LABOR

OFL delegates demand leadership

Fight for jobs planned

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Delegates to the 29th Ontario
Federation of Labor convention delivered a clear
messagetothefederation leadership, lastweekthatit
isn’t good enough just passing resolutions at an
annual convention, they have to be implemented.

That message was repeatedly hammered home
by the delegates during the week-long gathering
that began Nov. 11. It was reflected in the referal

On Opening day of the executive’s centre-piece
economic statement, ‘‘An economy geared to jobs
and decent incomes’’.

It was evident again when the convention un-
animously endorsed a controversial resolution
reaffirming the OFL’s commitment to maintaining
its anti-racism program and the promise by such
federation leaders as treasurer Wally Majesky that
a full-time coordinator to run that program will be
sought.

It was captured in Steelworkers delegate John
Martin’s frustration over certain leaders’ adoption
of the rhetoric of action without following through.

I'm sick and tired of coming to conventions to
vote on resolutions that don’t get acted on’’, Mar-
tin said. Addressing the executive he urged it to
“get off your ass and do the job you were elected to
do. If you don’t want to do it or you can’t, don’t
Stand for re-election.”

Bank Occupied .

The militancy developing at the grassroots of the
Movement was revealed during the noon-hour
demonstration by the entire convention supporting
Commerce Bank and Commerce VISA strikers,
Nov. 12. Not only did the delegates pour out of the
Sheraton Hotel in a massive wave of solidarity for
the striking bank workers, but they stopped traffic
along Bay street for three or four blocks and oc-
Cupied the Commerce Bank’s plush headquarters
in the heart of Canada’s financial district for more
than half an hour.

Many OFL delegates came to Toronto worried
about the federal Tory government’s mad dash
toward free trade with the U.S.; confronting an
unprecedented challenge by union haters, backed
by the reacionary National Citizen’s Coalition and
aimed at destroying the trade union movement,
impatient over the trade union movement's failure
to put into action the Canadian Labour Congress
decision of \its 1984 convention to organize a
country-wide March for Jobs — an initiative later
adopted then postponed, by the OFL; and, anxious
to see labor finally move into centre-stage with the
forces in this country fighting for peace, dis-
armament and the creation of a mighty peace coal-
ition throughout the country.

These and other issues such as the fight for jobs
and shorter hours, democratic control over tech

change, the fight to end sex discrimination and for
equal pay for work of equal value, the struggle for
better health and safety laws and for labor-
controlled occupational health clinics were
reflected in the dozens of resolutions adopted by
the delegates during the convention.

Paper Criticized

The fight to strengthen what CUPE delegate
Rosemary Baycroft described as an ‘“‘embarass -
ingly weak’’ economic paper, set the tone for the
entire convention.

She and other delegates who took part in the
Ontario Action Caucus at the convention zeroed in
on the document’s key shortcomings: its failure to
identify clearly the transnational corporations as
labor’s main enemy and the root of both the cycli-
cal and the structural crisis gripping the capitalist
system; and, its failure to outline the alternative
economic program the trade union movement has
been developing to counter the crisis.

Baycroft criticized the paper for failing to ‘‘dis-
cuss the real problem of expanding corporate con-
trol over the economy . . . we don’t need corporate
disclosures of their activities, but controls over
their powers.”

Alternative Program

United Electrical workers research director Jim
Turk dissected the paper’s flaws. It ignored the
demand for shorter hours with no loss in pay. And
it excluded labor’s clearly defined alternative pro-
gram based on nationalizing the financial in-
stitutions and the major, key economic sectors in
the country.

‘‘We need an economic statement that clearly
lays out why we have a problem and who’s re-
sponsible; that lays out what labor proposes to do
about it in the short term and in the long term; how
to achieve what we want; and, what the conse-
quences are for all of us if we don’t’’, Turk said.

When the paper returned to the convention, the
following day, it included, in addition to the prom-
ised March for Jobs and against Free Trade:

e a leadership commitment to organize and co-
ordinate community action groups and coalitions
at the regional, municipal and provincial levels
around the fight for jobs and for job creation;

e an eight-point economic program based on
public ownership of the financial institutions and
banks, and ‘‘key industrial establishments’’, the
restoration and expansion of public services, shor-
ter work time with no loss in pay, an OFL cam-
paign against contracting out and public service
cuts, the right to a job, democratic control over
tech change and the establishment of a fully porta-
ble pension system.

UAW LEADER BOB WHITE: “Labor has an enormous role in
launching a national debate which the Mulroney government
doesn’t want to take place.”

Support for peace

With the Canadian Peace Alliance being born as OFL delegates
convened, Nov. 11, the setting was in place for labor to
strengthen its commitment to peace action.

This it did, with the overwhelming adoption of resolutions
demanding an end to Canadian participation in Star Wars re-
search and development, and calling for the development of an
independent Canadian foreign policy.

