LABOR — 7

TORONTO — The Wo-
men’s Strike Support Coali-
tion, which was born out of
support for the union organiz-
ing drive at Eaton’s, came to
Queen’s Park, May 28 de-
manding three substantial re-
forms in Ontario’s archaic
labor laws.

These include: strong anti-
strikebreaking legislation; first
contract laws _ requiring
employers to agree to a basic
union contract when a dead-
lock is reached in bargaining
for that first agreement; and,
legislation forcing the Ontario
Labor Relations Board to in-
clude both full- and part-time
workers in a bargaining unit
when the union requests it.

The coalition represents a
fj wide array of women’s
organizations, a host of trade
union women’s committees,
the Ontario NDP and the
Communist Party.

The coalition, in its May 28
statement, pointed out that
union organizing, (in an
economy where three quarters
of the part-time labor force is
female) and picket line strug-
gles are increasingly women’s
issues.

‘““Most of the long, difficult
first contract strikes in the last
five or six years have been
women’s strikes’*, Coalition
spokesperson Pat McDermott

told reporters.
“Women workers at Radio
Shack, Fleck, Irwin Toys,

Mini Skools have all been sub-
jected to vicious anti-union
tactics in their efforts to or-
ganize and a get a first con-
tract.”

She added that the outcome
of the Eaton’s strike and these
other experiences made the
coalition realize ‘“‘that labor
legislation in this province is
archaic when it comes to ad-
dressing the needs and con-
cerns of women in the 1980s.””

The coalition emphasized
that strong anti-scab laws are
needed because the current
law, while banning profession-
al strikebreaking agencies,
doesn’t stop employers from

Ne

replacing strikers with other
workers. This undermines
strikes, and reinforces the im-
balance of power in the em-
ployers’ hands. They also
pointed out that under current
legislation scabs can vote to
ratify contracts which strikers
have risked their jobs and
financial security to achieve. |

Right now, Eaton’s is con-
tinuing to fight the union in its
six organized stores by mobil-
izing the scabs who worked
and were hired during the
strike to lobby the Ontario
Labor Relations Board so it
will hold a ratification vote on
the company’s brutal contract.

The coalition pointed to
anti-scab laws in Quebec
where employers are banned
from hiring anyone to replace
striking workers during a
strike.

They illustrated their de-
mand for first contract legisla-
tion with the Eaton’s struggle,
which they characterized as a
David and Goliath confronta-
tion.

“‘The Goliaths of today are
corporate giants with almost
limitless resources at their dis-
posal to evade responding to
the collective concerns of their

employees’, the statement
noted.
Companies like Eaton’s

have all the resources at their
disposal to wait out a strike.
What the coalition wants is a
law which will allow the union
to request an arbitrated first
contract, and one not based on
having to prove unfair labor
practices by the employers.

First contract legislation al-
ready exists in B.C., Manitoba
and Quebec.

BRANDON — The Manitoba
Food and Commercial Workers
Union has asked the provincial
Labor Board to impose a first
contract on Eaton’s. The union
was certified last October to
represent the department store
workers.

First contract legislation al-
lows a union or employer to ask
the Labor Board to impose a
collective agreement where a
new bargaining unit is involved.
The Food and Commercial
workers have used the legisla-
tion before in achieving first
contracts, but this is the first
time the law has been requested
for implementation in such a
high profile dispute as the one at
Eaton’s.

Manitoba’s first contract
legislation was passed three
years ago when the late Mary
Beth Dolan was labor minister.

Union wants contract
| imposed on Eaton’s
ec ee

MFCW President Bernard
Christophe said the union has
been unable to obtain an
agreement from Eaton’s on any
items including wage increases
and job security guarantees.
The pattern follows the com-
pany’s intransigence during the
six-month battle conducted in
southwestern Ontario by the
Retail Wholesale and Depart-
ment Store Union at six Eaton’s
stores.

They recently accepted the
company’s scandalous contract
offer, in order to keep the union
alive, to regroup to extend
union organization and to fight
for a better contract in the next
set of talks.

‘‘Katon’s offer is so bad I’m
confident the Labor Board
could only do better’’, Christ-

ophe said last week. ae

Devine refuses meet

with labor leaders

REGINA — When Tory pre-
mier Grant Devine arrogantly re-
fused to meet the Saskatchewan
Federation of Labor to receive its
annual brief to the government,
SFL president Nadine Hunt had
to deliver it personally to the pre-
mier’s office, May 27.

“The Devine government
claims it is interested in consulta-
tion, yet they have refused to
meet with us to discuss issues of
concern to all working people’,
Hunt said. ‘‘They would not give
us a date to. meet before the
budget was presented, and now
they say they can’t meet with us
while the legislature is in ses-

”

sion.

