By FRED WILSON

There is a straightforward ques-
tion being pondered by strategists
on both sides of the bargaining
table in B.C. Has the propaganda
line about ‘“‘restraint’’ of Mac-
Eachen, Bennett and their indust-
rial captains Ian Sinclair, Adam
Zimmerman, Calvert Knudsen and
company washed on the rank and
file?

It is hardly an academic question
because the labor disputes involv-
ing close to 100,000 fishing in-

dustry, building trades and govern--

ment workers will write the ticket
for the restraint program. If these
unions are successful in breaking
the guidelines, or forcing the gov-
ernment to resort to heavy handed
legislation, the pattern will have
been set for continuous struggle
against the demand for conces-
sions.

Weakness on the part of the la-
bor movement could produce the
opposite result: a downward slide
into MacEachen’s world where
within six to 18 months the pur-
chasing power of the great majority
of workers will be slashed by be-
tween six to.12 percent and the la-
bor movement put on the ideologi-
cal defensive. :

The reference of the strategists,
particularly those on the employ-
ers’ side, to the rank and file is well
reasoned. They know that the de-
mands for settlements far below

the rate of inflation, and in the case
of fishermen for pay cuts, have
never been so divorced from eco-
nomics and so dependent on poli-
tics. The gamble is that the federal
budget and Bennett’s political
manoeuvres have swung public
opinion to an anti-labor stance,
and made sufficient inroads into
the rank and file of the labor move-
ment to blunt the militancy and
staying power of the unions.

The political character of the
employers’ demands are most
transparent in the case of fishermen
where the companies have indicat-
ed they are willing to lose a season
in order to enforce a price cut to
1976 levels.

Construction Labor Relations’
offer to the Building Trades Coun-
cil was no less political. CLRA pur-
posefully dragged out trade talks
and refused to make any monetary
offer for over three months while
federal and provincial politicans
put their restraint guidelines in
place, and then made an initial of-
fer to the trades of six and five per-
cent. The ‘‘final’’ offer of 10 and
10 percent, with no retroactive,
bears little more relation to the re-
ality of the industry.

The Socreds, of course, have
been completely political in their
dealings with the BCGEU. Phase
one of the provincial restraint pro-
gram initially allowed for a settle-
ment in the 12 percent range; after

By DAVID LANE
The scene at a makeshift camp-
site near Oliver, B.C., brings grim
reminders of the depression in the
thirties. Several dozen Okanagan
fruit pickers huddle around a
large common pot of vegetable

in the centre of a cluster of tents
by ariver. No sanitation facilities,
no proper drinking water or
showers are to be seen.

The situation is no better for
the majority of farmworkers who
labor in the berry fields of the
Fraser Valley. Exploited by labor
contractors, making even less
money per season than their Oka-
nagan counterparts, the rasp-
berry and strawberry pickers have
been the major focus of a years-
long organizing effort by the Ca-
nadian Farmworkers Union.

The crops in the Okanagan this
year have been poor, and no pick-
ers have government crop loss
compensation. Most will be in-
eligible for unemployment insur-
ance after a season of hard labor.

Ten and 11-hour days are the
norm in an industry excluded
from the most basic labor legisla-
tion. Piece rate payment ensures
that pickers make_less than the
minimum wage at jobs that pro-
duce chronic back problems and
long-term pesticide poisoning.

However, the CFU has
succeeded, after-a long battle, in
securing protection for
farmworkers under the provincial
Workers Compensation Act, al-
though coverage does not begin
until April next year.

Additionally, the union is gear-
ing up for a winter campaign to
win adequate health and safety
regulations regarding the use of
pesticides. No such regulations
presently exist.

The CFU, meanwhile, is
collecting data on the work

Union seeks rules |
on pesticides use

rice stew brewing over a campsite -

hazards present in all sectors of
the agricultural industry, through
a major survey of fruit pickers,
berry pickers, nursery workers,
greenhouse workers and mush-
room workers. (The National
Safety Council already acknowl-
edges that farming is the third
most dangerous industry, but
local statistics are scarce.)

CFU president Raj Chouhan
said in an interview that although
only half the data is in, the prelim-
inary reports are shocking.

“More than half the farm-
workers interviewed had . been
forced to work in fields just
sprayed with deadly chemicals,
without knowing, or having the
basic right to know, what pesti-
cides were being used,’’ he said.

“The vast majority say they
have experienced symptoms of
mild pesticide poisoning.’’

Chouhan said the union will be
pressing the Workers Compensa-
tion Board to establish regula-
tions on re-entry times following
pesticide spraying to prevent
growers from sending workers in-
to the field before it is safe. Man-
datory posting of fields with the
specific pesticidés clearly marked,
as regulations in California re-
quire, is another key CFU de
mand. :

Most recently, the union’s or-
ganizing efforts took a step for-
ward with the settlement last week
of the bitter 18-month strike at
Jensen’s Mushrooms in Surrey.

The new contract gives pickers
a guaranteed minimum hourly
wage in addition to a $3.85 per bin
piece rate, and a $2 increase to $7
an hour for general laborers.

