COULD

AiR newsletter

IWA DEMANDS

SHUTDOWNS

MARCH, 1970

MEAN

FIR PROVOCATION. Above is the front page of a four-page color folder
received this week by nearly 25,000 workworkers, sent out by Forest
Industrial Relations. It is the boss loggers latest attempt to frighten and
intimidate woodworkers to back down on their contract demands. It
threatens wholesale unemployment if IWA demands are pushed.
Reaction of woodworkers 'to this latest provocation is anger and more
determination to press for their demands.

Labor Act amendment would

UNIONS TARGET

Socred Bill 22 aims to
tip scale for monopolies

The Social Credit government in Victoria has been playing the numbers game ;
for years, at the expense of organized labor — and

to the bank.

First there was Bill 43, then
Bills 42 and 33. Now, Bill 22 has
had first reading.

Bill 43 revised the Trade Union
Act by sharply restricting picket-
ing and by making it easier to
institute court actions against
trade unions. Bill 42 made it an
offence to contribute money
from-a trade union treasury to a
political party or political
candidate. Bill 33 “gave the
cabinet the right to impose
compulsory arbitration in any
labor dispute. Now Bill 22,
entitled ‘‘An Act to Amend the
Labor Relations Act’’, is on the
order paper. j

The main purpose of Bill 22 is
to strengthen the hand of big
business in contract nego-
tiations, which only goes to
prove that the object of the
numbers game is to use legal
enactments as a_ principal
means of weighting the scale in

block union organization

GEORGE GEE, secretary treasurer
of United Electrical Workers Union
Local 552, fhis week issued the
following statement exposing a
recent amendment to the Labor
Relations Act which should be of
concern to all trade unionists:

A recent amendment to the
Regulations of the Labor
Relations Act could have the
effect of completely nullifying
the legal right of employees to
join a trade union.

Section 14(4) (a) of the old
Regulations stated that when
employees make angqpplication
to be certified as a trade union,
the Labor .Relations Board
conducts a vote in which all
those are eligible to vote who
were ‘“‘employees in the unit at

the date of the application for ~

certification.”

The Labor Relations Board has
amended this section. It has
become Section 12 (4) (a) in the
new Regulations and now states
that entitled to vote are ‘‘the
employees in the unit at the date
determined by the Board.”’

This new regulation invites
collusion between officials of the
Board and employers to defeat
union organization. It could
permit a situation to develop
when the employer could lay off
all those who had signed up for
the union and then have a vote
taken among those left.

This is exactly what has
already happened in at least one
instance.

The United Electrical, Radio,
and Machine Workers Union,
Local 552, Vancouver, signed up
a majority of the employees at
B.C. Fluorescent Sales and
Service and applied _ for
certification. Before the vote
was taken by the Labor
Relations Board, the employer
laid off a number of the most
active supporters of the union.

Fair play, common sense and

any objective interpretation of
the law giving employees the
right to form trade unions would
provide that those eligible to
vote should be all employees at
the time of the application for
certification.

But using its new self-made
amendment, the Labor
Relations Board ruled that those
who had been laid off after the
application for certification
could not vote and that only
those could vote who were
employed when the Board
announced that it would take the
vote.

The way this new amendment
is being applied by the Board isa
travesty of justice. It destroy’s
labor’s right to organize. It
encourages employers’ to
discriminate against any
employee signing up for a union.
And when the Board accepts this
discrimination, as it did in the
case of B.C. Fluorescent, it gives
its legal blessing to what is essen-
tially an illegal act.

The issue here is not the right
of the employers to lay off or to
dismiss for cause. The issue is
that when employees join a union
and apply for certification, all

those who were employed at the
date of the application for
certification must have the
right to vote whether or not they
have been laid off or fired in the
meantime.

In other.words, the voters list
must be frozen when the
application for certification is
made. The only question to
decide is who was actually an
employee at the time. Anything
less makes a mockery of labor’s
right to organize. The purpose of
the whole Act is defeated and it
becomes a meaningless scrap of
paper. For purposes of the vote
there cannot be and must not be
any lay offs or dismissals. ,

The Board should not have thé
power to determine the. date
used to decide-who shall be on
the voters’ list. That date should
be set out in the Regulations. It
must be the date on which the
application for certification is
made. ;

The Board made this new
amendment and it can withdraw
it. The whole labor movement _
should demand of provincial
labor minister Leslie Peterson
that such a change be made at
once.

Dr

sending the delegation.

