CANADA

Women from B.C. and Yukon
Met at the University of Victoria
“May 10-12 to urge women to forge
links between activists in the
‘women’s movement and those in the
fight against the nuclear arms race.

Entitled “Women’s Alternatives
for Negotiating Peace,” and spon-
sored by a number of women’s
organizations including the Voice
of Women, the B.C. Chapter of the
Canadian Congress of Women
and the NDP Women’s Rights
commission, the conference’s main
aim was to identify the relation-
ships between women’s issues and
peace:

One ofa series of regional events
taking place across the country, the
conference of some 250 women
named delegates to be sent to an
international meet to be held in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 5-9.
The Halifax conference is part of
the preliminary international dis-
cussion as women prepare to wind
up the UN Decade of Women at a
world conference in Nairobi this
July.

Speaking at the opening plenary
session, Dr. Milnor Alexander, a
long-time women’s rights and
peace advocate active in the U.S.
during the McCarthy era and in
Canada since 1966, effectively set
the tone for the discussion.

“We must recognize that our
economic system, a system of
exploitation, the system of mono-
poly capitalism, is at the root of
much of the conflict in the world
today,” she said.

Alexander cited nationalism,
racism, religion and the “patriar-
chal system” as “prime causes of
global conflict,”

Admitting that she was likely
“stepping on some toes,” she also
condemned “anti-Soviet thinking
in the peace movement” as work-
ing against the “urgent need for
unity.”

Alexander urged participants to
“recognize the role of the multina-
tionals as the U.S. intervenes glo-
bally, in Iran, in Grenada, and in
Nicaragua.”

Her speech, which prompted a
standing ovation from a majority
of the audience, had a special sig-
nificance for one participant,
Mireya Lucero, a 22-year old from
EI Salvador, at the conference as a
guest and resource person in the

workshop on “Militarism and~

Third World Politics.”

*
Lucero, a member of the Salva-
dorean Women’s Association

(AMES) ona cross Canada tour to —

publicize the current situation in
her country and to promote the
Children-to-Children Aid campaign
sponsored by AMES.

In an interview, Lucero outlined
current conditions in her war-torn
country and her work in the Zones
of Popular Control which now
constitute one-third of the country.

“In the Zones of Popular Con-
trol, we are taking many positive
steps for women’s rights and child-
ren’s rights. We are teaching
women, peasant women, to read
and write. We teach them about

nutrition and health care and they
can then teach their children,” she
said through a translator.

“We have agricultural collec-
tives which are producing more
food than the land did before, but
these are also. the target of chemical
warfare.”

Emphasizing the urgent need for

medicine and health care facilities ~

for children, she said, “They are
the first ones hurt by the war, by
the lack of supplies but also by the
bacteriological warfare and by the
phosphorous bombs.

“We need your help. The
women of E] Salvador, the child-
ren of El Salvador are struggling
for peace, for justice, for freedom.
We are determined to win a new
society,” she said.

Dr. Ursula Franklin, a professor
at the University of Toronto,
stressed to the conference the role
that women must play as “agents
for peace.”

“If you want peace — work for
justice,” she said.

The conference passed several
resolutions, including: a demand
for no Canadian participation in
the U.S. Star Wars program; a
demand for non-renewal of the
U.S.-Canada agreement allowing
nuclear weapons testing at Nanoose
Bay on Vancouver Island; a call for
more Canadian chapters of the
Parents for Peace organization;
support for the national liberation
struggles in Central America and
support for struggle against apar-
theid in South Africa.

NAC meet tackles
budget, Star Wars

By NAN McDONALD

OTTAWA — Billed as a
“women’s economic summit,”
the National Action Committee
on the Status of Women
(NAC), at its annual general
meeting here May 10-13, con-
nected the links that exist
between the crucial problems of
Canada’s sagging economy,
solidarity — including interna-
tional solidarity — and most
important, the fight to safe-
guard world peace against
nuclear war.

Recognized as Canada’s lar-
gest and most powerful women’s
lobby, over 600 delegates and
observers from more than 370
women’s groups dealt with 22
resolutions, six emergency reso-
lutions, and a stream of recom-
mendations and _ resolutions
flowing out of the 27 work-
shops.

There was a strong demand
for federal government pro-
grams and practices of affirma-
tive action embracing manda-
tory requirements and enforced
practices to create equality in
employment to the full extent of
federal government jurisdiction.
The response to and discussion
on the upcoming Wilson budget
and the federal government’s
recently expressed intention to
restrict funding for direct job
creation in social sectors directly
affecting women prompted a
call for NAC member groups to
participate massively in the
Green Card Campaign, begun
in Quebec, demanding that the
government immediately estab-
lish direct job creation projects
for women in the community
sector.

