LABOR Five day mine occupation wins improved conditions Special to the Tribune ROUYN, Que. — The five-day occupation of a copper mine in this northwestern Quebec town, 250 km north of North Bay, On- tario, ended Oct. 2 with the employer’s promise to improve working conditions in the mine. They were joined in their pro- test that same day by 11 other miners who occupied a changing room building above ground when the underground protest was launched. They also went the duration of the protest without food. Thirty miners, members of the United Steelworkers occupied the lunchroom of the Corbet shaft of Falconbridge Ltd.’s Lac Du- fault mine, 10 km north of Rouyn, Sept. 28 to back up demands for the transfer or firing of mine man- ager Raymond Gaetan, a return to a five-day, Monday-to-Friday work week schedule, and quick action on the processing and handling of grievances. While Falconbredge didn’t comply with the demand for Gaetan’s removal from his post as mine manager, the workers and the union were happy to have at least forced the company to face the problem and many felt Falconbridge will eventually have to find an answer to the question. The miners and their wives re- _ peatedly complained during the occupation, of the mine man- ager’s arrogance in cutting off bonuses, and of the pressures placed on the miners through gruelling work schedules. The most frustrated complaints came from senior miners who suf- fered humiliation, disrespect and job demotions at Gaetan’s hands during his three-year manage- ment of the Falconbridge opera- tion at Lac Dufault. While the miners occupied the underground lunchroom at the 12th level, (about half a mile underground) of the copper mine, some 25 wives and other miners held a vigil outside the mine’s gates, 10 km north of Lac Dufault. All the underground protesters had to nourish themselves during their occupation was fresh water. They had sworn not to eat until the company responded to their demands, and for its part Falcon- bridge wouldn’t let any food into the mine. Meanwhile outside the pad- locked mine gates, the wives huddled around campfires to sing songs of solidarity for their hus- bands below, and they held signs which read: ‘‘Our husbands are starving.”’ Quebec Energy Minister Yves Duhaime, on his way to open a new gold mine, some 50 km beyond Lac Dufault was called on to intervene in the dispute by the miners’ wives and the United Steelworkers. On Oct. 2 the min- ers and the company came to an agreement following Duhaime’s phone calls to management. The miners ratified it before they emerged from underground, tired, and hungry at 5:45 p.m. The agreement said Falcon- bridge would not take any re- prisals against the strikers, that the miners involved in the protest would get five days paid holiday to help them recuperate from their experience, and that scheduling problems would be re- solved in meetings slated to begin Oct. 6. The underground occupation which lasted 106 hours, was the fourth protest action on the min- ers’ grievances that the Lac Dufault workers had taken since this February. There had already been two walkouts in February and another in May, over the same issues. _ Contract talks were expected to begin in about three weeks ona new agreement to replace the cur- rent contract which expires Nov. iis NO WAGE Oct. 17 strike date for GM and OPSEU TORONTO — October 17 could prove to be a hot day for the provincial government and one of Ontario’s largest employers as 7,600 community college teachers, counsellors and librarians, and some 35,000 General Motors workers have picked the date as strike deadlines. The teachers and staff at Ontario’s 22 community colleges Oct. 2 voted 78 per cent in favor of strike action to back demands for a new contract to replace the current agreement which expired Aug. 31. Teacher workload is a key issue in that dispute, though the Ontario Council of Regents has been forced to back off of a demand for an unrestricted work load lifting the 19 to 22 hours- a-week limit on classroom time the teachers have to fulfill above and beyond preparing for classes and lessons. The Oct. 2 vote, by the members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, (OPSEU) followed another rejection of the Regents’ earlier offer which included a wage increase proposal of - 5 percent. OPSEU members turned that one down by 95 per cent noting that half of that offer included wage increases that were held back by Queen’s Park as part of its public sector wage guidelines. OPSEU officials say they will continue bargaining right up to the strike deadline for better wages and an easing of the work load for teachers. Return to the 3 per cent annual improvement factor, an up front wage increase, continuous cost of living with no interruption, income security, pension improvements and shorter work time remain the United Auto Workers’ top priorities in talks with General Motors Canada. UAW Canadian director Bob White, announced Sept. 28 that GM had been chosen as the strike target in this set of talks, following the settlement of a contract with the union and GM in the U.S. Unless GM comes up with a settlement proposal by 12:00 noon Oct. 17 the workers will strike for the first time in more than a decade. White stressed the strike deadline was aimed at getting a settlement and that Canadian auto workers were expecting and entitled to make progress in these talks. He said: “This industry has made the highest profits in their history; their executives have taken the highest stock options and bonuses in their history; the workers in 1982 lost time off the job and did not get any base rate increase since 1981, and they are absolutely entitled to make progress in these negotiations’’. British miners battle the ‘system’ Last week it was the Labor Party Convention in Great cannot any longer successfully fight for their most im- Britain. The week before it was the Trade Union Con- gress. Next week it will be the Tory Party Convention. In all three of these British Congresses