By LIZ ROWLEY
__ HAGERSVILLE, Ont. — It’s
dark, a little on the cool side still,
5:30 in the morning, Nov. 22.
| About 50 Steelworkers mainly
| from the Hilton and Lake Erie
| Plants are on their way to this tiny
Community about 30 miles
North-west of Hamilton to help
| Out their brothers at Canadian
Gypsum, who are now entering
| the 71st day of strike action.
| They’re on strike because the
| Company owned by the giant U.S.
| multi-national Domtar, has re-
i to negotiate with the four-
} Man bargaining committee set up
| after the new Steelworkers local
_ Was certified in March. The com-
Pany has never even sat down
_ With the union and when in early
_ September, close to 90% of the
Workers voted for strike action,
Canadian Gypsum responded by

The number one enemy of or-
8anized labor in Canada today is
_ System of state-monopoly
Capitalism and its war on the living
Standards of the working class
and all working people.

It is this which threatens the
trade union. movement. with
destruction unless it unites to beat
back the monopoly offensive and

_ thereby transforms the situation
Into a counter-offensive for a
Shorter work week, jobs, rising
Standards and extension of

r’s rights.
For us today in Canada, the
anger to our trade unions does

_ Not reside in the left spectrum of

anadian politics, or in the
Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism
and its objectives which have
tverything to do with the well-
ing of Canadian workers, con-

y to the red-bating editorial
aN ed in the Toronto Star on
ok 1979. This is so regardless
bu © Occasional infantile out-
is Tsts_of so-called ‘“‘ultra-left-
aa which is the philosophy of
rate Course ois despair, an aber-
“ 10n of Marxism-Leninism and
ae of the working-class
_ Sophy which challenges

Oribund bourgeois philosophy
tio has constituted the founda-

On of the socialist and commu-

we Movements for almost a cen-
Ury and a half.

‘Red-neck Ideology

The biggest danger to the work-

a en and its trade union
lanes in Canada today
ashe from the ultra-right in our
i ana Spectrum. This red-neck
ea O8y reacts to the crisis of the
Nc Syn system by a systematic
€rmining of bourgeois democ-
Gace Seeking a way out of the
. SIS at the expense of the work-
Class and by means of fascism

thre war. Those of us who lived

- say Bh the 1920s and 1930s and
ie the rise of fascism and its
n West the Second World

» know what that means. That

Cost more than 55 million

Tenalties. Another war — nuc-
Neen time — would in all likeli-

destroy human civilization..

Steel battles Gypsum
for first contract

rounding up hundreds of scabs
and then calling in the Ontario
Provincial Police and regional
police to herd them through the
picket line.

Even the local parish priest was
given his prescribed task in this
cémpany’s vendetta of union
busting and intimidation: it was
the Rev. Father Joe Eliens of St.
Mary’s Church that signed the
lease authorizing the company to
use the parish parking lot to load
scabs into the waiting buses, even
though members of the church
and staff at the separate school
next door are unhappy about it.
Rev. Eliens remains unavailable
for comment despite attempts by
the union, and today by the
Tribune to get in touch with him.

Collaboration with the boss it
seems, has become literally ‘“‘un-
speakable’’.

Fortunately for us, such a war
can be avoided, thanks to the
growing strength of the world’s
working class and its achieve-
ment of a great maturity and a
higher political consciousness.
This is exemplified in the growth
of.the world’s socialist sector, the
advance of the anti-imperialist na-
tional liberation movements, plus
the great and growing struggles to
defeat the monopoly offensive on
the living standards and rights of
the working people of the ad-
vanced capitalist countries.

The problems to be overcome
do not include a growing mili-
tancy and the political left within
the labor movement. On the con-
trary, a most serious problem to
be overcome ‘is right-wing class
collaboration that feeds the
monopoly offensive and under-
mines the unity and solidarity of
the trade union movement and,

-between the working class and all

other democratic anti-monopoly
forces in our society.

What has to be overcome is the
poisonous doctrine of tri-partism
that rejects the anti-monopoly
struggle and strives for peaceful
co-existence on the ideological
front of the class struggle at the
expense of the working class and
the vital interests and rights of its
trade union movement, including
its right to strike,as determined by
the Quebec Convention of the
Canadian Labor Congress in
1978.

In his latest outburst of anger
against his critics the president of
the CLC, Dennis McDermott,
chooses to ignore the right
opportunist danger and con-
centrates all his fire on a relatively
insignificant number of “‘ultra-
left’ elements whom he credits
with some mysterious power to
manipulate and destroy the labor
movement and the country. “‘If
these people are on the march, we
are going to have to put them to
death.” (See above mentioned

Toronto Star editorial.)
Fanning the Flames

Critical of McDermott’s ‘‘over-
statement”’ of his cause and warn-
ing against polarizing the trade

‘The real enemy
of working people

The use of police as strikebreakers is a common occurance across the country as the photos here and
below indicate. Canadian Gypsum is making good use of their “law enforcers” to disrupt strike action by

Steelworkers in Hagersville, Ont.

