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Developers out to wreck construction unions

By FRED WILSON

Robert Campeau has made a fortune manipulating
housing markets and building skyscrapers in major
Canadian cities. His Campeau Corporation is now
one of Canada’s largest integrated development com-
panies involved in development, construction, build-
ing materials and lumber. By 1977 Campeau was the
fourth largest public land developer in the country and
owned a private land assembly of more than 10,000
acres,

A leader in the development industry, Campeau’s
base of operations is Ottawa where he built countless
government buildings and political connections with
Liberal politicians. He was coined ‘‘developer by
appointment to the federal government” by James
Lorimer in his book The Developers.

The Canadian Construction Association (CCA)
could hardly have picked a better spokesman to lead
the construction industry into the unofficial war de-
Clared on organized labor by employers who are using
mass unemployment to effect wage rollbacks and
concessions.

In a well publicized speech to the CCA annual
conference in Toronto, Campeau declared that labor
Costs must be reduced by 20 to 25%. High costs and
low productivity are preventing recovery in the econ-
omy, he argued and chided his CCA colleagues that

“the industry has not exercised its responsibility to
command and stimulate the workers to produce
More”, nor has the 25,000-member CCA been an
effective ‘‘common front” against union demands.

Challenge to Unions

For a developer as adroit as Campeau in using
g0vernment to make profit, it was only natural to turn
to his friends in government for a solution to the
apparant lack of bargaining power by the industry.

ere

News Analysis

Campeau called for sweeping legislation that would
give the CCA an accredited status with the regulatory
powers of a bar society. In sum, the legislation would

make CCA membership compulsory for all con- |

struction contractors in Canada, bestow sole bargain-
ing rights for the entire industry in CCA provincial
organizations, force all building trades unions into
councils for province-wide bargaining, and empower
the CCA to expel or discipline any contractor or com-
pany that broke ranks or negotiated separate
contracts.

Campeau’s speech was a bold challenge to building
trades unions, already faced with formidable prob-
lems. Unemployment in the trades across Canada
averaged 28.1% in 1982, more than 50% increase over
the 17.1% unemployment rate in 1981. Across section
of the industry reveals far worse situations. The Car-
penters’ Union in Greater Vancouver, for example,
reports a 52% unemployment rate, while northern
Vancouver Island and Prince George locals have 75%
and higher unemployment. Significant portions of the
union membership have run out of UI benefits and
applied for welfare.

The depression has also resulted in a growing por-
tion of construction work across Canada going non-
union. B.C.-Yukon Building Trades Council sec-
retary Cy Stairs admits the trend is alarming, particu-
larly on the prairies where large corporations like
Peter Kewitt, Atkinson, and Commonwealth have
decided to break with organized labor.

In B.C. the trend is toward small scale construction
and a proliferation of non-union contractors prepared
to undercut each other for the available work. That
has created a favorable political climate for the B.C.
labor relations board ro rule in favor of non-union
labor at Tumbler Ridge in B.C.’s north-east coal
megaproject, and for Socred cabinet ministers to push
for regressive changes in the B.C. labor code that will
make organizational actions by the building trades
more difficult.

The possible outcome of the non-union trend is
seen in the U.S. where 65% of construction has gone
non-union, and where 77 of the top 400 contractors

are open shop and another 75 are double breasted
(with both union and non-union operations).

Health Profits

In spite of mass unemployment, building trades
unions have fared better than most others over the
past 18 months, with average settlements across
Canada coming in at about 12% in 1982. In B.C. the
trades won a $4.30 an hour settlement over two years
after a strike in August, the largest settlement in a
major industry in B.C. since the imposition of federal
wage controls.

Those gains are precisely what Campeau finds irk-
some; however a closer look at the industry’s per-
formance shows that they in the first place reflect
continuing health profits. Total dollar values in the
non-residential construction industry soared by
17.8% in 1981 and by 16.2% in 1982. While mass
unemployment devastated building trades workers in
1982, the industry was doing quite well in dollar
terms, increasing its income well above the inflation
rate. In the private, non-residential sector, 1982 ’re-
venues grew by 9%, slightly less than the inflation
rate.

Wages have not been an inflationary factor in push-
ing up construction costs. Wages were 35.5% of total
construction values across Canada in 1982, down
from the 36.3% share in 1979, and only slightly more
than the 33.6% share in 1961.

Facts like those, however, won’t by themselves
help the building trades through the depression. Un-
employment and a growing non-union sector will take
a toll on wages and conditions, and the federal and
provincial governments are waiting with legislation to
guarantee the process. -

Fred Wilson is B.C. Provincial Organizer, Com-
munist Party of Canada.

