Employers ‘stand pat’ © Tribune FRIDAY AUGUST 14, 1970 Vol. 31, No. 33 eS" 10c¢ UNIONS PRESS DEMANDS Leading “OUTNOW” petitioner in B.C., Mrs. Velda Doran of the estminster-Coquitlam Moratorium Committee and Mrs. Thena Muryn Gre shown gathering signatures on Columbia Street to end the war in Indochina. Last Saturday, Mrs. Muryn’s son Mark turned in 136 Signatures after an hour and a half petitioning. Rita Tanche gathered 200 names while holidaying at Long Beach, V.1. Fishermen must equal rights as all others Two hundred and thirty-five va Scotia trawl fishermen and three ports have been idled for 4% months as a result of intol- €rable conditions and the flat Tefusal of two foreign-owned fishing companies to allow their employees to have a union. Wives, trade unions, churches and citizens from all walks of ife, have declared their support for the striking trawl fleet. And more than 7,500:Nova Scotia Workers have taken time off their jobs in solidarity with the €roic struggle of the United ishermen and Allied Workers’ Mion in Canso, Mulgrave and Petit du Gras. The United Mine Workers, construction men and Pulp workers have all downed tools in supporting demonstra- tions — with the latter pledging (before they returned to work) to donate a days pay per week to Support the striking fishermen. Support for the ‘unaffiliated’ FAWU has come from unions from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and as far north as Alaska. The Nova Scotia Federation of abor has called for a mass Campaign by all affiliated Unions to ‘‘free the fishermen and force the companies to the bargaining table.” The major issue at stake is Tecognition of the Union of the ishermen’s choice, the UFAWU. Two foreign-owned By NIGEL MORGAN companies, Booth Fisheries (Canada) Ltd., a subsidiary of Consolidated Food and Lever Brothers, U.S.A.; and Acadia Fisheries (Canada) Ltd., a sub- sidiary of Boston Deep Sea Fish- eries, arrogantly reject collec- tive bargaining. Like all open shop employers they don’t want a union. At one stage they claimed it was ‘‘Communist dominated.’’ However, even the Commissioner appointed by the Federal and _ Provincial Ministers of Labour, Halifax Judge Nathan Green, had to admit that the choice of a union — ‘‘Communist’’ or not — belongs to the fishermen rather than the company. So broad and representative is the support for the striking fishermen in the Maritimes that the Lord Bishop of Nova Scotia, Rt. Rev. Davis, felt com- pelled to speak out in the name of the Church deeply regretting ‘‘so many of our Nova Scotia fishermen should be impris- oned, especially when picketing has been so_ generally recognized as a normal procedure in labour disputes.”’ Jeremey Akerman, Nova Scotia leader of the New Demo- cratic Party has demanded a special session of the Legis- lature to assure fishermen the same rights as other workers. “Tf the Premier does not do As the Tribune went to press on Wednesday, near a score of unions in B.C. were standing firm in their determination to win a just and realistic settle- ment with industry. Five thousand members of the Pulp and Paper Workers are in their third week of strike and there appears to be no settlement in the immediate offing. The International Pulp and Paper Workers and the United Papermakers and Paper Workers, who had voted to take have this,’’ he declared, ‘“‘Fishermen of Nova Scotia will lose all respect for governments, courts and all other institutions which claim to be impartial yet con- tinue to be tools of the corpora tions.” The fishing companies have a big stake in blocking union- ization of the Maritime fishing industry. UFAWU President Homer Stevens reports ‘‘Condi- tions are intolerable. Nova Scotia trawlers have none of the most elementary rights which a Union contract would give them. In fact they have no rights at all to deal with management; no rights in the matters of safety, living and working conditions, or grievances for hiring and firing.” Until challenged by the UFAWU, the companies auto- matically took for themselves 63-70 percent of the gross landed value of the catch. They arbi- trarily set the price of all fish and refused to permit crews to check the weight of fish landed. They devised grading dodges which often robbed the men of a third of the landed catch. Despite the extreme hazards and hardship of life on-storm swept seas, average annual wages are as low as $3,500 and some of — those who work for Acadian See EQUAL RIGHTS, Pg. 8 strike action and were prevented from doing so when the govern- ment appointed Gus Leonidas as mediator, are still negotiating. Local leaders of the postal workers union says that the federal government will have to come across with a realistic offer before members of the union will consider a real break is in sight. On Tuesday of this week no details of a new government offer had been made public, but postal union and government representatives were meeting “in Ottawa on an alleged new ~ “‘nacket’’ offer from the govern ment. Postal workers across B.C. were angered afresh last week when Prime Minister Trudeau, during a speech in Prince George, stated that ‘‘Canadian postmen now makes 30 cents an hour more than the average Canadian industrial wage.”’ Such a statement, they say, indicates that Mr. Trudeau has been neglecting his homework. Current wage rates for mail handlers in Canada are $2.79 an hour; for letter carriers, $2.99 an hour. This rate is lower than other categories of the public service, much less industrial wage rates. The rotating strikes will continue until a definite settle- ment is reached, say union spokesmen. **K Deputy Labor Minister William Sands who acted as mediator in building trades disputes with CLRA has come up with a poor batting average in settling the current disagree- ments. There is another slow- down coming; the plumbers strike vote under way! The Teamsters’ union is the latest to recommend rejection of his offer, which amounted to a 19 percent increase over two years. Union officials say it boils down in the long run to the same offer of 14 percent formerly offered by the contractors. Other unions. which have rejected mediator Sands proposals are the Bricklayers, Heat and Frost Insulators, two Laborers Unions, and the Operating Engineers. The Carpenters have not yet revealed the results of a vote taken by their membership last week. All construction workers are Labor determined to win ) in wage struggle NOW remaining on the job in compliance with the agreement in Victoria when Premier Bennett was forced into temporarily suspending his com- pulsory arbitration order of July 18. Member companies in the Con- struction Labor Relations Asso- ciation (CLRA) have not yet announced the result of their votes on the Sands proposals. *** Forest companies which are banded together in the employers’ group FIR received realms of publicity on their “‘we’re going broke’’ theme the _last two weeks while nego- tiations with the IWA were going on under the jurisdiction of Mr. Justice Nemetz. Jack Moore, spokesman for the IWA Coast Negotiating Com- mittee, said that a recently announced $1.5 billion dollar © housing program in the USA, and a similar program for Canada involving $240 million dollars should brighten the scene, but spokesmen for the companies were mum on the new develop ments. Mr. Justice Nemetz will be releasing his final report ‘‘as soon as possible,’”’ according to the IWA leader. In the meantime, union locals which have been fined huge sums for partiaking in sympathy strikes with the tugboat men earlier this summer, hailed a history-making contract signed recently at The Pas, Manitoba. The Western Canadian Lumber Worker revealed the details in its current issue. At the town some 500 miles north of Winnipeg, the IWA signed a contract with a local forestry firm which included the provision that it is not a violation of the contract for the crew to respect picket lines established by bona-fide trade unions. This, says the Lumber Worker, is a provision long sought by the IWA in B.C.