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Save jobs: nationalize CCM

TORONTO — For the $13-
million the federal government
is going to fork out to the Royal
Bank of Canada for loans it
guaranteed on behalf of CCM
Inc., before the bicycle maker
went bankrupt, the company
could be nationalized and the
jobs of most of the 450 CCM
workers saved.

This is how CCM worker Bill
Devine sees it. :

Divine, United Auto Workers
Local 28 delegate to Metro To-
ronto Labor Council told dele-
gates at the March 3 meeting that
contrary to the reactionary
claims of Ontario Trade Minister
Gordon Walker, it is cor-

porations, who are ‘‘gobbling
up’’ money at the expense of
workers and taxpayers.

The UAW delegate was speak-
ing to a resolution condemning
statements Walker made to a re-

cent big-business luncheon at the

Empire Club. The Tory cabinet
minister attacked government
spending on social service pro-
grams and proposed that social
services should be handled by
volunteer agencies not govern-
ments.

Walker told the Empire Club
that, ‘‘as governments gobble up
money, less and less is left . . . for
business to invest and for charit-
able organizations to do their job

Tories privatizing Sask.

REGINA — The union representing 91 Saskatchewan

Government Insurance company workers laid off Feb. 28 have
charged the Tory provincial government of premier Grant Devine
with dismembering the publicly-owned insurance corporation.

According to Dave Maki, representative for Local 397 Office
and Professional Employees International Union, (OPEIU), the
permanent layoff of the 91 workers will mean the complete clo-
sure of Motor Vehicle Division offices in Estavan, Weyburn,
Swift Current and North Battleford.

““What we’re seeing is the privatization of SGI’’, Maki said.
“The public in these centres will have to go to privately-owned
business in order to renew their driver's licenses and license
plates. One has to ask if the objective is service to the public or
increases in private profits.’’

Maki said that, adding insult to injury, the government-run
insurance company is refusing to pay moving costs for those
long-term workers being affected by the closures. The union
intends to fight the closures and layoffs all the way to arbitration if
necessary.

What comes through from looking at the job positions declared

| by SGI management as ‘“‘redundant’’, is that every part of the

corporation is being ordered to sacrifice bodies to the Board of
Directors’ insistence on lower and lower budgets, Maki said.

Saskatchewan's Tory government has been going through a ~
“hit list’’ of publicly-owned enterprises that it has been moving to

privatize. In its recent brief to the government, the Saskatchewan

Federation of Labor lashed out at the province for undermining ©

the Potash Corporation, Saskatchewan Telephone the SGI and
Saskatchewan Media corp.

ECO

distributing to the dis-
advantaged.”’

Devine countered, ‘‘the CCM
situation clearly shows who gob-
bles up what and at whose
expense.”” .

He cited reports that the fed-

eral government’s Enterprise’

Development Board, (EDB)
could be liable for $13-million to

pay off loans it guaranteed, |
mostly to the Royal Bank. in 1978 |

when CCM was taken over by
Maxwell Cummings and Sons
Ltd.

Early this year CCM was sold
to Pro-Cycle of Quebec for a re-
‘ported $8-million. This wasn’t
enough to cover the firm’s debts,
bankruptcy was invoked and

while the EDB likely will have to

pay off the preferred creditors,
the workers are left holding the
bag — an empty one.

““Everyone wins except the |

CCM workers and the _tax-
payers’’, Devine told the
Tribune, last: week. ‘‘The work-
ers have lost their jobs, which
now will be done in Quebec.
They’ ll get no severance pay, be-
cause bankruptcy laws put them
at the end of the list of creditors,
and there will be no money left
for workers.

“The $13 million to pay the
Royal Bank and the others off,
will come from the taxpayers’’,
he pointed out. ‘‘The tragic irony
here is that CCM workers, who
are also taxpayers, will be paying
for the privilege of losing their
jobs.” :

Nationalizing CCM would be
far less costly to both taxpayers
and the government, he said. Not
only would the government be
saving $5-million over and above
the $8-million price tag Pro-
Cycle negotiated for the com-
pany, but a bundle would be
saved in Unemployment In-
surance benefits that will have to
be paid because of the move to
Quebec.

