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