‘Legal beagles’ don’t

shake Flec

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Mary Richard
and Catharine Kehn showed the
€xpensive ‘‘legal beagles’’ rented
by the Fleck Manufacturing Co.
and the Ontario Provincial Police
(OPP), what kind of stuff the
oe class is made of May

The women, members of local
1620 United Auto Workers
(UAW), stood their ground
against the lawyers for Fleck, the
OPP and Huron Middlesex MPP
Jack Riddell, as they testified in
the union’s application before the
Ontario Labor Relations Board
(OLRB) for leave to prosecute the
Owners of the strike-bound com-
pany and Fleck vice-president
Grant Turner for failing to bargain
In good faith. Also named in the
application are thrée OPP officers
who the UAW wants to prosecute
for interfering in union repre-
Sentation. :

The union is also asking the
three-man OLRB panel to rule if
they can sue Liberal MPP Jack
Riddell for libel and slander in

connection with public state-

Ments he has made about the
Strike. :
In two days of testimony before
the board, Richard, Kehn, UAW
international representative Al
Seymour and Canadian director

- Bob White detailed a story of

company intimidation of the
workers, refusal to recognize the
strikers’ demand for union securi-
ty, and the open involvement of
the OPP and a member of the On-
tario legislature on the side of the
company in trying to divide and
weaken the strikers.
: Hockey Stick

Mary Richard testified May 12,
that Grant Turner had told her he
would close the plant if the work-
ers went on strike, then admitted
the company had hired a bus to
bring scabs through the picket
lines. She also told the board that
Turner said to her that stock man
Bob McNoll, a Fleck employee
described in testimony as a “huge
man”, would come through the
picket line with a baseball bat.

“‘T commented that I had a hoc-
key stick that would fit pretty neat

up his ass too!’’, she told the
hearing.

Earlier Bob White told of the
frustrating lack of progress in
negotiations and the stubborn re-
fusal of the company to discuss
union security. He noted how the
UAW had moved from its de-
mand for a compulsory union
shop, to the Rand Formula, which
requires all workers in a bargain-
ing unit to pay union dues regard-
less of whether they actually join
the union.

Grant Turner’s response,
White said, was that he wasn’t old
enough to remember the Rand
Formula, and that in any case he
had ‘‘committed’’ himself to cer-
tain employees, that they
wouldn’t have to pay union dues.

Turner, White said, had told
him he had a ‘‘hang up” on the
question of union security, and
added that if Fleck president F.G.
Berlett authorized agreement
with union security in the con-
tract, Turner would resign.

“Ought To Resign”

“Our response was sharp’’,
White testified, ‘‘I told him he
ought to write the resignation out,
and we can start bargaining for a
collective agreement with people
who don’t have personal hang
ups.’”

White remained firm on the
UAW’s bargaining position, that
union security was essential for
the negotiation of an agreement
that would end the 11-week
strike.

Mary Richard, “‘shocked’’ by
Jack Riddell’s statements on a
Toronto radio program and in the
local press, said the Liberal MPP
had lied about the union and the
workers in the strike. She said she
heard Riddell, March 15, say the
workers didn’t want a union and
didn’t want to go on strike. She
said Riddell had said people were
forced to sign union cards as they

entered the first organizing meet-

ing and that many didn’t know
what they were signing.

“I thought it was ridiculous’,
Richard told the hearing, “he
must have got his information
strictly from management. I was
at that meeting and there was no

strikers

such thing done.”

She referred to comments in
the London Free Press .where
Riddell was quoted as saying the
women didn’t know what they
were signing when they signed
union cards. ‘‘When you make

the wages we do, you don’t sit.

down and fill out two sides of a
form without knowing where
your dollar is going’, Richard
said.

Police Role

Earlier, she testified that OPP
corporal Bill Freeth, had told her
that if she didn’t like the wages at
Fleck she could find work
elsewhere. “‘I asked him if he
took $100 a week honie to his wife
and told her to manage, could
she do it?’’ Richard said.

Freeth’s response was that she
knew what the wages were at
Fleck when she took the job.
Richard said she ‘“‘knew what the
wages were like when I took the
job two years ago, but the cost of
living has gone up so much since
then, and my pay hasn’t.”’

Seymour, May 11 testified that
OPP sergeant Ray Glover had
told him ‘*‘the UAW was making a
mistake (in conducting a strike) ,
that they were driving Fleck out
of the (Huron) Park, and if the
employees don’t like the money
they were being paid they should
seek employment elsewhere.”’

Hearings adjourned May 12, to
resume in June. Meanwhile in
other developments, James
Fleck, part-owner of the strike-
bound company and deputy min-
ister of Industry and Tourism,
was granted one year’s leave of
absence May. 12, to teach ‘‘Cana-
dian Studies, Business and Public
Management”’ at Harvard Uni-
versity in the U.S.

Busloads of workers from
Windsor and other Ontario
centres were planned to show
support for the strikers. Or-
ganized Working Women planned
to join the Fleck picketters May
19, bringing in women from To-
ronto. Cliff Pilkey, president of
the Ontario Federation of Labor
announced plans to join unionists

GUILD MEMBERS
VOTE ON CONTRACT

TORONTO — 1,400 members
of the Toronto Newspaper Guild
were to meet, May 18, to consider
the latest contract offer of their
employer, the Toronto Star.

The Star’s offer included a 6%
wage increase in a one year con-
tract, with a ceiling of $22 on any
increase. The Star is also de-
manding that Sunday work pre-
sently payed at double time be re-
duced to straight time. They also
want 14 positions removed from
the bargaining unit.

SOVIET CONTRACT
MEANS JOBS

ST. JOHN’S — Plans by CN
Marine to turn its St. John’s doc-
kyard into a repair base for Soviet
Atlantic fishing fleet could mean
the creation of 200 jobs in the work
starved community.

