ote

Job security clause for 90,000 federal employees deficient |

By MIKE PHILLIPS
) OTTAWA — Rank and file members
| of Canada’s third largest public sector

_ union are gearing up for a rejection of a
| tentative settlement on behalf of 90,000

_ federal employees.

} The proposal, reached after five days
|’ of “marathon” contract talks between
| negotiators for the 180,000-member Pub-
lic Service Alliance of Canada and the
|| federal Treasury Board, has sparked a

_ movement throughout the country for re-
jection that reaches into the Alliance’s
top leadership.

The tentative pact, covering 48,000
clerks, 20,000 general labor and trades
people and 22,000 program admin-
| istrators, was announced by PSAC pres-
|| ident Daryl Bean, Feb. 25.
| Inits wake, members across the coun-
ry have risen to oppose the tentative
|’ settlement and that opposition includes
1} the PSAC’s first, and third vice-
|) presidents Susan Giampietri and Jean

Bergeron.

“We're saying the provisions in the
tentative settlement aren't strong enough
to protect our members,’’ Giampietri
said in an interview last week.

“Given the layoffs that are taking
lace and the cutbacks, our members de-
serve better than what Treasury Board
|) offered. “‘We’re saying the contracts
| need to be turned down and the member-
| ship should prepare for a strike.”’

\3 Critical Deficiency
_ Inadequate job security language, the

'
'
'
|
£

absence of effective protection against
the adverse impact of tech change, and
wage increases that trail behind the in-
flation rate are some of the key areas of
discontent with the proposed deal.

The job security clause in the tentative
pact is centred out as a critical de-
ficiency.

“Subject to willingness and capacity
of individual employees to accept reloca-
tion and retraining, the employer will
make every reasonable effort to ensure
that any reduction in the work force will
be accomplished through attrition,’ the
controversial clause reads.

“There's no definition of what
‘reasonable effort’ means. It isn’t any
improvement over what we already
have,’’ Giampietri said.

‘‘There’s no protection against lay-

~ offs. The contract will Say the public ser-

vice will be reduced through attrition but
that’s the system we have now, and it’s
not working.”

Job security is a top issue for PSAC
members because the federal Tory
government is committed to destroying
15,000 federal jobs over the next five
years.

Many PSAC members believe these
15,000 job cuts are just the beginning.
They point to the Nielson Task Force
whose recommendations are so radical
as far as trimming the public service
goes, that they've been Kept under
wraps.

In addition, everyone is awaiting the

report of the Forget Commission on
Unemployment Insurance to see how its
recommendations for UI reforms will af-
fect jobs in that department

Spearheading “No” Vote

PSAC members also tend to believe
the Tories under Joe Clark were serious
when they were talking about the even-
tual slashing of about 60,000 jobs from
the government payroll.

The first major grass roots PSAC body
to respond to the proposed settlement
was the Toronto Area Council.

The 10,000 member council of PSAC
locals in the Toronto region announced
March 5 that it would spearhead a coun-
try-wide campaign for a massive ‘‘no”’
vote on the settlement.

It plans to set up a telephone “‘hotline”’
for members to call and hear a recorded
message explaining why they should
vote ‘‘no’’ when they confront the
settlement at membership meetings
Slated to run from mid-March through to
mid-April.

The Canadian Employment and Im-
migration Union component is organiz-
ing a special meeting of its local presi-
dents in Ontario March 8, to discuss the
proposed settlement and what is
contains.

The current set of contract talks are
the first under the new two-tiered bar-
gaining system which emerged from
controversial negotiations with treasury
board last year.

Rejection of tentative settlement urged

The aim of these talks was to arrive at a
bargaining system that would lead to a
master agreement covering all of the Al-
liance’s 180,000 members.

The system that was negotiated in
semi-secrecy provoked a vigorous cam-
paign by the membership to have it
scrapped because the leadership had
given up the right to strike in return for
master contract bargaining.

Under pressure from the members,
tech change, and job security were
shifted from the master talks to the 30 or
so individual group negotiations, which
under the two-tiered system, do have the
right to strike.

Opposition Justified

‘The position of the opposition (to the
master contract) has been justified,” a
rank-and-file PSAC member recently
told the Tribune, ‘*because it’s clear now
that the only way for our members to
achieve job security and protection from
tech change is to have the right to strike.

“If these issues still came under the
master contract we'd have no recourse
to protect ourselves,’ he said.

The PSAC members will be in a strike

position sometime in May and local
union activists feel that a strong rejec-
tion of the tentative settlement now,
could force the Treasury Board to return
with a substantially improved offer or
face a strike that could spread beyond the
current 90,000 PSAC members.

“‘The class struggle is alive and well in New Zea-
land.’’ So says Ken Douglas, the unique leader of the
New Zealand Federation of Labor.

