Labour Nurses militance i, A mass rally outide the strikebound plant May 10 was credited with bringing Leyland Industries to the bargaining table and a settlement this week as members of the |WA-Canada voted 83 per cent to accept a first contract at the Pitt Meadows plastics manufacturer. The pact, which ends a bitter eight- month strike, will bring wages for most workers up to $8.50 an hour from $5 and starting rates up to $6 over two years. Strikers also won a union shop, with mechanics who worked through the strike covered by the Rand formula. Their jobs will return to the bargaining unit through attrition. Sunday, Junei1iith 12 noonto 6 pm Websters Corner Hall 25470 Dewdney Trunk Road, Maple Ridge (from Vancouver take Lougheed Hwy. East, turn left at the first light in Haney, turn right at Dewdney Trunk Road) Songs and Music Food @ refreshments @ children’s activities @ sports @ fun for everyone. For information phone 251-1186 All proceeds to the Pacific Tribune 12 « Pacific Tribune, May 29, 1989 i i i § ! GTB UN=- : ‘ : | Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street g | Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5. Phone 251-1186 5 BP Name 2s ere so Se ee eh ee es | - Address <2, = eee a ee ee : Bocce cece cece ene ee ne Postal: Code: 25 sak. ss ees st j § lamenclosing 1yr.$200) 2yrs.$350) 3yrs. $500) Foreign 1 yr. $32 Big f Bill me later ~=Donation$........ Fr i i sparks talks Faced with a 94 per cent strike vote by the B.C. Nurses Union and overwhelming pub- lic sympathy for the nurses’ position, Health Labour Relations Association went back to the bargaining table Tuesday with the assistance of a private mediator, former Labour Relations Board chair John Kinzie. Talks were continuing at press time under a news blackout. The negotiations, the first in nearly a month, followed the BCNU’s action in launching job action in 144 hospitals and other institutions. Nurses began working to rule Sunday, refusing to carry out non- nursing work which has often fallen to them, including serving food, sorting rae records and filling in as switchboard relief. “We will focus totally on the patients and try to show the kind of quality care that would be possible if there was not a nursing shortage,” BCNU president Pat Savage said in a statement announcing the action. The BCNU began the job action imme- diately following the expiry of the 72-hours strike notice issued by the union May 18. As part of the mediated bargaining, however, the union has agreed not to escalate strike action and HLRA has agreed not to lock the union out while talks are going on. The hospital employers were clearly under pressure to come back with an offer after the BCNU registered the unprece- dented 94 per cent strike mandate and dem- onstrated its resolve to use that mandate with Sunday’s job action. HLRA has so far offered nothing at the bargaining table on wages and has demanded concessionary changes in con- tract language. Instead, the association ran ads earlier this month claiming that B.C. nurses were “the highest paid in Canada on average,” despite wage rates which rank only sixth among nurses across the country. BCNU has drawn on considerable public sympathy for its stand since the position of nurses has highlighted Social Credit cuts in health care over the last seven years. There is already a nursing shortage estimated at 2,000 across the province and cutbacks in other hospital staff have resulted in a grow- ing workload for nurses who have been forced to pick up additional duties. In addition, wage levels in the profession have fallen substantially, the result of years of government restraint. “We will no longer accept intolerable conditions for ourselves and our patients,” Savage declared in announcing BCNU bar- gaining demands in February. “We will no longer carry the whole load when employ- ers and the provincial government fail to meet their responsibilities for health care.” The BCNU is pressing for a 32.7 per cent increase in wages to bring a general duty hospital nurse up to $20 an hour from the current starting rate of $15.07. It is also asking for reductions in the work week, improved provisions for 24-hour service, including weekend premiums and increased shift differentials as well as changes in con- tract language on health and safety. The contract expired March 31, 1989. Labour Notes Werlin to lead Zeidler strike IWA-Canada president Jack Munro has announced that Dave Werlin, former president of the Alberta Federa- tion of Labour, has been hired to co- ordinate the [W A-Canada strikes current- ly under way at Zeidler Forest Industries . plants in Edmonton and Slave Lake, Alberta. Local 1-207 president Mike Pisak praised Werlin’s work during the Gain- ers strike in 1986, and noted: ““We are confident that with his experience and our members’ determination, we will soon get the employer back to the bar- gaining table to negotiate in good faith and bring these long-standing strikes to a just conclusion.” Workers have been on the picket line for over three years in Slave Lake and more than 14 months in Edmonton. “One of the things we will be asking Werlin to do is to mobilize the broad coalitions of unionists and social justice activists built during his tenure as AFL president to support our strikers in their resistance to Zeidler’s unwarranted con- cession demands,” said Pisak. Liz Claiborne boycott called Last October, Transcontinentales S.A., makers of the popular Liz Claiborne clo- thing labels, packed up their Guatamala operations and left 500 workers jobless, with neither back pay nor severance pay. The plant was set up in 1986, and initially employed some 1,400 workers, most of whom were women. Pay aver- aged $50 per month. Over the last year the company responded to the organiza- tion of a union in the shop with a series of illegal dismissals. The company refused to recognize a Guatamalan labour court which ruled that no actions could be taken against employees while investiga- tions regarding the company’s refusal to pay severence pay were under way. And when the company closed in October, it declined to pay workers their September salary. More than 100 ex- employees are presently occupying the vacated plant. They’re asking for a boy- cott of Liz Claiborne products. Picnic send-off for fish lobby A picnic in Vancouver’s New Brighton Park June 9 will send off a West Coast fishermen’s lobby to Ottawa to protest the federal government’s sellout to the U.S. on landing regulations covering salmon and herring. Spearheaded by the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, the cam- paign will take the issue to communities on both coasts, dramatizing the threat to jobs and-Canadian sovereignty. The picnic will be from 2 to 9 p.m., with the lobby scheduled to leave for Ottawa the following day, June 10.