LABOR

BCGEU set to begin

Some 90 per cent of B.C. Government
Employees Union members who attended
rallies across the province have called for a
strike vote, BCGEU president John
Shields said last week.

With that mandate, the union will begin
next month taking a strike ballot across
the 34,000-member bargaining unit, he
said.

Shields told a packed rally of Vancouver-
area government workers last week that
the Compensation Stabilization Program
means “we don’t have free collective bar-
gaining any more.”

The government negotiators have
offered public employees zero per cent in
the first two years of a three-year contract,
with a two-per cent hike in the third year.

Shields said that amounted to a three-
per cent decline in income for the first two
years, followed by what he sarcastically
called a “magnanimous” two-per cent
increasé. With added work hours that the
government is also demanding, it comes to
a 14-per cent cut in income, he charged.

“It should be clear to us — that this

There is a possibility of an alliance
between the revolutionary forces of the Phi-
lippines and the electoral opposition to the
corrupt rule of Ferdinand Marcos — butit
will require a significant change on the part
of Marcos rival Corazon Aquino.

That was the message two Philippines
peasant leaders brought to a meeting in
New Westminster Saturday, on the first leg
of a national tour.

Pancho Lara and Memong Patayn of the
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (K MP)
— the national Filipino peasant organiza-
tion — said their members refused to par-
ticipate in the recent snap election because
the Aquino forces failed to back a program
of much-needed land reform.

Instead, the KMP used-the election to
promote its demands, said Patayan, KMP
national vice-president.

The KMP, formed last year to fight the
encroachment of large agribusiness on
peasant-held lands, demands the return of
land to peasants and tenant farmers free of
charge. The organization has already scored
victories in forcing the reduction of land
rents by 50 per cent and reducing interest on
farm loans to 30 per cent of the former
figures in some regions, said Lara, the
KMP’s deputy secretary.

The peasant group represents rice and
corn farmers rather than unionized farm-
workers who labor on the large fruit-
growing plantations. They fight against a
situation in which peasants are forced off
their land and into urban ghettos by the
incursion of foreign corporations — notably
Dole and Del Monte — which through
Marcos have displaced farming needed to
feed the Philippines’ people with export-
oriented crops.

Recent legislative changes by Marcos
have allowed even greater control by agri-
business into the Philippines’ economy,

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Government employees pack hall in Vancouver, vote overw

union will not take that concession,”
Shields told an estimated 1,000 public
employees who packed the Italian Cultu-
ral Centre Feb. 18.

The rally was one of several, held in
major centres across the province.

“We don’t believe you’re ready to
accept another three-year agreement. We
know you’re not ready to accept more
concessions,” said Shields to applause.

‘A questionnaire distributed at the rally
asked members if they favored the

MEMONG PATAYAN (I), PANCHO LARA. . .little difference between Marcos’ and

Aquino’s land policies.

including that of Canada’s Massey-Fergu-
son, which is displacing peasants in the
Cagayan Valley, said Lara, noting that,
“The government of Canada pumped mil-
lions into Massey-Ferguson to save it from
bankruptcy.

“Soon, there will be no legal opposition
to the entry of foreign corporations,” he
said:

Ironically, the land which Massey-
Ferguson covets is a former sugar planta-
tion owned by former defence minister
Juan Ponce Enrile, who with ex-deputy
armed forces head Gen. Fidel Ramos is
holed up in the defence ministry. Both are
calling for Marcos’ resignation.

(The support given to Aquino Monday
by Enrile and Ramos, former Marcos sup-
porters, lends credence to the charge by
Philippines revolutionary forces that Aquino
is the United States’ choice to replace Mar-
cos, the long-time U.S.-backed dictator who

412 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 26, 1986

8)

ciaimed the presidency after the recent,
widely denounced as fraudulent, elections.
On Monday, the White House called on
Marcos to step down.)

The KMP withheld support for Aquino
after she refused to incorporate the
demands for land reform in her election
program. In fact, said Lara, she rejected
redistribution of her family’s holdings
under the Marcos “fake” land reform pro-
gram that exempts sugar plantations.

The KMP, which Lara said supports the
two-million member Bayan popular move-
ment, does not think much of Aquino’s call
for a boycott of banks and businesses con-
trolled by the Marcos forces.

“Few peasants have bank savings or can
afford to shop at those stores,” he pointed
out.

Instead, the peasant organization sup-
ports the broad based call for a national
people’s strike, which also has the support
of the forces behind Aquino and her run-
ning mate, Salvador Laurel.

“The good thing is, they’re coming to
Bayan hoping they'll be the ones to co-
ordinate the strike,” he said.

Peasants have been waging some armed
struggle, with scant resources, against the
Philippines military used as a goon squad to
clear farmers from their land, said Patayan.

“As much as we don’t want killings to
happen through armed struggle, we are
being pushed and pushed,” he said.

The KMP leaders said Canadians can
express their “solidarity” with Filipino pea-
sants by demanding their government
refuse to deal with the Marcos regime.

strike balloting

helmingly to take strike vote. {

af

ied Saas

government’s proposal, if they supported
a strike vote, and what actions the)
favored if negotiations produced m1
agreement. The union has reported som
5,000 members completed the questiol”
naire.

.

Co-ordinated|
bargaining
meet slated

The B.C. Federation of Labor has”
called a conference of staff officet,
for today, Feb. 26 to lay out 4%
action program for co-ordinate
bargaining among both federatiom
affiliates and the B.C. and Yukol
Building Trades Council.

Federation president Art Kud®
told the Hospital Employees Unio®!
convention Sunday that there Ww
“a feeling out there (among uniol®
ists) that they’re prepared to ove
shadow their autonomy and give thé
federation the mandate to @
ordinate bargaining this year.”

In an interview following
speech to the convention, Kube sal
that the action program which WH
be proposed to the staff conferen@
recommends: .

e A regular exchange of informé
tion in bargaining among all uniOl
in the federation, the Buildif
Trades or Operation Solidat’
through the B.C. Fed;

© Regular union reports to
federation on current negotiations

@ Weekly meetings of the m@
union negotiators for the exchal
of information and possible ©
ordination; :

@ Federation co-ordination ©
strike or lockout support;

© Regional meetings in conju®
tion with local labor councils =
support unions in bargaining as W
as a union media support campale.

The staff meeting and the P®
gram were the result of mectly
among union officers in Harris
earlier this month following dema™
for an enhanced bargaining %
ordination role by the B.C. Fed!
the critical 1986 bargaining. 4

Kube acknowledged in his spe
to the HEU that the program, wi
will focus on exchanging inform
tion and co-ordinating picketing
a long way from a common from

“But even limited co-ordinat™
in bargaining is the right step ©
ward,” he said. “And we can b¥®
on it as time goes on.”

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

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