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LABOR

PSAC members demand action, not rhetoric —

By MIKE PHILLIPS

OTTAWA — “‘They’re scared,
and they damn well should be
Scared,’’ a Torohto observer to
the tri-annual PSAC convention
Said, defining her union leader-
ship’s attitude to the growing mili-
tancy of the Alliance’s 183,000
members.

Although the slogan of the 1985
Public Service Alliance of Canada

convention was ‘‘Action in the
Eighties’’, it was clear throughout
the week-long gathering, launch-
ed June 17, that to the union’s top
officers, the slogan was just a de-
coration for the hall.

This was demonstrated in the
close vote on the second day,
defeating an emergency resolu-
tion to pull PSAC out of the mas-
ter agreement signed in semi-se-

Me

PHOTO — COMBAT

march.

to live on”.

: ae
‘We want jobs, not bombs

aoupesuad Gatenoay ade

ae |

MONTREAL — This demonstration of 1,500 in Montreal June 15
was the culmination of a two-week march for jobs in which several
hundred young people from seven cities in the province walked
hundreds of kilometres at the call of the Regroupement Autonome
des jeunes (RAJ) for “parity in social welfare for those under 30, an
end to cheap labor, and the creation of real jobs.” More than
120,000 young people are “living” on social welfare in Quebec.

Welcomed wherever they went, the marchers, who called for
“jobs, not bombs”, were supported by the Quebec Catholic
Bishops Assembly, Civil Liberties AsSociation and trade union
centres. Five Parti Québécois ministers received them on their

Cyril Dufour, 85, a veteran of the 1935 jobless trek, attended the

social following the closing march. “The situation of young people
today is worse than in 1935”, he said. ‘Give them work or enough

=

crecy last April. Reached with the
federal Treasury Board, the pact
surrenders the right to strike in
favor of what opponents maintain
is compulsory arbitration.

That agreement set off a wildfire
of opposition, particularly in On-
tario and in the increasingly mili-
tant Employment and Immigra-
tion component. Two groups
from Toronto and Montreal
demonstrated their opposition by
lobbying convention delegates.

After a volatile and fractious
debate which set the convention’s
tone and put current Alliance
president Pierre Samson in the
hot seat, delegates were able to
force the leadership to entertain
an emergency debate on the mas-

ter agreement. When the vote was
counted the executive was upheld
by a 220-196 vote margin. :

The gap between action and
rhetoric was also revealed when
the convention upheld a non-con-
currence recommendation on a
resolution to expand the Al-
liance’s Executive Management
Committee to six members and
guarantee two of those spots to
women.

Toronto delegate Bob Chandler
chastised the executive for its
hypocrisy in supporting similar
affirmative action programs at
both the Canadian Labor Con-
gress and provincial federations
of labor. ‘““They’re for affirmative
action everywhere else but in
their own union,”’ Chandler said

in an interview after the debate.

With two days remaining the
only business covered has been
constitutional resolutions and a
lengthy, confused debate on
finances. The convention sent
back a recommended budget
based on a 41 per cent increase in
dues by 1991 in favor of a budget
based on an annual 4 per cent
dues increase.

Still to be discussed are resolu-
tions protesting de-indexation of
old age pensions and an
emergency resolution demanding
the re-instatement of suspended
defence employee Bonnie Robi-
chaud and an end to employer

.harassment against her for her

valiant fightback against sexual
harassment.

VISA workers won't give in

By MIKE PHILLIPS
TORONTO — Seven years ago, Reva Moore
wouldn’t have shown much of an interest in joining
a union. Today, she’s a picket captain for the
Union of Bank Employees on the VISA picket line
outside the Bank of Commerce building in North
Toronto.

Demeaning favoritism, lousy wages and arbit-
rary supervisors all combined to make her and 250
other workers in the Commerce’s VISA process-
ing centre look to the union as a way to gain a
measure of dignity on the job and a say in their
working conditions.

Reva became ‘“‘union’’ about four years ago, and
on June 4 she proudly watched her fellow workers
as they launched their strike by occupying their
workplace for 21 hours, much to the frustration and
bewilderment of bank security and management.

The sit-in was called off by the workers when

‘Bank of Commerce big-wigs, representing the thitd:

richest bank in the country, wouldn't allow union
supporters to bring a few hundred dollars worth of
hot food inside to the workers.

Talks have collapsed over the bank’s demands
for a two-year contract with no pay increase, man-
datory overtime, reduction of supper meal allow-
ances from $6 to $3, and a management’s rights

clause-straight out of the dark ages allowing it to
fire, promote, demote, reclassify, lay off, recall,
evaluate and discipline any worker it wants with-
out the worker having the right to file a grievance.

