Labour

Labour Notes

Negotiate now,
Citation told

If Citation Industries can go on for
“months to come” losing $20,000 a day at
its strike-bound Richmond plant, it can cer-
tainly afford to negotiate a collective.
agreement with its employees, the business
agent for the industrial local of the Carpen-
ters said Wednesday.

Local 1928 business agent Dave Streb
was responding to remarks by Citation con-
troller Dean Willows who told a radio
reporter Tuesday that the company was los-
ing about: $20,000 a_day during the shut-
down “and (was) prepared to keep losing
money for months to come.” Willows said
that it was “up to the union to come up with
ideas to end the strike.”

“How about sitting down and negotiat-
ing a collective agreement? — that’s what
our members have been after for months,”
said Streb.

From the beginning of the strike July 13,
1988, Citation has applied to both the
courts and the Industrial Relations Council
for orders to halt picketing at the Richmond
plant. For several weeks last year, Citation
workers were in the eye of an industrial
relations storm following an IRC ruling
which stated that the strike was illegal —
because a collective agreement was sup-
posedly in effect — and ordered a halt to
picketing.

That ruling was subsequently overturned
on appeal but even before that time, the
issue created’a new controversy when B.C.
Supreme Court Justice William Trainor
refused to order court enforcement of the
original IRC ruling, arguing that to do so
would make the court a “‘rubber-stamp” of
the IRC. However, his decision was also
subsequently overturned on appeal.

Since that time, the dispute has twice
been back in the courts and before IRC
panels. In its latest decision, Dec. 2b, 1988,
the IRC ruled that the Carpenters were on
strike illegally between July 13 and Nov. |
because their original strike vote was not
supervised by the IRC. However, on Nov. 1,
with the sanction of the B.C. Federation of
Labour, the union took an IRC-supervised
vote and has been on a legal strike since that
date.

Citation has used the IRC ruling to
launch a massive suit for damages against
the local, claiming losses of $1.2 million plus
$20,000 per day. The case has been set for
January, 1990.

But the issue at stake is still a collective
agreement, said Streb, adding that the law-
suit will obviously be on the table.

The B.C. Fed sent out a appeal to its
affiliates last month, requesting financial
assistance for the Citation strikers.

Talks at crucial
stage at Leyland

Negotiations for a first contract at Ley-
land Industries in Pitt Meadows have
entered a “really critical stage,” [WA-
Canada Local 1-367 president Dave Tones
said this week.

“There’s a possibility for a settlement
— but we either get a collective agreement
by this weekend or it’s a long road,” Tones
told the Tribune in an interview Wednes-
day.

After five months on the picket line,
union members have been in intense nego-
tiations since December, trying to get an
agreement at the plastics bottle manufactur-
ing plant in the face of Bill 19 and the
restrictive curbs on picketing that it brought
in. Two days after the 60 IWA-Canada
members walked out on Sept. 14, a
Supreme Court injunction cut the number
of pickets and barred them from doing little
more than watching scab trucks go through
picket lines.

8 e Pacific Tribune, February 13, 1989

Jobs, shorter hours
back on the agenda

“This strike has really demonstrated
what this law has done — maybe you have
the right to strike but you can’t do anything
to make the strike effective,” Tones said.

The local president said that wages and
employer demands for exclusions from the
bargaining unit continue to be the main
issues in negotiations. Talks were scheduled
to continue this week.

The B.C. Federation of Labour issued a
hot declaration against the Pitt-Meadows-
based company last year and several pro-
ducts packed in Leyland containers,
including West canola oil and VIP pro-
ducts, are on the boycott list.

Free trade meet
set for Feb. 25

CLC executive vice-president Nancy
Riche is slated to be the keynote speaker at a
strategy conference on countering the
effects of the trade deal set for Feb. 25, 9
a.m. to 4 p.m. at Vancouver Community
College’s King Edward Campus.

Organizers of the
conference, the Coa-
lition against “Free”
Trade, are expecting
up to 150 represen-
tatives from church,
trade union, anti-
poverty and women’s
groups to take part.
It will be the prelude
to the national meet-
ing set for next
month by the Pro-
Canada Network. For more information,
call the coalition at 321-1202 or the Van-
couver and District Labour Council at
879-2421.

BCNI warned on
social programs

The cuts in spending on unemployment
insurance and social programs advocated
by business groups will only exacerbate the
problem in the economy and, in fact, are a
recipe for “economic disaster,” Carpenters
Provincial Council president Bill Zander
told the president of the Business Council
on National Issues.

RICHE

In a letter sent Jan. 24, Zander warned

BCNI president Tom D’Aquino that any
efforts “to undertake cutbacks in social
programs will be met with resistance.”

