Hamilton labor condemns attack an CUP

HAMILTON — The Hamilton and District
Labor Council, (HDLC), Feb. 5 unanimously con-
demned the Ontario Tory government's vicious
wave of reprisals against the province’s 16,000
hospital workers..

Members of the Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE), the hospital workers defied
an Ontario law banning hospital workers’ strikes
and numerous other legal threats and assaults with
an eight day strike to enforce their demand for a
decent contract from the Ontario Hospital
Association (OHA), that would help them recap-
ture the 22% drop in the wages they have suffered
through forced arbitration since 1975. —

But some of the delegates to the Council didn’t

From)
Hamilton

Der ee es ee ee
Liz Rowley

think the statement — though strongly worded —
was enough. :

Don Stewart, Local 105 International Brother-
hood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) said the
government’s role from beginning to end was
“scurrilous”, and pointed out that~*in spite of the
promises of ‘no reprisals’ and ‘no lowering the
boom’, they’re doing everything they can right
now to effect reprisals and lower the boom.

‘This: persecution and assassination of labor
must be stopped — we have to draw the line some-
where,’” he said, and called on the Council to call
on the Ontario Federation of Labor (OFL) and the

‘ Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) “‘to register with
the people of Ontario and with the labor movement
that it might have to go up to the point of with-
drawal of labor by other unions ... because we
have to make sure that not one worker is sacrificed
because of this (attack and reprisals)’.

Stewart was supported by Council secretary Bill
Thomson, who called the government action **vic-
ious’’ and noted that ‘‘action by the whole Labor

Council, such as we had. this past weekend ...—

could make Ontario premier Bill Davis do a double
think about social justice.” es

CANADA

Steelworkers’ delegate Bob Mann also took the
mike to take issue with a previous speaker who had

urged that support for the hospital workers be con- ~

fined to support of the New. Democratic Party at
the ballot box. March 19. ‘‘It can’t all be accom-
plished at the ballot box,’’ Mann said, adding that
‘‘of course we have to get rid of the representatives
of big business — but we also have to mobilize
workers, and yes ‘take to the streets’ if necessary
— to support our brothers and sisters who also
have to pay rent and buy groceries just the same as
we do.”’

Council president Harry Greenwood took a slap . /

at Attorney General Roy McMurtry as well as the
establishment media, who had claimed that
CUPE's interests were at odds with the public
interest. ‘“‘Public opinion is with the working
people,” he said, ‘‘because CUPE members are
the public, just like auto workers are the public and
steelworkers are the public. We are the public ...
and we don’t feel we’ ve lost yet — we’ ve achieved
something new — solidarity.”

The meeting, which was hot with election fever
throughout, heard from delegate after delegate
about the issues that need to be raised and fought
out before the March 19 Ontario vote.

Most significant was the resolution introduced
by Hugh Hair, United Electrical Workers (UE),
and executive member of the Hamilton Peace

Council, raising the question of peace, détente and -

disarmament, and the Canadian Peace Congress
petition around those issues. After a brief introduc-
tion, the petition was unanimously endorsed by the
labor countil on behalf of its 40,000 affiliated mem-
bers. :

Speaking to the question of a 20% rent increase

forecast for the area in the coming year, Bob Mann —

announced that tenants in the city were organizing

and demanding action to save rent controls and —

affordable rents. | :

Local 504 UE president Tony McNulty called on
delegates to ‘defeat the Tories and elect working-
class candidates,’’ since the 700 Westinghouse
jobs being shipped out of Hamilton, along with the
seven-month lockout at Participation House and
the strike of Ontario hospital workers could all be
laid at the door of the 38-year old Tory government
in Ontario.

e

Hamilton labor council was quick to condemn the Tary governm!
vicious wave of reprisals against the province’s 16,000 hospital wort
The workers shown here on the picket tine during the eight day
now face arrest, fines, suspensions and firings from their jobs.

EDMONTON — Characterizing
western Canadian separatist movements
as ‘‘nothing but front organizations for
the interests of the multi-national oil
companies”, the annual convention of
the Alberta Federation of Labor held
here, Feb. 46, declared that Alberta
labor ‘go on record condemning western
separatism with no reservations’.

Then turning its attention to the role

Western separatists front organizations’
- for oil multinationals, says Alberta Fed

2 William Tuomi

From Edmonton |
, |

fought fascism in Spain in 1936-39 and!
accord to them the same rights and be®™
fits that other veterans get. P|
Working under the difficulties cre, 4
by differences between the build
trades and the federation, the convelll,
urged the building trades to maintai®
. unity of the labor movement and tot
turn to the Canadian Labor Congrest

the Alberta Federation and to meet if

played by the Lougheed government in
the energy crisis, the convention de-
manded the Alberta Government rescind
its 15% cutback of oil production and quit
fanning the ‘‘flames of western
separatism”.

The Federation convention, attended
by 844 delegates representing the bulk of
the province’s 125,000 organized work-
ers, was the first clear statement of the
labor movement to the campaign to sepa-
rate the western provinces into an inde-

. pendent country.

dominantly foreign-owned and -con-
trolled’? and that “‘this foreign domina-
tion of a key energy resource is contrary
to the best interests of all Canadians’,
the Convention by resolution made the

* ail foreign-owned and -controlled oil and
\_ all foreign

Describing the oil industry as “‘pre-

‘*demand of the federal government that -

gas companies be brought under demo-

cratic .public control through joint

federal-provincial crown corporations’’.

The ‘‘channelling of massive sums of
money into the production of weapons of
war’’ was condemned by resolution as
“the primary cause of inflation and the
sagging North American economy’”’ and
that ‘‘history reveals that every arms
race inevitably leads to war’’. The con-
vention resolved to ‘‘urge the govern-
ment of Canada to use its influence to
bring about the confirmation of the Salt-
II agreement.” ; ;

Another resolution, using the esti-
mates of the U.S. National Security
Council that 140 million American and
113 million Soviet citizens would die in
the initial minutes of a nuclear war, cal-

led ‘upon the government of Canada to_

develop an independent foreign policy

based on the pursuit of détente and
peaceful relations among all nations of
the world’’.. 7

A series of resolutions dealing with so-

cial problems in revenue-rich Alberta

condemned the provincial government
for the fact that:

e classroom time for Alberta teachers is
the second highest in Canada;

e lack of child care facilities in the pro-
vince has reduced Alberta to ninth place
in the country;

e the level of social services is a ‘‘dis- -
He defeated Fred Pyke of the Can f

grace to all Albertans’’;
e the aged in the province are still

exploited by profiteering private nursing.

homes.

The convention endorsed a resolution
calling on the Canadian Government to
recognize the veterans of the
MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion who

per capita payments. Another resolut f
urged that the question of autonomy
the Canadian building trades be sett
by the Canadian Labor Congress andi
trades ‘‘in accordance with the mini™,
. standards adopted by the CLC’”’ in 1
A decision ona proposal for a modifi
form of bloc voting in Federation co
ventions was postponed for a year.
At the end of a tense campaign fot |
election of the leadership of the Fed@),
tion, Harry Kostiuk was re-el 4
president with a slim 71-vote major

-

Union of Public Employees (CUP,
who urged a policy of “‘confrontatio?
for the Federation. The vote was a
ally greeted as a step forward in the 7
“to maintain the unity of the craft u
and the mass service workers uniOP”
the Federation. |

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEB. 20, 1981—Page 10