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LABOR

At the trailer that has functioned for
nearly a year now as the picket head-
quarters for locked-out Slade and Stewart
workers, picket captain Norm Jones is look-
ing forward with no small amount of inter-
est to May 17.

It will mark one year that they’ve been on

the picket line, an anniversary that will be .

commemorated by a big benefit organized
by the Retail Wholesale Union (RWU), the
union that has represented them for 30-odd
years.

But it is also the day that Slade and Ste-
wart, with a curious sense of timing, has
announced to what few customers it has left
that all deliveries by scab drivers will cease.

In the letter, sent out May 6, the manag-
ers of the company, which distributes
wholesale groceries and supplies to hotels,
restaurants and institutions, told customers:
“We cannot continue to allow union
members to harass our customers. . Slade
and Stewart has decided to stop all deliver-
ies in the Lower Mainland and the Okana-
gan as of May 17, 1985.”

The company “‘is not going out of busi-
ness,” the letter added, “just ceasing deliver-
ies.” It informed customers that the pro-
duce and other provisions supplied by Slade
and Stewart would be available “on a pick-
up basis” from the company’s warehouse
on Vancouver’s Prior Street — which is
behind picket lines.

“We don’t know whether they’re plan-
ning on closing down for a couple of
months and then re-opening somewhere
else or whether they’re finally looking at
negotiating a settlement,” Jones said in an
interview with the Tribune.

“But it doesn’t matter — because we’re
in this for the long haul. We’re staying till
we get a new collective agreement or sever-
ance pay.”

Jones cited another sentence in the Slade
and Stewart letter which has elicited scorn
from all of the union members who have
seen it. It claims that the company “made
repeated offers and concessions tothe union
...but they did not satisfy the union.”

The claim is completely false. But then it
has typified the approach that Slade and
Stewart has taken even before the U.S.-
owned company locked out 78 workers on
May 18, 1984. :

Ironically, before last year, there had

Locked-out Slade and Stewart workers set up picket lines
outside the premises of Shah's Trucking in Richmond Monday
to protest the company’s repeated scabbing for Slade and
Stewart. The picket also backed a four-year-old complaint laid

never been a strike or a lockout in the 32
years that the RWU has bargained with the
company.

But that changed when the U.S. multi-
national, Pacific Gamble Robinson — the
second biggest produce company in the
world — took over in 1984.

The lockout was imposed at the com-
pany’s four operations, in Terrace, Kam-
loops, Penticton and Vancouver — even as
members were preparing to vote on the
company’s offer. The offer itself was pulled
off the table.

Another near-settlement was scuttled just
before Christmas last year when company
negotiators failed to return to the bargain-
ing table despite their earlier statements that
there were only a few details left to be
worked out.

The most recent company proposal, put
on the table in April, came with an ultima-
tum that the RWU members vote on it
within five days or it would be withdrawn,
said Jones.

Despite the difficulties of organizing a
vote on short notice among union members
scattered around the province, the vote was
held — and the locked-out workers repu-
diated it utterly, by a vote of 57-1.

The details of the proposal revealed the
extent of the concessions demanded by the
grocery distributor.

The proposed wage cuts ranged from
$1.75 an hour to $7. an hour on a base rate
which averages about $13 to $14 an hour.

HEU makes gains on parity
demand in new agreement

A 60-hour bargaining session won the
700 members of the Hospital Employees
Union working in 14 long-term care facili-
ties a new collective agreement which, if it is
okayed by Compensation Stabilization
commissioner Ed Peck, would give them
rates comparable to those earned by
workers in acute care hospitals.

HEU members voted overwhelmingly
for the new contract which is a “significant
breakthrough for long-term care workers,”
according to HEU communications direc-
tor Lecia Stewart. HEU members had for
three years been seeking an agreement giv-
ing them parity with acute care workers but
Continuing Care Employee Relations
Association (CCERA), the employers’ bar-
gaining agency, maintained that the two
jobs were different and had even gone to
Supreme Court to strike down — on a

12 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 15, 1985

technicality — an arbitration award which
gave them parity.

