_____ BUDGET FIGHTBACK____
Code changes make

private sector unions’
participation critical

Continued from page 1
Others are engaged in their own economic
battles and while giving Operation Solidarity
full support have been waiting until the
Socreds launch the expected attack on
private sector unions before calling on their
members to leave their jobs in protest ac-
tions.
This week the Operation Solidarity
unions learned that the assault on the private
sector unions, particularly the building
trades, is now imminent. The Socreds are
about to bring in changes to the Labor Code
eliminating automatic certifications and
loosening procedures for de-certification,
and making it more difficult to win an unfair
labor charge against an employer.

The Labor Code changes together with
expected legislation to dismantle the Fair
Wages Act and to require Crown corpora-
tions and municipalities to accept the lowest
bid, union or non-union, on all construction
projects will be a heavy blow against the
building trades unions that are presently
watching more and more construction
jobs escape into the non-union sector.

This new round of anti-labor legislation
will present a fresh challenge to Operation
Solidarity to include this as yet unseen
legislation with the 26 bills that the labor
movement and the community organiza-
tions have pledged to fight as a package.
That commitment, particularly from the
public sector unions, will be necessary for the
Building Trades and other private sector
unions to bring their members solidly into
Operation Solidarity.

The second key factor that will determine
how far the movement against the budget
can go is the success achieved in building the
provincial and regional coalitions. The coali-
tions have to achieve more breadth,

As the coalitions broaden out with
organizations brought into the struggle
against various aspects of the Socred
legislative program, clarity around the fun-
damental nature of the budget will become
increasingly important. If coalition partners
can’t be won to an offensive demand for a
new budget, the danger will grow that the
movement will lose its momentum as the
Socreds manouever and appear to back off
some of the most arbitrary and unjust
aspects of the legislation, without altering its
basic political and economic essence. -

This will be a difficult task by itself. It is
made even more difficult by coalition
spokespersons continuing to give un-
necessary sops to the notion of ‘‘restraint.””
Even the Operation Solidarity slogan,
“restraint is no excuse for repression”’, car-
ries the implicit idea that a restraint program
would be acceptable, if pursued in a dif-
ferent way.

At the Salmon Arm rally an economics
teacher from Okanagan College, Clyde
Tucker, was asked to speak on the
economics of the Socred budget. His
message was more political than economic,
arguing that the adversarial system which
pits labor against capital, tenants against
landlords, etc. must end. The problem with
the budget, he said, is that it creates social
conflict instead of social peace and what is

Published weekly

needed instead is cooperation and business-
labor-government planning.

It is inevitable that views such as Tucker’s
will be expressed in a broad people’s move-
ment. That just makés it all the more impor-
tant for labor spokespersons and the left in
particular to be clear and vocal in describing
the budget as it is: the economic program of
the Employers Council and the transna-
tional corporations. Human and democratic
rights will be trampled on by this economic
policy even with a Human Rights Commis-

sion. Human and democratic rights, in fact, —

demand a completely new economic policy
and that will have to be won by thesame kind
of struggle presently being waged against th
Socred budget.

The third factor in developing the fight-
back that can’t be predicted in advance of
real events is the tactics of the Socreds
themselves. The government may stage a full
retreat, it may attempt to wait out the pro-
test, or it may attempt to bring matters to a
head by introducing still more legislation’
and provoking a confrontation which it
calculates may divide the opposition and
break the back of Operation Solidarity.

If there are positive developments in in-
volving the private sector workers and in
building the coalition, the basis could be laid
for following the regional protests with a
provincial day of protest. Although not a
general strike, that kind of action would
have some similarities with a general strike,
and it would certainly be forceful and evoke
a strong response from the government and
employers. Such araction would have to be
carefully considered and prepared for, with
full realization of the intimidation and force
that would oppose it, and the retaliatory
measures that could be expected from
government and employers.

It has been pointed out that many of the
coalitions, including the provincial solidarity
coalition, will require some weeks to con-
solidate and establish viable forms. It has
also been pointed out that by the end of Oc-
tober many large unions will be in a legal
position to strike. Clearly, these factors also
have to be taken into account in timing ac-
tions.

The critical task in the interim period is to
maintain mass action to build the movement
against the budget. One proposal that could
be effective is for a mass petition campaign.
The petition can be more than a political
statement by hundreds of thousands; it can
also be an organizational vehicle to bring
Operation Solidarity to every street corner
and job site in the province.

After attending the demonstrations in
Vancouver, Victoria and other B.C. centres,
it would be easy to exaggerate the extent to
which B.C. has radicalized. But it is
undeniable that thousands of people in this
province are now in motion and that in only
five weeks historic events have brought a
massive people’s movement into being.
With the involvement of these masses in
struggle, qualitative changes are taking place
in B.C. politics that will see new forms of ac-
tion and demand new tatics.

