‘ _

Bob White with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers and Leo Gerrard, District 6 Director of the
_ United Steelworkers of America at a recent Toronto rally.

White: CLC needs autonomy debate

By MIKE PHILLIPS

Autoworkers leader Bob White
doesn’t especially want to be at the
Centre of the autonomy controv-
ersy in the labor movement. But
with the question now squarely on
the table, he intends to see a debate
within the Canadian Labor Con-
gress leadership that will compel it
to confront the need for changes.

“We can’t just have a nice little
Section in the constitution that
talks about a code of conduct for

| international unions and com-

_ pletely ignore international unions
that don’t abide by the code of
conduct, especially when there are
People in those organizations ask-
Ing for help.” he said.

The storm swirling around the
dynamic leader ‘of the 140,000-
member Canadian Auto Workers,
‘Is focussed on what White calls the
CAW’s “extension of solidarity”
to the Newfoundland fishermen’s
union. The CAW welcomed the
Newfoundland Fishermen into its
tanks after they decided to bolt
from the Washington-based Uni-
ted Food and Commercial Workers.

The charges of raiding and
empire building hurled at him by
the leaders of the international
Unions and others in the CLC lead-
ership are rejected by White and
dismissed as beside the point.

“The price the fishermen’s
Union would have had to pay
Under the current structure of the
CLC for demanding autonomy
Within their own union, and then
Withdrawing would have been to
et thrown out of the labor move-
Ment.”

Rather than being left out in the
Cold, White maintains that unions
like the Newfoundland fishermen,
Where they can’t get their interna-
tionals to live up to the code of
Conduct, ought to have access to
direct charters with the CLC.

Instead, he has become a kind of
big brother to an_ increasing
Number of unionists looking for
advice on how they can win more
autonomy for their Canadian
or within their internation-
als,

“Now I shouldn’t play that role,
I guess that’s my point. We have to

find a way in the central labor
movement to play that kind of a
role for people.”

Free trade, the struggle for peace
and the labor movement’s interna-
tional role were also explored in
the CAW leader’s exchange with
the Tribune.

With the CLC’s escalation of the
anti-free trade campaign, the Con-
gress and the provincial federa-
tions are aiming to bring more of a
Canada-wide perspective to labor’s
fightback.

But stopping a deal between
Ottawa and Washington will be no
mean task. “I think Mulroney,
because it’s his only platform, is
determined to reach some kind of
an understanding. I also think that
the understanding will be so fuzzy
that Canadians will really be fooled
by it.

“The Tories will talk about the
elimination of tariffs over a long
period of time. They'll talk about
protection of certain cultural
industries. They'll talk about what
hasn’t been on the table, but that’s
not the issue.

“The issue is what happens to
this country down the road as you
go step by step more economically
entwined with the United States.”

He doesn’t mince words over
the “despicable” way in which the
prime minister is ‘trying to sell free
trade by playing on regional dis-
parity. “The truth is that the only
way the outlying areas of Canada
can develop is by government
intervention in the economy ...

even (Donald) McDonald in his °

report when he talked about the
‘leap of faith’ talked about the
necessity of people from Atlantic
Canada having to move as a result

of all this.
“That’s the kind of thing we've

ot to get at now, the myth that
ee eae is going to help the
underdeveloped areas of this coun-
try, so to speak.
Mey can vaestand people being
supportive of it, if they have no
jobs and Mulroney’s saying its
going to create jobs. But nobody’s
telling us where.” White sees a link
between trade union international-
ism and the fight for peace. While
welcoming the increased involve-

ment of the union movement’s
leadership in the peace fight, labor

still faces big tasks on this and the »

international solidarity front, par-
ticularly around Nicaragua and
South Africa.

The CAW‘s support of South
African trade union efforts to bring
down apartheid recently found
White and other top labor leaders
challenging certain CLC interna-
tional affairs staff who were
undermining relationships between
the congress and the underground
South African Congress of Trade
Unions.

White was among those who
insisted the CLC must work with
both SACTU, and the Congress of
South African Trade Unions.

“There were some people going
around this country who were
sabotaging the work that SACTU
was doing for their own political
gains and it made no sense. The
facts are, that without the SACTU
movement, the Canadian labor
movement would not have had the
same understanding of South
Africa. That doesn’t mean exclu-
sively, but they certainly played
and important role at a time when
nobody else could have played that
role.”

