Racism rampant at Consumers’

__ TORONTO — After a battle of
_ More than a year John Persaud is
finally getting a glimpse of motion
in his fight for justice.

Persaud, a sole-support parent
h three kids, has been fighting
ice May of 1984 against being
‘Unjustly fired by management at
‘\onsumer Distributing Ltd.’s
Malton warehouse.

In all this time he’s not yet had
grievance heard. Instead the
mpany has filed a preliminary
jection to the arbitration even
ng heard, because it claims
‘ersaud agreed to a $50,000 cash
‘Settlement in Jan. °85 ending the
dispute.

N fact, under what his suppor-
ters describe as extreme pressure

a battery of lawyers, Per-
Saud did sign an agreement, but
he immediately repudiated it and
Was successful in convincing the
ntario Human Rights Com-
ISsion not to ratify it.

Hearings Scheduled

. Effectively, he reconsidered
'S decision and chose to continue
€ arbitration route.

Last week, even the _arbit-
Tator’s patience seemed to be
Wearing thin over the company’s
Stalling tactics. Professor R.B.
4\aynor informed counsel for both
Sides that they could give their
_Summations on the preliminary
bjection Dec. 16. Should he find
there is no basis to the company’s
ection he would begin hearing

early January.

Meanwhile Persaud’s friends
Supporters are marshalling
latever help they can from
“00r, community groups and
‘ntl-racism activists, because his
Was just the tip of an ugly
tuation at Consumers Distribut-

erits of Persaud’s grievance.

ing where it appears racism runs
rampant with little or no resis-
tance from management.

Immediately after Persaud was
fired, the majority of his work-
mates in the warehouse circulated
a petition calling on the provincial
labor minister to investigate the
circumstances of the firing.

History of Racism

His supporters at work and in
the support committee that’s
been formed to help him
achieve justice say he was fired
because he was a dedicated and
conscientious chief steward and
was an active participant in the
fight against racism in the work-
place.

There was a long history of ra-
cism in the place. Workers recall
how the company would hire il-
legal immigrants for a day’s work
then have immigration officials
pick them up before they could
collect their pay.

Persaud was even taken from
work in 1976 and interrogated by
immigration officials until he
proved that he was a landed im-
migrant. He’s since become a
Canadian citizen.

Pressure from the workers and
complaints on the situation to the
human rights commission forced
the company to clean up its act a

bit and at least end the exploita- .

tion of the illegal immigrants. A
few visible minority workers
were promoted to supervisory
jobs but in the recent period the
company has either fired most of
them or offered cash settlements
for them to leave.

Over the past two years the
company has openly ignored a
contract provision ensuring that

_Fired worker seeks justice

workers be selected for training
and promotion on the basis of
seniority, making it impossible for
management to bypass senior and
experienced minority workers in

favor of white workers hired from .

outside the company.

In fact the workers at Consum-
ers complain of a double standard
in the treatment of white and visi-
ble minority workers. They com-
plain of one worker in particular
who openly boasts of being able
to get any worker fired that he
wants; who is able to verbally and
physically harass visible minority
workers with impunity and who
on one occasion beat up a worker
so badly he needed to be hospital-
ized.

Yet management hasn’t taken”

any disciplinary action against its
employee.

Unsavory
Reputation

Consumers Distributing
doesn’t exactly have the most
savory reputation. Charges of il-
legal stock manipulation by the
company’s president in 1979 still

-haven’t been dealt with.

Last year, while the company
was trying to grind Persaud down
on his grievance, the press was
filled with reports of kickback and
payoffs to former Local 419 busi-
ness agent Sean Floyd in order to
secure ‘“‘labor peace.”

The local has since been put
under trusteeship, and Floyd res-
igned with a luxurious cash pay-
ment from the Teamsters.

Persaud and his supporters
have also called on Labor Minis-
ter Bill Wrye to look into the
situation, and the minister’ s office
has promised to meet with Per-
saud later this month, before
Christmas.

TRIBUNE PHOTO —JOSE KAUFMAN

ok. :
Massive solidarity is needed behind the Burlington’Northern
strikers in their fight for a first agreement.

Labor solidarity
on Northern line

MALTON — It was a time for solidarity, Nov. 29 as Toronto-
area workers responded to a call by Local 91 International Typo-
graphical Union to demonstrate their support for 30 locked out
workers at Burlington Northern Air Freight. 3

The workers have been locked out by the subsidiary of the
mammoth Pittston Corporation since May 8. Pittston, a U.S.
transnational, also owns the Brinks Company, a notorious
anti-union armored car company.

- The company has been using scab drivers to keep their busi-
ness moving. True to form the Peel Regional Police have been
living up to their anti-union image by harassing the pickets.

Pickets are being arrested on nuisance charges and ITU
members’ homes have even been raided.

The Peel police came under fire from the trade union move-
ment at last month’s Ontario Federation of Labor convention.

