oe lM LL Visa strikers take protest inside bank TORONTO — The walls rocked as more than 300 unionists rolled through a local Commerce Bank branch, Sept. 21 demanding a first contract for striking Commerce VISA and mailroom work- ers. Like a tidal wave the strikers, backed by hun- dreds of other union members, including striking Air Canada flight attendants, striking technicians at Graham Cable, local labor council officers at- tending an Ontario Federation of Labor con- ference, women’s organizations and other trade unions swept along St. Clair Avenue toward one of the bank’s few branches open on Saturdays. Earlier in the morning the protesters had gathered at a nearby park to show their solidarity with the strikers, share messages of support from the labor movement, women’s organizations and other strikers, sing labor songs and to enjoy a side- splitting skit performed by the strikers lampooning life and management at the Commerce. Feminist folk artist Arlene Mantle led the gather- ing in songs of protest and solidarity. The rally heard from a wide array of labor and women’s organizations. Rally chairperson, Jaynie Cowl, the Congress of Canadian Women representative on the Women’s Strike Support Committee, which organized the event, called the VISA strike, ‘‘a critically important strike for the labor movement and especially for women.” _— Marjorie Cohen, vice-president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, representing some 400 organizations across Canada pledged NAC’s full backing to the strikers. The Commerce and the rest of the Canadian bank- ing establishment, she said, fear the unionization of bank workers, 90 per cent of whom are women, because they don’t want them to gather the collec- tive strength to defend and extend their rights. ‘The issues in this strike are important to all of us as women and as workers in this country’, Cohen said. Citing management’s refusal to nego- tiate wage and benefit increases, guarantee job security, and the Commerce’s single-minded bid to destroy the Union of Bank Employees, she added, “‘these are things the banks and all other women’s employers want to do to all of us.”’ VISA striker Liz Fong welcomed labor’s and women’s groups’ in the union’s busy roster of pic- keting, demonstrations, leafletting and solidarity mobilization. Commerce VISA workers, she said, a haven’t had a general wage increase since 1981. ‘*All some of us have received are merit increases which offer nothing..If the supervisor doesn’t like © you, you don’t get a raise,”” Fong told the rally: ‘‘She’s the one who determines your lifestyle.”’ Donna Hendrick, strike co-ordinator for the Canadian Airline Flight Attendants Association battling Air Canada, situated the fight against con- cessions and battling Air Canada, the move to de- regulate the industry at the heart of CALFA’s con- flict with the corporation. : She charged that, ‘Air Canada is determined to break all of its unions particularly those dominated by women’’. Hendrick rejected statements by Air Canada president Pierre Junieant that women only work for “pin’’ money. “‘Women work for the same reasons that men do. We want to earn a decent living and we work because we have to”’, she said. Pat O’Connor of the Communications Workers on strike at Graham Cable for their first agreement, and CLC Ontario director Ralph Ortlieb also ad- dressed the gathering. in parity Jer workers set to win with GM counterparts WINDSOR — Canada’s 10,000 Chrysler workers approached their Sept. 29 meetings to set a strike deadline with the U.S. cor- poration, more determined than ever to win wage parity with Ford and General Motors workers. Results of the meetings which also took place in Ajax (near Oshawa) and Etobicoke, (a To- ronto suburb), were not available at press time, but given the mili- tant mood of Chrysler workers and the company’s insistent de- mands at the bargaining table in _ Toronto for sweeping conces- _ sions in work practices, seniority rights and inplant rules, a near unanimous endorsation for strike action is expected. Officials for the United Auto Workers say the company and - union bargaining subcommittees are meeting daily, but that’s about all that is happening. - Canadian Chrysler workers’ _ wages fell about $3 an hour -be- hind those at Ford and GM as a result of the massive U.S. Government bailout of the ailing corporation in 4979. The Cana- dians wouldn’t go along with the massive ‘“‘give backs’ surren- dered in the U.S., in 1979, until the international contract was _ re-opened by the company and ~ the U.S. UAW leadership in 1981. _ Under intense corporate- government pressure the Cana- dian members voted a narrow 50.5 per cent in favor of the con- - Cessions agreement which wiped - out their COLA and drove down their wages. The historic five-week strike in 1982 put an end to concessions, restored the COLA and won the Canadians a $1.15 an hour wage : increase that forced the company | fo give its American workers more money than they'd settled for in their agreement. Ten months later, in Sept. 1983 the Canadians closed the $2 an hour wage gap and briefly estab- lished parity in Canada with Ford and GM. The gap was however re-opened with subsequent con- tracts at the other two companies. Uppermost in the minds of