Union. members had initiated rotating
job action Mar. 14 and launched full-scale
strike action in April to back their demands.

The new four-year contract, which runs
from Apr. 1, 1982 to Mar. 31, 1986 calls for
a two per cent increase Apr. 1, 1984,
another two per cent Apr. 1, 1985 and a
further five per cent Nov. 1, 1985. The
agreement also includes an eight per cent
increase already paid to employees Aug. 1,
1982.

The 1984 and 1985 increases, com-
pounded, amount to 9.6 per cent which
would almost close the 10 per cent gap now
existing between long-term and acute care
workers, Stewart said.

But the pact still has to be reviewed by
Peck, she added.

“They also worded the proposal so that
they would be able to hire back scabs,”
Jones said.

“No union would have lived with that
kind of an agreement:” :

Throughout the lockout, the union has
had to rely on flying pickets in an effort to
thwart'the attempts by Slade and Stewart to
maintain operations using scab drivers.
And it is the effect of the 1984 amendments
to the Labor Code on that tactic that has
thrust the lockout into the forefront of labor
disputes in the province.

Ina series of advertisements published in
several newspapers around the province,
the RWU has noted that scabs and restric-
tions on picketing are the “‘new reality” for
the labor movement in B.C.

In July, just two months after the
amendments came down, Labor Relations
Board vice-chairman Peter Sheen, acting as
a one-man panel, ruled that RWU picketing
of Slade and Stewart trucks, whether they
were in transit or making deliveries, was
illegal.

The ruling, the first restriction under the
amended code, sparked outrage in the trade
union movement. It was subsequently
amended following an appeal, launched by
the RWU and the B.C. Federation of
Labor, to allow picketing at the time the
truck was at a customer’s loading dock
making a delivery.

Although less restrictive, it still forced the
union to follow trucks driven by scabs —
one of whom later acknowledged he was
told when he has hired that he would have
to lose union pickets or be fired — in the
hopes of getting to the loading dock before
the delivery was completed.

For eight of the last 12 months, the union
has mounted an effective campaign, which
Jones estimated has reduced Slade and
Stewart’s business to one-twelfth of its
former volume.

Through all of it, the RWU has had to

by neighbors against the scab trucking firm because it violates

municipal bylaws in operating the business in an area that is”
zoned: for agricultural purposes. The action marked the first
anniversary of the lockout.

count on support of other unions and union
members, many of whom contact the RWU —
picket trailer through what is only half
jokingly referred to as the “dial-a-scab” set-
vice, to report scheduled shipments either tO
or from Slade’s warehouse.
“The support has been tremendous, just
tremendous,” Jones said. ES
The B.C. Fed has had a hot declaration if”
effect since last May. In March, under pres
sure from the union, the federation als
stepped up its program of support.
But the company’s hardline anti-uniol
stand — it has hired security guards, suf
veillance cameras, and camouflaged
delivery trucks — has emphasized the
struggle that workers, particularly those i
smaller service industries, face in trying 1
maintain collective agreements in the face!
unemployment and the employers’ deman@ ~
for concessions. a”
“The company appears determined 10 —
break the union. . .an enormous budget has
been tapped to maintain scab opera”
tions...” the RWU charged last July. _
Gail Beau, one of the union’s bargaining
team members added that the company ha
informed them through mediator Jae
Chapelas in April, that it was prepared to
hold out for 10 years if necessary. :
Winning at Slade and Stewart is as vital
for the labor movement as for the RWU:
“Somebody at the top in the U.S. has
been pulling the strings,” Jones said refe™
ring to the company’s American ownels;
“At the beginning they thought they cou
bust the union. And last month they pro
bly thought we’d accept anything in the wa,
of an agreement.
“But it hasn’t happened — and maybe
somebody up there will finally take notic:
The benéfit for Slade and Stewa™
workers is set for May 17, 8 p.m. in
Ukrainian Hall, 805 E. Pender. The P’
gram includes a screening of the video
the lockout and music by Communique a
the Starvation Army Band.

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125. Phone 251-1186

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