the dominant issue was and will be the coal-miners’ strike. It is the centre of British politics. ee Nor is it just a matter of the difference between Mar- garet Thatcher’s Tories on one side, and the Labor Party and the trade unions on the other. There are splits in the trade unions, the Labor Party and the Tories as well over the issue. The media attempts to define these differences as dif- ferences of style, qualities of leadership, old fashioned versus modern unionism, etc. A studied and deliberate effort is made to obscure the real nature of the struggle and the real cause of the differences in approach to the miners’ strike. When the substance of the question is exposed it is understandable why such differences of approach are so evident in the working-class movement. The split in the working class movement which began in the latter half of the last century and continues today, divided the movement into its revolutionary, (class struggle) component, and its evolutionary, (class collaborationist) component. The issue which precipi- tated the split was the attitude of different sections of the movement to the theory ofthe class struggle, and the role of the working class, the attitude to the state as an organ of rule of a particular class. Capitalist Politics In the view of the reformists the trade union represents the workers, the capitalists have their own similar organizations, and the state arbitrates the differences between the two ‘‘equal partners”’ in society. Socialism they define according to whether the government elected calls itself socialist or not. Their actual definition of socialism is what the traffic will bear today. Given this view the question of getting elected takes precedence over everything. After all if you don’t get elected you can’t do anything for working people. There- fore anything that stands in the way of getting ‘‘socialists elected’’ must be avoided. If this means avoiding sup- port for striking miners because they have answered police violence with workers’ violence, so be it. If it. Labor in action Ng q William Stewart ‘ means keeping the trade unions at arms length, while: dipping into their treasuries for monies, because they are viewed with suspicion by the middle strata, this is bril- liant tactics. Stripped of all its bourgeois political trappings it has one simple definition. Capitalist politics replaces working-class struggle in the labor movement. This is by no means a new feature of the movement as we have noted. What gives it such a critical place in the move- ment today is the sharpening of the class antagonisms in capitalist society resulting from its crisis and attempts to make the workers bear the burden. Fighting For the Future Workers cannot fight the present strategy of monopoly capitalism and the big transnational corporations with Policies of class collaboration. However they are sad- dled with a leadership which developed and learned its art in a period where class struggle seemed remote and who are steeped in reformist ideology. Their trade unionism and their social democratic ideology are exten- sions of each other. The miners in Britain are not attacking the leaders of the British Labor Party, nor are they looking for quarrels with the steelworkers, electrical workers and others in the British labor movement who are hostile to their struggle. Neither did they go on strike to embarrass Margaret Thatcher. They are fighting for their jobs, their future, the basic economic needs of their communities and their families. They are fighting for the real future of their country. That such an elemental struggle leads them into con- flict with leaders in their trade union movement, miners in their own ranks, Tory leaders and many British people who are being misled by the press and other media, is not to be blamed on the miners. Rather it shows that workers ‘forced into ‘‘circumventing’’ moves, such as Neil Kin- mediate needs without coming into collision with the “‘system’’, its police, its media and all the protective screens it has erected to perpetuate itself. Unity Process Unfolds Most interesting and promising however is that those inside the labor movement who oppose the struggle of the miners find themselves in the minority. They are nock’s attempt to overcome the effects of the Labor Party’s endorsement of the miners’ struggle with his day later, hollow, ‘‘I deplore violence wherever it comes from’’, unlike Thatcher who is true to her ownclass. Our own Dennis McDermott, who was compelled to agree to send $17,000 to the miners, issued a press release in which he announced that the money was given ‘“‘inthe name of humanity to aid our brothers and sisters . . .’’. Not for one minute in support for the ‘‘old fashioned”’ trade unionism involved. Nonetheless the majority of members in the British trade union movement, the Labor Party, the Canadian Labor Congress, the New Democratic Party, associate themselves with the courageous British coal miners as do workers all over the world, in capitalist and socialist countries. ; As well this week the completely divergent views expressed by Willy Brandt, president of the Socialist International, who denounced the U.S. for its role in Central America, and others led by Portuguese ‘‘social- ist’? Premier Mario Soares who gave backhand support to U.S. actions in Central America, show that serious differences are evident in the world socialist community on international affairs. Lenin noted at one time that just as the split in the world working-class movement was inevitable, representing as it did the material possibilities for mass opportunism in the movement, so was the healing of the split inevitable, on the basis of genuine working-class policies. This process is indeed working itself out today and opportunism will find itself more and more on the de- | fensive in the entire labor movement as workers move into mass actions in support of their economic and social needs. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 10, 1984 e 7