The Communications Workers of Canada (CWO), has said it
intends to ask Ontario Solicitor General Ken Keyes to investigate
the Peel force. CWC members have been the butt of racially-con-
nected police harassment in a Mississauga strike involving a
largely East Indian and immigrant workforce at Super Plastics.

The CWC decision flows from an OFL convention resolution
calling on the Solicitor General to investigate the Peel Regional
Police. CWC delegates were joined by delegates from the Cana-
dian Paperworkers Union and other OFL affiliates who centred
on the force’s unsavory reputation as a ruthless pro-employer
presence on the picket line.

__ Like the Burlington Northern pickets, and the Food and
Commercial Workers who recently concluded their strike at —
Galco Foods, in Mississagua, the Super Plastics workers, accord-
ing to the CWC, were subjected to arrests even though scabs who
recklessly injured workers as they ploughed their way through
picket lines were not even charged.

Burlington Northern refuses to negotiate with the ITU. Since
the May 8 lockout there has been only one meeting which the
union described as ‘‘short’’ and “‘fruitless.”

World labor body

marks 40 years

‘The 206-million member World Fed-
€ration of Trade Unions turned 40 in Oc-
_tober. While it isn’t common knowledge
to the current generation of trade union
activists in this country, Canadians were
Present at its birth.

_Canada was represented by delega-
tions of both the Canadian Congress of
Labor and the Trades and Labor Con-
ress at a preparatory conference for the
formation of a world federation held in
ndon, England, in April, 1945.
Canada was also represented on the
Provisional committee that was struck
off to lay the groundwork for the
_WETU’s founding conference in Paris.
_ The federation’s birth wasn’t painless
Dy any means. Even at this early stage,
Certain right wing trade union leaders,
Including Canada’s Charlie Millard, rep-
Tesenting the CCL, unsuccessfully tried

- But thanks to the efforts of the Ameri-
can CIO’s Sidney Hillman and R.J.
Thomas, along with trade union leaders
m Latin America, France and the
Soviet Union unanimous approval for
the formation of the world federation was
‘Secured.

Historic Unity
Its creation established a single, uni-

d global trade union movement for the
first time in history. It expressed the

to get the WFTU’s formation postponed. —

democratic and working class unity that
found its reflection within the United Na-
tions, the alliance binding together the
U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France,
Canada and other countries to stop
European fascism and Japanese
imperialism from reaching their goal of
world conquest.
“When capitalism launched its cold war
inst the socialist commmunity and
shattered the alliance the United Nations
was built on, the international union

“movement was also split by the with-

drawal from the WFTU of the trade
unions from such capitalist countries as
Britain, the U.S., Canada and others.

® WEFTU Unique

With the formation in 1949 of the In-
ternational Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, these leaders chose to line them-
selves up with the global aims and
policies of big business. This crystalized
a split in the international labor move-
ment which continues to this day, al-
though today’s conditions find the two
bodies increasingly undertaking parallel
actions around certain issues including
peace and international solidarity.

For its part, the WFTU has always
sought united action by. the unions ona
world scale. Through international trade
union secretariates, it tries to foster co-
operation and joint activities along re-

gional and sectoral lines among all willing
trade union organizations regardless of
their affiliation.

It remains unique among the world
labor centres, not only as the largest, but
because of its firm class struggle outlook.
Its main focus today is on the fight for
peace and disarmament, the battle for
jobs and to defend workers’ living stan-
dards against the vicious attacks of the
crisis-ridden transnationals, and for the
creation of a new, just international eco-
nomic order. —

The WFTU initiated Sept. 1 as the
international day for trade union peace
action. Since its inception in 1984, this
Peace Action Day has caught workers’
imagination in many parts of the world,
prompting demonstrations, five-minute
work stoppages, ‘“‘peace shifts’’ in which
workers donate their day’s wages to their
peace organizations and even joint trade
union efforts for peace actions across
international boundaries.

The federation also conducts research
into peace and disarmament issues,
particularly around such questions as the
conversion of military economies for
civilian, job-intensive and socially-useful
production. :

During the 1984 British miners’ strike,
the WFTU moved quickly to mobilize
world solidarity behind the National

Union of Mineworkers. It was a WFTU
initiative which brought a shipload of
food, clothing and other necessities to
the miners and their families during their

year-long battle with the Thatcher
government.

Fighting Transnationals

It was also the WFTU which first
turned the spotlight of world public opin-
ion on the Turkish government and its
persecution and prosecution of the DISK
trade union leaders. The campaign it
helped mobilize, along with support and
parallel actions from the ICFTU and
other organizations forced the Turkish
authorities to release the DISK leaders.

Now the WFTU is working on the
ways to encourage co-operatien among
unions, regardless of their political
orientation or affiliations, through the
transnationals their members work for,
so workers can share vital ining and
health and safety ees pees com-
pare strategies for dealing with their em-_
ployers and their world-wide operations.

Such exchanges on this basic working
class level ought to contribute to a
much-needed strengthening of interna-
tional trade union solidarity in the face of
very powerful transnational cor-
porations who are united in their drive
to extract maximum profits, from their
workers around the world.

A

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 4, 1985 « 7