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QUEBEC — The 72% rejec-
tion, Feb. 2, of a tentative pact
between the leaders of 82,000

» Ron-medical hospital workers and
the hugely unpopular Parti

Cois government was a

| Stunning counter blow to the
80vernment’s failed bid to smash

€ public sector Common
Front’s general strike.

Common Front’s massive

Show of Strength, Jan. 29 with

' More than 55,000 strikers on the
8tounds of the Quebec National

Ssembly, prompted Premier
ne Levesque’s government to
Move in on what it saw as the

Weakest sections of the Common

Tont as well as the weakest
Unions preparing to join the
Province-wide illegal general
Strike led by the front.

€ not retreating an inch
the $400-million, three

me on all unions in the public sec-
ae the government pressed
a government employees,
th © aren’t in the Common Front,

€n later 85,000 non-medical
Pik workers to accept con-
Tact settlements which offered
negligible improvements in job

: ee one of the key issues in

the strike,

Nurses who were slated to
Strike Jan. 31 cancelled their

Strike plans. The non-Common

members of the Quebec Civil
Service Union (QCSU), post-
poned their strike deadline from
Feb. 1 to midnight Feb. 3. At
Tribune press time, QCSU
negotiators were still meeting
with the government.

The biggest prize for the
government however, seemed to
be the 85,000 hospital workers
who began their strike Jan. 31 and
suspended it at midnight, that
night, on the strength of a pro-
posed contract that the bargaining
committee recommended with a
narrow 18-15 vote.

Government and corporate =

propaganda mills throughout
Quebec and the rest of Canada
crowed over the apparent disin-
tegration of the Common Front.
The Social Affairs Federation,

‘(FAS), of the Confederation of

National Trade Unions, (CSN),
represents 82,000 of the striking
non-medical hospital workers.
The Quebec Federation of Labor,
(QFL) represents the rest.

As it turned out, reports of the
Common Front’s death were
greatly exaggerated. In a stormy
two-day meeting, which was sup-
posed to last only a day, the 750
FAS council members angrily
criticized the agreement as being
far too short of the workers’ de-
mands and needs.

The Montreal section of the

FAS came to the council meeting

LABOR

mandated to vote rejection and to
call for a new bargaining commit-
tee.

Meanwhile, the three leaders of
the Common Front, Donatien
Corriveau of the CSN, the QFL’s
Louis Laberge and Yvon Char-
bonneau president of the Centrale
de l’Enseignement du Quebec,
(CEQ), reminded reporters at a
joint press conference, Feb. 1,
that the Common Front was still
operating in the education sector
and was standing firm on its de-
mand the government negotiate a
decent contract with job security
and no wage cuts.

Charbonneau, whose 90,000-
member CEQ has proven to be
the backbone of the general strike

and the Common Front recalled
the overwhelming mandate
teachers had given their union

The CEQ mandate called for a
strike within or outside of a
Common Front. Charbonneau
pointed out that as far as his union
was concerned nothing in the
situation in Quebec had changed
to make the union call its mem-
bers off strike.

It is hard to describe the depth
and bitterness of the anger within
the labor movement, at all levels
against the PQ government.
Labor leaders and rank and file
members alike, . without hesita-
tion, see the government’s attack
on the labor movement, the right
to strike, and the right to bargain

collectively, as first and foremost
an attack on democracy.

The support that has been
shown to the strike by the rest of
the Canadian labor movement is
greatly appreciated, and leaders
as well as rank and file strikers
note how, in the days to come,
more moral and financial help will
be needed. Strikers, their leaders
and unions face fines in the
thousands of dollars for defying
the “‘no strike’’ laws.

Levesque has declared the
government will fire all strikers
who prevent scabs from crossing
their picket lines, and everyone
expects that the PQ cabinet will
indeed invoke harsh measures
after its Feb. 3 meeting.

Front government workers,

_ This guest column is by George Morris, labor columnist
3, the Daily World, New York. The column first appeared
an. 14,

The AFL-CIO general office in Washington continues
to ignore the nationwide sweep for the nuclear freeze,
but goes full hog for the ‘forced labor”’ lie. Ronald
Reagan used in his unsuccessful effort to block both the

Viet gas pipe project and the election-day vote for the
arms freeze. The November 13: AFL-CIO News
Splashed out with a piece putting Lane Kirkland and the
AFL-CIO in full association with the CIA, State

Partment and alleged ‘‘dissidents’”’ for the forced
labor lie despite the fact that the paper knew the Soviet
Union had invited the International Labor Organization
to come in and inspect the charge.

Charge a Fraud

In The Los Angeles Times of November 10 Beril Bolin
Of the International Labor Organization reported in an
article headlined, ‘‘Soviets Offer Inspection of Pipeline

T,”’ that his agency’s officials are discussing with a

Viet delegation the date of a proposed ILO inspection
and the sites to be inspected. The visits are likely to begin

reasonably soon,” he said in the article. But the AFL-

O story claimed ILO investigators are “‘blocked’’ and
quotes a State Department statement that an investiga-
tion is ‘‘probably not bright.”’