TRIBUNE PHOTOS — MIKE PHILLIPS

In addition, CCM workers why couldn’t they wait for
their jobs intact, would be paying workers and the government
taxes. It isn’t as if the Royal Bi

“As for the $13-million stili couldn’t afford to wait, he S
owing the Royal Bank, Devine pointing to the Royal’s $1124
proposed that the bank should lion profit racked up ovel
wait for its money. ‘CCM work- latest three month period. Th
ers right’ now are re-structuring anincrease of $32-million over
their debts, in the face of the lay- $80 million in profits the ¥
off. Their mortgages are coming scored in the same period ‘
up, their rents have to be paid year earlier. a
and nobody’s guaranteeing their There’s a market for bicy¢
loans. or anything the plant caf

“Let the Royal Bank re- modernized to produce, De¥
structure its debts. The banks says. ‘‘It’s high time that theJ'
have already shown they can and interests of workers and
wait for the likes of Dome Pet- dinary taxpayers be given |
roleum and Massey Ferguson, priority.”

—

Anti-monopol

What was, and what was not, the CLC-sponsored
‘conference on the economy held last week in Ottawa?

It was far short of a clarion call to its member
organizations to mobilize and fight against conces-
sions, wage controls and unemployment. It did little
to galvanize the CLC’s 2% million members into ac-
tion against the combined government-monopoly as-
sault on living standards. In short it was far too much
talk-talk-talk by ‘‘thinkers’’ far removed from the

struggles, and not enough down-to-earth planning for _

action by the unions.

At the same time it had its positive sides.

It adopted a four-point program calling for (1) The
right to a secure job. (2) Right to a decent home (3)
Right to needed public services. (4) Right to free
collective bargaining. Under these four headings the
conference spelled out a program around which a
broad economic fight-back and political alternative
could be grouped. Aliso of interest was the full support
accorded to the program by NDP Leader Ed
Broadbent.

It brought together the organized trade union
movement, representatives of farm, academic and
teachers’ organizations, plus democratic women’s,
unemployed, pensioners’ and anti-poverty groups.
The church was well represented including archbi-
shop Proulx, who firmly solidarized the Canadian
Conference of Catholic bishops with labor’s struggle
for meaningful social change.

Although it was unfortunately missing in the intro-
ductory material, the matter of the Cruise missile got
much attention from the floor as did ringing appeals
= solidarity with the Quebec teachers, and against
Bill 111.

ee

+| Labor in action
William Stewart

The conference was informed about, and asked to
help in, the organization of a series of public forums
on the same theme of the four-point program, to be
held in literally hundreds of cities and municipalities
across Canada. Together with this, telephone can-
vasses of trade union membership are to be conducted

around the program.

As might be expected considerable attention was —

paid to the preparations by the CLC for the next
federal election and strengthening the position of the
NDP in the House of Commons. A criticism of the
conference was that it tended to deal with this ques-
tion out of the context of the fightback between now
and then.

Robert White, Canadian director of the United
Auto Workers Union, seemed to sense this weakness

-and warmed the assembly that workers who were

victimized by corporations and governments by
take-aways and wage controls and who had not
adequately fought back against these measures, were
less likely to draw the conclusion to vote for the NDP
in the next election.

This columnist was not present at the conference
and has to depend on newspaper reports and second-
hand information, but this together with discussions
we had in the Prairies and in Ontario recently with

alliance on

the agenda

many trade union leaders gives the impression that
there is a tendency for many well meaning trade union
activists to grab onto the NDP like a drowning mat
grabs a life raft.

It is not so much that they see the election of the
NDP as the answer to their deep-going problems (i
fact there is very little likelihood of the election of an
NDP government in the next federal election in any
case) but rather that they don’t know how to confront
their problems, and so use the NDP as a panacea.

This, of course, is neither fair to the NDP nor to the
trade unions. It places, a responsibility on the NDP
which it could not live up to even if elected, and it
absolves the trade unions from conducting the kinds
of struggles necessary to set the stage to defeat the old
line parties, and to develop the public consciousness

- mecessary to accommodate fundamental changes

necessary to answer today’s pressing economic
social problems. .
The Ottawa conference seemed to shed a little more
light on both of these questions. The very fact, that
such a conference was called by labor, including its
natural allies in the fight “against the present
monopoly-inspired crisis, gives recognition to the

_ point the Communists have been hammering on for

many years. The struggle for fundamental social and
economic change must be led by labor but must em-
brace a wide alliance of forces at both the economic
and political level.

The concept of an anti-monopoly alliance leading to
an anti-monopoly government in Canada including
the NDP, the trade unions and the Communist Party
is on the agenda. |

—

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 18, 1983—Page 6