Labor Briefs

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COSATU tackles pass laws

JOHANNESBURG — Some 565,000 South African workers
launched the country’s newest non-racial trade union central, the
Confederation of South African Trade Unions Nov. 30-Dec. 1
with a political campaign to end the Apartheid regime’s racist
pass laws.

COSATU president, Elijah Barayi, an official of the National
Union of Mineworkers, announced that the new federation was
giving the South African government six months in which to
abolish the pass system.

More than 22 million black South Africans are barred from
moving inside the country without the government-issued pas-
ses. The COSATU leader promised that workers would begin
burning their pass books if the government doens't lift the abnox-
ious law within the next six months.

Customs workers protest cuts

OTTAWA — Federal public service employees working at
Revenue Canada, Customs and Excise demonstrated Dec. 3, to
protest service cuts. These are plans to cut approximately 1,000
jobs across Canada.

Included in these plans are some 100 cuts at headquarters in
Ottawa and some 120 cuts in various other locations by central-
izing the examination of international mail in 12 screening centres
across Canada. ‘*This decision is opening the doors to an increase
in illegal goods, pornography and offensive weapons’, Mansel
Legacy, national president of Customs Excise Union a compo-
nent of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said.

Retail worker nix concessions

TORONTO — Tell A&P they can stuff it. That was the mes-
sage about 1,000 former Dominion store workers gave their new
employer, Dec. 1, in response to a letter to the Retail Wholesale
and Department Store Union demanding sweeping concessions
from the workers.

A&P, a west German-owned supermarket chain bought out
Dominion Stores and its 93 outlets last April for $143 million.

The concessions demanded by the company include massive
reductions in the part time rate, (18-29 per cent); reduction of the
current starting rate of $4.93 an hour to $4 and from the $9.93 base
rate, after three years, down to $7; and, amendments to the
contract that would let the company lay off full time workers to
hire more part time employees.

On Dec. 2 the workers voted 99 per cent to reject A&P’s
demand for concessions.

Free trade will victimize women

OSHAWA — Women especially those working in low paid jobs
will be the first victims of free trade with the U.S. Ontario Federa-
tion of Labor president Cliff Pilkey told a fundraising dinner for a
battered women’s shelter recently.

“Any attempt to make up for centuries of discrimination against
women, like equal pay legislation and affirmative action programs
will be judged as detrimental to competitiveness because they

interfere with the free working of the market place, as outlined by
free trade’’, the OFL leader said.

He also warned that unemployment and increased domestic
violence are intimately connected.

Conference challenges Tory,
business links to U.S. military

TORONTO — Canada’s inde-
pendence, and our cultural, poli-
tical and economic sovereignty
are being challenged by this coun-
try:s tie-in to the U.S. military-in-
dustrial complex.

This was part of the consensus
which emerged, Nov. 30 from a
conference on economic con-
version aimed at developing
strategies to shift government
spending and economic develop-
ment away from increasing de-
pendence on military spending
toward more job-intensive and
socially beneficial civilian pro-
duction.

The conference was organized —

by a broad committee including
church, peace, and labor organ-
izations and reflected a very high
degree of unity around the need to
get on with economic conversion.

Participants in the conference
included representatives from
both English-speaking Canada
and Quebec, a large number of
church groups, the Toronto Dis-
armament Network, the Cruise
Missile Conversion Project and
other peace organizations and
several trade unions, including
the UE, auto workers, provincial
government employees the postal
workers and others.

In addition to representatives
from the Canadian Labor Con-
gress, and the Ontario, and Al-
berta Federations of Labor, there
were representatives - from
Quebec’s Confederation of Na-
tional Trade Unions, (CSN).

As government spending on
military production increases,
Canada’s national security is
undermined, and the risks of nuc-
lear war are heightened. As were,
our ability to set our own eco-
nomic and social priorities is
undermined, the panelists and
participants noted.

University of Toronto
economist Mel Watkins in a panel
on “‘the Canadian context for
conversion’’, said Canada is
being forced into a free trade
agreement with the U.S. because
of the huge deficit south of the
border, which in the main is being

AFL president Dave Werlin: two
pronged strategy to mobilize for
peace needed.

fueled by increased military
spending, what he referred to as,
“the bizarre mix of policies called
Reaganomics.”’

Project Ploughshares research
director Ernie Regehr, contrasted
the Tory government’s assault on
social programs while military
spending climbs. He pointed out
that over the past six years milit-

‘ary spending has increased 13.5

per cent annually while federal
spending in general has only gone
up 10.8 per cent.

_ Much of the discussion centred
on how to mobilize labor and the
trade unions in the fight for con-
version. Alberta Federation of
Labor president Dave Werlin
noted the importance of develop-
ing a double-edged strategy in-
volving, on the one hand, organ-
ized political pressure on
governments to shift their spend-
ing priorities to meeting social
needs, and on the other mobil-
izing the trade union movement to

educate and organize its members ©
to assume a more strategic role in
the peace movement.

