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Parrot attacks federal
government anti-labor drive

Special to the Tribune
OTTAWA — Jean Claude Par-

- Tot, fighting leader of Canada’s

militant postal union, called on
country’s workers Oct. 27, to
Mobilize their ‘‘great strength

against a government which has

proven that it has no respect for
human rights and civil liberties.””
: Parrot launched this appeal at a
Fair Deal’’ rally organized by
the Ottawa-Hull area council of
the Public Service Alliance of
Canada. It was the largest labor
Meeting the capital city had seen
since 1976.
‘ Some 1,000 people filled Ot-

Following a ten-day strike and
faced with a federal government
ultimatum to surrender or face
annihilation by having its mem-
bers fired and replaced by non-
union workers, the Canadian.
Union of Postal Workers were

forced to beat an organized re-

treat on October 26.

After 18 months of futile
Negotiations with a_ politically
bankrupt government determined
to resist every union demand, the
CUPW membership saw no-way
to’ win a new contract except
through a strike as their only
weapon of last resort. This right
was given to them in the form of
the Public Service Staff Relations
Act (1967).

The key issues were: the right

| to negotiate technological change

to protect jobs; an end to the use
of casual, non-union labor; ways
of dealing with 56,000 grievances

arising from complicated provi- -

sions of the old contract and
bureaucratic supervisory prac-
tices. In fact, these issues over-.
Shadowed the monetary issue.

’ Instead of entering into serious
Negotiations the government re-
plied by using its parliamentary
Majority with full Tory support to
adopt a strike-breaking back-to-
work law, whereupon the CUPW
decided to defend its right to
strike by civil disobedience
against this unjust law under the
slogan, ‘‘no contract, no work!”’

This uneven contest between a
powerful employer; in this case
the federal government with all
the. awesome power of the
bourgeois state at its disposal;
and, a group of 23,000 workers,

- no matter how well organized and

determined, could not prevail
long enough to win if left alone to
take the full brunt of the punish-
Ment meted out by a vengeful
government. :

The political weakness of the
government’s case showed up on
the last day of ‘overkill’, when it
authorized its already publicly
discredited federal police force to
conduct raids on CUPW offices in
all the main cities throughout the
country, raids which had no other
purpose than to intimidate other

workers, particularly those in

public service. :
The strike-breaking and
union-busting legislation adopted

tawa Civic Centre auditorium to
cheer Parrot and other labor and
political leaders who denounced
the federal government’s drive to
weaken the trade union move-
ment in order to make working |
people pay the costs of the cur-

‘rent economic crisis. Sharing the

platform with the CUPW leader
were Canadian Union of Public
Employees president Grace
Hartman, Andy Stewart, presi-
dent of the Public Service Al-

liance of Canada, Jack Wynter,

legislative director of the Cana-
dian Brotherhood of Railway
Transport and General Workers,

Right to strike
is indivisible

and New Democratic Party fed-
eral leader Ed Broadbent. :

The labor movement will not
allow its rights to be destroyed,
Parrot said, but he noted at the
same time that labor had to ‘‘face
some facts.” .

He cited the Canadian Labor
Congress’ refusal to publicly back
the postal workers when the Lib-
eral government supported glee-
fully by the Tories, tyranically
deprived the union of its right to
strike by rushing through back-
to-work legislation.

Parrot said the CLC remained

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Leese XVI

by the parliamentary majority of
Liberals and Tories was, in fact,
in direct contravention of the law
adopted in 1967, legislation which
gave postal employees the right to
strike and which has not been re-
moved from the federal statutes
of Canada. /

As Jean-Claude Parrot told of-

ficers of other public service un-
ions at a well attended Rally for a
Fair Deal at the Ottawa Civic
Centre on Friday, October 27,
the federal government is at war
with Canada’s unions, trying to
break worker solidarity with
weapons of fear and democratiza-
tion. The president of, CUPW
warned Canadian unions they

must be prepared to work to-

gether to organize industrial ac-
tion to defend their rights. —

It was not the postal workers
who broke the law or showed con-
tempt for law. It was those politi-
cians in parliament and senate
who abdicated their responsibility
to uphold that law which protects
the democratic right of Canadian
workers to collective bargaining
and to strike and picket as a last
resort to obtain a fair and just set-
tlement of their grievances with
their employer, which in the
postal workers’ case happened to
be the government of Canada.

Persecution of postal workers
and their union will not solve 1n-
flation, the negative effects of au-
tomation in the Post Office which
threaten job security for the
postal workers and, consequent-
ly, to expand unemployment. It
was this which caused the strike

in the first place.

Reducing postal employees to
second class citizenship without
either human or legal rights will
not restore peace and stability to

the postal service. Only genuine
collective bargaining and negotia-
tion in good faith can do that. This
the government has failed to do.

The postal workers would have
won their strike had the Canadian
Labor Congress broken their si-
lence and stood by their side in
solidarity. Similarily, had the
New Democratic Party taken the
issue to the country to explain the
government’s real aim, namely,
to outlaw strikes in all public ser-
vices as demanded by the
monopoly interests they repre-
sent, along with their Tory
friends, ostensibly in ‘opposition’
but demanding even’ more sweat
and blood from the workers.

