LABOR Quebec unions fight attack on public By CLAIRE DASYLVA MONTREAL — “The princi- pal weakness of the Quebec trade union movement is the division within our ranks’’, teachers’ union president Yvon Charbon- neau said, Feb. 2, at the launching of the largest. labor coalition Quebec has ever seen. Some 1,500 union members representing about 2,000 public sector locals and more than 365,000 organized workers in Quebec met at the Place des Arts to form a Coalition For the Right to Collective Bargaining and to adopt an action plan to defeat the Parti Québecois government's proposed changes to legislation governing collective bargaining in the public and para-public sectors. The coalition unites all four Quebec labor centrals and some eleven unions, including prison guards and the provincial police union. The Quebec government intro- duced its plans to weaken public sector bargaining rights in De- cember. Essentially the changes in the legislation would dismantle the province-wide bargaining sys- tem that has existed since the late 60s, and effectively rule out the _ right to strike in the public and para-public sectors. The Feb. 2 conference adopted an action plan to force the government to withdraw the pro- posed amendments. It includes a massive discussion and education campaign in all of the locals af- filiated to the coalition, local coalition-building, regional meet- ings throughout Quebec with pub- lic meetings, and the presentation of briefs on the legislation — all building up to a National Day of Protest in mid-March. Quebec History Also as part of the build-up to the protest and the broadening of the coalition, each local union in the province will be asked to communicate the results of their discussions on the legislation to the premier himself. Quebec Federation of Labor president Louis Laberge address- ing the coalition thanked the PQ government ‘‘for making trade union history in Quebec’? by sparking unprecedented labor unity with its proposed amend- ments. ‘‘In the short term’’, he warned “‘the proposals effective- ly signal the disappearance of trade unions in the public sector because there’s nothing proposed to replace the right to strike, not even compulsory arbitration.” Gerald Larose, president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, charged that the law wipes out the right to organize, freedom of association, and worse, “it is a direct attack against the collective bargaining structure the labor movement helped to put together during the Jean-Guy Harguindeguy of the provincial employees union said the government's plan takes labor relations in the public sector back to the old days and the ‘‘social club”’ atmosphere that had pre- sector vailed when unions were weak or non-existent. Charbonneau called on the trade unions to open their lines of communication with other demo- cratic organizations and the gen- eral public in building coalitions. “This new law won’t improve anything for the young, the aged and people on social assistance’’, he said. “‘We are responsible to the entire community.” Attacks Women Three women, speaking for the ° three major centrals’ women’s rights committees, emphasized how the changes will hit women the hardest because they make up two-thirds of the public sector work force. “‘When acquired rights are under attack in the public sector such as assaults on wages and working conditions, the govern- ment’s attack is primarily -di- rected against women’’, they said. ““By attacking us’’, one of the women told the meeting, ‘‘the en- tire population suffers because of social service cuts.’’ It’s about time the government accepted women in the work force as workers and not as fairies just working for the love of it. **Hospitals and the homes for the aged aren’t factories and the patients and inhabitants there aren't machines’’, she said. The women stressed that gains they have made in the public sec- tor have benefited all women. While the spread between male and female wage levels in the pub- lic sector has been narrowed to a range of 13-18 per cent, women lag some 40-60 per cent behind men as far as wages in the private sector go. Unity Is Key Other speakers stressed the importance of uniting public and private sector workers in this fight. One of the proposals in the new legislation would be to adjust public sector’ wages to wage levels in the private sector where only a small minority of workers are organized. Reflecting the potential of the coalition, spokesmen for youth and even the police officers’ union pledged their support. One spokesperson for a youth group known as RAJ attacked the . government for plans to toss some 9,000 young people into so-called ‘‘community service work”’ at pay rates of $2.50 an hour. “This government is exploiting young people to attack the trade union movement’’, he said. ‘‘If we all struggle together, you'll win the right to negotiate and. we'll win wage parity with union workers.” Leaders of the police officers union urged the coalition mem- bers to focus their attack on the government, not the police. Responding to the request Yvon Charbonneau invited the police to “turn their riot sticks against the government while the union movement will be showing it their picket signs.” 