LABOR

Canada Employment Centres are being
used to obtain scab workers for strike-
bound operations — and one local of the
Carpenters Union whose members have
been victims of that policy wants the prac-
tice stopped.

Some 15 members of the shopworkers’
Local 1928 of the Carpenters went on
strike Mar. 26 against West Brothers, a
small Vancouver furniture manufacturer
to back demands for the removal of holi-
day pay concessions which would have cut
all vacations to two weeks. As soon as they
walked out, the employer went to CEC
and stated that jobs were available at the
plant.

The notice shown at (right) went up on
the board at the CEC with the other post-
ings, calling for workers “with good
woodworking skills. ..and previous expe-
rience.”

The card stated clearly: “This position
will require you to cross a picket line as
company employees on strike.”

“There’s no doubt about it — they (the
CEC) were involved in scab-herding,”
Carpenters Local 1928 picket co-ordinator
Pat Dickie told the Tribune. He added that
about a dozen scabs had reported for
work at the plant, located on the city’s east
side.

Although a mass picket mounted by the
union Mar. 29 resulted in the employer
withdrawing the demand for concessions
and a settlement of the strike, the union’s
problems with Canada Employment Cen-
tres remain in another dispute at Entex
Door Systems in Port Coquitlam where
the local has been on strike since mid-
December.

In fact, the involvement of the CEC
there is “probably a lot mroe serious,”
Dickie said, noting that the centre is using
what is called a “closed order” to obtain
scab employees for Entex.

“The order isn’t posted on the board
where the public can see it,” Dickie said.
“But peopleare called in for interviews on
the basis of jobs being available at the
plant.”

He emphasized that the union “knows
for a fact” that the CEC is recruiting scabs
for Entex because people from the local
have gone into the CEC and inquired
about jobs at the plant.

“They've been told ‘yes’, jobs are avail-
able,’ ” he said.

“The thing that really concerns us is
that there’s an implication when people
are called in for interviews that they'll lose
their benefits if they don’t take the

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jobs — and that’s contrary to the Unem-
ployment Insurance Act,” he added.

The local has raised the issue, with the
Public Service Alliance of Canada, the
union representing workers at the Canada
Employment Centres,and has dlso called
on the department to stop recruiting

workers for operations involved in labor
disputes.

If that does not result in the practice
being stopped, Dickie said, the union will
consider some further action in conjunc- —
tion with the Unemployment Action Cen-
tte,

CLRA ploy steps up

The action by Construction Labor Rela-
tions Association (CLRA) last month to
break off negotiations on a residential
_ agreement has signalled a new campaign by
_ construction employers for separate con-
cession contracts with individual unions
_ and an attempt to break up the existing joint
bargaining council.

CLRA negotiator Bob Wilds told the
Bargaining Council of the B.C. Building
Trades Unions Mar. 22 that CLRA was
terminating negotiations on the residential

_ agreement and would seek instead to sign
separate agreements with individual unions.
: Wilds also stated that if CLRA was
unsuccessful in obtaining separate agree-
ments, it would go to the Labor Relations
_ Board to have residential construction
excluded from the standard 1984-86 agree-
ment between the Building Trades and
CLRA.

Since that time CLRA has approached at
least two unions, the United Association of
Plumbers and Pipefitters and. Laborers
Local 602. The Laborers local last year
signed a separate concession-ridden agree-
‘ment which was unanimously condemned
by all Building Trades including representa-
tives of the Laborers’ locals.

That separate agreement, which called
for a 30 per cent in the standards construc-
tion wages, cuts in holidays and an increase
in the hours of work, was shelved in Janu-
ary when CLRA agreed to resume talks
with the bargaining council on a residential
agreement. The Trades and CLRA had
agreed in bargaining last year to discuss a
Special residential agreement as an adden-
dum to the standard agreement.

But CLRA went into those talks
demanding the same major concessions
that the laborers had earlier signed.

Building Trades Council president Roy
Gautier confirmed that the concessions
sought by CLRA were “in the same range”
as those laid out in the shelved Laborers’
agreement.

Unable to get the concessions it wanted

_ from the joint bargaining council, CLRA
again sought to go after individuals trades
some of which have been prepared to accept
concessions in the hope — a mistaken hope
as Alberta unions have discovered — that
they would win back some work which has
been going non-union.

