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TORONTO — The Ontario
Public Service Employees Union,
OPSEU is claiming victory in the

€ to organize daycare chain.

Originally partly-owned by the
Great West Life Assurance Co.,
Miniskools is now part of a North
American chain of daycare
centres owned by one Perry
Mandel, described by Time
magazine last year as ‘‘the Col-
onel Sanders of child care.””

Two Miniskool units in Missis-
sauga were certified by the On-
tario Labor Relations Board Feb.
27, While OPSEU has filed an ap-
plication on behalf of a third unit
in Hamilton and two more in To-

‘Tonto. The union proudly claims

to be the first to organize Minis-
kools anywhere in North Ameri-.
ca.

OPSEU organizer Barbara
Linds says the union’s organizing
drive has brought an enthusiastic
response from Miniskool work-
ers, who like most daycare work-
ers are among the lowest paid in
our society for the quality.of work
they perform and the heavy
responsibility they bear.

“The response has been very
good’’, she said, ‘‘everyone
working there, thought they really
enjoy working with children and
are dedicated to their work, rec-
ognize how they’re being
exploited.

‘‘At first they were nervous
about doing anything because
wages are really poor, and with
the exception of municipal

centres, most daycare workers

un :
There ‘are 12 Miniskool loca-
tions in the Toronto-Hamilton
area. The pay is rotten for the
responsibilities and skills needed
in taking care of children and de-
vising stimulating programs to
hold their interest and help their

KEEP PROMISES.
UE TELLS TRUDEAU

TORONTO — C.S. Jackson,
president of the 20,000-member
United Electrical workers (UE),
called on the newly-elected
Trudeau government, March 12,
to carry out ifs election promises.
Specifically the UE called for the
broadening of Petro Canada to
secure our energy requirements
and reduce foreign ownership in
the oil industry, and for the expan-
sion and strengthening of the
Foreign Investment Review Agen-
cy, FIRA, to ensure greater Cana-
dian ownership and control over
the economy.

ATOMIC WORKERS
DUMP BLUE CROSS
OTTAWA — Two groups of
unions representing 3,000 Atomic
Energy of Canada Employees

here and in Chalk River, Ontario, ;

have asked AECL in current con-
tract talks to cancel their health
coverage with Blue Cross Health
Services and resplace it with a
competitor. The current agree-
ment will be up, March 31. The
decision was made to protest Blue
Cross’ refusal to settle a strike
with its Toronto office workers. -

development. :
Teachers with two year dip-
lomas in Early Childhood Educa-
tion, who supervise a room full of
kids at Miniskools are paid $3.65
an hour, while their assistants in
the rooms earn from $3.00 to
$3.30. :
In sharp’ contrast, the outfit
which now owns Miniskools, the
Alabama-based Kinder-Care
Learning Centres Inc., in 1977, in
1977, chalked up total revenues of
$12.8-million. And this was be-
fore they bought Miniskools. —
In the last six months Minis-
kools have raised their fees three
times. Presently in Mississauga
where OPSEU has been certified
the fees range from $75.50 a week
for infants to $53.50 for older kids.
In 1978 the company came
under fire for allegedly cooking its
books by padding expenses in its
subsidy contract with Metro To-
ronto’s Social Services Depart-
ment. Toronto alderman and
member of Metro Council, Dan
Heap questioned budget informa-
tion submitted by Miniskools in

relation to its application for sub-

sidy from the council.
- His questions lead to similar
questions being raised in the On-
tario Legislature by the New
Democratic Party and to charges
before Metro Council’s Social
Services and Housing Committee
by a former Miniskools employee
that the company had submitted
false financial information to
Metro over a three-year period in
order to get fatter subsidies. She
based her allegations on compu-
ter printouts of the company’s
financial records itemizing Mini-
skools’ operating costs and in-
come. Miniskools as a result lost
their subsidy.

Miniskools came into being in
Ontario in March 1970 after its

ALBERTA FED
DEMANDS PROBE

EDMONTON — The Alberta
Federation of Labor, March 13,
called for a full and open investiga-
tion into provincially-operated or
funded child care facilities in Al-
berta. Sheryl Wowk, AFL Human
Rights Committee chairperson
cited newspaper revelations about
mishandling of children at the
Northern Regional Treatment
Centre in Peace River in her call
upon Alberta ombudsman Randal
Ivany to investigate. She accused
the Alberta Social Services and
Community Health department of
not monitoring such facilities
enough and blasted department
head Bob Bogle for cancelling a
recently announced Alberta-wide
review of child care practices.

DOCKHANDS |
SET TO STRIKE

VANCOUVER — About 60
Canadian Pacific Steamships
Ltd., dockhands were free to take
strike‘action at midnight, March
21, following a federal department
of labor decision to end concilia-
tion efforts in talks between the
Seafarers International Union
and the Canadian Pacific sub-
sidiary.

founder, former Manitoba Tory
Education Minister John Christ-
ianson was booted out of office
along with the rest of the conser-
vative government by the NDP in
February 1970. 2
Christianson was an active
_ lobbyist at Queen’s Park to get
Ontario to loosen the standards of
the Day Nurseries Act to make
the daycare business more pro-
fitable. One of the changes he was
after was for the government to
increase the maximum infant-to-

teacher ratios. He was reportedly

lobbying for an increase to some-
thing like six kids for every
teacher.