The unionization of Jensen’s,
and other year-round agricultural
operations, gives the union a base
from which it can fight for better
conditions in the harder to organ-
ize sectors, such as seasonal work-
ers, Chouhan said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 6, 1982—Page 8

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The CLC convention last May took a militant stand against wage controls. Now that stand is being]

to the test in B.C. as workers face hard nosed employers bolstered by provincial and federal wager

straints.

the federal budget, phase two low-
ered the guidelines to the six percent
range.

However, the Socreds gave Gov-
ernment Employee Relations Bu-
reau negotiators instructions not to
offer any increase at all until three
days before the strike deadline.

The significant strike votes in all
three industries indicate that the
rank and file haven’t bought the re-
straint line. But union spokesmen
will also admit that the job has not
yet been done to discredit the no-
tion that labor has to accept re-
straint in order to assist economic
recovery.

Without a doubt the problem
has been complicated by a series of
confusing statements from the top
offices of the labor movement in
the province. B.C. Federation of
Labor president Jim Kinnaird told
the Vancouver Province July 7,
just before the special meeting with
employers and premier Bennett,
that he would be prepared ‘‘to ex-
plore some form of fair and equit-
able program that would see every-
one subjected to the same kind of
restraint.”

When Kinnaird and other union
leaders emerged from the meeting
they commented in unison, ‘“‘the
economy is worse than we
thought.’’ There were no forth-
right condemnations of govern-
ment policy, no demands for im-
plementation of alternative
policies.

A statement released the follow-
ing day attempted to clarify the
Fed’s position. It stated that labor
would confer with the government
on the economy only if the wage
control was scrapped. But it went
on to say, “‘We believe that if all
parties at that meeting (with Ben-
nett and the employers) are prepar-
ed to discuss concrete proposals to-
wards solving economic problems,
then something positive can be

done.”

What has emerged from these
and subsequent statements is a
message which can’t help but weigh
on rank and file workers. The mes-
sage is, ‘“We’ll accept restraint, but
only if it is equitable.”’

That may appear to bea safe po-
sition; an equitable program will
never be produced by a Socred or
Liberal government. But it isa dou-
ble jeopardy which concedes the
need for a form of monetarist eco-
nomic policy, and which opens the
door for differing interpretations
of what constitutes ‘‘equity.”’

The closer the issue becomes to
what constitutes ‘equity’? in an
economic program, the farther it
drifts away from the basic diverg-
ence between the government’s
economic policy and that of the la-
bor movement. The effect of that is
to undermine labor’s position in

strikes which are being fought over
a political-economic program.

The Canadian Labor Congress
at its May convention placed the
matter concisely in a ‘‘Statement
on Concessions”’ which termed the
demand for concessions and wage
controls on the public sector ‘‘the
most serious challenge facing the
labor movement since the 1930s.”
And it rejected the policy not only
as unfair, but as bad economics
which are ‘‘part of an over-all gov-
ermment-corporate strategy to in-
crease corporate profits and a con-
scious policy to destroy the labor
movement.””

ANALYSIS

The paper showed that the entire
economic policy of the govern-
ments and industry is based on con-
trolling inflation by cutting pur-
chasing power, and it points out
that purchasing power has been cut
by 10 percent since 1976 without re-
ducing inflation. While profits
soared during the same period, big
business watched over massive de-
industrialization of the manufac-
turing sector and funnelled capital
into overseas investments.

The statement cited the real

causes of inflation: energy prices; —

which rose by 30 percent in 1981 be-
cause of the federal-provincial
agreement; federal monetary pol-
icy, which kept interest rates eight
percentage points above the infla-
tion rate in 1981; corporate price
setting power, which prevents
prices from falling in times of reces-
sion and which constantly forces
up prices regardless of production
costs. A factor not mentioned in
the CLC paper is arms spending,

likely the single largest source of in- -

flation.

Unwilling to address any of these
questions, which would require
radical reforms to the economic
system, governments and industry
have decided to attack inflation by
a large scale curtailment of pur-
chasing power. Donald Johnston,
the federal minister behind the re-

Address
City or town
Postal Code

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straint program, said in a spec!
the Conference Board in
“Our success in holding d0
wage increases in forthcomi
gotiations, in both the publi
private sector, will really dete’

‘whether we beat inflation or!

There is no other issue which co!
close to touching this in imp?
ance.”” q |
With this policy underlying”
government’s restraint progrally
and ‘‘equity,’”’? from a woOIM
class viewpoint, are mutué
compatible concepts. 4
The CLC statement made ®
other salient point, that the® |
mand for concessions is more &
an economic question; it is a GM
attack on unions. ‘‘Workers do!
need a union to make concess#
for them,” it soberly judged]
went on to assert that what 3:
stake is the ‘“‘survival of the #4)
union movement’’ and conclu@ |
with the militant statement ™
“‘No affiliate in this Congress"

‘break ranks, no matter what j =

pressure.”” a
The analysis and spirit of!
CLC convention needs to be t@®
out of the resolution books an@F
to work in the current labor scel™
B.C. 4

Say ‘No’ to 4
wage cutbacks —

Support the
strikers

Hear

William Stewart —
labor secretary
Communist Party
of Canada

Tues., Aug. 10
8 p.m.

Ukrainian Hall

f
E. Pender, Vancouv®)
805 ender, Van ,

Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 751-1186

_ Read the paper that fights for labor

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