a Sion NOTES

STEELWORKERS JOIN FIGHT AGAINST CONCESSIONS

- SUDBURY — Both Ontario and Quebec directors of the United Steelworkers announced May 13, their
union has no intention of accepting wage and other concessions at the bargaining table. Along the same lines
as the autoworkers’ militant rejection of concessions in 1982, Dave Patterson of Ontario, and Quebec’s
Clement Godbout said their union intends to back the UAW in Ontario and Quebec’s public service workers
who are also being asked by the Parti Quebecois government to take a wage and benefits cut in forthcoming
negotiations. ;

Pointing out that wage concessions won’t save jobs, Patterson stressed that none of his Ontario locals are
working under a take-away agreement, and that the union has no intention of signing any in the future.

Patterson declared that Steelworkers will throw full support to the UAW if the corporations decide to try
to force concessions in this fall’s contract talks because ‘‘once the bosses knock off one of the largest
industrial unions in Canada, it’s only a matter of time before we all go down.”’

‘THREE QUEBEC CENTRALS PRESS FEDS FOR JOBS

OTTAWA — The leaders of Quebec’s three trade union centrals, told the Quebec Liberal caucus that
labor will organize general strikes if necessary to force the federal government to abandon the disastrous
economic policies that have put more than 1.2-million Canadians out of work. ;

‘Quebec Federation of Labor president Louis Laberge said the question of general strikes and other forms
of mass protest will be discussed at the 14th biennial Canadian Labor Congress convention beginning May
24 in Winnipeg. ‘We’ ve lived with inflation for the last 15 years and survived,’’ Laberge told reporters, May
12. ‘‘But we can’t survive without jobs. If necessary we will have general strikes, if we have to go that far.”

SYSCO WORKERS FACE UIC RIP-OFF

__ SYDNEY — The federal government and the Sydney Steel Company may be planning to exact their
pound of flesh against 1,500 Steelworkers who had the guts to conduct a 12-day strike for better wages which

ended May 7. Canada’s crooked unemployment insurance laws say that after a strike is ended, 85% of the

production must be resumed and 85% of the workforce returned before UIC benefits will be paid to the

remaining workers who haven’t been recalled. :

The catch is that if the layoffs which followed the strike are identified as being caused by a work shortage,
the laid off steelworkers will get their benefits after the normal waiting period. If it is decided by the

government that they resulted from the strike, the workers get zip.

__ Show Feds your anger,

call us — CLC urges

- OTTAWA — The Canadian
“Labor Congress sharply
criticized the federal govern-
ment May 7 for its lack of ac-
tion in the face of the highest
increase in unemployment.

~ since the depression of the 30s
~ and expressed the hope that its

media campaign for economic
recovery will increase public
pressure on government to
‘reverse its depression-
oriented policies.”

“The unemployment figure
of 9.6%, up from 9% the pre-
vious month, is a direct result
of the senseless tight-money,
high-interest-rate policies pur-
sued by the current Liberal
government and its Con-
servative predecessor,’ CLC
President Dennis McDermott
said.
The CLC TV advertising
blitz, which runs on television
stations across Canada, started
May 3 and will continue until
May 29. It consists of two 30-
second commercials; one
showing CLC President
McDermott, the other a tumbl-

_ ing house of cards. The mes-

sages say, ‘‘high interest rates
threaten all you’ ve worked for:
your home, your job, your se-

curity."’ The viewers are in-
vited to “‘speak up to bring the
rates down’’ by calling the
CLC on a toll-free telephone
number and relating how
they’ve been personally hurt
by the government’s economic
policies.

Callers receive, by retum
mail, a campaign button and a
brochure outlining the CLC’s
policies for an economic and
political altarnative, as well as
a protest postcard to be mailed
free of postage to Prime Minis-
ter Trudeau. :

McDermott said the re-
sponse during the first days of
the campaign is extremely en-'
couraging. *‘We receive hun-
dreds of calls from people ac-
ross the country every day,”
he said:

‘*We count on Canadians to
call us to show the government
that people want a change.”

The toll-free numbers are:
1-800-267-9700 ‘for English
Canada except British Colum-
bia. In B.C. the number is 112-
800-267-9700. French-language
callers from Quebec and the
Maritimes can call: 1-
800-267-4017.

Unity grows a

concessions

A sharp confrontation is shaping up between state
monopoly capitalism and the organized trade union
--movement in Canada. The public service industry,
most particularly in Quebec and British Columbia, are
on a collision course with their respective govern-
ments. In B.C. the government has set out a wage
guideline policy for employees under its jurisdiction
which holds their wage considerably below that re-
quired to catch up with the effects of inflation and
protect themselves over the life of the contract. In
Quebec the government is demanding forfeiture of
negotiated pay increases by public workers which
would rob them of half a billion dollars.

In both instances the workers haye told the
governments they refuse to accept their edicts.
Meanwhile a massive campaign is being waged

through the media to create a public climate hostile to ©

public employees, to split the ranks of public workers
as well as drive a wedge between public and private
industry workers.