Under his ownership of Mini-
skools the centres were inspected
more frequently by provincial in-
spectors than most other private

centres. Ontario social services
minister Keith Norton publicly
admitted that ministry inspectors
had visited six Miniskool centres
25 times over a three-year period
because the firm had consistently
higher children to staff ratios than
the Day Nurseries Act allows.
OPSEU reports that in one
Miniskool centre they learned
that five workers had quit last
April because of the conditions.
One worker complained of having
to watch a room full of 10 children
under the age of two by herself for
a whole morning. The other
workers had similar complaints
and accusations that the com-
pany’s practices of overworking
- the staff endangered the safety of
the children as well as making
working conditions difficult.

‘Kentucky fried’ daycares organized

Miniskools was sold to
Kinder-Care Inc. last September
but the ownership change didn’t
open any doors for union organi-
zation. :

Management fought the first
signs of worker interest in unions
by circulating a tape recorded
message to all Miniskool centres
warning that union organization
would drive the cost of fees up,
and that parents would then drop
out forcing Miniskools to cut back
on staff.

However, Linds points out that
the tape in some instances promp-
ted the workers to do alittle inves-
tigating to see who the-union was .
that had frightened management
so much. ‘‘In some cases’’, Linds
said, ‘‘it actually helped us to ge
contacts for the: union.”’

Tentative settlement reached

They did it — Bell’s cracked

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — It looks like
Bell Canada has lost its bid to
punish striking cafeteria workers
and operators for daring to join
and negotiate through a real union
— the Communications Workers
of Canada.

CWC officials announced
March 19 that a tentative agree-
ment had been reached with the
wealthy corporation that effec-
tively puts into practice the main
terms of the federal conciliation
commission report recommended
Dec. 17, 1979 by federal con-
‘ciliator Rolland Tremblay.- -.-

It was on the basis of accepting
the Tremblay recommendations
Dec. 21, 1979 that the union
wanted to come to an agreement
with Bell. However Bell, with its
-$9.2-billion in assets and more
than $370-million in profits in 1979
refused to abide by the recom-
mendations. Bell wanted to teach
the 7,400 operators and cafeteria
workers a lesson for ditching the
company union and joining the
CLC affiliate in 1979.

. The only other large group of
Bell workers still held captive in
the company association are the
clerical workers, and Bell wanted
them to get the message that join-
ing a real union wouldn’t change
anything for them and would
probably be a mistake.

However, like other important
struggles in the recent period,
such as the fight at Inco last year,
Canadian working people from
coast to coast rallied behind the
Bell strikers with messages of en-
couragement, and financial sup-
port, to show that the solidarity of
the trade union movement is a
powerful force in protecting
workers’ interests in the face of
corporate greed. Se oS

Recommend Acceptance

The CWC negotiating commit-
tee is recommending acceptance
of the three-year proposed con-

further 9% wage hike will be

applied across the board in
November and a cost-of-living ad-
justment will be made Sept. 1,
1981.

The initial wage hike conforms
to Tremblay’s recommendation
which included compensation for
the back pay Bell refused to offer.
The union estimated that Bell’s
refusal to pay the back pay to the
expiry of the old agreement meant
a loss of $1,000 for every worker
compared to Tremblay’s recom-
mendation.

The new contract, if approved:
«by the CWC members after they.

discuss it March 22-26, will also
provide improvements in vaca-
tions, and the elimination of the
unfair zoning system of pay rates.
Zoning will disappear in two
stages. The first will be April 1,
1980 and after Nov. 1, 1981 all
wage zones will be eliminated en-
tirely by the company.
On the important question of
administrative firings, one of the
key strike issues, the union won
the right’to grieve and arbitrate
dismissals and has established
Bell’s responsibility to prove just
cause in firing workers.
Technological Protection
Also, the company has agreed

from its files after two years, so
the company can’t hang onto vio-
lations of company rules by the
worker for more than two years.

Bell has also accepted
Tremblay’s recommendation on
technological changes, increasing
Bell workers’ protection from
layoffs due to technological
changes.

CWC representative, Bill
Howes, said results of the rati-
fication vote will be known by
March 29 or 29. “‘If the contract is
accepted,”’ he said, “the strikers
could be back on the job by. March

"31, justin time to pick up their stat

holidays on Good Friday.””

The CWC spokesman said the
proposed settlement is a victory
for the union. ‘‘We’re very grate-
ful for the support of Bell strikers
were given from the labor move- .
ment, particularly the Canadian
Labor Congress, and Metro To-
ronto Labor Council, as well as
local unions from coast to coast
and the public at large’, Howse
said.

‘The solidarity of our troops,
the support they got from the
technical and craft workers, and
the public and labor movement
support we got were significant
factors in helping us to win the.
strike.”’

to clean out disciplinary records
7 -
ns Se

f

tract which is dated from expiry 9\@e

of the previous contract, and 3
would expire Nov. 24, 1981. This “
is within six days of the expiry of Fs
the CWC contract with Bell on +

“ behalf of the company’s craft and 2

technical workers, opening the 7
possibility for greater clout at the ¥

bargaining table for both groups in 5

future contract talks.

The immediate 28.1% wage in-
crease will mean that a person in
the top wage category will receive
an increase of $61 a week. A

The nine week strike by 7,400 Bell Canada operators and cafeteria

‘workers may be over March 29 as the strikers discuss and consider a

recommended settlement proposed
Canada negotiators, March 22-26.

by Communications Workers of

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 28, 1980—Page 5