LABOR Trail—front-line figh The 5,000 Steelworkers at Cominco operations in Trail and Kimberly have staf- fed the picket lines in a front-line battle against concessions. At press time Wednesday union and company negotiators were deep in negotia- tions. While there is talk of progress in the _ talks, a news blackout has been imposed. But union officials agreed that the strike in the two southeastern B.C. cities — which received a 94-percent vote of ap- proval — will be a long one, if the talks break off. At issue are the concessions that Comin- co, which has claimed losses in the lead- zinc mining and smeltering operation dur- ing the past 15 months, wants to exact from the workers, members of Local 480 of the United Steelworkers. Union members have vowed to stay out rather than accept company demands for rollbacks in the cost-of-living adjustment and pensions. The COLA was the result of a bard foat strike during four months in 1974, Additionally, Cominco has demanded a two-year contract with no wage increase in the first year, and a ‘‘modest’? COLA in the second year. The company has also demanded a 58-cent-an-hour wage cut, a demand they reportedly abandoned in talks which pick- ed up shortly before the commencement of strike action Monday. Cominco spokesmen have claimed losses, but Steelworkers officials note the company engaged in costly expansion and modernization measures recently. The USWA District 3 strike fund and the international strike fund will pay $40 weekly to the strikers, and committees to establish food programs have been set up. Union negotiators have been asking for a one-year contract, with a six-percent pay hike and improved cost-of-living and benefit plans. : Local 480 president Ken Georgetti said recently that the current talks have achiev- ed more in the last three days than had been achieved in three months of bargaining prior to the strike action. Georgetti has been vocal in resisting repeated company demands for conces- sions. Georgetti also faces a struggle of hisown on another front. One week before the t against rollbacks strike deadline, he was charged, along with several other people by the RCMP, with in- volvement in a cocaine and marijuana smuggling operation. Geogetti, whose offer to resign as presi- dent was unanimously rejected by the Local 480 executive, told the CBC televi- sion in interviews that he was the victim ofa set-up ‘“‘and I’d like to know who’s respon sible.” The Local 480 president said he was not guilty of the charge, and ‘‘T’ll be found not guilty”’ when the trial date comes up. The trial date is not expected for at least six months, and is possibly as long as tw0 years away, prompting speculation as t0 the reason Georgetti was arrested during such a crucial period for the local. an ‘Unionists must act to control high-tech’ For workers, the growth of high technology industry and computerization has meant shrinking job opportunities, a loss of control over job functions — and the pro- spect of major “‘technological unemploy- ment,”’ unless the labor movement takes ac- tion, participants in a union conference on technological change were told this week. And according to one study presented to the conference, the effects have already been demonstrated among workers at B.C. Telephone Company — and the future looks even more ominous as the pace of technological change quickens. _ . The three-day conference was organized by the Telecommunications Workers’ Union, which represents B.C. Tel workers and brought together leading authorities in the field from across the continent including John Madden, the developer of Telidon, Dr. Wassily Leontiev, a New York-based economist and Nobel Laureate, as well as Dr. Margaret Benston and Dr. Theodore Sterling, both professors at Simon Fraser University. It was still in progress at Tribune press time, with participants from a variety of unions wrestling with many of the issues in a series of workshops. For many of those unions — the TWU, Office and Technical Employees, Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks, Canadian Union of Postal Workers among them — the problems are immediate and urgent, with many already having lost significant sections of their membership as a result of automation and computerization. And, according to Dr. Benston, who has done considerable research on the effects of new technology on occupations in which women are the main work force, that resulting unemployment must compel unionists to ask: who benefits? Contrary to the rosy predictions of a new. computer age, she noted, ‘‘computerization is not here to make life pleasant or work easier, but rather to make a profit, to in- ~ crease productivity and to increase manage- ment control.” She cited studies which indicate that anywhere up to 40 percent of office workers will be made redundant through com- puterization. But ‘‘what happens isn’t inevitable — we don’t have to accept it,”’ she added, urging unionists take action to strive to ensure that the benefits accrue to all society, not just to the corporate sector. RIBUNE B.C. Tel worker Phil Zander takes to the microphone to tell Telidon owner John Mad- den that despite the computer executive's rosy vision of a high-tech future, ‘working people aren't benefitting from the cheaper way of producing things.’ Several other trade unionists also told of layoffs resulting from high techn ology in the workplace. A challenge to what he called the ‘‘op- timistic forecasts of management speakers and soothsayers’’ was also voiced by Dr. Theodore Sterling, a professor of computer science at SFU, who heads his own research firm. Although he did not name them, among those soothsayers are Socred minister Don Phillips and Pat McGeer who have touted high technology industry in this provinceasa major source of employment. But statistics in the U.S. suggest that such hopes are unfounded, he said. He cited a 1978 University of Michigan study which showed that from 1968 to 1978, some 100,000 jobs were lost in General Motors alone because of automation — jobs that forecasters had hoped would be absorb- ed in high-tech industry. “That hope was without foundation,” he ‘said. “‘Again, comparing the same boom years, 1968 to 1978, the share of payroll for electronic manufacturers in the state of California declined from 4.1 percent in 1968 to 3.1 percent in 1978. “Certainly the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost so far and in the future in tradi- tional industrial manufacturing are not go- ing to be picked up by high-tech industry READ Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive, q Vancouver, B.C. VBL-3X9 Phone 251-1186 b THE PAPER THAT FIGHTS FOR LABOR 1am enclosing: 1 yr. $140 2 yrs.$2507 6mo.$80 Foreign 1 year $15 0 | Bill me tater 1) Donation §............ P.O 2 2 ES SP LF SF AE BY BS LE LP LE SD EF LF La . PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 17, 1983—Page 12 which itself is looking at declining employ- ment.”’ That has also been demonstrated in Japan, considered the centre of high-tech in- dustry, Sterling emphasized. ‘‘The Kanagawa Prefecture is the centre of high tech industry in Japan, similar to California. Here the share of payroll of high tech employees slipped from 41 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 1980. “Again we see a devastating decline in employment at a time when the Japanese high-tech industry was at the booming best,”’ he declared. With Sterling were two of his research associates, Rick Gordon and Ken Hanson who have prepared a study for the TWU on the impact on union members of B.C. Tel’s decision to move its Vernon operation to Kelowna and centralize operations in a new regional communications centre. The two researchers also conducted a study of B.C. Tel, demonstrating the poten- tial loss of jobs, the ‘‘deskilling”’ of the work force and the enhancement of management control that are direct results of com- puterization. (A full report of the research will be carried in next week’s issue.) - One TWU member from Nanaimo gavea graphic example of the potential job loss, - noting that asa result of thenew GTD-5 elec- tronic switch, slated to be installed next February, 18 workers will lose their jobs, leaving only five people on a job which once required 23. And that decline in employment is, in fact, the history of technological change, ’ declared Dr. Wassily Leontiev, emphasizing that “‘the role of men and women in produc- tion has been declining.’’ In a lengthy and often witty address to the conference, Leontiev noted that ‘‘to be very cold-blooded about it, what is happening is the same as happened to horses when trac- tors were introduced. “But,”” he emphasized, “‘if horses! been members of the union, the story have been entirely different.”’ A Nobel Prize winner in economics an authority on the employment eff technological change, Leontiev is a known advocate of a reduced work and joint labor-management-gove cooperation to work out solutions to blems of technological change. And returmed to those themes in his address day. ; “If we look ahead 50 years from now; can foresee shorter working hours, lon vacations and more leisure time,”’ he sa “‘However,”’ he cautioned, ‘‘that will difficult to achieve. And it won’t be achi through a market system.”’ 3 But, if society can produce suffid goods without workers working as long they do now, ‘then the work week can reduced, Leontiev said. According to his proposal, the loss i come from reduced hours would # necessarily be made up through incr é wages but rather by an ‘incomes poli which would supplement the incomes workers through provision of free social vices and other benefits. ; “We must look seriously for a way tol crease income distribution with redu@ hours,” he said. Leontiev also drew heavily on the exam) of Austria where, he argued, the reseal! carried. out by the Institute of So@ Economic Studies and the cooperation ™ ween labor, employers and governmé! “they succeeded in introducing ™ technology without major upheaval.”’ _ That has been thrown in to questid! - however, by the recent defeat of the Soci®® Party government in Austria. Even bef! that, Austrian statistics since showed 1? showed a decline in the workers’ share of ® tional income. WASSILY LEONTIEV . . . reduced Ny key to ‘technological unemployme™