Jeff Bickerton of the Canadian.
Union of Postal Workers addres- —
sed the question of how the union
movement must present concrete —
alternatives to workers who —
would be affected by conversion, ©
pointing out that to win support —
for conversion workers have to
see concrete alternative job
prospects. ’

Secondly he linked the need to —
shift government spending to so- —
cial need with the harnessing into —
work of the million and a half un- —
employed in this country.

The relationship between the
peace movement and the trade
unions was examined in detail by —
Donna Balkin of the National —
Union of Provincial Government
Employees. She was critical o
the peace movement for not
communicating enough with
groups like the PSAC’s union o
national defence employees,
(UNDE). :

She noted the role UNDE had |
played in PSAC by voting against
the anti-cruise missile campaign —
and referred to the positions taken —
by the union against military
budget cuts at recent provincial
labor federation conventions.

It is necessary to develop’ a
program of conversion in the pub- —
lic sector as well as in the private, —
she pointed out. e

Balkan also took the NDP to
task for not making conversion a
prominent enough part of its poli-
tical agenda. She linked the fight
to win workers’ support for eco-
nomic conversion to the need to
change the political climate which
allows governments to shower
employers with money to develop
industries for the military.

The conference also discussed
conversion in the context of —
developing new Canadian de- —
fence policies that recognize the —
country’s real security needs and
tied sucha policy to achieving full —
control over setting our own eco- —
nomic and social priorities and an —
independent foreign policy.

Commerce rejects union’s offer to resume talks —

TORONTO — The courage
and the morale of 250 Commerce
Bank strikers continued to soar

~ last week despite the prospects of
winter on the picket lines and the
__ bank’s bid to sidestep a move to
try and settle the six month strike.
_ Singing ‘‘We shall not be
moved”, and ‘Solidarity For-
ever’, the Commerce VISA and
centeral mailroom strikers jam-
med a church hail Dec. 4 to hear
United Auto Workers president
_ Bob White outline the steps lead-
ing to the bank’s agreement to re-
__ turn to the bargaining table under
the auspices of a federally-
appointed conciliation officer.
The chain of events leading to
_ this decision began Nov. 29 when
White, on behalf of the Union of
Bank Employees bargaining
committee telexed Bank of
Commerce boss Donald Fullerton
proposing both sides send the

- Qutstanding issues in the strike to

binding arbitration.
White said the union agreed to

-accept whatever findings a

federally-appointed arbitrator
would produce, and the strikers
would return to work under the
current conditions and wages,
until the decision ws delivered.
Fullerton rejected this propos-

_al, Dec. 2, suggesting a return to

bargaining instead, ‘‘with the as-

“sistance of the (federal) ministry’s

”

mediation services,’ the same
means, Fullerton said, the bank
and the UBE had used to reach a
settlement in an eight member
branch in Sorel Quebec.

““We see no reason why this
most recent settlement together
with other agreements already
negotiated between the bank and
the UBE should not form the
framework of an agreement for
the employees at the VISA centre
and the central mail room”’ Fuler-
ton wrote.

_ 8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 18, 1985

White told reporters after the
meeting with the strikers that to
his knowledge, ‘‘there is no UBE
settlement that would set-a pat-
tern for the bank workers at the
VISA centre and the central mail
room’’, and he reiterated the
union’s demand for a decent
settlement that would provide
Commerce: workers with basic
dignity and better wages.

The UAW leader also told the
strikers that he’d made it clear to
the bank that UBE wasn’t in-
terested in taking part ina charade
when it returns to the table.

‘*We’re not going back to the
bargaining table to accept the
bank’s last offer’’, he said, urging
them to keep up their pressure on
the bank through demonstrations,
picketing and solidarity actions.

He also pledged that the UAW
would’continue to help keep the
strike and the UBE’s issues ele-
vated in the public eye as well as

mobilizing support from the labor
movement.

In that connection, he an-
nounced that the UAW had given
the Canadian Labor Congress a
$100,000 interest free loan to bols-
ter the Commerce workers’ strike
fund.

Blasting Commerce manage-
ment for refusing to come down
from their ivory tower to nego-
tiate with the workers, White said
the strike would be discussed at

this week’s CLC executive coun-_

cil meeting and that the trade

_ union movement remains deter-

mined to keep the strike going as
long as the bank refuses to settle.

Certainly this is the attitude
among the strikers themselves.
VISA centre. bargaining com-
mittee member Liz Fong respond-
ing to White’s report pledged,
“‘we will stick together and we
will continue to fight for what we
believe in. We will continue to

~rights.’’ she said.

fight for our rights and for the other
bank workers in this country.”’
throughout Ontario will rally at
Commerce branches in their —
throughout ontario will rally at
Commerce branches in their
communities for an Ontario-wide ©
bank-in. The action is timed to
occur simultaneously in each
centre between 4and6p.m.
The next day the strikers are
having a Christmas party for their
kids. a
The determination an
confidence of the strikers was
evident in one woman’s response —
to the bank’s decision. ‘‘We want
a contract, but we’re not going —
back to work under the degrading —
conditions that existed before the
strike. A lot of us are buying extra
warm coats for the winter picke
line and if the bank doesn’t want
settlement we'll be out their
fighting for justice and ou

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