Strongly criticizing the argu-
ments by federal and provincial
attorneys as a move towards
anti-choice in the abortion
issue, the meeting instructed
NAC to write to Manitoba
Premier Howard Pawley con-
demning the raids on and seiz-
ure of equipment from the
Morgentaler clinic in Manitoba,
and asking the province to
immediately drop the charges
and take over the clinic in line
with NDP policy.

There was unanimous sup-
port for a Congress of Canadian
Women resolution calling on
NAC to welcome the Apr. 7
peace initiative by Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev — a mora-
torium on the deployment of
medium-range missiles and the
suspension of all other reply
measures in Europe — as a
demonstration of goodwill
towards the success of the Gen-
eva disarmament talks. The
NAC-endorsed resolution calls
on Canada to urge NATO
members, particularly the U.S.,
to join the Soviet Union in the
moratorium.

Also receiving the meeting’s
full support was a resolution
introduced by the Communist
Party of Canada calling for
unity with other peace forces to
get the government to declare
Canada’s opposition to Rea-
gan’s Star Wars program and to
support measures leading to the
success of disarmament negoti-
ations based on preventing an
arms race in space and ending it
on earth, and on the principle of
equality and equal security.

Where’s the fight against concessions?

Of the 136 concessionary agreements signed in
Canada last year, more than half were negotiated in
B.C. and Alberta, where unemployment officially
ranges at 14 per cent and growing.

The latest invasion of concession contracts appears
to be rooted in the U.S. The International Wood-
workers of America leadership in Region B (Oregon
and Washington state), and the Lumber Production
Industrial Workers (carpenters) in the same area, have
now submitted proposals to their members, which
would add $750-million to employer coffers by defer-
ring wages and other conditions, while giving up con-
tract conditions won after years of struggle.

A two-tier wage proposal would start new employees
at $7 an hour, and to top it off, the concession package
would see the work force cut by more than 33 per cent.
According to the latest reports, workers were rejecting
the plan by a three-to-one margin.

On the Chin

Woodworkers in western Canada, badly hit by
contracting out, plant closures and tech change, are
facing similar demands from the employers. While the
policy of Canadian labor is to reject concessions, that
rejection is being undermined by unemployment and
the absence of a united fightback. :

Building trades workers, plagued with as much as 80
per cent unemployment, are also seeing attempts to
undermine their collective agreements.

The Laborers’ union leadership has tried to negotiate
a 25 per cent cut in residential contract rates on the
mistaken premise that more labor would go union. It’s
perhaps not surprising that the first union to break
ranks with the rest of the building trades has strong

Labor in action

George Hewison

connections to the U.S. labor movement, where
concessions are the norm, and where labor is taking it
on the chin as a consequence. ;

_It also isn’t accidental that the bastard son of the
AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades
Department — the Canadian Federation of Labor —
recently announced that it is setting up a B.C. rival to
the CLC-affiliated Federation of Labor, with Socred
MLA Terry Segarty the guest speaker at their founding
convention. ;

Where’s the Action Plan?

The current dispute at Air Canada is likewise an
attempt to foist U.S.-concessionary contracts on
Canadian workers. While over at CP Air, the unions
which have formed a ‘“‘Common Front’’ to fight
concessions have been greeted by new tactics of divide
and rule, including the lock out of CP Air machinists.

What’s missing in the entire struggle against conces-
sions is the co-ordinated fightback by labor, promised
at the last CLC convention.

Everybody in the trade union movement now knows
that concessions don’t create jobs; and that no single
union can withstand the fury of the united employe
attack. 5

But there are still too many in leading positions of the

trade union movement who have not fully grasped the
significance of the CLC’s 9-point Action Plan adopted
at last year’s convention in Montreal.

That Plan calls for a continued fight against conces-
sions. To be successful, the fight against concessions
must go beyond rhetoric, and incorporate co-ordinated
bargaining, picketing and support action.

Workers Deserve Better

In addition, the fight against concessions must in-
clude the fight against unemployment.

The CLC’s 9-point plan calls for ‘‘a co-ordinated
bargaining and political agenda centred on shorter
work time with no loss in pay ... and a major educa-
tional program to convince Canadians of the impor-
tance of reduced work time with no loss in pay to their
social and economic future.”’

The Action Plan called for ‘‘a campaign at the com-
munity, provincial and federal levels to mobilize work-
ers, the unemployed and all those victimized by the
economic crisis ... At the provincial level we will as-
sist federations in developing ‘solidarity coalitions’ ...
to place labor’s program on the political agenda.”

The ‘‘March For Jobs’’, as part of this Action Plan,
called for “‘marches, rallies, meetings and action to
lobby governments at all levels on the right to full
employment.”

To date, the ‘‘March For Jobs’’ remains on paper,
and to the extent it does so, labor will remain in a
defensive posture, shielding itself from blows by
government, big business and the right.

Surely the workers of Canada deserve better, for
they have amply demonstrated everywhere that where
leadership is given, they are prepared to fight.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 22, 1985 e 5

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