November 26,
1986

40°

Vol. 49, No. 43
ISSN 0030-896X

Ontario’s
Bill 105:
‘bad faith

bargaining’

— page 5 —

*

SHIPBUILDN ae

Ae

y

RECOGNITION

g

el

SEAN GRIFFIN

TRIBUNE PHOTO

The walls of the staid Vancouver Hotel echoed with the chants of ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs!"’ and ‘We want the Polar 8!"’ as more

than 200 shipyard workers, many of whom have been out of work for two years, demonstrated outside the first ministers’
Conference in Vancouver Nov. 20 and 21 to demand that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney move immediately to award the
Polar 8 icebreaker contract to North Vancouver's Versatile Pacific shipyard which is low bidder on the project. Marine

Orkers and Boilermakers Industrial Union president John Fitzpatrick told reporters that three out of five B.C. shipyard
Workers are unemployed while the federal government has awarded only four per cent of federal work to B.C. and has
failed to live up to its pledge to give priority to the shipbuilding industry.

By SEAN GRIFFIN
li. Year ago, when delegates opened the
bh cnvention of the B.C. Federation of
', most were acutely aware that it
the last convention before a pro-

He, eletion — an election in which the

Rye elming majority of unionists fer-
Roped would result in the defeat of

Nett and the election of an NDP

"ment.

*W could have expected that one of

bg ttt’s most far right ministers would rise

 Socred leadership and then, three

Se
Coe ee

months later, lead the party back into office
with an increased majority. Fewer still
could have predicted that much the same
would happen in the Vancouver civic elec-
tions in which the NPA returned to domi-
nate city hall as well as the school and parks
boards.

The return of right wing government to
both Victoria and Vancouver — coupled
with the Tory government in Ottawa —
typifies the problems facing the labor
movement.

More than anything, it underlines the

need for the labor movement to begin shar-
pening its traditional weapons of militance
and solidarity and to begin involving unio-
nists throughout the province and other
groups in developing independent political
action.

Certainly 1986 has been one of the most
turbulent years in more than two decades, a
year in which survival of trade unions — as
well as trade unionism itself — has been on
the line in several key disputes.

@ Early in the year, Construction Labor
Relations Association took the unprece-

Report ‘a disaster’:

IWA urges rejection

Calling the report brought down Nov. 21
by the three-member industrial inquiry
commission ‘“‘a major disaster,” Interna-
tional Woodworkers Canadian regional
president Jack Munro declared Monday
that |WA members would be urged to reject
the proposals in voting over the next week.

And the bargaining committee’s recom-
mendation was unanimous, he said.

“The report is so bad that it’s not even
worth trying to patch up,” he told reporters
following Labor Minister Lyall Hanson’s
delivery of the report to the TWA and
Forest Industrial Relations (FIR) Monday.
“It’s a major disaster.”

Munro said the ballots were already
being prepared in the printers for the
region-wide vote and balloting was expected
to begin as early as Wednesday, with results
expected in Dec. 3.

That date would fall in the middle of next
week’s B.C. Federation of Labor conven-
tion where delegates could begin to step up
the program of support for the [WA if the
membership, as is expected, follows the
leadership’s recommendation of rejection.

FIR president Keith Bennett imme-
diately announced that the forest compan-
ies would be urged to accept the report, a
clear indication of how heavily the three-
member commission favored the employers
in their findings. Bennett also added the
warning that the companies would be pre-
pared to hold out against a settlement till
spring if the union did not vote to accept.

The report’s key recommendations are:
e A two-year agreement, expiring in
June, 1988;

e@ A 40-cent an hour increase — roughly
2.8 per cent over two years — effective the
beginning of the second year of the agree-
ment;

@ A $200 signing bonus;

® Increases in employer contributions to
pensions to provide for increases in benefits

see lIC page 3

dented action of sending letters to all 16
Building Trades affiliates telling them that if
they did not accept concessions contracts as
written by the employers, they would face
termination of their collective agreements
on the expiry date, April 30.

In May, CLRA locked out the industry
and then lifted the lockout 48 hours later,
inviting workers to return to their jobs at

‘lower rates. The tactic, which was defeated

by Building Trades solidarity, was devised
by union-busting lawyers in the U.S. and
see IWA page 12