The convention called for an independent foreign policy for
Canada that would be based on declaring this country a nuclear
weapons-free zone, withdrawing Canada from NATO and
Norad, a freeze on the production and deployment of nuclear and
conventional weapons leading to a balanced and mutual reduc-
tion, and a reduction of the arms budget, shifting these resources
to civilian uses and projects.

This resolution also called for labor to work at building an
all-inclusive Canada-wide alliance of peace forces.

The only two delegates to argue against the resolutions were
members of the Union of National Defence Employees, an af-
filiate of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, who opposed the
reduction of the military budget because they fear their members’
jobs would suffer.

This point, however, was answered by Pat Clancy of the UAW
who pointed out that any increase in government spending on
arms usually comes at the expense of spending on social services.

The trade union movement, he said, has to speak against the
insanity of the nuclear build-up and for the preservation of the
human race.

‘‘When we’re talking about the nuclear build-up, we’re talking
about insanity and supporting the insane,’’ Clancy told the dele-
gates.

‘*So that our kids, our kids’ kids, and their kids after them can
live in a world of peace and social justice, we in the labor move-
ment have to start today in laying the foundation for that peace.”

oS

bor hits hard at free trade pact

TORONTO — The labor
Movement has a special respon-
Sibility for leading the crucial de-
bate on free trade and Canada’s

ture, auto union leader Bob
White told the OFL convention,
Nov. 12.

_ White’s address to the conven-
tion was one of a trio of speeches
Y influential trade union leaders
which helped set the stage for the
Convention debate on a policy
Paper commiting the OFL to
. 'Mmediately convene’’ a meet-
'Ng of the heads of unions in the
Province to mobilize an action
Campaign against free trade. It
also calls on the federation to
“build a coalition with like-
minded groups across Ontario to
Mobilize public support for la-

T's position.”

N his opening address to the
Convention, President Cliff Pilkey
Warned that ‘‘free trade has noth-
'Ng to do with economic security
and everything to do with com-

promising our political, economic
and cultural sovereignty.”
Should Canada enter into a free
trade agreement with the WeSs,
Pilkey predicted, more than
270,000 Ontario jobs would likely
disappear in such manufacturing
sectors as machinery, textiles,
furniture, and electrical goods.
At least another seven per cent of
the Canadian labor force (on top
of the current unemployed level)
could be left jobless, he said.

Mulroney Contradiction

It was a theme Canadian Labor
Congress president Dennis
McDermott continued in his
speech to the delegation.

He pointed to the contradiction
between Prime Minister Mul-
roney’s claim that Canada’s cul-
tural sovereignty, economic
independence and our social pro-
grams aren't negotiable, and the
utterances of top U.S. diplomats
and trade officials that everything
is on the table for discussion.

The CLC leader listed the so-
cial services and social benefits
already being targetted by various
U.S. interests for elimination as
so-called non tariff barriers. De-
scribed by the Americans as
‘tunfair subsidies’ that block the
path to the creation of an ‘even
playing field’ from which each
country will trade are: unem-
ployment insurance, medicare,
worker’s compensation, health
and safety laws, regional
development programs, labor
codes protecting union security,
laws to protect our culture, and
the list goes on.

Canadians will pay a high price
for free trade, McDermott told
the delegates. ‘‘That price, I be-
lieve is a country ripe for profit
making, and a labor force that is
conveniently docile, intimidated,
willing to work for less.

“The price ultimately is our
status as an independent coun-
try,’ McDermott said.

Bob White emphasized the
leadership role labor and the
elected officers of the trade union
movement must assume in help-
ing their members understand the
dangerous implications of free
trade and mobilizing them into ac-
tion against it with other forces
that will be adversely affected.

Labor and Free Trade

‘*Labor has an enormous role
in launching a national debate
which the Mulroney government
doesn’t want to take place,”
White told the convention.

Opinion polls, he said, show
the vast majority of Canadians are
concerned about the issue. The
federal Tory government’s
strategy, he said, is ‘“‘to keep a
blanket on the debate and just
keep walking us down that road
quietly, but very quickly.”

He challenged voices in the big
business and government elite
who push free trade as the road to
Canada’s future prosperity. ‘‘The

people that have the faith in this
country are not those that want to
tie themselves to the U.S., but
they are those who believe we can
develop this nation as Canadians
first and not as a branch plant of
the U.S. economy,”’ he said.
The debate on the convention
floor revealed solid unity in
labor’s ranks against free trade.

CAMCO worker Ron
Volterman of Hamilton, speaking
on a companion resolution to the
anti-free trade policy paper, put a
human face on the looming crisis.

“If free trade is allowed to
progress to fruition I'll be out of a
job along with 1,300 other people
in my plant,” the UE delegate
said. “If free trade comes to
Canada there would be no reason
for a company like General Elec-
tric to compete with itself, and the
plant I now work in would be-
come a warehouse ... Free trade
is not free — it will cost jobs, jobs,
jobs, and more jobs.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 20, 1985 e 5