A statement adopted by the Building
Trades bargaining council Mar. 22 con-

12 ¢ PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 3, 1985

ROY GAUTIER BILL ZANDER

demned what they called CLRA’s “obvious
attempt to disrupt the operations of the
bargaining council, to cause fragmentation
of building trades unions and to destroy the
collective bargaining relationship which
has, for a number of years, brought stability
to the construction industry.”

The council noted that the CLRA action
was in violation of the memorandum of
agreement signed last summer by CLRA
and the bargaining council. The statement
added that the council was confident the
LRB would reject “any attempt (by CLRA)
to break collective agreements in mid-
term”, by attempting to separate residential
work from the standard agreement.

However the LRB might rule on the case,
itis clear that CLRA is determined to break
up the joint bargaining structure, with the
idea that it can better win concessions from
individual unions.

CLRA supported joint bargaining in the
70s when the Building Trades Unions were
ordered into a joint council because the
structure brought in stable industry-wide
bargaining, replacing the leap-frogging on
wages and the inter-trade jurisdictional
wrangles that often marked earlier bargain-
ing.

But in the last two years, the council
structure has provided a united resistance to
the employers’ concerted campaign for
concessions — hence CLRA’s attempts to
get around it to individual unions.

A recent newsletter from CLRA made
just that point, noting, that the “benefits of
dealing with each of the unions individually
in standard construction negotiations as
well as in specialty agreements such as resi-
dential. . .outweigh the negative considera-
tions”, which include leapfrogging on
demands.

Whether the shelved Laborers’ agree-
ment would now go back on the table was
still unclear since both the CLRA and

concessions drive

Laborers’ representative Rolly Gordon
would not discuss it. Both sides had stated
in January that if joint talks failed, it would
be dusted off again but the unanimous
opposition from the Building Trades coun-
cil could prevent that.

What was particularly ominous about
that agreement was that it was a “‘wall-to-
wall agreement”, giving the Laborers juris-
diction over all phases of a job, from “‘the
preparation of footings, in the yard or on-
site fabrication and erection of all residen-
tial construction.

The agreement reportedly in the works
between CLRA and the Plumbers Union
would be limited to traditional areas of
plumbers’ and pipefitteres’ work, according
to representative Norm Farley.

But sources have also indicated that the
agreement sets out no wage standards, leav-
ing it open for employers to set wages at the
time of hiring, depending on the project.

That is an echo of agreements wrested by
Construction Labor Relations-Alberta from
building trades unions in that province. One
such agreement with electricians provides
for wages to be set on each project before
the employer bids on a contract in order to
undercut non-union contractors.

‘The clause was inserted, according to
Vair Clendenning, business agent for the
International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, to try and prevent contractors
from setting up non-union subsidiaries, or
“double breasting.”

But that has happened despite the con-
cessions. According to a confidential memo
sent out by CLR-Alberta vice-president
George Akins ‘last year: “In the last six
months, the sub-contractors as well as the
general contractors have moved heavily

into the spin-off option. CLR-A has n
knowledge of the exact number of union=
ized contractors who do not as yet ha
double-breasting capability, but it is su:
pected the percentage is very small.”

And Building Trades representatives
Alberta agree that the concessions have n
brought jobs. Clendenning told On t
Level, that what has made “things so diffi
cult is that there is no work.” The volume
construction is less than half what it was tw
years ago.

In both provinces, the employers hav!
exploited massive unemployment in thi
industry — created by the decline in con
struction work — coupled with govern
ment-supported encroachment by t
non-union, right-to-work contractors tom
step up the drive for concessions. ¥

“The employers here are following th
scenario in Alberta — they want to gt ou
from under the standard agreement and t
Pay wages at whatever level they have t
undercut the non-union sector,” said Bi
Zander, president of the Provincial Coun¢!
of Carpenters. “But there’s no bottom t
that pit.”

The union has learned of instances 10
Alberta where electricians are being paid a8
little as $6 an hour, he said.

Zander also noted that more than 160 :
contractors in B.C. have put an application
in to the Labor Relations Board for a reas
sessment of one section of the Labor Cod
so as “to allow contractors to double-breast_
with impunity.”

Some 94 of those contractors
members of CLRA and CLRA itself is o.
cially supporting the application, he said.

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125. Phone 251-1186

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