Fred Wilson is labor secretary of the B.C.
Communist Party.

at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,

Vancouver, B.C. V5L-3X9 Phone 251-1185

READ THE PAPER THAT FIGHTS FOR LABOR

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 19, 1983—Page 8

offices Friday.

McClelland picketed

Socred Labor Minister Bob Mc-
Clelland was met with jeers and catcalls
from several pickets outside the Workers’
Compensation Board offices in Rich-
mond Friday in a demonstration organiz-
ed by the B.C. Government Employees
Union and other groups.

The joint protest, which also involved
the Canadian Farmworkers Union, was
called to “highlight the intent of the
government to erode human and civil
rights legislation in this province,”’ said a
BCGEU spokesman.

As McClelland arrived to attend the
ribbon-cutting ceremony officially open-
ing the new administration building, he
was reminded of his widely condemned
action six months ago in which the
minister overruled a WCB decision and

HEU rejects rollback

The 35,000-member Hospital
Employees Union has rejected over-

_whelmingly a three-per-cent pay cut offer

from the province’s hospitals and clinics
made in the wake of a ruling by Compen-
sation Stabilization Program commis-
sioner Ed Peck.

Peck had ruled that the eight-per-cent
salary hike which the union achieved in
negotiations with the Health Labor Rela-
tions Association last year was excessive,
according to the guidelines of the Socred
restraint legislation. HEU members had
been receiving the increase since Aug. 1,
1982.

Following Peck’s ruling, the HLRA
cancelled the eight-per-cent pay hike and
submitted its five-per-cent offer. The
association has also witheld a five-per-
cent hike scheduled to kick in last April,

UFAWU pact ratified

B.C.’s unionized fishermen, tendermen
and shoreworkers have accepted a collec-
tive agreement involving some price cuts
for fishermen and an extension of 1982
wages for tendermen and shoreworkers.

But the members of the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union
succeeded in gaining a small price hike
over the initial offer and thwarted the
fishing companies’ demands for a wage
rollback following a two-day strike two
weeks ago. = :

““We’re not claiming any victory — but
it should be obvious to others in the in-
dustry what can be accomplished if we
have unity,”” UFAWU spokesman Bill
Procopation commented.

Union members voted more than 70
per cent to take strike action in a two-day
work stoppage Aug. 5-6, forcing the
companies back to the bargaining table.

In the subsequent settlement, which
lasts until April, 1984, fishermen settled
on prices ranging from $1 per pound for
Sockeye (down six cents from last year),
26 cents for pinks and 63 cents and 25
cents for chums.

Labor Minister Bob McClelland (th rd from left, foreground) was picketed at wea :

in the fishing industry improves durin’

cancelled plans to énforce farm safety
regulations for farmworkers.

“Six months ago we were duped in
what was, at the time, the most dishonest
betrayal by the Socreds we had seen,”
CFU president Raj Chouhan com-
mented. .

“We pointed out then that if they
would do it to us, they would not hesitate
to do it other workers in this province.
We did not realize at the time how pro-
phetic those words would turn out to be.””

But, thanks to actions such as the
50,000-strong demonstration against the |
Socred budget at Empire Stadium Aug.
10, “We are joined with our brothers and
sisters and friends to fight this legislation,
and to gain social justice for all. We will
fight until we win,’’ said Chouhan.

and has never paid a $70-per-month
retroactive settlement to cover the period
between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1, 1982.

The HLRA also ignored a recommen-
dation from Peck that the employers con-
sider making the new offer retroactive to
January of 1982, said Lecia Stewart,
HEU press officer.

Union secretary-business manager
Jack Gerow said the results of the vote on
HLRA’s latest offer, taken over a period
covering the last two weeks in July and
the first week in August, shows that HEU
members “‘are not willing to submit to
repressive government legislation of any —
kind,”

The HEU has contested Peck’s ruling,
and the commissioner is considering new —
evidence submitted by the union.

Union members voted 68.8 per cent
(fishermen), 79 per cent (tendermen) an
70 per cent (shoreworkers) to accept the
offer.

“The companies tabled their offer 4$
an ultimatum kind of thing. We had t0
assess the situation, noting that the
Native Brotherhood had settled for what
we had rejected before,” Procopatio®
noted. a

The 10,000-member brotherhood had
voted narrowly (slightly more than 51 pe
cent) to accept the companies’ offet.
Their prices were subsequently raised 9
line with the UFAWU settlement.

The union also agreed with an offer ©
discuss possible price hikes if the pictur?

the year, ‘“‘but we’re not iB
anything much to happen out of that, |
said Procopation.

He said that UFAWU won’t be lulled
into accepting such agreements in lieu of
negotiating a minimum price, liken
such a settlement to “buying a pig in 4

ke.”’
m =