in Barrie, On!)
-who are attempting to get a!
agreement. 1
Gay Lambe, the Banie sia
rep who organized Radio Shae,
told delegates that the use
police in the strike had onl
helped the company. ‘‘I used © Mi
have respect for the police, but
have no respect now,” she said.4
boycott is in process against
Radio Shack company across
country.

UE to CLC, Clark

Petrocan top priority

TORONTO — The 20,000-
member United Electrical Work-
ers (UE) blasted the Tories’
energy policies in a telegram Oct.
24, calling on the government to
Start bringing multi-national oil
corporations under public owner-
ship.

At the same time, in a separate
message, the Canadian Labor
Congress was called upon to
make the fight against the Clark
government’s sell out energy
policies a top priority and to help
mobilize the public to pressure
Ottawa to act in Canadian’s in-
terests.

Signed by UE president C.S.
Jackson, the telegram to: Prime
Minister Joe Clark called on the
government ’to freeze energy
prices and reverse its stand on the

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sellout of Petro Canada. He cate
the Tories’ proposed energy Pm mt ;
ing policy ‘‘one of the 4
openly brazen acts of piracy
perpetrated on the Canae
people.” :
The UE president predic™
that ‘‘unless the govern
backs off its ruinous position, 1.
people of Canada will shake
government to its very roots: —

To Dennis McDermott, soe
dent of the CLC, pe es
that the congress *‘m [
number one priority re B
that the rank and file of ‘the oe
affiliates, together with all
minded citizens be mobil lied fy
force the government (to) ay
the best ininterests of
dians.”’

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