LABOR

Beginning seen for
people's coalition

By MIKE PHILLIPS

OTTAWA — Dialogue 86 ended Jan.
14 and clearly demonstrated that for many
different groups throughout the country the
time is ripe for developing a sort of people’s
coalition against free trade and other big
business policies of the Mulroney govern-
ment.

While no formal agreement on the point
was reached, the call for enhancing the pro-
cess has already begun in various provinces
and communities, and the need for greater
communication and co-ordination right up
to the Canada-wide level were repeatedly
emphasized by a broad range of partici-
pants. Dialogue 86 gathered 95 individuals
representing 65 organizations and 40 per-
sons representing 40 labor groups.

Ironically, while the Canadian Labor
Congress is committed by convention reso-
lution to the formation of such broadly-
based coalitions, the CLC leadership was
largely silent and unresponsive to the
numerous interventions in the plenaries and
workshops which urged that Dialogue 86 be
considered as a platform from which to
launch the process.

It was clear in CLC president Dennis
McDermott’s opening remarks to the two
and one-half day gathering, that the Dia-
logue, as far as the congress was concerned,
would be more of an effort to continue the
process initiated by Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney’s economic summit last March
than a forum to develop a common strategy
to counter monopoly’s attack on the
people’s living standards, social conditions
and democratic rights.

Consumers Against Rising Prices spokes-
person Nan McDonald struck a responsive
chord» among the participants when she
proposed the development ‘of: a-“‘people’s
budget” to counter the Mulroney govern-
ment’s never-ending bonanza to the trans-
national corporations and the Canadian
corporate elite.

“If we want to be realistic at this Dia-
logue and come forward with good, strong
proposals for action, we not only have to
take into consideration our demands for full
employment, but bring forth the concept of
a people’s budget rather than one that suits
profits, free enterprise, and particularly the
transnationals,” she said.

One key role of the people’s budget, she
Stressed, “would be ‘to tell the Mulroney
government that Canada is: not for sale
because, in my opinion, that’s what free
trade is all about — the complete sellout of
Canada, lock, stock and barrel.”

McDonald went on to suggest that such a
budget would include the nationalization of
Canada’s natural resources as the base for
developing a job-intensive secondary manu-
facturing industry. ee

Tony Clarke of the Canadian Council of
Churches picked up.-on McDonald’s

proposal, calling it “‘the kind of thrust I
would hope we come out of this conference
with.” In the discussion on unemployment,
Clarke emphasized that Canadians were
now dealing with “a structural and perman-
ent reality,” calling forth a two-pronged
strategy of developing policy alternatives to
free trade and other planks in the big busi-
ness agenda, at the same time developing

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the means of supporting popular strategies
and organizations which aim to establish
democratic control over the economy:

This was an extension of a theme deve-
loped earlier during the conference by
Bishop Adolph Proulx of the Canadian
Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Proulx charged that working people, the
jobless and the poor in Canada have been
“disenfranchised” by the policies of a fed-
eral government that, he said, is pursuing a
“corporate business agenda.”

Economic democracy does not exist in
Canada, the Bishop declared. “The time has
come for the labor movement and com-
munity groups to develop new strategies for
social change. . .by helping to develop grass-
roots coalitions.”

Lynn Kaye, of the National Action
Committee 6n the Status of Women, also
stressed the need for the Dialogue to focus
on the development of coalitions as instru-
mental in bringing free trade to centre stage
as a specific focus of discussion at the con-
ference.

CLC vice-president. Dick Martin, who
chaired the two ad hoc, lunch hour sessions
on free trade, said it would be one of the
cornerstones of the forthcoming biennial
Congress convention this spring in Toronto.

Marjorie Cohen of NAC, described Can-
adian involvement with free trade as “a
lemming’s leap. . (from which) the country
would not survive as we would like it to.”

In addition to the devastation free trade
would have on Canadian manufacturing,
Cohen showed, such a policy would ravage
Canada’s service sector which employs 70
per cent of the work force. Free trade in this
sector, she noted, would stimulate U.S.
employment as that country also experien-
ces deindustrialization with the shifting of
capital to low-wage countries in search of
super-profits.

