LABOR

Special to the Tribune
WINDSOR — The first union-led
Strike by academics in Ontario ended
_ after one week on the picket line Sept. 27
| When the University of Windsor Faculty
Association ratified a tentative contract
Providing a 13.8% wage increase over
one year.

The settlement, however falls under
1} the spectre of the Ontario Tory govern-
){ Ment’s wage control legislation and un-

less it is exempted from the controls law

y the government’s so-called Inflation

Straint Board, a development many
- feel is highly unlikely, the 525 librarians
and professors in the university will
ly see their wage increase rolled back

OF
The roots of the Windsor strike, like
the growing trend to collective action by

University faculties throughout Ontario,

ing a contract that would be in line with
other Ontario universities and with
Laurentian University in Sudbury;
Windsor hadn’t reached a contract
settlement by Sept. 9, the date the union
came into a legal strike position.

The final straw for the union’s
negotiating committee was _ the
University-Board’s presentation of an
inadequate 22-page proposal at 6:30 a.m.
Sept. 20, an hour and a half before the
strike deadline, and after five fruitless
months in which the Board refused to
negotiate seriously. Within 90 minutes
picket lines were up and the strike was
on.

The university library and sports
facilities were left open and the union
bermitted unionized clerical and mainte-
pance. workers to cross the picket lines.

Windsor faculty strike makes gains

Once on strike, many of the faculty
members were quickly surprised to find
that they were less ‘‘respectable’’ than
when they stuck to their classrooms, labs
and offices.

Several columns of the Southam-
owned Windsor Star, which specializes
in the spread of anti-labor invective and
political ignorance, were given over to
direct and indirect attacks on the
Windsor faculty.

The strikers were depicted as greedy
and irresponsible, especially to the stu-
dents whose plight the Star suddenly dis-
covered and championed.

Though this anti-strikers campaign did
make some headway in driving a wedge
between the Students’ Administrative
Council and the Faculty Association, a
situation that to a certain extent was
made possible by the union’s failure to

- wage offer last June to the 13.8% that

publicize the strike as part of the fight for
a better university system, and defence
against cutbacks, the strike won some
significant advances for the faculty.

Above all by both beginning and end-
ing a strike action in a united manner the
faculty showed it could demonstrate col-
lective determination. Clearly the strike
forced the Board to move from a 6%

was the basis for the final settlement. The
union also won such significant non-
monetary gains as in the dating of con-
tracts, sabbatical leaves from the uni-
versity at 80% regular pay, (an increase
from 75%), a university-funded indepen-
dent actuarial study of the pension
scheme, full year contracts for sessional
lecturers and expanded grievance pro-
cedure rights.

lies in the generally declining relative and
Teal salaries of university faculties and in
the deteriorating educational conditions
IM the province’s universities since the
Mid-1970s.

At Windsor, added to the pressure of
Tory provincial government cuts in real
€ducational spending was a particularly
backward, anti-labor administration and
University Board of Governors. Two
Previous negotiations had ended on th
Verge of strike action.

This time around, local Tory-
4ppointed businessmen on the Board and
4 short-sighted, self-serving top ad-
Ministration led by University of

indsor president Mervyn Franklin,
academic vice-president Paul Cassano,
and chief Board negotiator John Demps-
ter, (a former Ontario government
Mediator), frustrated and embittered the
Negotiations.

“we have a regular rotation of jobs every 45 minutes!”

The faculty association was demand-

Leeda Trede Union & Community Resource Center, England

.“Ottawa’s advisors cool to mortgage relief plan,”’ we
are informed in a front page banner story by the Toronto
Globe and Mail, October 5.

The story tells us that a panel of prominent business
leaders has rejected a federal proposal to offer home-
Owners, farmers, fishermen and small business, low-
Interest loans. The same committee, we are told, has,

OWever, given its approval to another part of the federal
80vernment scheme which would give tax breaks to
those investing in Canadian stocks and bonds.

