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Autoworkers in fight
_to regain lost ground

By WILLIAM ALLAN
and MIKE PHILLIPS
TORONTO — Canadian’ au-
toworkers bargaining new con-
tracts with Ford and General
Motors will not be selecting a
strike target until after the Sept.
14 strike deadline set by the
United Auto Workers in the U.S.
talks.
Bob White, Canadian UAW di-
rector made the announcement
Sept: 30 as U.S. auto talks con-

' tinued to go nowhere. Ford and

GM in the States had tabled con-
tract proposals demanding
greater productivity and more
concessions from the UAW.
The union has been campaign-
ing in these talks to recoup some
$6-billion that autoworkers con-
ceded to Ford and GM in unpaid
wages, cost of living adjustments
and the loss of the three per cent
annual wage improvement factor
(AIF). The concessions were
made in the 1982 contract talks
and helped set the stage for the
massive profits boom currently
being enjoyed by the auto giants.
Detroit auto industry analysts
say that total 1984 profits could
possibly reach $12-billion. In 1983
the profits of the big three Ford,
GM and Chrysler topped $6-bil-
lion and so far this year profit _
figures have surpassed that mark.
Meanwhile, worker productiv-
ity in the U.S. over the past two
years has increased 23 per cent
according to the UAW while

_ wages have remained frozen to

1982 levels. :
White said the Canadian UAW
had advised Ford and GM

negotiators here, Aug. 30, that the

offers tabled by their parent com-
panies in the U.S. had better not
be introduced on this side of the
border if the companies want to
avoid a confrontation.

That offer, he said, *‘takes a di-
rection that is fundamentally op-
posite to the direction we want to
go in Canada in terms of wages,
COLA, and profit sharing ...”’

The UAW on both sides of the
border have rejected the com-
panies’ proposals for so-called
profit sharing as a substitute for
wage increases. The plan prop-
osed by General Motors, (U.S.)
for example would see the work-
ers get $600 in the first year, $300
in the second and nothing in the
third year of the pact. The offer
totally ignores the union’s de-
mands for the return of the 27 paid
personal holidays lost in 1982, re-
turn of the AIF, COLA and an
immediate catch-up wage
increase.

At a Labor Day rally in Detroit,
Sept. 4, which was jointly or-
ganized by the UAW and the local
Teamsters and saw more than
150,000 union members marching
through the city’s streets, UAW
international president Owen
Bieber called GM’s position ‘“‘a
zero answer’ to the union’s de-
mands to ‘‘Restore and More in

The UAW in the U:S. has also
called for measures to shorten
work time in this contract, includ-
ing a ban or compulsory over-
time. The union estimates that
some 90,000 jobless auto workers
could have been put to work-last
winter if there had been contract

language forbidding forced
overtime.

It is also estimated that about
20,000 auto workers’ weren’t re-
called when the production began
on the 1984-85 cars and trucks.

With the clock ticking on both
sides of the border toward Sept.
14, the American side has tar-
geted both Ford and GM for strike
action if a contract isn’t in place
by the U.S. deadline. The last
time such a dual targeting strategy
was used was in the 1970 nego-
tiations.

In Toronto, White explained to
reporters that in the event of a
U.S. strike, the Canadians would
put their negotiations on hold,
pending the outcome of the con-
frontation, and would focus their
energies on backing the U.S.
strikers.

He warned the Canadian Ford
and GM negotiators that the
extension of the contract dead-
line, and the union’s decision to
pick a strike date after Sept. 14
wasn’t an invitation for the
multi-nationals to drag their heels
in the talks. Noting that the union
expected an economic offer be-

fore Sept. 14, White said the |

companies were told, ‘‘they
should not sit back and wait until
Sept. 14 and assume that one of
them is not going to be the target
shortly after that.

“‘We want to get the process
moving’’, he said.

Back in Detroit a couple of days
later, Bieber, speaking at the
Labor Day parade; and backed’ by
AFL-CIO president Lane Kirk-
land, attacked President Ronald
Reagan’s recent: call on auto

SHORTER WORKTIME

workers to ‘‘restrain’’ their wage
demands, and targeted the U.S.
administration’s bloated arms
budget as the source of the ter-
rible economic crisis gripping the
USA.

**Reagan’s call for restraint to
auto: workers while they’re in
negotiations and while the cor-
porations have reached a record
profit is an outrage interference

on the side of the corporations’’,
Bieber said.

