LABOR

Auto workers

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — With their first strike in
14 years, Canada’s 38,6000 General
Motors workers rejected the inadequate
settlement recently adopted by their
U.S. counterparts and opted for a milit-
ant fight to make GM return some of its
fabulous profits to the workers in better
wages, shorter work time, improved
pensions and COLA protection.

GM workers throughout Ontario and
Quebec were poised to make Canadian
labor history as the United Auto Work-
ers strike machinery in each plant clicked
into action at 12 noon Oct. 17 following
Canadian director Bob White’s
announcement that the strike was on,
and the bargaining committee had
unanimously rejected the corporation’s
second “‘rubber stamp”’ proposal in 10
days.

“With a few minor changes it is a total
rubber stamp of the U.S. GM settlement
but with less money in it for Canadians
than-what U.S. workers got’’, White told
reporters. He added that subcommittees
would be struck to try and find some
common ground to keep the talks going,
but that the union would withdraw if it
became obvious that progress toward a
settlement wasn’t in the cards.

‘We're calling this GM’s strike,”
White said, accusing the transnational of
a ‘‘fundamental change”’ in the direction
it has traditionally gone in both collective
bargaining program and labor relations
with the UAW.

‘We’re calling it GM’s strike’

TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS

“Smoke and Mirrors”
GM’s offer, White said, was a product

ist: bts Peis i.

he oa

Atthe Scarborough van plant the strike was launched in style, with one Local 303 member

nattily attired in bowler and tails.
of “‘smoke and mirrors bargaining,’’ and
that the Canadian letterhead on which
the U.S. transnational’s offer was print-
ed, was just about the only indication the
UAW had that chief GM negotiator Rod
Andrew recognized he was bargaining in
Canada not the U.S.

White said the Canadian GM offer

contained less money than the U.S.

workers got; more diversions from the
cost of living adjustment, an inferior in-
come security plan to the one negotiated
in the U.S., almost nothing on shorter

reject ‘rubber sta

of
wt

work time, very little pensions and actu-
ally demanded concessions on health
and other benefits the union had turned
down in the 1982 talks.

GM offered the same 2.25 per cent
wage increase in the first year and lump
sum payments in the second and third
years equal to the same percentage but
not folded into the base rate. White

_ pointed out that the extra eight cents

added to the fist-year wage offer in the
Canadian proposal, which American
workers didn’t get, is cancelled out by

FL meets durin

REGINA — Saskatchewan workers
go into the Saskatchewan Federation of
Labor convention, October 24-27, with
two of this city’s recent labor struggles
fresh in their minds.

And when National Union of
Mineworkers member Frank Clark
speaks to the gathering he is expected
to win a rousing welcome from dele-
gates, because the British miners’
struggle to save jobs will hit home to
many Saskatchewan workers.

The threatened closure of coal mines
in Britain has many parallels in Canada
which delegates will be aware of.

* * *

One of those to make local headlines
this fall was at Ipsco steel mill in this
city, where 200 workers staged a wild-
cat sit-in over the Oct. 13-14 weekend,
to protest management actions.

An October 12 ultimatum issued by
the company would have scrapped im-
portant contract provisions and con-
tinued unpopular work schedules, in an
effort to further boost productivity. The
company demanded mandatory over-
time, restrictions on total overtime, a
reduction in vacation time, the estab-
lishment of a list of employees to be on
call 24 hours a day to fill in for absent
workers, elimination of pay for the half
hour lunch break, and more.

Repeated Layoffs

Angry steelworkers shut the plant
down in protest, until their local exe-
cutive won an agreement from the
company that the changes would be
dropped. They and their families, many
of whom gathered outside, were parti-
cularly upset over shift schedules
which have left workers with no week-
ends off. Union leaders reported that
the company has agreed to work out a
compressed work week with 10- or 12-

hour shifts for four days, followed by
four days off. ;

Leaving the mill, the steelworkers
agreed that their occupation was a vic-
tory. Frustrations have been building
for several years at the mill, as the
workers have been laid off and recalled
repeatedly. At the company’s main
operation, in Regina, the workforce has
dropped from about 1,600 to 1,100 in
recent years. Meanwhile, the com-
pany, which is about one-fifth owned
by the provincial government, has con-
tinued to make profits — $7-million in
1983, reportedly about half the previous
year and well below expected profit
levels for 1984.

In a newspaper ad published late last
year, Ipsco stated glowingly that **1983
was a year for records at Ipsco —
thanks to the commitment, efficiency
and productivity of our employees.”
Both the melt shop and the rolling mill,
said the ad, had smashed all previous
records for total production in October
1983.