Strikers say that two years ago they were work-
ing a 35-hour week, when management suddenly
added a half an hour a day to the workload with no
increase in wages. 1981 was the last time Com-
merce workers got a regular wage increase, and the
current $300 a week in strike benefits the Canadian
Labor Congress is paying them is more than many
of the VISA workers normally take home in wages.

The CLC’s support and the financial and bar-
gaining assistance the strikers are getting from the
United Auto Workers has cemented their deter-
mination to hold out for a decent contract that will
set the stage for a long-awaited breakthrough in
organizing bank workers.

‘A win for us here will make organizing the
banks like a roller coaster; nothing will stop us —

“we're going to“bréak thé baiks, > Moore’ said, With”
the same chuckle that was in her voice as she —
desdribed the June 12 occupation.

After 17 years at the Commerce, Reva Moore
and her fellow workers think that with the whole
labor movement backing them, they’ve finally
found the way of making sure that management
isn’t always going to get ‘‘the last word.”’

The March For Jobs is needed now. Unemploy-
ment in Canada is in excess of two million (official and

to be told about the retarding influence that mass
unemployment has on the fight to maintain and extend
trade union rights. The new Tory government has
Made it clear that Unemployment Insurance 1s going
under the surgeon’s knife, thus substantially altering,
if not removing a major social ‘‘safety net’. The
Intention of the government is clear. The desperate
unemployed are to be used even more as a battering
Tam against the labor movement. Conveniently, and
Co-incidentally, the Tories hope to solve budgetary
Problems at the expense of the unemployed. More-

- OVer, the government has made it clear that it does not
Intend to continue funding labor supported
unemployment help centers. All across Canada these
centres are closing down.

It is apparent that the government does not wish to
Maintain centers which can be readily converted to
fighting the government, both over Unemployment

nsurance and over employment policies.

No, the federal government has a different agenda.

It is the agenda of pitting the unemployed against the
trade unions,

The last Canadian Labor Congress Convention re-
cone zed the danger and conceived the “March For
Jobs” as an escalating program of rallies, meetings
a demonstrations directed at local, provincial and
ederal governments and involving labor, the com-
munity and the unemployed. Organizing the un-
€mployed was a major plank in the CLC’s 9-Point

Ction plan. Both the March For Jobs and organizing

—

unofficial) during a period of recovery! No one needs |

Labor in action |"

George Hewison

the unemployed has remained on paper. No leader-
ship has come from the CLC offices on this important
matter. Now the task is all the more urgent in light of
the government’s stated intentions on unemployment
insurance.

The recent commemoration of the 50th Anni-
versary of the On-To-Ottawa-Trek and the Regina
Riot was an imaginative approach to combining the
just demands of the unemployed of the 1930s with the
similar plight of the unemployed of the 80s. The na-
tionally televised meeting between the latter-day
trekkers and Prime Minister Mulroney confirms that
none of the veterans have lost their combativity nor
their zeal for a Canada which guarantees every citizen
a basic right of WORK or WAGES. Many of the
original trekkers went on to use their skills, honed in
the unemployed movement, to help build the mass
trade union movement we know today. Their strug-
gles in the Thirties resulted in the downfall of the R.B.
Bennett Tory Government then, and helped mightily
to bring into being much of the social legislation we

~ enjoy today.

The combination of youthful representatives of to-
day’s unemployed with yesterday’s sage veterans

Let’s get on with the March for Jobs!

means that the working class is not bereft of experi-
ence in the difficult matter of organizing the un-
employed to the side of labor.

Full employment will not come about by itself. The
developed capitalist countries have currently more
than 35 million unemployed. Despite the fact that
unemployment is endemic to the capitalist system,
the working class does not have to sit fatalistically by,
while it is clobbered by tech change, plant closures,
concessions and the loss of trade union rights, and
suffers big business government increasingly hostile
to labor. Labor has a program for jobs which the
whole country needs. That program is based on taking
the profits from the over-bloated corporations (who
are currently using them for corporate cannibalism,
for introducing job-destroying tech change, or to
exploit slave labor abroad) to create jobs in Canada.
That program and the March for Jobs has at its
centerpiece the shorter work week with no loss in
take-home pay. It involves expanding services to the
people. It involves a crash housing program, and the
massive expansion of health and educational
facilities. It involves nationalizing the major trans-
national corporations and banks, and using the re-
sources to build secondary manufacturing for the by
now expanding Canadian home market. It involves
up-grading our transit system and our railways, our
forestry and our fisheries; for an expansion of our
aircraft and machine tool industry; and a modern
Canadian merchant marine, among others. There is
no shortage of things to be done; no shortage of capi-
tal; and certainly no shortage of skills and labour.
Let’s get on with The March For Jobs!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 26, 1985 e 7