ISS Oy Sees > aor ae labor By MIKE PHILLIPS TORONTO — Canada’s largest labor council voted unanimously, April 4 to back the Canadian Labor Congress in its efforts to encourage local building trades unions to affiliate directly to the CLC. Delegates to the Labor Council of Metro Toronto paid close attention to secretary Peter Hitchen as he read an executive board statement which detailed the background to the dispute between the CLC and the Canadian leaders of the 12, U.S.-run international building trades unions who face suspension from the congress, April 30 for non-payment of dues. Representing the council’s 160,000 members, the delegates voted to ‘endorse the actions taken by the CLC,” urged the council to ‘‘immediately look at ways and means of getting construction locals and organizations affiliated to the Cana- dian Labor Congress.”” — The council will do this by circulating a brief version of the executive’s background paper to all building tades union members in the Metro area and will co-operate organization- ally and financially with the provincial campaign through the Ontario Federation of Labor to get building trades locals to affiliate to the CLC. : In Ontario, the federation has launched an information campaign aimed at bringing the issues to the rank and file of the building trades. Some 80,000 leaflets and hard hat stickers are being circulated at local union meetings and on job sites in an effort to do what the intemational roadmen have consistently refused to do throughout their fight to blackmail the congress into gutting the democratic structure of the Canadian labor movement — let the rank and file know what is going on. The decision, last April to withhold per capita payments to the congress was made by the roadmen without any authoriza- a or consultation with the grass roots members who pay the In its April 2 decision, the Metro Labor council also commit- ted itself to helping with the distribution of all CLC materials to Toronto building trades workers, and to explore the possibil- ity of organizing a joint meeting with the Toronto-Central Ontario Building Trades Council to invite CLC president De- nnis McDermott, and International Brotherhood of Electrical ‘Workers, (IBEW) Canadian vice-president Ken Rose to de- bate the issues in this critical struggle. Rose is the leader of the building trades’ move to split away from the CLC and set up another labor central. If it comes off, the Rose-McDermott meeting will be the third such event being planned so far. On April 15, the Hamilton-Brantford building trades council is planning to have McDermott and a building trades representative share the platform for such a debate. The Toronto-Central On- tario council is also trying to stage a meeting April 13 with OFL ident Cliff Pilkey and a building trades leader. So far Pilkey and McDermott have agreed to take part in the debates while the building trades haven't said yes or no. Meanwhile, the roadmen have been criss-crossing the coun- try laying down the law to local building trades union business agents executives and representatives. Significantly they aren't talking to the rank and file, and in Ontario a lot of pressure, including threats of trusteeship and other constitu- tional and disciplinary measures against local executives and officers are being applied to make them toe the line. Wally Majesky, president of the Metro labor council, and a delegate from IBEW Local 353, summed up the current situa- tion when he said the labor movement was at a crossroads. Personally, after 30 years of activity in the building trades, Majesky said he found it very difficult to have to take sides on the issue against his union. “But, I've finally come to the conclusion that the Ken Roses of this world aren't in tune with what’s happening in this country”’, he said. ‘‘We have no other way to go but with the PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 17, 1981—Page 6 backs ongress CLC, we're at acrossroads for the trade union movement, five ortenyears down the roadwe' re going to havea different kind of trade union movement.”’ _ Speaking as a member of the CLC executive council and as Canadian co-director of the Amalgamated Clothing and Tex- tile Workers Union, former council president Sam Fox ac- cused the building trades leaders of wanting to destroy the democratic essence of the structure of the Canadian labor movement. es What is at issue, Fox said, was the question of whether ‘local union members (will) have the guiding power over the life of the trade union movement in Canada, or will inter- ~ national roadmen have supreme authority in all matters?” As a member of the congress executive council he said he had heard the building trades leaders tell the CLC the bottom line issue for them was the structure. Plumbers delegate Chris Thurrot said that democracy is the issue in the current fight because of the kind of leadership building trades workers have been getting from the inter- national officers. : ‘*Most of the traditional craft unions’, Thurrot said, ‘‘are losing their grip. They're losing their grip on their own mem- bership, and they're losing their grip on the realities of the work