The SFL president said the
government appears determined
to dodge the concerns raised by
the 66,000-member organization

which is the provincial voice for
365 union locals. :

“The government is not anxi-
ous to hear what we have to say
because we speak for working
people in Saskatchewan’’, Hunt
said. ‘“Workers were promised a
lot in the 1982 election campaign;
but have been very low on this
government’s list of priorities

ever since.” :
The Federation pointed out

that in the last three years un-
employment has reached post-
depression highs, the economy
has contracted and investment
has ceased to grow. It argued that
these and other economic in-
dicators illustrated the failure of
the Tories’ “open for business”
experiment.

The best way to stimulate the
economy, the brief said, is
through job creation.

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 1985

Coalition seeks end to archaic labor laws

Barb Cameron of Organized
Working Women told re-
porters the coalition had met
with both the Liberal and NDP
labor critics and were assured
by the New Democrats ‘that
their three demands would be
priority issues for the NDP
caucus in the forthcoming
legislature.

She added that the coalition

plans to continue mobilizing
women’s organizations around
these legislative demands.
“It’s the coalition’s view that
union organization is an im-
portant step to achieving wo-
men’s equality and that it’s im-
portant to get the support of
these sections of the women’s
movement for the right to

organize.”

a ‘NO UNION LEFT ON ITS OWN’

EDMONTON — The top lead-
ers of the Alberta labor move-
ment met in Calgary May 31 to lay
their plans for what’s being billed
as a ‘‘Wage> Negotiations Co-
ordinating Conference” slated to
take place in September.

The fall conference is in re-
sponse to a resolution calling on
the Alberta Federation of Labor
to convene such a meeting as part
of its mandate to gear up the trade
union movement’s fightback
against concessions and to put
labor on the offensive at the bar-
gaining table for jobs, shorter
hours, better wages and working
conditions.

AFL president Dave Werlin,
last week, said the preparatory
conference would include the
AFL executive, representatives
from all of the province’s labor
councils and the staff and ranking
officers of each of the federation’s
affiliated unions.

““We hope to come out of that
meeting having laid the ground-
work for the September confer-
ence where we want to get the
whole trade union movement in
Alberta geared up to co-ordinate
their bargaining strategies and to
support one another’, Werlin
said.

“‘We want to ensure that no

union in this province will be left

on its own at the bargaining table

U.S.-style

made-in-USA concessions.

The company has already
workers.

to happen May 30.

older buildings.

BRAMPTON — Two hundred workers at Carrier Canada
Ltd., have given their union a 93.5 per cent strike mandate to
back up its refusal to take the company’s demand they accept

‘‘Canada is not the same as the United States’’, Celso Adriano,
president of Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 575, said May 27. ‘‘It’s
a different country and our collective agreements should be
based on the needs of Canadians.”’

Carrier Canada, owned by the giant U.S. transnational United
Technologies, is demanding the workers take a lump sum settle-
ment instead of a wage increase, wants to initiate a two-tiered
wage structure for new workers, and wants the right to contract
work normally done in the plant to outside firms.

The members of Local 575 have been without a contract since
Dec. 30, and will be in a legal strike position, 15 days from the
release of a provincial conciliator’s report, which was expected

The workers manufacture industrial air conditioning equip-
ment that is used in the construction of new buildings as well as in

Adriano said his members are ready to bargain and hope to
achieve a settlement before the strike date.

pact nixed

lowered the wages of its U.S.

Alberta fed mounts
concession fight

in a fight with the employers
against concessions.’

A graphic example of a situa-
tion the AFL doesn’t want to see
repeated is the year-long battle by
meatpackers in Brooks, Alberta
at Lakeside Packing.

The United Food and Com-
mercial Workers have been on
strike there since June 1, 1984 and
the first anniversary of their fight
against concessions will be
marked by a show of labor soli-
darity as trade unionists from
throughout the province there for
a picnic and rally.

Werlin called the workers’ fight
against Lakeside’s demands for a
two-tiered wage structure and a
whole array of concessions
“‘heroic’’. The workers have

-come under intense pressure by

the police on the picket line. The, —

vice-president of the local UFCW
unit even had the rear window of
his car shot out.

The company has been using
scabs extensively to try to break
the strike, but now even the scabs
aren't happy as. Lakeside
management has cut their hours
of work down to 20 a week. With
that kind of a reduction in work,
they’re making less than the 29
strikers are earning in weekly
strike pay.

Brooks is about 130 kilometres
east of Calgary.

Tanjay
makes
serious
offer

WINNIPEG A militant
campaign by the International
Ladies Garment Workers Union
and community supporters has
been successful in forcing Tanjay
International to make a serious
contract offer to its workers.

The last minute offer came
early on May 29 only hours before
Tanjay workers were to begin a
strike and set up picket lines.

At press time a vote was being
held on the offer and there was
still a possibility of a strike.

On May 25, Tanjay President
Peter Nygard spent $9,000 on a
full page advertisement in the
Winnipeg Free Press attacking
the union and the provincial New
Democratic Party government.

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