Wednesday, October 23, 1985

es

Newsstand Price 40°

Vol. 48, No. 39

PR CA RTA OE SEE AE

Labor’s fightback,
bargaining blunted
‘under Hawke accord

By SEAN GRIFFIN

For four months, in 1984 and the beginning of 1985, workers at the Rosella-Lipton
plant in Melbourne, Australia walked the picket line in a now historic dispute that
began with the demand for reinstatement of 14 fired workers but quickly became a

complicated strike involving the centrepiece of labor relations under the Labor

government, the Prices and Incomes Accord.

Seventeen weeks after the strike was launched, in January, 1985, the workers,
members of the Food Preservers Union (FPU), scored a major victory, winning
reinstatement for the 14 as well as pay and benefit increases.

But that victory only came after actions by the government of Prime Minister

Robert Hawke had nearly driven the union out of the plant — and nearly forced
FPU members to give up the 2.6 per cent national wage increase granted by the

Arbitration Commission, Australia’s
wage-fixing agency.

“We won but we were taken to the
very brink of our destruction as a
union,” FPU organizer Gail Catton
told the Tribune from Melbourne.
“And even after we won, we still had
to fight to get the national increase
passed on to our members.”

The strike at Rosella-Lipton, a div-
ision of the huge British Unilever mul-
tinational, is only one of a growing
number of disputes which have
erupted in Australia in recent months

and which, because of the nature of }

the Hawke government’s Prices and
Incomes Accord, have become as
much strikes against the stifling wage
restraint of the accord as they have
strikes against the employer.

The much-vaunted accord, origi-
nally signed in February, 1983
between the soon-to-be elected Labor

Party and the Australian Council of |

Trade Unions (ACTU) established a

mechanism to control wages, based |

ona pledge from the government that

special programs, tax reforms and |
other measures would be introduced |
in return for workers submitting to |

wage restraint.

Under the accord, wage increases
are set for most unions on a national
scale by the Arbitration Commission
which takes the Consumer Price
Index for the previous two quarters
and establishes a twice-yearly wage
award accordingly.

“But in order to gain the arbitra-
tion award, you have to accept an
undertaking that you will make no
further claims on the employer for
two years,” said Catton. And itis that
restriction — one of several guide-
lines which accompany the accord
— that has created enormous tension
between the government and many
Australian trade unions.

“The employers hide behind that
— they say ‘no’ to everything. The
guidelines have been used to bludgeon
workers into accepting the status
quo,” she said.

In the Rosella-Lipton dispute, the
FPU was able to buck the trend, and
win increases outside the accord. But
the union faced an attempt by the

government to force the workers back’ }

on the job with an Arbitration
Commission-imposed ballot on the
resumption of work — a vote that
was rejected 83-52 — as well as legal
action to restrict the union’s right to
sign up members.

Second of two articles

Nine months on the line

: oe
y

see ACCORD page 12

Bruce Usui (I) and John Campbell man picket line outside AAF Ltd. in North
Burnaby where members of the Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Workers, a
local of the United Association of the Plumbers and Pipefitters, have been on
strike since Jan. 29. The employer, who manufactures filters for air conditioning
units, has stonewalled negotiations since the strike began and has maintained the
operation with scabs, reflecting an ominous and growing trend in disputes across
the province.

Court injunction
still hangs over
Cdn. Tire boycott

An ex parte B.C. supreme court injunc-
tion barring the Retail Clerks and the B.C.
Federation of Labor from virtually any
action in support of the Canadian Tire boy-
cott at 21 Lower Mainland Canadian Tire
stores, was set aside on a technicality Oct. 17.
but its sweeping provisions are still hanging
over unionists’ efforts to mount the boycott
on behalf of striking Canadian Tire workers
in Prince George.

Retail Clerks lawyer Morley Shortt told
the Tribune Oct. 18 that the injunction
order, issued by Justice H.A. Callaghan
Oct. 12, was set aside by the court because
the counsel for the union had not been
notified of the application for an injunction.
The application had been filed by G. Ver-
non Forster, co-owner of Pacific Associates
Stores Ltd., the franchise owner for Cana-
dian Tire’s 21 stores in various Lower Main-
land municipalities from North Vancouver
to Chilliwack.

Shortt added that the company could not
make a new application for an order unless
there was leafletting or picketing at the
stores. “And at the moment there’s no pick-
etting so there’s nothing to complain
about,” he said.

“Right now, it’s a stalemate.”

The original injunction order, considered
one of the most sweeping and punitive since
the “injunction heyday” of the 1960s, and
granted the same day as Forsters’ applica-
tion and accompanying affidavits were
filed, was prompted by leafletting at several
of the stores Oct. 11. The action was part of

. the campaign mounted by the Clerks and

the B.C. Federation of Labor to win a set-
tlement of the two-year-old strike at Cana-
dian Tire in Prince George.

The order prohibited the Clerks, the B.C.
Federation of Labor, “and their respective
officers, members, employees, servants or
agents,...or any other person having
knowledge of this order” from:

@ “Watching or besetting or causing to
be watched or beset any of the 21 stores;

@ “Persuading or attempting to persuade
any person not to enter the store or do
business with the store;

e “Distributing any handbill or other
material urging a boycott of the store;

@ “Attending the store with placards or
handbills that “convey information with
respect to any aspect of the plaintiff's busi-
ness;

e “Interfering, hindering or obstructing
ingress and egress to and from the plaintiff's
place of business by any means what-
soever.””

“Tt basically ordered us not to look at the
stores, to leaflet them or do anything that

see ORDER page 3