At 6:15 a.m. the Hamilton
Steelworkers’ cavalcade arrive at
the church and are warmly wel-
comed by striking pickets.

The job is to stop the scabs and
stop production in the plant.

union movement by advocacy of
a general ideological house-
cleaning by making honest dissent
appear to be political subversion,
the Star’s editorial nevertheless
sought to exacerbate hard feelings
between the Canadian Union of
Public Employees and the CLC
by highlighting McDermott’s per-
sonal attack on the CUPE leader.

Similarily the Globe and Mail
headlined McDermott’s  state-
ment on its front page with em-
phasis on a “‘rift’’ with CUPE. In
Wilfred List's story, reference is
made to the contest for the presi-
dency of the Saskatchewan Fed-

eration of Labor at its recent con-'

vention in Saskatoon, inferring
‘that the close but unsuccessful
fight to defeat Nadine Hunt, *‘a
CUPE member and staunch sup-
port of the NDP, backed by the
CLC’’, was the work ofa new and
revolutionary left. The point is
also made that the demand for

McDermott’s resignation came -

from CUPE’s local of Montreal
municipal workers, and could
lead:to CUPE’s withdrawal from
the CLC.

It is clear that the monopoly-
controlled press has seized upon
McDermott’s statement to fan the
flames of what it perceives as a
potentially dangerous internal rift
inside the ranks-of the CLC. The
hope in this regard seems to rest
upon a maximum utilization of
political instability and contra-
dictions, including the national

question, the regional disparity of |

development, and the inequality
between the employees in the
public and private sectors of the
Canadian economy.

What the trade union move
ment needs, and must fight for with
all its might at this time, is unity in
its own ranks and _ solidarity
around an anti-monopoly prog-
ram of action to win new policies.
Such policies must come to grips
with the crisis of monopoly and
begin to solve this crisis at the
expense of the huge profits and
power of the _ corporate
establishment. This is what every
responsible trade union leader
must be called upon to do.

“So far,’ said Brian Birch one
of the striking workers, ‘‘they’ve
only got the mine working during
the day shift. They can’t get it
working steady and it’s hurting
them.”

A car drives up and the pickets

move in to tell the guy it’s a strike.

“‘Don’t scab, we’re trying to get a
contract here, go home, don’t
scab on us.’’ The car backs up
and drives away; acheer goes up.
Another car drives up and this
time the OPP moves in. ‘‘Let him
through; get out of the way!” the
cop says. The car goes through.
At 7:00 a.m. the pickets move
to the main plant. A dozen OPP

. are waiting with four attack dogs,

half a:dozen cruisers and a paddy
wagon. ‘‘Hey it’s stoop and
scoop,’’ somebody yells and it’s a
little warmer. ‘‘Nothing comes
out (of the plant) without the
cops’, says picket captain Bob
Clark. ‘‘ Dispatch has to call a cop
to move the stuff out.’’ Do they
come? ‘‘They work for the com-
pany’’, somebody says and
everybody laughs. ‘“‘They can’t
intimidate us — that’s what the
dogs are for — but we won’t be
intimidated,’’ says Birch.

A car full of scabs arrives and
suddenly two cops have Andy
Anderson from Local 1005 in an
arm lock. He’s been arrested for
‘mischief’ says OPP Corporal
Brown. For what? For telling a
scab not to.

He’s escorted to the paddy
wagon and hauled off to the local
lockup, amid jeers.

‘*Five men were arrested, three
day ago’’, says Bob Mann, also

from 1005, ‘‘and others before
that too. The cops were really
pounding us that day. There were
100 guys here. We almost stopped
the scabs getting through.”

What brought this all about?
Why is this company going to so
much trouble, why is a big multi-
national working so-hard to bust
this comparatively small local in
the middle of rural Ontario?

‘*They built a new line, a board
line in June. They moved every-
body over and cut our rates. They
made us work 70 hours a week
and cancelled our holidays. There
were lots of accidents but they
wouldn’t go to compensation, this
guy with a broken foot — they
told him to come in anyway,
they're so god damn concerned
with their accident record they
don’t give a damn about their
employees. We had to do some-
thing. We had enough.”

They had to get a union and
now they're trying to get a con-
tract.

It’s a tough one ‘‘but we’re get-
ting lots of help from all the Steel
locals in the area,”’ say Steel rep
Doug McFarlane. *‘We may go
further than that for help if we

have to,”’ he says. ‘‘So far the

response is very good.”’

Just before leaving I asked if
anybody knows a scab with a
license number C21 738. ‘“‘Why?”’
someone asked. ‘‘ Because he de-
liberately aimed his truck at two
of the pickets,’’ I said. ‘‘Pic-
kup?”’, ‘“Yah that’s right’. ‘‘Oh,
he does that all the time’’. *‘Oh’’,
I say.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 30, 1979— Page 5