LABOR

CAW gears up for

new negotiations

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Auto workers emerged
from their legislative and bargaining
convention, April 24, united around a
program to make significant job and in-
come security gains.

The 500 Canadian Auto Workers dele-
gates unanimously endorsed a bargaining
strategy targeting on improved pensions
with built-in protection against inflation;
wage and COLA increases geared to
maintaining purchasing power as well as
increasing living standards; and firm con-
trols against contracting out and out-
sourcing of union jobs.

As the three day convention drew to a
close, CAW president Bob White
counted some 149 delegates who had
taken the floor to debate the draft bar-
gaining and legislative program, titled
**We’re building a future together.’’ De-
legates and CAW leaders agreed that the
intensity and high level of discussion
around the document reflected the dele-
gates’ commitment to a decision-making
process over which they had full control,
unlike previous similar assemblies which
tended to rubber stamp a bargaining
strategy hammered out in Detroit.

Inescapably, Canadian autonomy
loomed large over this CAW convention
as Newfoundland fishermen’s union
president Richard Cashin explained why
his organization bolted from the Wash-
ington-based United Food and Commer-

_.. cial Workers to join the CAW, and White
pledged the union's financial support for
the fishermen’s campaign to recertify
their union in the Maritimes under the

autoworkers’ banner.

Both the leaders defended the admis-
sion of the 14,000 member fishermen’s
union into the CAW as a necessary re-
sponse to the absence of a structure
within the Canadian Labor Congress to
ensure the integrity of Canadian sections
of international unions who can’t achieve
their autonomy within those structures.

Cashin said. the internationals’ resis-

tance to Canadian autonomy demands.

were a Violation of the Canadian labor
movement’s militant values of struggle
against the global corporate offensive
on living standards and the trade union
movement itself.

Rejecting charges that the move was a
CAW raid, as ‘‘patronizing’’ toward east
coast Canadians, Cashin drew a standing
ovation as he thundered: ‘‘That’s not
what this labor movement is all about,
and if there are those who think it is, then
it’s about goddam time we had a re-
vival.”

Alongside legislative demands like
effective plant closure laws, the CAW
program projects other demands includ-
ing reduced work time, improved child-
care benefits, paid maternity and pater-
nity leave and protection against the arbi-
trary introduction of tech change.

A critical note on shorter work time
was sounded by aircraft worker Nick De
Carlo, Local 1967 McDonnell-Douglas.
De Carlo said the document didn’t prop-
erly relate the impact of tech change on
the elimination of jobs and the reduction
of work hours.

“It seems to me that we should be

‘looking at the principle that with the

increasing introduction of technological
changes and rising productivity, hours of
work should be proportionally re-
duced,” he said.

Massive corporate profits, the CAW .

says, makes 1987 a time for substantial
advances, especially on pensions. Gen-
eral Motors raked in $418-million on
world wide profit of $2.95-billion last
year; Ford Canada realized $104-million
on a total of $3.29-billion; and Chrysler’s
$193.3-million on a global tally of $1.4-
billion is a 40 per cent increase.

The figures reinforce the union’s firm
rejection of lump sum payments and
conditional wages, like profit sharing,
and the bargaining program affirms the
CAW’s intention to fight for negotiated
wage increases, and a pattern settlement
for the three corporations. The Cana-
dians’ rejection of corporate demands for
lump sum payments instead of wage in-
creases in the last contract was at the
centre of the union’s autonomy conflict
with the UAW, expressed in a parting of
ways between the two organizations on
the issue of|concessions. <

With GM and other corporations
threatening to pull its business out of On-
tario if indexed pensions are legislated,
and the’ corporations’ general drive for
concessions, and fatter profits through
contracting out and outsourcing CAW
delegates repeatedly called for maximum
unity from top to bottom in confronting
the corporations.

A sign of the leadership’s commitment
to that unity was seen in the passage of

Chrysler strike over the Parity Gap. The
CAW is now gearing up for a new bargain- —
ing strategy. :

aresolution from Local 303 delegate Bob —
Ryan providing for local unions to elect
health and safety representatives if they —
so choose. The reps are currently ap-
pointed by White in consultation with the

’ locals.

Ryan and others criticized a process
they saw as undemocratic and out of step —
with the general CAW practice of elect- —
ing all other local union reps.

Setting aside procedural formalities,
White put the amendment to a vote —
immediately after the debate, rather than —
referring it to the National Executive
Board.