That a group of prominent businessmen, under the
Chai ship of Canadian Stock Exchange president
Pierre Lortie, should reject aid to homeowners, farmers,
fishermen and small businessmen comes as no surprise.
_ What is surprising, or at least downright unacceptable,
'S that the Canadian Government should say, as Prime

linister Trudeau has, that any government action

ges on the business panel's advice.

Big Business Permission :

Worki ople are bound to pause and reflect on this
bold RM iage sloatine by the Globe and Mail. What is

Ng clearly stated is, although the government Is
lected to govern and represent all the Canadian people
MN this process, it has in fact conceded that it cannot act
Without the permission of big business in Canada. This is
€xactly what the spokesmen for monopoly have been
demanding for quite some time, the most strident
Spokesman being the Toronto Globe and Mail.

What the ‘prominent business leaders”’ are demand-
ing is that everything be left to the market place to sort
OUt. This is the only ‘‘free’’ area where the present crisis

be resolved. Government intervention, according to

™, only further aggravates the crisis. ;
ee same paper however was compelled to print
4 story less than a week earlier quoting from Statistics
, which showed that while prices were coming
; down in the sector of the economy occupied by small
business, as a result of the crisis, they were sharply

=

Labor in action —
William Stewart

escalating in the sector dominated by monopoly. The net
result was an overall increase in the cost of living.

Working people may well draw two conclusions from
the unabashed bragging by the Globe and Mail. One, that
the real decision maker in Ottawa is not the government
after all, but the big business representatives who hold
‘the real power, the economic levers, in their hands. And
secondly, the answer for working people is to assemble
for themselves an even greater power to overcome their
serious disadvantage in face of this open shack-up be-
tween governments at all levels and big business.

Clearly the people elected to govern in this country
consider that the real wealth of this country is owned and
operated by the banks, credit institutions, financial in-
stitutions and big corporations. That if there is to be any
improvement in the crisis-ridden Canadian economy, it
must come about as a result of actions by this handful of
people.

In fact, however, the real wealth of this country lies in
the hands and brains of its working people, from labor-
ers, farmers, intellectuals, teachers, health workers and
technocrats who together produce and make possible the
production of everything that we have today and can
have tomorrow.

Government Game

It is a massive insult, and a gross distortion of the truth
to tell Canadians that the wealth that has been stolen
away from them by profits extracted from their labor
over the years, should now be visited upon them in the
form of demands that they downgrade their living stan-

Program could make governments consult labor

dards at the shrine of this misappropriated wealth.
As people are comprehending the magnitude and

unpardonable nature of the game being played by the .

governments and big business they are likewise gearing
up to act for different solutions to their problems than
those foisted on them.

One which the trade unions should consider, along
with the entire labor movement, short of new policies
and new governments, is the demand that before Otta-
wa, Quebec, or any provincial government, or any cor-
porations, adopt decisions which will affect workers’
lives and well-being, they must be consulted and their
agreement secured. After all, if it’s good enough for a
handful of “‘business leaders’ surely it’s good enough
for the overwhelming majority of the people of this coun-
try, the working people. ;

Clear Labor Program

Such a demand from the organized labor movement
should have to be carefully distinguished from_ bi-
partism and tri-partism where labor, governments and
unions sit down together to work out acommon solution
to their problems. It is clear today there is no common
solution to the problems of big business and working
people. The present crisis will either be solved at our
expense, or at theirs.

Labor must make such demands on the government
from the positions of a clearly enunciated program
whose integrity it must protect from incursions by
government and monopoly and whose boundaries it
must seek continually to expand. If this is uhe basis for
discussions then labor has nothing to fear from making
the demand that governments must seek its approval
before dealing with legislation and actions which will
effect labor’s long term aims. :

After all, the precedent has been publicly set. It re-
mains for labor to make its case strongly enough that
Ottawa andthe provinces begin really consulting the
dog, not the tail.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 15, 1982—Page 3

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