At the same time, the United Automobile Workers
Canadian Council closed ranks on the May 8 weekend
in an historic Canadian Economic Conference to pre-
pare for this year’s negotiations. The Council
unanimously dumped on the industry’s demands for

concessions on COLA, personal paid holidays and-

other monetary items. They lined up solidly behind
the demand that the traditional pattern of 3% annual
productivity increase in wages be maintained, as well
as all existing conditions including folding into the
base rate outstanding COLA. (See article in this issue,
for details.)

While many on the left have been critical in the past
of the UAW for its monetary settlements of 3% and
much of the bargaining strategy of the International
UAW, there is little, if any room for criticism of the
Canadian UAW leadership, top and secondary, for
their approach to negotiations this year. :

The struggle being undertaken by the UAW against
the three auto giants and American Motors, is of
considerable consequence fo the entire trade union
movement and the people of Canada as well.

Implicit in the actions of UAW members in Canada
is their refusal to accept responsibility for the present
crisis. In effect they are denying the right of the sys-
tem of capitalism to do what is endemic to it, namely to

drive down the cost of labor in the world-wide -

competition of capital to keep up its rate of profit in a
period of economic decline.

One is reminded here of the polemic conducted by
Karl Marx against Ferdinand Lasalle’s ‘‘Iron Law of
Wages’ theory which argued that wages are auto-

ainst wage

Labor in action
William Stewart |

matically fixed at a minimum level by the capitalist
system and the struggles of workers can do nothing to
alter this. Therefore one should abandon the struggle
for wage increases and simply fight for the overthrow
of the system.

In effect, UAW leaders in the USA are giving sup-
port to one side of Lasalle’s theories, whereas Cana-
dian workers are proving that workers can indeed
affect the levels of wages, by rejecting any *‘auto-
matic’’ operation of such laws affecting their lives,
and by striking out in a different direction.

Involved also in this at first simple economic strug-
gle is a classical illustration of the relationship be-
tween revolution and reform, a substantive question
for genuine socialists, one around which centre many
of the differences in the working-class movement.

In the course of protecting themselves against the
obvious injustices of this system, and without any
reference to socialism, Canadian auto workers find
themselves coming into direct collision with state
monopoly capitalism, its natural laws, and its
governments and state. This does not mean that the

result of the UAW negotiations in Canada will be

socialism, or that it will necessarily. bring capitalism
closer to its demise.

It does point workers in a direction opposing the
state and monopoly. In the course of this struggle they
can come to see the need for new policies, new pro-
grams, a new direction for their industry and for
Canada. At the same time, monopoly, which is not
blind, can back away from confrontation, make con-
cessions to auto workers, and use other options to
recover their ‘‘losses’’. ;

Workers will have the task of meeting the corpora-
tions and their governments on these new fronts and
trying to block their efforts to take back in one form
what workers have won in another. —

In this unending struggle between capital and labor,
between workers and bosses, it is possible for work-
ers to perceive the true nature of the system and the
need for fundamental change, for socialism.

It is also precisely for this reason that workers need

a vanguard party which knows in advance the nature
of the class enemy, knows its immediate tactics and
strategy and is able to help the workers develop prac-
tice and policy to counter and defeat the attacks on
their immediate interests and at the same time use
these battles to change the balance of forces in favor
of overcoming once and for all the system of capitalist
exploitation.

That is why Communists in the auto industry will
throw their entire weight into the struggle behind the
decisions of the Canadian District of the UAW in this
year’s negotiations. They will work to unite the mem-
bership behind the proposals. They will work to win
the community to understand that what’s good for
Canadian auto workers, is good for Canada, and most
of all for the auto communities. They will work to win
the total and all-out support of the Canadian trade
union and labor movement, the academic, youth,
women’s, farm and democratic communities. They
will help guard against the splitting, divisive tactics of
the ultra-left as well as the gloom and doom of the
right-wing elements in the union.

At the same time, however, Communists will work
to bring an understanding to as many members of the
UAW as possible, that the way out of the defensive
dilemma they find themselves in, is to strike out in the
direction of new policies, new programs, new
governments, in the direction of socialism.

We will do this in the full confidence that this pro-
cess will not weaken the unity of auto workers but on
the contrary will strengthen that unity. As workers
understand fully their adversary and the necessity of
an alternative, they also better understand the im-
portance of each individual struggle of working
people and how to conduct it.

We would like to appeal to all our readers and
supporters to make the struggle of Canadian auto-
workers in this year’s negotiations their own (without
in any way interfering with the right and responsibility
of the union to have complete control).

The same support must be mobilized behind the
public workers of Quebec and British Columbia. The
lie must be given to the argument that public
employees should help dig capitalistm out of its self-
made crisis by sub-standard wages. :

Auto workers and public employees are in the van

- of the struggle against wage cutting and slashed living

standards. If they win it will be a victory for all of us. If
they lose, we can expect a monumental attack on the
standards of all working people.

What more compelling reason to unite our ranks
now and win?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 21, 1982—Page 7