Chrysler workers is the know- ledge that the massive bailout and the concessions given by the American UAW helped turn Chrysler from what U.S. labor economist Victor Perlo recently called ‘‘the sick puppy of the auto industry to a cash cow.” In a recent column in the New York Dail World, addressed mainly to American auto work- ers, but not without interest to Canadians, Perlo cited a study by the New York-based Labor Re- search Association which proves that ‘‘Chrysler’s extraordinary performance on the backs of its workers provides a firm footing for real advances in the current contract negotiations. “Chrysler has no more ex- cuses’’, LRA declares. Contrasting Chrysler chairman Lee Iaccocca’s $4.3-million earn- ings last year to the conditions faced by American Chrysler workers, Perlo cites the LRA re- / 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 2, 1985 leadership | search to show how the workers’ productivity has increased five times more than wages and bene- fits since 1980. While Chrysler workers in 1980 produced 15.1 vehicles each, in 1984 they were producing 25.2, an increase of 67 per cent. LRA notes that ‘‘workers’ share of the value they produce has fallen from 54.2 per cent in 1980, to 29.2 per cent in 1984 — a 46 per cent drop.” Sales revenue from 1979-84 in- creased 136 per cent and in 1984 the company’s cash flow as a por- tion of its sales was 14.9 per cent compared to 11.2 per cent at GM and 9.9 per cent at Ford. In an oblique reference to the pro-concessions leadership of the American UAW, the LRA study concludes: “‘The real issues at stake in these negotiations —jobs and wages — cannot .be met through retraining programs, quality circles or profit sharing schemes. “The gap between what the workers need and what the com- pany wants is too great. Given Chrysler’s desire to increase out- sourcing, put a lid on wages, re- vise work rules, weaken the union, and intensify speed-up, moderate adjustments will not suffice. ‘With Chrysler swimming in profit, the time is ripe for the UAW to make a big dent in the anti-labor strategy of the com- panies and make substantial im- provements in wages, benefits and job security of Chrysler workers.” TT } VISA workers join in skit at support rally. Mila needs daycare? So do PSAC workers OTTAWA — The Public Service Alliance of Canada is en- couraged by Mila Mulroney’s declaration that she intends to take her new baby with her to the office. And the Alliance hopes Brian Mulroney is listening. The union, representing 180,000 federal public service employees — 41 per cent are women — has long-called on the federal government to provide child care in the workplace so that federal public service employees will also have this option, Al- liance vice-president Susan Giampietri, said Sept. 17. ‘Unfortunately the vast majority of Canadians — including federal public service employees — have neither the necessary workplace child care facilities nor the flexibility required to take ~ their children to work,’ Giampietri noted. ‘Although some professional women may have this option, it is not a reality for most women and particularly not for members of the low-paid Administrative Support Category — clerks and secretaries — in the federal public service,’ she said. She added that the lack of child care facilities denies needed if es family income and valuable skills to the workplace. But the cost of quality child care makes it prohibitive to many workers. Child care at public service worksites is virtually non-existent, although the government has announced a program for facili- tative support for up to four pilot day care centres. ‘“‘Because child care is such an important issue for working mothers, particularly the 64 per cent of women in the public service concentrated in the Administrative Support Category, the Alliance is calling for child care facilities in this round of mas- ter contract negotiations,’’ Giampietri said. “The bargaining demand calls for the employer to provide subsidized child care facilities on or near the premises where no suitable child care facilities exist and when there is a demand for them.” Labor calls boycott of Kresge chain * THUNDER BAY — Some 150 supporters of Kresge strikers in Port Arthur paraded through the streets and marched to the strike-bound store to kick off a national boycott of the trans- national department store chain. Visible were banners of various union locals — CUPW, CUPE, UAW, USWA, SIEU as well as non-CLC affiliates such as Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union. f Other groups included activists from the women’s and peace movements. Bishop John O’Mara and area NDP MP and MPPs also pledged their support. The 15 Kresge workers, 14 women and one man, have been on strike since April é 18. A solid picketline has beet maintained, reducing traffic at th Port Arthur outlet to a ba trickle. 2 However, the giant chain has seen fit to shoulder the losses this outlet in hopes of breaking t strikers’ morale rather than b gain in good faith. The issues are wages and language suitable fo first contract. The strikers wef The strikers’ union, Food and Commercial Worke Union, has called for a total bo cott of Kresge and its affilia chain K-Mart, Jupiter and DIe Top stores. The call has been ef dorsed by the CLC.