EDITORIAL

Support NAPE strikers

As Fraser March, president of the Newfoundland
Association of Provincial Employees (NAPE) so elo-
quently put it, Newfoundland Premier'Brian Peckford
is sitting on a volcano.

When it explodes, shock waves should rumble right
across Canada. At the heart of this historic confronta-
tion are the pent-up frustrations of public sector
workers throughout the country, fed up with being
used as a battering ram by big business governments
to roll back the general living standards of all Cana-
dian workers.

The NAPE strikers are in the same boat as govern-
ment employees in B.C. currently battling for their
jobs and a new contract, and with Saskatchewan’s
public sector workers, whose strike this winter against

concessions was crushed by still another provincial

Tory government.

NAPE, its 14,000 members, and the entire trade
union movement in the province are on the front lines
of labor’s battle to block the big business, neo-
conservative agenda to privatize, deregulate, and dis-
mantle the social benefits and services Canadian
workers fought so long and hard to win.

While the capitalist media looks on, horrified by the
possibility of a general strike, there is a grudging

The nuclear

In August, 1985, the USSR announced a unilateral
nuclear test ban to run until Dec. 31, 1985 and invited
the United States to join with it. It proposed a system
of verification, including on-site inspection, thus re-

moving an issue American negotiators had constantly °

raised as a stumbling block to a test ban agreement.

When the time ran out, the USSR extended its ban
until March 31, 1986 and continued to press the Rea-
gan administration to follow suit. Banning nuclear
testing, the Soviet Union argues, would be an impor-
tant first step toward what both it and the United
- States told the world they are seeking — a world
without wars and weapons.

In Geneva both leaders spoke of disarmament and
scaling down: dangerous nuclear arsenals. At that
time, in November, 1985, the USSR had ceased its
tests, while the Americans accelerated their program.
Two months earlier, the USSR had presented a com-
prehensive plan to the United Nations to ban all
military activity in space — “Star Peace, not Star
Wars,” it told the world body.

Then, on Jan. 15, 1986, Soviet leader Gorbachev ~

outlined a stunning three-stage proposal to rid the
world of all nuclear wepoans over the next 15 years.

America’s response to every Soviet peace initiative
over the past eight months has been negative.

admission that Bill 59 — the law denying NAPE
members the right to strike thorugh a process of
designating most of them as “essential” — is too
repressive.

Yet their call is for NAPE to end its strike in the vain
hope negotiations will resume. Gone is the passion for
the right to strike many of these same voices expressed
when they demanded “free” trade unions in Poland.

Faced with the choice of obeying a law to buttress
corporate greed and privilege, or taking action to
defend their own living standards, the NAPE strikers
are opting to put their families’ welfare ahead of
Reaganomics, Peckford style.

Their resistance should attract massive support not -

only within Newfoundland but throughout the coun-
try. The jailing of NAPE members and the arrest of
Canadian Labor Congress executive member John
Fryer on the NAPE picket line is a challenge from the
Tory government to every worker from St. John’s to
Vancouver Island.

The explosion developing under Peckford could
deal a heavy blow to the neo-conservative agenda for
Canada.’ With full CLC backing, a victory in New-
foundland could help set the stage for turfing out the
Tories throughout the rest of the country.

tests issue

Washington has all but rejected Gorbachev’s plan, it_
has pressed ahead with its Star Wars program, and it
continues nuclear testing.

Thus, while the world heard both leaders speak of
peace and disarmament, it sees the USSR putting
forward proposal after proposal and ending tests; and
it sees the Reagan administration bargaing ahead with
its record peacetime build-up in a desperate effort to
achieve military superiority.

As March 31 approaches, the Soviet Union has
again responded to the world desire for disarmament
by once more extending its test ban. It’s difficult to
imagine a U.S. administration, especially this one,
behaving in such a patient and responsible manner.

The latest Soviet offer extends its ban until such
time as the U.S. conducts its next nuclear test, placing
the responsibility for the direction this world takes
squarely on the U.S. In so doing, Soviet leader Gorba-
chev added this note of warning: “We cannot extend it
unilaterally in perpetuity.”

For Canadians, who will not escape destruction ina
nuclear war, how the U.S. responds to this latest
Soviet initiative is a vital matter. Ottawa should tell
Reagan that we're not indifferent, that Canada urges
he stop testing and get down to serious negotiations at
Geneva.