Referring to the forthcoming
elections in November, Bieber
told the vast throng, ‘‘our choice
in ’84 is to defeat the threat of war
coming from Reagan and _ his
administration and for us in the
labor movement to lead the
American people to win a lasting
peace.”

The support accorded the British coal miners’ union at
last week’s Trades Union Congress was undoubtedly a
big victory for the union and should help it in its struggle
against Prime Minister Thatcher’s anti-union crusade.

At the same time, however, it showed the splits in
labor’s ranks at a time when all-out unity is needed to
defeat the Tory onslaught.

Two major unions, the electrical workers and the
power distribution union refused outright to support the
striking miners, and the steelworkers’ union is taking it
to its membership for a vote. There is little doubt about
the outcome of this vote bearing in mind the antagonistic
attitude of the steel leadership.

In the miner’s union itself, close to 40,000 of the
-180,000 members are working the pits in northern parts
of England against the strike. Likewise a few weeks ago
some dockside workers refused to go along with a strike
called by the dockers’ union occasioned when non-union
labor and steelworkers unloaded ships containing hot
coal at a British port.

What is evident in all these instances are major dif-
ferences of outlook inside the British trade union move-
ment. This takes place in a movement which is renowned
for its solidarity and unity in the face of boss attacks, and
its respect for picket lines.

Different Concepts

What lies behind these differences which the British
ruling class is seeking to exploit?

Essentially it lies in two different concepts of the trade
union movement. One sees the trade unions as rep-
resentatives of the working class, fighting to protect and
extend their interests against a hostile exploiting class. It
extends this struggle to the political sphere to find ways
to eliminate the system of exploitation as the only real
way to protect its membership.

The other sees unions as an integral part of the sytem

of capitalism in which workers and bosses are two parts

_ Class struggle under a Tory majority

Labor in action

4 William Stewart —

of a whole whose differences are arbitrated by a neutral
government while they solve their day-to-day dif-
ferences around the collective bargaining table.

The buzz words for these two concepts are class
struggle and class collaboration.

We remind ourselves of these long known realities of
the class struggle and its shape and form in Great Britain
not just because we have a stake in the outcome of that
critical struggle, but because it sheds light on processes
under way in our own trade-union movement in Canada.

As the statement of the Communist Party says in this
issue of the Tribune, workers can expect a rough ride
from the new Tory majority in Ottawa supported and
linked with Tory majorities in most provinces across the
country.

~ Similar Decisions

Canadian workers are going to be faced with decisions
similar to those of the British workers: whether to sit
back and watch our jobs, trade union rights, and social
security go down the drain at the insatiable demands of
the big corporations, or whether to fight back every day
in every way at every attempt to take away what we have
won; whether to struggle at every turn or wait four years
for the next election; whether to put our faith in the
capitalist system, or put it in the working people to unite
their ranks and defend and extend their rights.

It requires no extra sensory perception to observe in

the Canadian trade union and labor movement those
who will take the same line as the electrical, power
distribution and steelworker leaders in Britain. Nor
should this surprise or dismay us.

The struggle for strong, principled, class-based
leadership in the labor movement is an integrA part of
the struggle against the boss. Its particular sharpness at
this time arises because of the long period of clss truce
in the Canadian trade union movement when the system
seemed to be working. It is not so easy to kick bad habits
and pursue new and more useful ones.

Which Side? :

The forthcoming provincial federation of labor con-
ventions can play a very important role in helping further
define a solid class-based line for the trade union move-

-ment. There is little doubt that certain forces will use the

performance of the New Democratic Party in the federal
elections to draw the attention of the conventions away
from the Canadian Labor Congress’ nine-point program,
the proposed march for jobs and all forms of mass strug-
gle, to plans to elect the NDP in upcoming provincial ~
elections. While in no way minimizing the importance of
such electoral efforts they must not be allowed to inter-
fere with immediate plans to move the unions in action
across Canada for peace, jobs, higher wages and social
security.

The sharpening of the class struggle takes place out-
side the control of union leaders and corporation presi-
dents alike. It also presses inexorably on the labor
movement to pick up the challenge of the class struggle
in the self-interest of its membership. This in turn brings
the very system of state monopoly capitalism into ques-
tion. g

A famous old union hymn asks the question: ‘‘Which
side are you on? Which side are you on?”’ It’s a question
which is going to be asked with increasing frequency,
and not just in Britain.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 19, 1984 e 5