Part one of two articles.

‘Concession ba

On February 26 the Columbian, B.C.’s
Oldest newspaper, carried a news story
Caturing an address by a Professor

CKersie to the annual conference of

Industrial Management Association
of B.C. His topic: ‘Concession Bargain-
‘Ng — How to get back what you have
already given’’. The news story, ‘Wage
Tollbacks hard to find in Canada’, claims

| Alfred Dewhurst

Marxism-Leninism Today

rgaining — a boss swindle

Economic struggle alone by the organ-
ized labor movement will not compel the
employers to meet union demands that
impinge on the sanctity of private proper-
ty, which the capitalist looks upon as

being the holiest of the holy. It will take
political struggle as well. And, if we

might say so, it will also contain a good -

element of ideological struggle, to win
over the hearts and minds of the working

ee So

that the professor's lecture attracted

the biggest and most eager crowd of
Management personnel,’’ who no doubt
Came to get some hot tips on how to cope

With the crisis on behalf of the corpor-
ations,

Ce

, McKersie, a professor of industrial re-
ations from the Massachusetts Institute
€chnology, stressed that Canadian
Workers have resisted wage and benefit
te backs to a far greater extent than in
USA. He noted that in the U.S. there
ave been at least 150 major concession
€ments covering such key industries
48 Auto, Steel and Transportation.
€ claims that this situation is ““un-
Paralleled”’ in the history of depression
Periods including that of the Thirties. He
pee that the same bargaining away
c Ormer gains has not been the case in
anada because the ‘unions in Canada
aote taken a much stronger ideological
Xception to concession bargaining than
Merican unions have’’.
“ CKersie told his audience that if they
an persuade their workers to give back
previously won wage increases and
8€ benefits, both sides would benefit.
the Management side, it cutscosts, andon

Union side, it saves jobs.

However, thereare less obvious impor-
tant advantages. One of : these ad-
vantages, he says, is that it reinforces the
concept of *‘take-charge management’,
meaning a freer hand for management,
such as cutting back the work week from
five to four days with only four days pay.
Another advantage, but a key one, is
that it will draw employer and worker
organizations closer together on what is
clearly aclass collaborationist basis. Not
bad for management.

* * *

Such collaboration, he says, means
that there will be sharing of information
between both sides. The unions will be
able to insist on getting detailed informa-
tion about their firm’s profitability.
Further, they will be able to insist that
“equality of sacrifice’ between workers
and management be not only apparent
but real — that rollbacks and cutbacks
apply proportionately to both sides. He
claims that “concession bargaining”,
makes it possible for the unions to insist
that all such savings be reinvested in the
plant, as a basis for job security. This is
called ‘investment bargaining.

However, our cagey bargaining
strategist warns management against

overplaying its hand which he says can
only build up resentment among the

workers.
* * *

In order to round out the employers’
strategy we draw your attention to a
warning given to the conference by an
assistant professor of labor and industrial
relations from the University of Illinois.
He told the conference: ‘‘These are not
temporary or cyclical layoffs that we see
as the result of the recession. The situa-
tion is unlikely to improve, especially in
the steel and auto industries. It is not a
recession phenomenon. Something more
serious is goingon’’. A spokesman for the
corporations said this, not us.

For many years the trade unions have
demanded a meaningful say on all ques-
tions related to production which affect
the well-being, safety, job security,
working conditions and living standards
of the workers. And, for as many years
the employers have rejected them out of
hand. Nor will demands for a real say
ever be secured through ‘‘concession
bargaining’. To establish meaningful
employer-worker industrial relations
calls for determined leadership and mili-
tant struggle on the part of workers and
their union.

people in general.
*

* *

When we speak of an economic
strategy to put Canada back to work at
socially accepted wage standards, we are
not speaking about small make-work
projects, although these are needed also.
We are speaking about long-term policy.
Because the crisis of mass unemploy-
ment we face will be permanent as long
as the alleged solution is left in the hands
of monopoly and its governments.

Canada needs new national policies
that will (1) nationalize under democratic
control the multinationals, banks and
natural resources; (2) an investment
policy geared to strengthening the Cana-
dian economy, under government con-
trol to develop the country in a planned

_ way, based on public (social ownership

of the main means of production; (3) stop
the export of Canadian capital; (4) pro-
duce capital goods and machinery in
Canada.

Such a course of action would reduce
unemployment, expand domestic con-
sumption and protect the living stan-
dards of the people. This is the only way
that the real national interests can be up-
held. Only the Communist Party ad-
vances such a policy. Think it over!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 25, 1983—Page 5

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