The forced labor charge is almost as old as the charge
of ‘‘nationalization of women’’ that made the rounds
Soon after the Russian Revolution. AFL administrations
Used it in their propaganda against the USSR, particu-
larly aimed at the Soviet trade unions. It was the stock
fraud used by the CIA-dominated AFL-CIO inter-
National affairs office through the entire administration
of George Meany. For most of Meany’s administration it
was Lane Kirkland as his assistant, and eventually as
Secretary-treasurer who was directly responsible for op-
erations at headquarters and implementation of policy.

That the AFL-CIO headquarters is still a CIA nest is
Well reflected in the article of November 13. With it is a
drawing purporting to show how a “‘forced labor’ camp
housing ‘‘four million Soviets engaged in forced labor’’
looks. As chief administrator during Meany’s administ-
ration, Kirkland worked closely with the international
affairs department when it was headed by Jay Love-

AFL-CIO office still a CIA nest

= wr
oa I

Labor in action
William Stewart

‘*

ay

stone, whose record as the AFL’s bridge to the CIA
since World War II, was well exposed by a former top
CIA official and in Joseph Goulden’s biography
‘Meany.’

Now in his mid-eighties, retired, Lovestone is repor-
tedly still in the shadows. Earnest Lee, Meany’s son-in-
law, who worked under Lovestone and replaced him,
was assigned to collect Meany’s papers, giving the post
to Irving Brown, to head the department. Brown was
Lovestone’s collaborator in CIA service since World
War II and never deviated from the dirty business. A
most recent addition was Murray Seager, named by
Kirkland to head information and edit the AFL-CIO
News. Seager served as L.A. Times correspondent in
Moscow a decade back and set the reportorial pattern for
his successors, all a perfect model for what CIA Direc-
tor William Casey once admitted the CIA uses in ‘“‘some
cases.”’

Related to CIA

But standing above this gentry of ‘‘labor’’ men is Dale
Good. Kirkland named him to be his assistant in May
1980 and at the time the AFL-CIO News termed him a
‘specialist in international labor affairs.’’ Good was co-
ordinator of labor affairs in the Agency for International
Development, the very government body that finances
the CIA operations and the AFL-CIO’s co-operation
with the CIA in Latin America, Asia and Africa. He was
listed as labor attache in various State Department
assignments, in “‘services’’ in Greece, Isracl, the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany, in important Korean war
agencies and in other duties so closely related to CIA
operations that his real role could hardly be mistaken.

Such is the collection at AFL-CIO headquarters, that
spends much time plotting anti-Sovietism and con-
cocting ways to keep “‘forced labor’’ yarns alive to hum-
bug the present-day generation, but little time worrying
about the forced unemployment and starvation of 12

' resenting 18 million members initiated the Citizens

million Americans and their families, or about the unpaid
forced labor of many thousands among the 400,000
Americans in federal and state prisons. To judge by
what’s in the AFL-CIO News, there doesn’t appear to be
concern over the fact that after more than a year, the
much ballyhooed organizing project in Houston hasn’t
yielded significant results.

Anyway, what can you expect from a president of the
AFL-CIO who still holds membership in the Committee
on the Present Danger, a big Pentagon sponsored ultra-
rightist hawk outfit, from a man in the company of
Reagan, CIA director Casey, officials of all major intel-
ligence outfits, officials of an assortment of Pentagon
divisions and about anyone prominently involved in mili-
tary buildups?

Kirkland is the sole representative of a labor organi-
zation in this company. To say he continues the Meany
policy is an understatement. He continues the policy he
had a personal hand in making over many years. How
can his circle wage an effective struggle against Reagan-
omics while tightly fastened to the Reagan crowd for
ever-more billions for anti-Soviet war purposes? The
Kirkland group has betrayed the Labor Community Co-
alition by its tie to this war crowd.

:Fortunately, another coalition of 26 organizations rep-

Against Nuclear War. Among the initiator unions are the
International Association of Machinists, Commercial
Workers International Union, Amalgamated Clothing.
and Textile Workers, National Education Association —
and major organizations of minority, women’s and
church movements. :

The movement for the nuclear freeze has only started,
as so strongly stressed in the follow-up conferences that
have already taken place in California and other states.
More unions will join CANW. Kirkland will be roundly
repudiated.

In Labor in action in the Jan. 31 Tribune an error
appeared in paragraph four. The paragraph should have
read ‘‘The admiration and support of all Canadian work-
ing people must be extended to the workers of Quebec
for daring to do what was needed in the face of the
unprecedented actions of federal, provincial and
Quebec governments against public service workers.”

Meee

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 11, 1983—Page 7 -