The failure of the Reykjavik
summit left him feeling “tragic”
over the loss of a chance, for the
first time in many years to do

“something fundamentally about

arms control. “There’s no question
about it, the Reagan ‘Star Wars’
sabotaged that.”

White’s also hoping for a revival
of detente at the trade union level.

“I’m saying at the CLC level,
we’re the only organization around,
it seems to me that hasn’t agreed to
have exchange visits with the
Soviet Union. Everybody else is
doing it, I just think we have to get
that behind us and I hope that’s
going to happen very shortly.

“I’m a great believer in having
dialogue with workers’ representa-
tives from all countries of the
world. Never mind the political
stripes. It’s not a question of are we
going to change their politics. The
question is, do we build some
bridges of understanding.”

Labor in action

GEORGE HEWISON

United Sovereign and
Independent

(The recent decision of the Canadian Autoworkers Union to take in the
Newfoundland Fishermen's Union has made waves in the entire trade
union movement. This is the last of a three-part series of articles dealing
with the likely impact of this decision. Comments are invited.)

The struggle for a fully sovereign trade union movement in
Canada is not new. Autonomy was a central plank in the program
of the Trade Union Educational League adopted in 1925. Canada
has the unique distinction of being the only major developed
country with a large chunk of its union head offices in another
country.

This phenomenon has to do with history.

The struggle to establish autonomy has generally taken place in
the course of uniting for an effective fight against employers.

Autonomy minus unity = tragedy
When the struggle for autonomy has been artificially separated
from other key elements, tragedy has befallen Canadian workers.
The cheers that have gone up initially around the liberation from
‘‘Washington’s yoke’, in such cases, have invariably turned to
grief in which worker is pitted against worker in Canada.

The situation is changing rapidly but still requires great care not
to separate the elements — the primary one being unity for the
struggle.

In 1974, the CLC, in recognition of this changing situation,
opted for a set of minimum guidelines for Canadian sectors of
U.S.-based unions. These guidelines, although never fully
satisfactory, or lived up to, nevertheless recognized that the
demand for autonomy was uneven from union to union and from
area to area of the country.

Thus, the guidelines moved in the direction of more autonomy,
while retaining the needed unity between national and inter-
national unions to do the job of fighting the boss and bosses”
governments.

Now, the developments in the United Food and Commercial

Workers’ Union have placed a new set of problems on the agenda

not only for the UFCW, but for all unions. There has been a
growing demand for autonomy in that union based on the work-
ers’ need to have an effective fightback against packinghouse and
retail corporate giants, and to fight free trade which will devastate
meatpacking in Canada.

The international President may wish to ignore the needs of the
Canadian section of his union. If he does so, the Newfoundland
Fishermen may not be the only defections from the ranks, result-
ing from his high handed activity.

Who polices guidelines?

But the question is posed: whose responsibility is it to deter-
mine or to police the minimum standards for Canadian auto-
nomy? If individual unions, particularly large ones, unilaterally
take the matter on, it invites the charge of interference or raiding
of one union by another.

The obvious answer is that it must become the concern of the
entire Canadian trade union movement, through the CLC. Every
union and union leader in Canada must be made responsible for
the furtherance of Canadian autonomy, and enforcement of the
minimum standards set by all of labor.

The CLC needs to insist on the minimum guidelines being
enforced. Where they are not, and the workers can no longer live
with their international. As a result, these workers should be free
to enter the Congress as a directly chartered affiliate and under
the protective umbrella of the entire Canadian trade union
movement.

In this process, the Congress will continue to urge all affiliates
to unite into larger more effective unions along industry lines.
There is logic to having all of the food workers eventually facing
Galen Weston and Conrad Black in unity rather than fragmented
as matters stand now.

All this and the kitchen sink

Fortunately for the Newfoundland Fishermen, (perhaps not so
fortunate for those Canadian autonomy forces left behind in the
UFCW), the CAW was able to play the big brother and step in
when no one else was prepared to stick up for them. But with the
entire trade union movement poised to take on everything, in-
cluding the kitchen sink, the last thing which trade unions (no
matter how big) need is a big in-house dustup.

The trade union movement, whether U.S.-based, or all-
Canadian, can ill afford to be wasting their bullets shooting in-
wards. That makes the'job of the employers and neo-conser-
vatives so much easier.

They have union-busting on their minds.

See era

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 29, 1987 e 9