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An open i

The following open letter has been
sent by the Ontario Provincial Execu-
tive of the Communist Party of Canada
10 the Houdaille (Oshawa) plant work-
ers, members of UAW Local 222:

* * *

The Ontario Committee of the Com-
munist Party of Canada greets the
workers of Houdaille Industries in
Oshawa. We congratulate you on the
Militant and firm action you took by
Occupying that plant. This has resulted
in the achievement of the declared aims
of your sit-in — greatly improved pen-

sions and severance pay rates that you -

forced this U.S.-owned company to
concede.

Your sit-in action serves as an exam-
Ple to all workers, particularly in On-
tario where in the recent period there
have been 50 plant closures, 18 of them
i the auto industry, shutdowns that
have already resulted in the loss of tens
of thousands of jobs in auto alone.

But having acknowledged this, the
fact remains — as Houdaille workers
have told us they themselves realize —

that what was lacking in the sit-in action

was the aim of saving the jobs of the ©

workers, to prevent the shutdown of
the Houdaille plant next October by
forcing the Ontario Tory government to
take over the plant to guarantee the
workers’ jobs through continuous pro-
duction.

For the main need, the most im-
portant fight for the workers is the fight
for jobs — the fight for policies for full
employment.

The auto and other multi-nationals
must no longer be allowed — and this
without any legislative controls over
them —to arbitrarily destroy the jobs of
workers and the security and future of
their families and communities. In On-
tario and in all Canada legislation must
now be fought for and won to guarantee
there be no plant shutdowns without
full and open consultation with the
workers themselves, and this following
one year’s prior notice of any intent by
companies to end production.

The UAW’s decision to present its

t FIGHT PLANT CLOSURE &
etter to Houdaille workers

brief on Auto In Crisis to the federal
government in Ottawa is commend-
able. But more is needed.

What is important now is that the
organized labor movement as a whole,
the CLC first of all, undertake a mass
campaign for jobs, a mass campaign to
‘*Put Canada Back To Work’’. And as
the first step a mass lobby in Ottawa
organized and led by the CLC, a mass
lobby for a jobs program.

The basis for this mass campaign for
jobs must clearly be a policy for the
industrialization of our economy, a pol-
icy to put an end to the deindustnializa-
tion that has been dictated by U.S. and
other foreign-owned multinationals in
their own interests and against the in-
terests of Canada and the working
people.

At the very centre of such a mass

campaign for jobs and against plant clo- .

sures will be organized labor’s united

solidarity with all workers who under-

take militant actions to save their jobs.
Yours in solidarity in the fight for jobs

. and against plant closures:

TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS

After a 14-day occupation of Houdaille
Industries in Oshawa by 200 workers
company officials made concessions on
pensions and severance pay.

defend the right to organize

t] Sit-in example of

REPEAL THE

MICHELIN BILL

[

YRS 12°30 NC

Calgary labor boycotts
strike breaking inn

; By DAVID WALLIS
CALGARY — The labor
council voted unanimously Aug.
18 to put the strike-bound Calgary
Inn on its ‘‘unfair’’ list for re-
fusing to settle a strike with its

employees which began July 5.

At that time some 46 waitres-
seS, waiters and bartenders
walked out to back demands for a

© an hour wage for wait-
resses. Now there are about 20
members of Local 47 Hotel and
Restaurant Employees and Bar-
tenders Union walking the picket
line outside the hotel.

Union business agent Graham
Sproule told the labor council
Aug. 18 that “‘the management of
the Calgary Inn has refused to

_ Negotiate with the union in good

faith.”” Only 46 of the Calgary
Inn’s 550 workers are organized
and the company has told the
striking workers they will only get
their jobs back after the workers
hired to scab on them have quit.

Labor council secretary Bill
Patterson informed the delegates
that ‘‘these workers (at the Cal-
gary Inn) are only earning $3.95
an hour, only 45 cents over the
minimum wage.”’

The Calgary Inn has filled the
jobs of the striking workers and
seems determined to break the
union. The Calgary Inn is owned
by Western International who
also own the Bayshore Inn in
Vancouver. There the union con-

tract provides a minimum of $6 an
hour.

Sproule, in asking for union
solidarity by respecting the picket
lines said ‘‘our fight is your fight
... this province is moving to-
wards ‘Right to Work’ legislation
and they’re trying to chip away at
the weakest unions first’’.

Undemocratic Changes

The Labor Council also ex-
pressed disgust with proposals by
the Alberta Government to make
prohibitive and undemocratic
changes in the legislation cover-
ing plebicites in Alberta. Under
present legislation residents in
Edmonton and Calgary can de-

mand a city plebicite on city

spending and bylaws through
submitting a petition of around
14,000 signatures.