Exactly a year later, many of the
union members are convinced that the
company is out to crush their local.
Some point to Milan Kosanovich, Ips-
co’s senior vice-president and chief
operations officer, as the leading figure
in the effort. Kosanovich, formerly of
Crucible Steel in Pittsburgh, who came
to Ipsco two years ago, denies the
charge, but refused to give written as-
surances of no reprisals. While Ipsco
was forced to back down on its de-

mands, many labor observers will be
watching Kosanovich’s actions close-
ly.
In any case, the introduction of new
technology, which along with soft mar-
kets has been mainly responsible for the
declining Ipsco workforce, is compell-
ing Regina steelworkers to consider
further action to save their jobs.

Library Workers Seek Support

While the Regina Public Library
celebrates its 75h anniversary,
employees are fighting to save their jobs
as a new automated system is intro-
duced. The library’s catalogues have
been computerized, with the circula-
tion system and other functions to fol-
low. The employees, members of
CUPE Local 1594, have leafieted lib-
rary patrons recently, pointing out that
the new technology will wipe out jobs,
and that the increased use of VDTs pre-
sents physical and mental dangers to
staff.

Contract negotiations have been
dragged out since the last one expired at
the end of 1983. The library workers
want to share in the benefits of automa-
tion, including limits on the amount of
VDT work, a guarantee of no layoffs or
reduction of hours, and inclusion of
part-time workers (nearly 50 per cent of
the staff) in their pension.

Public support will be crucial to the
workers, mindful of a bitter seven-
month strike at the Prince Albert public —
library in 1982. ‘

bas

eral Motors’’,

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 24, 1984

mp’ offer

the extra nine cents GM wants diverted
from the COLA on top of the 13 cents the
corporation grabbed from the COLA in
the U.S. pact.

He also noted that 11 cents of that first
year wage hike came out of the workers’
own pockets in the form of the COLA
payment build up during the last quarter
of the old agreement.

Resentment, Heat

In a press conference following the
UAW’s, Rod Andrew, GM’s chief
negotiator gave Canadians a pious lec-
ture on the need to drop ‘‘the unfortunate
strike mentality’ in favor of the colla-
borationist collective bargaining style
the corporation has established with the
U.S. UAW leadership.

Canadian GM workers, he said, have
to accept the corporation’s attacks on
their wages, conditions, rights and local
agreements as part of the holy crusade to
make the U.S. transnational “‘more
competitive,” (and one of the world’s
richest corporations.)

Walkouts at GM’s. Oshawa, Scar-
borough, and Ste. Therese, Que., plants
the night before the official strike dead-
line, and the disciplined, efficient way
the strike was launched on Oct. 17
demonstrated that GM workers are pre-
pared to wage a tough fight for the prog-
ress they feel entitled to enjoy in 1984.

Huge bonfires outside the plant gates
of GM’s gigantic Oshawa complex were
as much a sign of defiance and deep re-
sentment over GM’s made-in-U.S.
concessions program, as a source of heat
for pickets.

The mood on the Scarborough Van
Plant picket line was upbeat and con-
fident. A number of pickets demanded
that the firing of 25 Local 303 members |
for joining the walkout the previous eve-"
ning be reversed as part of the final set-
tlement of the strike.

Everyone’s Solid

- Picket captains confirmed that aside

from the early birds, everything was or-

ganized from top to bottom and the
noon-hour walkout was carried through

without a hitch. ‘‘Everyone’s solid and
we’re more than ready to take on Gen-

one Local 303 member
said. :

Pickets declared they were ready to —

stay out as long as it takes to get a

satisfactory contract. Most of the talkon

the line at Scarborough was about GM’s
healthy profits over the past couple of
years, and of the need to restore lost
benefits and conditions, and to make
progress in the areas charted by the
union. S
‘‘Three percent a year isn’t alot to ask |

for, considering they made more than
$600-million in profits last year,’ a

striker pointed out. ‘In °82 GM was ask- —

=

ing us to give things up to help pull them
out of the hole, well they’re out of the

hole now, the brass all got their bonuses —
and it’s time we finally got our share.” _

*

Fes

The strikers also spoke of the needto

either restore the nine personal paid —

holidays lost in the °82 agreement or to —

win some equivalent arrangement in
shorter work time.

Another striker commented, ‘‘we geta

lot of static from the (Toronto) Sun and
other rags about how we're so highly —
paid and all that, as if all we have todo
everyday is show up and collect the
money. But nobody writes about what a

.|

pressure cooker a place like this reallyis,

what it’s like to spend day after day chas:
ing the assembly line, or what shift work
takes away from your health, your social —
life, even your family. a
“If they can start shortening the work —
week in Germany, I don’t see why it
can’t be done here, besides, if you’re

looking for a way to put the unemployed

back to work, it’s a good place to start.” |