Having abolished strikes in the
public service, or so-called essen-
tial services, would open the door
to outlawing of all strikes. Make
no mistake about that. The right
to strike is indivisible.

Itis now the responsibility of all
organized workers in the country,
and above all of their leaders, to
demand an end to the persecution
of the postal workers and the
dropping of all charges against
their leaders and their union.

At the same time it must be
made abundantly clear that the
organized labor movement of this
country will not stand for this
humiliation of lower living stan-
dards while profits of monopoly
and the banks soar upwards. That
organized labor will not allow the
abrogation of basic rights, such as
the right to free collective bargain-
ing, to strike and to picket to pro-

tect jobs. Moreover, that where- »

ver this is attempted, such at-

tempts will be met by a united

trade union movement deter-
mined to protect its rights at any
and all costs.

~ CUPW president Parrot speaking at “Fair Deal” rally. -

silent ‘‘because they said we did
not ask their permission first.

“Tt?s obvious that the real
reason was that the CLC did not
want to lose its credibility. The
question is: credibility to whom,
the membership or the govern-
ment?”’ he demanded.

The CUPW leader noted, “this
question will have to be dealt
with, hopefully before too many
workers lose the rights they
fought so long and so hard to ob-
tain.”

The strength and, pace of the
government-big-business attack
on the right of unions to negotiate
and strike to enforce their just
demands, contains a message for
every worker in the public and
private sector of the economy,
Parrot declared. In a veiled refer-
ence to the CLC he said, “we
must have institutional
mechanisms that help, not hinder

“us to express the solidarity that

clearly exists.””

The government’s strategy in
trying to create a climate of fear
and demoralization among work-
ers to break their increasing sol-
idarity has failed, the CUPW
president said to a boisterous
standing ovation.

“For my own union, I can say
that the postal workers are more
united than ever. And make no
mistake’’, Parrot said, ‘‘they (the
government) will have to return
those rights to us — and if they
don’t — we're going to take
them.”

Public sector workers, he said
were being used by the federal
government as a scapegoat for the
economic ills of the country.
While wages were controlled,
prices continued to rise un-
checked thus blasting the lie that
wages were the cause of inflation.
Private sector workers however
aren’t buying the government’s
new myth that public sector
workers are causing the current
economic plight. Sg

‘‘Our brothers and sisters in the
private sector are standing firm
with us because they know as we
do, that if the government suc-
ceeds in stripping us of our rights
it will soon do the same for
them’’, he said. :

The question now facing the
labor movement Parrot declared
is what to do about the govern-
ment’s industrial strategy, its
“tripartist’’ policies, and its at-
tempts to do away with free col-

lective bargaining and the right to —

strike.”

‘‘Are we going to let postal
workers, or miners, fishermen,
transit workers and others go
down one by one, or are we finally
going to develop the tactics
necessary to. implement the
strategies we all endorse?”’ Parrot
asked.

The trade union movement’s
leadership; he said, must respond
to the government’s attack. ““As
never before the leaders must be
prepared to go to membership

‘meetings, issue joint statements
and organize joint actions such as
demonstrations and study ses-
sions.” Industrial actions going
beyond demonstrations, press re-
leases and verbal statements must
be organized he said.

“It is the government that
started this war’’, Parrot con-
cluded. ‘‘It is up to us to make
sure that they don’t win it. It is up
to the membership to organize a
campaign on the shop floor and
tell their leaders that they want
them to stand together. And it is
up to the leadership to push
strong education campaigns and
stick their necks out for each
other in the fight.”

Grace Hartman was applauded
when she exposed the govern-
ment’s proposal in Bill C-28 to
peg public sector wage increases
to those in the private sector as an
obvious effort to pit these work-
ers against each other. The only
winners in such a strategy, she
said, would be the business com-
munity, ‘“‘who would reap the
harvest..of lower wage levels
while they continue pricing up-
ward without any form of re-
straint.”

In drafting such a bill, Hartman

said the government was like ‘‘a
collection of shysters who can de-
termine whether you win or lose
by making up the rules as the
game goes on.”

The phony restraints program,
she said, was nothing more ‘‘than
the convulsions of a government
in political trouble.”

PSAC president Andy Stewart,
noted the ‘‘rotten deal’ handed to
the CUPW. The -government’s
restraint program, Stewart said,
means that ‘“‘essential services
will be sacrificed for the benefit of
the profiteers.””

NDP leader Ed Broadbent had
to speak over jeers and shouts of,
‘‘Where are you Ed?’’ as he
criticized government cutbacks
and restraint policies. He charged
the government was “‘going af-
ter’’ the workers in the public ser-
vice with the messages encom-

_ passed in Bills C-28 and C-45.

PUBLIC SERVICE |
ALLIANCE

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PSAC president Andy Stewart.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 10, 1978—Page 7