PECKFORD SICS HIS PpoGs >
“ON STRIKERS

Jy Woe Bao

Carpets must be big. Claiming a 1985 three-month profit of $35,00
Harding Carpets Ltd., Brampton, Ontario, reports its three mo

. profit this year at $1,257,000. Fast math gives this company a prolly)

increase of 3,400 per cent. It’s anyone’s guess whether Harding?
employees received a 3,400 per cent wage boost. a

~ IRIBUNE 1

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Second class mail registration number 1560

ading through the verbiage of Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney’s speeches
and interviews is usually about as inspiring
as contemplating last week’s congealed

People and Issues

lishment of the United Fishermen an
Allied Workers, of which Peter was
founding member.

Active in the union’s Fort Langley local

gravy. But every so often, there’s some-
thing that makes it all worthwhile.

Take for example, his comments on free
trade, made during the Tory leadership
race and subsequently quoted by the
Financial Times Sept. 30, 1985.

“Free trade with the United Sates,” he
said, “‘is like sleeping with an elephant. It’s
terrific until the elephant twitches. And if it
ever rolls over, you’re a dead man. ~

“And I am going to tell you when he’s
going to roll over. He’s going to roll over
in times of economic depression and
they’re going to crank up those plants in
Georgia and North Carolina and Ohio
and they’re going to be shutting them
down up here.”

A couple of years later, Mulroney’s
metaphors — and his views — have
headed off in another direction. In an
interview with the Financial Post Feb. 22,
1986, he declared: ““When (free trade)
ambassador Simon Reisman sits down to
begin the process of negotiating the deal
with the U.S., you will hear a call to great-
ness that will stir the soul of this country.”

All of which leads to the question: Is the
“call” that Mulroney refers to that of the
elephant who’s just started twitching — or
is it that of the victim on whom the ele-
phant is about to roll over?

eaders looking over last week’s issue

will have seen the report of the var-
ious agreements that unions have secured
in the food. industry and elsewhere to
ensure that their employers don’t handle
South African products. There was one
small but notable contract that we didn’t
have space to note, however.

It has been signed by the hotel workers’
local of the Canadian Association of Indus-
trial, Mechanical and Allied Workers and
Versa Services, a management company
which provides food and other services to
seniors’ housing complexes in Vancouv-
er’s Downtown Eastside. The contract,
which has only to be approved now by the
city of Vancouver, commits the employers
“not to buy or use products from South
Africa,” and gives workers the right to

' refuse to handle any products made by, or

distributed from South Africa.

Uniquely, the clause is to remain in
effect “as long as South Africa has a
government that is not elected on the prin-
ciple of one person one vote and practises
apartheid.”

* * *

ape are few people who are able to put
off their retirement until the age of 80

and even then continue for another decade
and more in political activity. But for Peter
Cordoni, a supporter of the Tribune from
its inception 51 years ago, that was the
hallmark of a long and active life.

That life came to a quiet end March 8 as
Peter passed away in Maple Ridge Hospi-
tal at the age of 92.

Born in Teramo, Italy Oct. 7, 1893, he
came to the U.S. with his father in 1911
and joined other immigrants in working
on highway construction before moving,
five years after, to what is now Thunder
Bay.

ik 1926, he moved to British Columbia
and, after a stint as a logger in Maple
Ridge, began what was to become a life-
long commitment to the fishing industry
and to militant unionism.

As a Fraser River gillnetter, he became
active in the Upper Fraser Fishermen’s
Protective Association, working there to
help organize the Pacific Coast Fisher-
men’s Union asa militant voice for gillnet-
ters and trollers. In 1936 he also acted as a
courier for the Fishermen and Cannery
Workers Union during the historic Rivers
Inlet strike although the principle of indus-
trial unionism uniting all workers in the
industry for which it stood was not to be

~ finally achieved until 1945 with the estab-

from its inception, he served on t
UFAWU bargaining committee and wa
a frequent convention delegate, virtually
until his retirement in 1973.
The understanding gained during hi
years as a roadbuilder, logger and fisher- |
men led him in 1932 to join the Commu:
nist Party in whose ranks he remaine
throughout his life. He was a member 0
the party’s Correspondence Club at th
time of his death. F 3
He was also a longtime member of the
B.C. Peace Council and it was his family’
request that, in lieu of flowers, donatio
be made to the council or to End the Arms
Race. |=
Former UFAWU president Homer |
Stevens paid tribute at a memorial service ||
held at the Garden Hill Funeral Chapel in ||
Maple Ridge March 14.

ee ee
W: don’t put mistakes in our paper

just to see if readers will catch
them — honestly. Because we’re human.
they just happen.

So it was last week when we incorrectly
identified a Haida elder in our front page
photo caption as “Eva Yanovich.” In fact,
the person pictured was Haida elder Ada

Yavonovich. Our apologies.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 26, 1986