CANADA

‘Save our jobs!’

Police bar the door at the Toronto Dominion Bank as pickets from
Puretex Knitting Mills march outside demanding, “Save ourjobs!”
The workers are asking the bank to delay action against Puretex
which will put 200 workers on the street.

TORONTO — A plant occupa-
tion, Feb. 1, by laid off workers at
Puretex Knitting Mills has forced
the Toronto Dominion Bank to
call a meeting with the union and
the owners to discuss how to keep
the plant open and save the jobs of
some 200 members of the Cana-
dian Textile and Chemical Union

An agreement between the
union and the bank was reached
some seven hours after 13
Puretex workers walked into the
closed-down factory and oc-
cupied the showroom. Manage-
ment people on the premises were
surprised and disoriented as the
laid off workers settled into the
factory with their sleeping bags
and enough food for a lengthy
stay.

The occupation: was:timed: to:
coincide with a demonstration of
some 150 Puretex workers out-
side a downtown branch of the
Toronto Dominion Bank. The
workers, mostly immigrant wom-
en, marched outside the bank
demanding: Save our jobs! They
were joined by supporters and
even a few passersby who step-
ped into line when they had the
issues explained to them.

By MIKE PHILLIPS

The demonstrators had three
demands: a stay of execution be-
fore any bank action is taken
against Puretex; a meeting with
bank management to discuss the
ways of keeping the plant open;
and renegotiations of bank loans
for the company so the 200 jobs
could be saved.

The fate of the workers,
with 20 and 25 years at Puretex, is

in the hands of the bank which, -

the union says, is forcing Puretex
into bankruptcy because of a debt
of three-quarters of a million dol-
lars.

Prior to the rally and occupa-
tion, bank officials had subbornly
refused to speak to the union.
When the protestors outside tried
to enter the bank to speak to the
bank executives, they were bar-
red by the police. The local:man-»
ager then agreed to speak to a
delegation of two of the union
leaders. ,

Outside, following this fruitless
meeting, Salome Tsakonas, the
local union treasurer, reported
that bankers were unwilling to
forward the union’s demands to
their superiors to clear the way for
discussions aimed at saving the
workers jobs.

RIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS

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Urging the protesters to go to
the Puretex plant and show their
support to the occupiers, she told
the crowd, ‘“‘this bank can sup-
port the dictatorship in Chile with
millions of dollars in loans but
they won’t do anything to help us
to save our jobs.”’

Nothing for Workers

The protesters were supported
by a number of trade union and

women’s representatives, includ-

ing Alice Heap who spoke on be-
half of Spadina NDP MP Dan
Heap. Noting the $325-million
profit the bank racked up in 1983,
she said the NDP supported the
workers’ demands.

Ontario Communist Party
leader Gordon Massie was also
among the supporters of the
Puretex protesters. Expressing
the party’s support for the work-

ers’. demands, Massie said that
more and more workers will be
taking similar actions such as pro-
tests and occupations to protect
themselves against the ravages of
the system’s terminal crisis.

“‘This struggle is proof that the
so-called recovery is just for the
banks and big business, with
nothing in it for the workers’’,
Massie said.

Winnie Ng of the Immigrant
Women’s Centre called for a boy-
cott of the Toronto-Dominion
Bank by the city’s 14,000 textile
workers in support of the Puretex
workers. Naomi Wall and John
Greyson were among the first to
walk off the picket line and into
the bank to remove their
accounts.

Militancy Paid Off
The Puretex workers were laid

off in the second week in De-
cember when the company closed
its doors under pressure from the
bank. The workers have yet to see
their holiday pay and the com-
pany hadn’t kept up their share of
OHIP and health insurance pre-
miums up to the time of the lay-
offs. Puretex has also failed to
turn over to the union the dues
money it collected on the union’s
behalf.

_ After the bank protest, the
workers went back to the factory
to show their solidarity with the
13 occupiers, led by local union
president Maria Iori. ‘‘We’re pre-
pared to stay here as long as it
takes’’, Iori told them. A few
hours later, the workers’ militant
action had helped them win the
first round in their fight to save
their jobs.

The uranium mining industry in Sas-

_e@ work was done within 100 metres ofa

katchewan continues to generate contro-
versy as revelations pile up about lax

‘health, safety and environmental stan-

dards. But preliminary indications are
that a series of reports on the massive spill
of radiated water at the Key Lake mine
will focus only on the measures needed to
prevent the same type of accident from
occurring again.

Formal reports are expected soon,
from Key Lake Mining Corp., itself, from
the provincial and federal environment

departments, from a provincially-ap-

Pointed private consultant, and from the
Atomic Energy Control Board.

A former employee of KLMC, mine
Maintenance supervisor Kal Manno, re-
cently confirmed the suspicions of many

_ Observers of the industry, when he re-

vealed wide-ranging problems at the
mine.

Manno charged publicly that he had
warned the company that the sand used to
build dikes holding back radiated water
was too soft for the purpose, but he was
ignored by management. He also main-

tains that employees have been given -

Supervisory positions they are unsuited

for, leading to problems when any un-~

expected difficulties arise. Government

regulations are being ignored, he says,
including requirements to test for radia-
tion levels daily.

Métis Community Closest

The mayor of Pinehouse, the largely
Métis community closest to the KLMC

‘ site, blasted the company and the Grant

Devine, Tory provincial governinent at a
recent meeting of the Association of Métis
and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan
(AMNSIS). George Smith said the spills
at Key Lake and other mines may serious-
ly affect the northern water system. He
also pointed out that his community was
promised 60 to 85 jobs at the site, but that
there are only three people from Pine-
house working now at the mine.

In a related development, former em-
ployees at the Rabbit Lake uranium mine
development further north went public

From

Kimball
Cariou |

Jan. 27 with accusations that they were
fired for protesting unsafe working condi-
tions and attempting to form a union.

‘“When Eldorado Resources Ltd., real-
ized that we were trying to organize to
protect ourselves, it immediately dropped
its contract with the construction com-
pany we were working for. All 52 em-
ployees were flown out of the site im-
mediately’? according to the statement
issued by the workers.

The statement details numerous safety
problems which arose while they did con-
struction work at the site:

_ @ they were not provided with personal
radiation exposure dosimeters.

e they were forced to work standing in
water, ‘‘often to our ankles’’, which they
were advised by independent sources was
probably contaminated with uranium and
toxic by-products such as radium.

huge ore stockpile, exposing the workers
to radioactive airborne dust.

e blasting at the site was being carried
out unsafely.

After meeting with numerous provin-
cial government officials and making no
progress, for some eight months, the
workers decided to go public. They also
released a letter from the Minister of
Labor, Lorne McLaren, to one of their
spokespersons, Mike Toth of the Carpen-
ters Union. In his letter, McLaren agrees
that ‘‘there may have been violation” by
Eldorado, which fired the workers by the
simple expedient of changing its subcon-
tractor. But he concludes that ‘‘the re-
medy you seek (that is, the return of your
jobs)’’ can’t be won “‘under the Trade
Union Act as it is now drafted.”’ His final
word of advice is to ‘‘raise this case as an
example where you may wish to propose
an amendment to the Trade Union Act the
next time we are _ considering
amendments’’.

Remaining unsatisfied with this re-
sponse from the provincial government,
the workers plan to continue raising their
demands. And it seems likely that the en-
tire industry will continue to come under
close public scrutiny for some time yet.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 8, 1984 e 7