“The deal is, the Russians are
willing to wait a reasonable length
of time’’ said a company spokes-
man “‘but if we can’t deliver within.
a reasonable time-frame they are
not really interested.” Ifsall goes
according to plan, the dockyard
will have time to begin an appren-
ticeship program to train the
necessary 200 extra workers.
There are currently 300 workers
employed in the shipyard.

QUEBEC — Protesting a recent 3% tax on non-returnable beverage

KEEP PROFITS
IN CANADA

MONTREAL — Speaking at
the annual convention of the

Communications Workers of —

Canada, Boris Mather, chairman
of the union, stated ‘Northern
Telecom must be prevented from
moving jobs out of Canada.
Perhaps by public ownership ...
but at the very least by legislation
advocated by the Canadian Labor
Congress ensuring that profits
made in Canada remain in Canada
to create jobs.’’ Northern Telecom

_ has expanded in the U.S. and over-

seas as a result of profits generated
in Canada.

‘STOP LAYOFFS’
SAYS LABOR

OAKVILLE — The Oakville
and District Labor Council re-
cently called on the 2.3 million
member Canadian Labor Con-
gress to start an “‘all out cam-

‘paign’’ to mobilize workers ac-

ross Canada and publicize the
auto industry shut downs and
layoffs in Windsor.

The resolution also noted ‘‘that
the Auto Pact is not working for
Canadians”’ It pledged the labor
council’s efforts to mount a pub-
licity campaign in the local media
and among all council delegates in
support of stopping the current
epidemic of layoffs and plant
closures.

from across the province May 25 cans, more than 500 Quebec Steelworkers from three Montreal can
factories demonstrated May 17, outside the Quebec National Assembly.

on the picket line.

World labor body adopts action plan

_ PRAGUE — World labor unity
in action today, is not only neces-
sary, but urgent. This was the

- Message driven home by the pol-

icy document unanimously
adopted by the delegates to the
9th Congress of the World Feder-
ation of Trade Unions (WFTU).

‘The long period of the cold
war in the fifties,” the policy
paper noted, ‘‘ravaged the ranks

_Of world trade unionism, causing

the split, a radicalization of the
Positions of its various compo-
Nents and a bitter ideological

’ Struggle.

“Today the dominant trend is

in favor of the forces of peace and

Progress, international détente
and cooperation which helps to
bring together the various ten-

dencies within the world trade

Union movement at a time when
there is a growing awareness of
the community of interests among
all the workers of the world, ir-
Tespective of the social system in
which they live.’’

Ratified by the delegates on the

last day of the congress, the pol-

icy document and some 29 resolu-
tions on a wide range of topics
concerning the activities and pro-
jections of unity for the labor
movement throughout the world
outlined five ‘‘essential and prior-
ity objectives of the labor move-
ment.”

Heading the list was the need to
widen and consolidate the fight
for peace and the détente process
and imposing disarmament on
governments by developing the
fullest cooperation among the

eoples.
pe The satisfaction of the
economic and social demands of
the workers was the second ob-
jective. The burden of responsi-
bility for the deepening economic
crises in capitalist society was laid
on the multi-national corpora-
tions. The document pointed out
the need and possibility of siphon-
‘ing off ‘from the immense profits
of the monopolies and from the
fabulous sums invested in arms’’,
to counter the destruction of the
peoples’ living standards through
unemployment and inflation.

The key to satisfying these so-
cial and economic demands of the
workers, the WFTU document
declared is ‘unity of action and
solidarity from the factory floor,
to national, regional and interna-
tional level . . . organization of un-
ited action among the workers at
their places of work is a primary
condition”’ of success.

‘‘The advance of socialism,
détente, the defeats inflicted on
imperialism, the vast movement,
for national liberation, the anti-
monopolist content of the
economic struggle in the develop-
ing countries, the setbacks. to
class collaboration and the battles
of the working class in the de-
veloped capitalist countries — all
these together constitute favor-
able conditions, backed by mass
struggle for a break with the
capitalist system dominated by
the monopolies in several
countries.”

The fight to assure the peoples’
economic and political indepen-
dence, conquer underdevelop-
ment, and build a new interna-

tional economic order, was the
third priority fo thé labor move-
ments of the world.

The elimination of colonialism,
fascism and racism, and the fight
to establish economic and politi-
cal democracy with the - full
development of workers’ rights,
were the fourth and fifth priority
goals.

To accomplish these noble ob-
jectives, the WFTU document
urged the fullest possible unity of
action of all detachments of the
world labor movement regardless
of different ‘ideological, religi-
ous, political or philosophical’
backgrounds. Noting that such
divisions shouldn’t block the way
to united action, the WFTU pol-
icy position added, ‘‘neither
should the different conceptions
that the interriational trade union
organizations have of the world
and of workers’ action constitute
an obstacle to any agreement or
precise common objective.”’

This unity was described as
“the requisite attitude needed to
begin a conscious process of rap-

prochment and unity conforming
to the necesssities of the moment
and the aspirations of the workers
throughout the world.”’

WFTU declared its ‘‘am-
bition’’ is to be an important
stimulant to this kind of unity of
action but went even further to
pledge its efforts to be an ‘‘impor-
tant factor on the international
level in the determination of per-
manent forms of united action and
solidarity amongst all trade
unions ...””

The policy document called on
the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions (CFTU),
and the World Confederation of
Labor (WCL), ‘“‘ to take this
line’, and expressed the hope
“that the three organizations can
find the means for lasting cooper-
ation as soon as possible.”

For its own part the WFTU

critically examining its past ac- -

tivities and noting the success,
also pledged to -‘‘take every
necessary initiative to strengthen
and further improve its activities
everywhere.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 26, 1978—Page 5