After it was overwhelmingly endorsed —
by the convention White told the dele- —
gates: ‘I have no problem with changing
the rules. We’re not trying to maintain a ~
bureaucracy here but to do something
that’s in the best interests of the ©
membership.”’ wn ae

The amendment will take effect fol- —
lowing the 1987 talks.

—

Ont. auto workers battle for their jobs

THOROLD — Hayes-Dana
workers here are coming to a
boil over the corporation’s so-
called “‘new direction’’ that
will decimate their jobs, dis-
rupt their lives and drive a
stake into the heart of their
union, Local 676 Canadian
Auto Workers.

‘*The productivity, quality
and experience are all there.
The company admits they're
all there. Why dismantle some-
thing that works, just so they
can make bigger profits and
break the union,’ Local 676
president Tim Lambert said
last week.

News of the ‘‘new direc-
tion’? tumbled down on the
workers like a ton of bricks,
March 17 when the corpora-
tion brought in the plant com-
mittee to inform them of its
plans to downsize both
Thorold plants reducing the
work force from more than 900
to less than 200 in each plant.

Lambert said the loss of
some 536 jobs, slated to occur
this fall, will mean that workers
will need a minimum of 20
years seniority to escape the
axe. ‘As it is, the average age

in the plants is 44 to 46 years
old, junior seniority is about 15
years,”’ he said.

The union’s mobilization
against this assault on the
community began with inten-
sive lobbying of federal, pro-
vincial and municipal politi-
cians, with the result that rep-
resentatives from the three
parties in parliament and
Queen’s Park, Lambert said,
have declared their support for
the workers in their fight to
save their jobs.

Last week, at the union’s
legislative and collective bar-
gaining convention in Toronto,
CAW president Bob White told
the delegates of his recent
meetings with Hayes-Dana
management in which the lat-
ter admitted the company was

profitable, and that the quality .

of production was high. In fact
Chrysler Corp., had just
awarded the parts company for
its high standard car frames.
In an interview after the
convention, White said that he
had warned Hayes-Dana man-
agement that its actions in try-
ing to eliminate the union
amounted to a “‘declaration of
war against us ... ~

‘*So I said just because your
board of directors made that
decision, we’re meeting our
board of directors in another 10
days in Toronto, my guess is
they're going to have some-
thing to say about tha.”

He foresaw a tough fight at
the local level backed by sup-
port from the workers in plants
that use Hayes-Dana products.
‘‘Dana workers are going to
have to send a clear message to
the corporation and we’re
going to have to talk to the
places where the parts are
being sent.

“I’m not saying we’ve got
the solution, but I think we
have to indicate clearly we’re
prepared to fight on it,’’ White
said.

Convention delegates Jerry
Gilligan and Jim Porter, speak-
ing on the union’s legislative
demands for effective plant
closure legislation told of how
the corporation’s chief execu-
tive officer, Jerry Mitchell told
a January meeting of some
2,500 business executives that
he intended to drive trade
unions out of Hayes-Dana.

Lambert explained how and

why Mitchell intends to try
achieving this goal. ‘*They
want to beat the union. If you
take his statements
Hayes-Dana is going to
non-union shops, the smaller
the better where they can have
greater control over the work-
ers. The employment stan-
dards in this province say that
when a company lays off 50 or
more workers, they have to
provide severance pay, one
week’s wages per year of ser-
Mice.

Hayes-Dana’s down sizing
plans include setting up satel-
lite plants in south western On-
tario employing no more than
30 or 40 workers. “‘Moving 30
workers here and 30 workers
there, plants can be closed
down with the corporations
not having to pay severance be-
cause the employment levels
are below the employment
standards.”’ ;

The feisty local president
noted how profitable Hayes-
Dana workers have made the
corporation. The frame plant,
for example rakes in $1.3 mil-
lion in profits every month,

while drive train brings in $400
thousand.

Lambert and others can see
that the Hayes-Dana strategy
isn’t unique. ‘‘Their strategy is
one of banding together to get
away from the union,’ Lam-
bert said.

As that strategy sinks in to
the previously quiet work-
force, (the local hasn’t struck
the corporation for 13 years),
worker anger and indignation
is bubbling to the surface.

White promised the conven-
tion that outscourcing and
transfer rights will be brought
to the bargaining table with the
big three. Ford, General
Motors and Chrysler workers
will go to the wall for workers
like those at Hayes-Dana as
they fight for their jobs.

Local 676 worker Gilligan
reflected some of that anger as
he told the convention his
members, have a chance to
show these corporate bastards
that we will go to war.

‘*We will not sit back and let
people with that kind of senior-
ity go down the tubes like dogs
with their tails between their
legs.””

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 6, 1987