Zander was responding to comments
made by BCNI, as well as the Canadian
Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian
Manufacturers in calling on the newly-
elected Tory government to begin slashing
social spending. D’Aquino was quoted in
the Toronto Star as stating: “The problem
with the country is that we have too much
money tied up in a passive way. We’re pay-
ing people not to work. It drives me mad to
see billions used so non-productively.”

But if anyone is to talk about unproduc-
tive labour, then “take a look at the. . . land
speculators in real estate in Toronto and
Vancouver who, without an ounce of sweat,
make billions of dollars flipping property
without producing anything of value,”
Zander charged in his letter.

In addition, he noted, “the big business
friends you represent do not pay and have
not paid their fair share of taxes for many
years. In fact, even apart from direct grants
and gifts, tax havens such as deferred taxes
not paid by corporations in this country

* amount to $40 billion.”

He told D’ Aquino: “If you are representa-
tive — and I believe you are — of the neo-
conservative business community and the
large corporations, ... then your efforts to
undertake any cutbacks in social programs
will be met with resistance.”

“We are getting perestroika without
glasnost, without democracy,” Interna-
tional Association of Machinists presi-
dent William Winpisinger told delegates
to the British Columbia Federation of
Labour convention one week after the
federal elections last November.

The contrast is clear. The Soviets are
in the process of economic restructuring
that calls for the maximum participation
of all working people. It has its problems,
of course. Meanwhile, Canada and the
rest of the capitalist world are restructur-
ing with no input from workers.

Little did Canadians know what was
in store for them. Winpisinger was talk-
ing in general about the process of global
economic restructuring now underway
in the world capitalist system. The full
impact of this process here was felt with
the recent mergers at Molson-Elders and
PWA-Wardair, and Imperial Oil’s acquis-
ition of Texaco Canada.

A recent Financial *Post editorial
observed that “in major sectors in most
of the industrial world there is feverish
restructuring and positioning for the next
decade of fierce global competition.

“In Canada there are, thankfully,
many business leaders who don’t intend
that our country be left in the wake of
this activity, heading companies that are
too small and inefficient to grow and
prosper.”

Corporate and government spokes-
persons are repeatedly saying this is the
only way we can go because we have to
“compete” with the rest of the world.

Canadians are faced with a three-sided
attack. First is the closing down of prof-
itable plants that are moving to even
more profitable areas. Second come
corporate mergers that see big Canadian
companies becoming larger, throwing
workers out on the street. The last form
of this attack, as a result of the free trade
deal, is seen in the Canadian dollar mov-
ing to par with the American dollar. This
threatens all our exports to that country,
currently the destination of around 80
per cent of total Canadian exports.

Global economic restructuring is not
new; it is part of the capitalist system.
What is new is the speed of the process of
the centralization of capital, and the
impact of the scientific and technological
revolution. Workers suffer just the same.
They lose their jobs though rationaliza-
tion and structural unemployment aris-
ing from the introduction of new
technology in the work place.

How do workers respond to today’s
global restructuring? As reported last
week, the CLC has responded with a
six-point action plan. This is a good start.
One small problem in this program is
that it deals with the effects of restructur-
ing, not the cause.

Clearly, the trade union movement
has to continue to fight the trade deal.
But part of that fight will require dusting

LABOUR IN
ACTION

off some long-standing demands. It is
becoming more clear than ever that we
need a shorter work week.

Along with the restructuring and
rationalization, there is an absolute
increase in the exploitation of workers.
Employers are reaping the profits
through more productivity and a
reduced workforce.

In Europe a shorter work week has
been introduced. West German metal-
workers won a 37.5 work week, with
further agreement to come down to 35
hours.

Europe is part of the so-called world
competition we are supposed to be fac-
ing. A shorter work week would create
jobs and save jobs in the companies that
merge. If a shorter work week is good
enough for West Germans (many of the
same transnationals operating in Can-
ada operate there), it’s good enough for
Canadians.

This will not be as easy as it sounds,

_ but this approach is now back on the

agenda.

Another area that needs to be
addressed is the fight for jobs. Labour
must demand that for every job lost there
has to be one created at the same rate of
pay.

Adjustment programs and first-class
retraining are fine provided there are jobs
waiting at the end of the process. But
without such jobs, these programs will
only lead to a well-trained unemployed
work force. This large pool of unem-
ployed workers will be used to keep
wages down, and wherever possible force
the jobless to provide scab labour.

The only thing that has worked in the
past as a response to corporate centrali-
zation of the transnationals on a world
scale has been government action. Only
governments that have enough eco-
nomic and political clout to take on, or
take over the TNCs.

Previously, this has meant nationali-
zation, the setting up of Crown corpora-
tions and joint ventures by industry and
government. In this new round of global

restructuring this question of govern-~

ment intervention has to be put back on
the agenda. It also means at some point,
the coming to power of a government
that will carry though a program in the
interests of working people, and not
those of the TNCs.

§
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