Douglas is unique because in addition to being the
| NZFL’s general secretary, he’s also the newly-elected
|} chairperson of that country’s communist party, the
. Socialist Unity Party of New Zealand.
| Politics are anything but usual in that highly de-
veloped country of two and a half million people. In
| 1984, New Zealanders threw out the reactionary
| Robert Muldoon government after nine years in Office,
1 | while last year, the new Labor Government garnered
| top marks for its epic struggle with the Pentagon over
| the issue of keeping their ports nuclear free.

Domestically, however, the Labor Government
- appears to be following an increasingly familiar theme

_anti-imperialist and pro-peace foreign policy while
'} adopting the policies of Milton Friedman and Margaret
.} Thatcher on the home front.

\} Facing the deepening contradictions of a terminally
‘| ill socio-economic system and growing international
‘| economic integration, social democracy is increasingly
‘| being compelled to choose between policies which con-
‘| front the monopolies or policies which aid them.

| In New Zealand the government has clearly opted
‘| for strengthening the positions of monopoly at the ex-

pense of the people, — so far. .

True Monetarist Style

When the U.S. pulled out of the recent 1980-82
depression, New Zealand’s. recovery was somewhat
delayed. The surging ahead of the U.S. economy at the
°xpense of a capital hemorrhage from all of the U.S.’
allies hit New Zealand particularly hard.

Coming out of three years of Muldoon wage and
price controls the new government and its finance min-
|| ister in true monetarist style immediately took steps to
) de-regulate the economy, floated the New Zealand dol-
' lar, lifted foreign exchange regulations and regulations
'} on the banks among other things.

As capital poured out of the country to the U.S., the

for international social democracy by pursuing an

|New Zealand labor confronts monetarism

Labor in action ‘

George Hewison

government was then compelled to raise interest rates
to staunch the flow. Currently those rates stand at 18-20
per cent after peaking at 24 per cent last year.

Like Canada, New Zealand suffers from the vagaries
of the transnationals’ price diktat for commodities. So
with the reduced rate for lamb, the bulwark of her
economy, the country also faces a serious balance of
payments problem.

Within this context, the trade unions in New Zealand
which are virtually 100 per cent organized, and with

Douglas at the helm have advanced the campaign to
“‘Stop the Rot’’.

Stopping the Rot

Prior to the last general election, the trade unions had
worked out their general program for stopping the rot
and had won agreement from the Labor Party. But no
sooner had the new government come to power than it
began to move away from its commitment to the trade
unions. :

The trade union program focussed on: improving the
economic position of low paid workers, pensioners and
others; maintaining New Zealand workers’ living stan-
dards; strengthening the centralized bargaining system
in the face of employer efforts to erode it; and reforms
to make corporations pay their taxes so that jobs can be
created and the people’s needs met.

Douglas points out that corporation taxes as a pro-
portion of total government income shrank under Mul-
doon from 32 to 12 per cent while the workers’ share
increased from 68 to 88 per cent.

In the New Zealand version of the economic summit
of government, labor and business, the unions ad-

’ tries as well.

vanced fleshed out economic proposals and essentially
won the public’s support.

The government, though, reminiscent of our own
Tory government, took no heed of the people’s consen-
sus and instead argued that the economy would be
managed on the basis of “letting the market determine
the economic policies.”

Growing Labor Unity

For their part, the employers, based on the govern-
ment’s signal approached the last round of national
bargaining with a stubborn and unjustifiable 5.6 per
cent guideline — ‘‘2.2 per cent for ‘what we owe you’:
2.2 per cent for productivity; and 1.2 per cent for in-
flation.””

The unions were confronted with an unprecedented
solid front of employer resistance, but dug in, with
solidarity of their own and with a wave of well-cor-
ordinated strikes forced a settlement at or around 15.5
per cent — a significant victory according to Douglas.

A new feature of this latest struggle and of the New
Zealand labor scene generally is the growing unity of
the workers. Douglas and the federation have proposed
to the 25 large, mostly public sector and mostly non-af-
filiated unions that they formalize their loose working
relationship with the New Zealand federation into a
new, more powerful ‘‘Council of Trade Unions’. The
federation currently unites 186 of the country’s 304
registered unions.

So far, the largest of these, the teachers, the postal
workers and the public employees have endorsed the
proposal.

But the central question facing the labor movement
in New Zealand in the immediate period ahead, in
Douglas’ view, is how to block the election of a reac-
tionary government in the next general election, par-
ticularly when the labor government appears hell-bent
on alienating working people.

The world labor movement will follow the experi-
ence of New Zealand with keen interest, for the ques-
tion posed by Douglas and the trade union movement
of his country crops up in many other developed coun-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 12, 1986 e 7