situation.”” ° He outlined the type of information campaign the OFL is launching to inform rank and file building trades members about what the CLC has done for them in the past and is continuing to do for them. Recalling the battle at Boise Cas- cade and the money raised by the CLC and the OFL in support: of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union, Thurrot noted, “I’m not sure how many of you realize that Boise-Cascade workers are members of Lumber and Saw and also member of the Carpenters union and they will be out on their ass as well on April 30 because of McCambly and Rose,” he said. ~ “ Radio Canada continued. . FIRM’S STRIKE PLANS of the 475 workers were to be laid off for as Motors recently shut down for a few ‘ SFL CO-SPONSORS CHILE MEET REGINA — The Saskatchewan Feder- — ation of Labor and the Regina Chilean As- sociation co-sponsored a conference on || Trade Union and Human Rights in Chile | — April 11. The one-day conference was ad- || dressed by Rolando Calderon, a former | minister in the government of Salvador — Allende and Oscar Munoz representing | ‘the co-ordinating body inside Chile of | trade union bodies, CNS. Other speakers — included Javier Sandoval of the Canadian — Labor Congress’ international affairs de- | partment, and Joan Duerr, executive sec- | — retary of the Co-ordinating Committee for | - Solidarity with Democratic Chile. a JOURNALISTS SHUT DOWNDEDEVOIR MONTREAL — Some 35 journalists | _ from Le Devoir have joined Quebec CBC | workers on the picket lines, in separate | contract disputes. The journalists went on — strike April 6 protesting management's re- | fusal to negotiate around the union's con- tract proposals. The strike followed a | warning by the union to Le Devoir man- | agement two weeks earlier that unless the || workers’ demands were seriously answered, a strike would take place. The ]|| "strike also turned off another French lan- | guage news source during the last week of | the provincial election campaign, as the | six-month-old strike by jounralists at. | CAUSELAYOFF sy -. OSHAWA — Duplate Canada Inc. “signed a new three-year contract with its | workers represented by the United Auto — Workers, then told.them that almost half - long as three months. The layoffis caused | by the company’s three-month stockpiling | of production as they prepared for a strike 7 that didn’t materialize. When General | weeks, the auto glass manufacturer was. | stuck with the high inventory it was going — to use to fight the strike. Now the workers — are being made to suffer because they | didn’t go on strike. Daycare shortage a scanda Special to the Tribune SUDBURY — “I think Sud- bury has serious problems’’, On- tario Federation of Labor presi- dent Cliff Pilkey said here, April - 4. Pilkey was speaking at a press conference ‘held just prior to the fourth in a series of OFL- sponsored forums on daycare throughout Ontario entitled The president of the 800,000- member federation was referring to Sudbury’s $6.37 per capita ex- penditure on daycare, a far cry from the $20.50 per capita spend in Thunder Bay where the OFL forum was held the previous day. Pilkey stated that after all of the forums are held, it will be up to the OFL to pull together all the information received, then pre- sent the findings to Premier Wil- liam Davis and Keith Norton, the Tory minister of Community and Social services for Ontario. Then Pilkey said, the labor movement will have to keep prodding and provoking (the Tory government) until they make a larger alloca- tions for daycare.”” Briefs were submitted by more than a dozen groups at the forum. The almost unanimous theme was a demand for more accessible public daycare. One daycare worker presented her views ofthe inadequate salaries which aver- age in the $9,000 a year range. A member of the audience com- mented that most daycare work- ers couldn’t afford their own ser- vices. Se On behalf of the Sudbury District Labor Council, Miriam Bordofsky drew the panel’s atten- tion to the struggle for daycare as being partand parcelofthestrug- gle against social service cut- backs. ‘‘We are now faced with four years of a majority Tory govern- ment’’, she said. ‘‘There is no reason to believe that their policies will change to the benefit of working people of Ontario in — the next four years. ‘the wage controls fight and the - then our society must provide the “Every labor council, every trade union must do its best to ensure that the government at Queen’s Park hears from the labor movement — loud and clear’, the labor council brief stated in urging the OFL to back its campaign with the same kind of mass action displayed around recent Oct. 18 rally against plant shutdowns. The brief also noted that Sud- bury has the lowest incidence of women in the work force. An influx of women into the labor force, such as the 700 jobs soon to” begin at the federal government’s Taxation Data Centre, will create a further strain on existing day- care facilities. The brief concluded that “‘if women are to enter the work force on equal terms with men... services necessary to. allow both parents to go to work knowing that their children are being prop- erly cared for.”