Send-off breakfast
for YCL delegates

A farewell pancake breakfast to send off the B.C. delegates
to the Young Communist League founding convention, will be
held Sunday, March 22 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 3316 Garden

The public are invited to attend the send-off. The breakfast
will be $1.00 and proceeds will go towards defraying costs of

At least 8 delegates from B.C. will be attending the
convention in Toronto at which the new national Marxist-
Leninist youth organization will be established. The first part
of the delegation will be travelling by train, leaving Monday,
March 23 from the CNR station at 5:30 p.m.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 20, 1970—Page 12

By OBSERVER

big business is laughing all the way

eae

favor of the monopolies and
against the trade unions.

The new Bill was introduced
quietly and with no advance
notice. The government has
refused a request by the B.C.
Federation of Labor that it be
referred to the legislature’s
Standing Committee on Labor
for a public hearing. Obviously,
the cabinet has made up its
collective mind to ram _ this
legislation through the House.

Reliable sources indicate that
there has been some division
within the caucus of the New
Democratic Party on this issue,
reflecting divisions over the
role of the trade unions in the
party and the relationship of the
party to the trade union
movement as a whole. However,
a staff meeting on March 12,
under the auspices of the B.C.
Federation of Labor, was
advised: that the NDP caucus
was anxious to have the opinion

' of that meeting. The opinion was

unanimous opposition to Bill 22
and the caucus was so advised.

The key sections of the Bill are
those pertaining to accredi-
tation of an employers’ organi-
zation as the recognized bar-
gaining agent on behalf of
employers named in a voluntary
application. Once an _appli-
cation was made, if this Bill
becomes law, the Labor
Relations Board could add to, or
delete from the list of employers
names.

On being accredited, the
employers’ organization would
be the exclusive bargaining
authority. No employer named
in the accreditation would have
the right to withdraw except
during the fourth or fifth month

immediately following the
signing of a collective
agreement.

Thus, if Forest Industrial

Relations (FIR) was accredited,
it could prevent the union from
signing with an employer who
was prepared to make peace
with the union rather than be
engaged in an all-out fight to the
finish. In effect, this would mean
that a few giants, or one giant
like MacMillan Bloedel, would
call
employers’ of

side the

all. the shots from the’

bargaining table. This could
mean longer strikes and te
bankruptcy of small operators
caught in a squeeze impos'
those firms who togethel
cohstitute a near-monopoly °
the industry.

It is reliably reported that the
Construction Labor Relation
Association recently made ?
submission to the government
which it asked for such leg>

lation. It is also reported thal

they didn’t get everything they
wanted in this Bill — not this
year.

The CLRA would like to make
the. accreditation mandatory m
all employers in the industrl@

-group once a majority hav

voluntarily sought and ie
granted recognition for a a f
employers’ agent. It wow

appear that they are moving
the direction of the decreé
system in Quebec for
building construction industry ~
and that the B.C. government ®
not unsympathetic.

In an article published in t?
Pacific Tribune of January 2) °°
G. Peskett, president of yi
Employers’ Council of :
(voice of big business
quoted as follows:

“The pertinent word is hon ie
Surely businessmen are capab
of honoring each other’s caus
of absorbing some pers?
damage...” he

It would appear now that t é
honor system is not sufficient fo
the monopolies. They wa? ip
closed shop in order to whip 4
smaller firms into line agai
the legitimate demands 2
working people, and in order
make it easier to drive them
of business.

move by state monopoy
capitalism (aliiance 9° a
business and. government) | -
regulate the trade a
movement in the interests of
business and higher profits. 0

The monopoly interests ‘i
are pushing for the adoptlo?
Bill 22 are those who are resPe
sible for high prices, inflat He
poverty and unemployme
They are no friends of
working people!

CITY CP MEETS

Sixteen Communist Party
clubs in the Greater Vancouver
area will send delegates to the
Party’s Regional Convention
next weekend. The Convention,
to which sixty-five to seventy
delegates are expected, will
convene at 9:30-a.m., Saturday,
March 21 in the auditorium of
the F.R.C. Hall, 600 Campbell
Avenue.

Discussion at the Convention
will centre around the changing
political relationships and new
mass movements developing in
the Greater Vancouver area: the
big business offensive against
the people’s living standards,

a
and commencement of prepay {
tions for the civic elections ®
fall.

< j-
In addition to annual mune
pal elections -in Burnaby

) the
North Vancouver, 1970 38 e
year for bi-annual. elections be

Vancouver. Attention wil
focussed on the critical §
situation, rising unemployn ag
and runaway prices (inclu
hydro and bus fares), 4? aed
lower mainland’s pressing ©
for rapid transit. e
Tye Galwention will conclu
with election of a Ree
Committee for the coming Y&

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