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 20, 1985 Seated on the podium are representatives of Quebec major labor bodies. The unions have come together to form a coalition to battle provincial legislation which has stripped public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights. Auto locals give backing to Canadian independence © By MIKE PHILLIPS OSHAWA — Canada’s largest United Auto Workers local voted 70 per cent, Feb. 10, to sup- port creating an independent Canadian UAW. Tne sparse turn-out to the meeting, out of a total membership of 19,000 suggested that the vast. majority of Local 222 members reflecting the gen- eral mood throughout the union, favor the move to independence. Canadian UAW director Bob White suggested that in the current situation such a meeting would tend to attract members who felt strongly against breaking with the international. However, while opinion was split during the hour-long discussion, and while there was talk by some members con- sidering legal action to stop the move, the over- whelming majority voted in favor of the move to independence. That endorsation will likely end the minor con- troversy which has percolated on the fringe of the discussion over the union’s future — the demand by a few members for a membership-wide refer- endum on the issue. On the whole, most UAW members have ig- nored the demand. Local 199 in St. Catharines was the only one to deal with the question formally at a relatively small membership meeting which voted 54 per cent against asking the union to hold a referendum. ~ To date, about 65 per cent of the UAW’s Cana- dian locals have voted for the creation of a Cana- dian union. Only one local has voted against inde- pendence from the international. : White has said throughout the whole process that the decision was being made “‘in the traditional UAW fashion’’, of local meetings to discuss and vote on the action taken by the Canadian UAW Council and ‘the International Executive Board. Shock Waves It was the IEB which voted to set up a committee to work out the details of an amicable divorce after it had turned down the Canadian council’s demand for complete. autonomy within the international structure. That committee, which includes White for the Canadians and treasurer Ray Majerus and another American IEB member, will hold its first meeting Feb. 20-21 in Bal Harbour, Florida. White’s top aides, Bob Nickerson and Buzz Har- grove, will be along to assist him. The UAW decision and the warm support it got from the top levels of the Canadian labor move- ment including Canadian Labor Congress presi- dent Dennis McDermott, sent shock waves into the Canadian offices of the internationals left in the CLE 3 _ It sparked the formation of a semi-secret com- mittee of many of these internationals under the joint leadership of Steelworkers Canadian director Gerard Docquier and Sam Fox of the Amalga- mated Clothing and Textile Workers. Though they apparently couldn’t agree on a common statement regarding the internationals and the congress, the fact the unions got together signals open resistance to further progress in the Canadian trade union movement toward more au- tonomy. Debate in Steel The Steelworkers’ hierarchy in particular is ner- vous, because the volatile demand for Canadian autonomy continues to smoulder just under the surface of internal union politics. Canadian au- tonomy was a key plank in the platform that helped Dave Patterson knock off Stew Cook for the On- tario directorship in spite of the Steelworker estab- lishment’s bitter campaign to save their man. It’s also been recently reported that Local 1005, long a bastion of Canadian autonomy within the Union, has sent a resolution to the upcoming inter- national convention demanding a Canada-wide referendum on the question of setting up a Cana- dian USW. While it won’t stand a ghost of a chance of being adopted let alone get to the convention floor for debate, it will remain nevertheless as an emblem of aspirations that remain very much alive among Canadian Steelworkers. What worries the Canadian officers of the inter- nationals are the implications of the UAW move. In the first place the drive to independence began in the Canadian unicn’s rejection of the inter- . national’s policy of concessions bargaining with the auto industry. The U.S. leadership’s effort to impose the concessions pattern on the Canadian. GM talks, when the union and the workers here had set very different bargaining goals and were well aware a better settlement was possible, finally drove the Canadians to put their ultimatum to the IEB. Secondly, the independence of the UAW, the - second largest international union, tilts the balance within the CLC ever more in favor of Canadian unions. " Limits U.S. influence This further limits the influence of U.S. economic and foreign policies which are brought into the Canadian labor movement by many of the internationals. To the extent this takes place, the CLC faces a greater potential for playing a key role in the fight for general Canadian independence from U.S. domination. White’s reaction to the concerns raised by the unions gathered around Fox and Docquier is that it is up to the members and leaders of those unions to work out their own destiny, just as the UAW is doing. Their position on the auto workers’ move ‘“‘won’t deter us from pursuing our own course of events’, he said Feb. 10. “‘There’s no question that a Canadian UAW will be a viable entity and that it can play a strong international role as well’, White said, dismissing critics who attack the proposal, and block what he has said is a coming of age for the Canadian union.