Ron Brown, President of Local
37, Canadian Union of Public
Employees told the Council dele-
gates that a 20,000 signature peti-
tion submitted last fall will likely
be legislated invalid by the next
sitting of the provincial legisla-
ture. This petition, which called
for a public vote on city council’s
self-awarded 48% pay increase,
has been stalled in the courts.
Calgary Council is appealing a
court decision declaring the peti-
tion to be valid. Brown also went
on to say that ‘‘the right to peti-
tion is the only opportunity that
people have to force council to
take a different course.”

Working people in Canada on
this Labor Day should be unani-
mous in saluting the workers of
Houdaille, Oshawa for providing
an example of militant struggle
against what would have other-
wise been another in a growing
list of plant shut-downs.

The agony of mass layoffs,
plant closures and runaway
industries is a new and com-

pletely unexpected phenomenon ~

for the majority of the work force.
Even highly union-conscious
union members (who are un-
fortunately a small minority of the
total union membership) find
themselves frustrated and with-
out.answers when the protection
afforted by their union contract
provides no solutions to the clo-
sure of their plant.

Working people who bought
houses, began to rear families all
with perfect assurance that pros-
perity and their jobs were

-imperishable, suddenly find

themselves on the street with little
if any possibility of finding proper
employment.

Older workers with long senior-
ity, which they were confident
would protect them against the
ups and downs of the production
cycles, are dumped unto the job
market with little likelihood of
ever again securing meaningful
jobs.

All of this misery and heart-
break has been piling up in
Canada for the past couple of
years with no promise but more of
the same, when suddenly the
workers of Houdaille ‘‘sit-in’’ in
their bumper plant scheduled for
final shut down on October 31.

The sympathy and support of
all Canadian working people went
out to the workers of Houdaille
who occupied ‘‘their plant’ for
two weeks while the company
was forced back to the bargaining
table, where considerable gains in
pensions and severance pay were
won for the work force.

The significance of the event

however goes far beyond the
gains achieved. It is the first suc-
cessful action of the labor move-
ment in Canada in this period of
crisis, which went beyond the
confines of traditional collective
bargaining into the area of mass
collective action. ,

Buz Hargrove, United Auto
Workers representative was
quoted as saying, “workers
throughout Ontario can iook at
what's happened here and say to
themselves that as workers facing
the closure of their plant, there is
something they can do about it,
rather than just throw up their
hands and give up.”

Hargrove is absolutely nght
and the leadership of the UAW,
as well as the workers involved in
the sit-in, deserve the thanks of all
labor for their encouragement and
support of the actions.

I think it is safe to predict that
this is just the first of a whole
range of actions which will be
undertaken by Canadian workers
as they fight for their right to a job
and a secure future.

As a matter of fact the workers
at Tung-Sol Wagner, Bramalea,
threatened with closure on Oc-
tober 6, have struck the plant and
mounted a picket line demanding
improvement in pension and
severance benefits as well as ac-
tion by the provincial government
to prevent the plant’s closure.
The plant is part of United Elec-
trical Workers Local 514 which
has already been scaled down
from 150 to 60 workers.

Once workers are seized by the ©

concept of fighting back against
plant closures, and mass layoffs,

they can be expected to develop .

the most diverse and colorful
forms of struggle to achieve their
ends, just as they did in the thir-
ties:

What is so far lacking in the
fightback is a sufficiently fleshed
out policy by the trade union
movement to answer the basic
problems of plant closures.

While everyone can agree that
the Houdaille actions were im-
portant and provided somewhat
of a victory, the bitter fact is that
the plant is still closing and the
workers will still be out on the
street. The basic question of job
security remains.

It is to this central problem that
organized labor must address it-
self. The people of Canada, work-
ing people, first and foremost,
cannot and must not accept for
one minute, the law of the capital-
ist jungle to determine their nght
to a job and an adequate income.

A recent meeting of the To-
ronto Labor Council adopted a
resolution on plant closures de-
manding that the Ontario
government enact legislation
which would make corporations
justify a plant closing before a
public tribunal; that workers and
communities would receive full
compensation from such corpora-
tions in the event of any closure
so that the corporations would
bear the social costs: and that at
least six months notice of such
closure be given to unions and
communities.

What needs to be added to the
good proposals in this resolution
is that the government would step
in and take the plants over and run
them as public enterprises if they
were serving a good and useful
purpose.

The slogan. of organized labor
needs to be, no plant closures, no
mass layoffs, jobs and job protec-
tion for all Canadians.

In the spirit of ‘‘collective ac-
tion’ proposed by Canadian
Labor Congress president Dennis
McDermott, at the CLC conven-
tion in May, it would be indeed
timely for the CLC to organize a
mass lobby on Ottawa this fall.

Everything proves that work-
ers are ready to fight for their night
for a job and decent income. It is
certainly time to hear ffom the
CLC and all provincial labor
federations. ~

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPT. 5, 1980—Page 5