United Electrical Workers’ president
Dick Barry argued that free trade would
undermine Canadian sovereignty by inte-
grating Canadian economic, cultural and
foreign policy to that of the U.S. He reiter-
ated his earlier appeals during the confer-
ence along with other leaders such as
Alberta Federation of . Labor president
Dave Werlin and postal union leader Jean-
Claude Parrot, for the Dialogue to develop
a country-wide coalition that would mobil-
ize and warn the working people from one
of the country to the other of the dangers of
free trade.

AFL president Werlin said it was impor-
tant to discuss free trade in a coalition set-
ting and suggested that in the Dialogue
steering committee there was a useful for-
mat to lay the basis for such a formation.

“What’s spurring the U.S. toward free
trade is the same thing with respect to its
entire foreign policy. Canada is not much
different from Nicaragua as far as the Rea-
“an government is concerned, except that it

vants to take us over without firing a shot,”
Werlin said.

_ “Andina spcial way, free trade has to do
with the trillions the U.S. government wants
to spend on Star Wars. For Canada to rush
headlong into such an arrangement is like
jumping out.a lifeboat into the Titanic,”
Werlin concluded.

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Supporters from several union locals rallied outside the Centennial Hotel-
owned Fairview Saloon Jan. 17 to back the demands for reinstatement of 12
workers who were fired and to call for a boycott of the restaurant-pub until the
issue is resolved. Hotel management, ina move seen as reflective of a growing
trend, carried out extensive renovations and then offered re-employment to the
12 only on the condition that they sign away their seniority and support for their
union, the Canadian Hotel and Allied Workers. An unfair labor practice has
since, been filed before the Labor Relations Board. Union representative Roger
Crowther also told the rally that the management action is also linked to current
negotiations with the B.C. Hotels’ Association which has major concessions
on the table.

- contracts unilaterally. if no agreement 1s is

make, tabled demands Monday for —

~ echo the position
- taken by CLRA |

. demanded by CLRA range as hich, tit: =
some cases, as -$7an hour, while other :
contract concessions ‘sought would cut

_ overtime pay from double time to time-
: and-a-half; Vv
travel allowance; emasculate clauses giv- a3 ng
_ing union protection to job stewards;and
é push unions back to the 40-hour week

‘totally unacceptable’

2B. c ane Yokoi: Building “Trades —
Council president Roy Gautier warned
this week that Construction Labor Rela-
tions Association has issued “a declara-
tion of war” with its demand for massive
contract rollbacks and its notice to cancel

“qaded andther: twist: ‘the. letter’ givin,
~ notice of commencement of collective
bargaining also stated, “Please accept
this letter as the notice required under the
terms of the collective agreement to ter- | _
minate and cancel the agreement effec- es,
tive midnight Apr. 30, 1986.”
That threat to cancel existing agree-
ments if no new contract is signed by |
Apr. 30, follows an Oct. 2, 1985 Labor ]
Relations Board decision which gave
employers the right, under certain condi- |
tions, to cancel collective agreements un
laterally, opening the door to contracto
to take similar action to that taken

reached by Apr. 30.
CLRA, in a move many unionists
predicted the employers’ ‘group would ~

sweeping concessions to Building Trades
collective agreements, including $5 an
hour wage cuts, reductions in vacation
pay and statutory holidays, as well as an

_ increase in the work week to 40. DOUES, |

The demands In that province during th

: of negotiations, contractors

at the opening ‘Or

negotiations for
the last collective ©
agreement in 1984 —
although never —

reduced anes and Ssndion:
ally set by the employer.

In October last year, CLRA sent.
surveys to its member contractors outli
ing various bargaining options open to
them | in 4780, The option presented m:

has the scope of -
rollbacks demand-
ed been so exten-
sive, said Gautier.

The wage cuts

ROY GAUTIER

that it has now set out to ae that
formula Uns the necessary B.C. ame
statutory holidays from 14 to 11; cut tions, -

ually eliminate the daily :

for the first tim Ogre, than 20: “he

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