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Electrical workers reach
contract settlement with GE

TORONTO — A three-year
contract offer providing a wage
hike ranging from $1.34 an hour to
$1.89 was narrowly accepted
Feb. 5 by some 6,000 United
Electrical (UE) workers members
negotiating with Canadian Gen-
eral Electric (CGE).

'The acceptance was close be-
cause the workers actually voted
54% to 46% in favor of rejecting a
UE bargaining committee’s re-
commendation to accept the CGE
offer. The UE constitution re-
quires a 70% pro-strike vote in
order to ensure that strike action
has the commitment of the over-
whelming majority of workers.

The new agreement covers
about 6,000 CGE workers in
Peterborough, Toronto, Scar-
borough, Guelph, Barrie, Tren-
ton and Burlington and will expire
Dec. 23, 1982. However, workers
at Burlington were out as the

Tribune went to press to back

demands for the resolution of
local issues.

The wage increase adds up to
35% over three years assuming a
9% annual inflation rate, and it
includes retroactive pay at 10% of
the worker’s gross earnings
back-dated to the expiry of the old
agreement, Dec. 23, 1979.

The cost of living allowance
(COLA) is expected to produce
an increase of some $1.23 an hour
over the life of the contract.

By 1982 the starting rate will
have increased to $9.10 an hour,
while the higher classifications
such as tool and die makers will
be earning $12.01.

Other contract improvements
were achieved including ad-
vances in pensions. Increases in
the monthly pension payments
were made from the current $9 a

month times the years of service’

to a maximum of $16 a month for
each year of credited service.

Medical and dental coverage.

were improved. Medical benefits
received outside of Canada are
now covered and retirees’ cover-
age was increased from a $6,000
maximum to $30,000. Also a re-
tiree’s spouse and dependents
will be covered for as long as the
pension is payable.

An additional paid plant holi-
day will be added in 1982 and vac-
ations have been increased to four
weeks after 13 years service and
five weeks after 23 years. Shift
bonuses have been increased to
4% of the workers basic rate on
the afternoon shift and 6% on the
midnight shift.

UE president C.S. Jackson said
the committee’s recommendation
of the offer was necessary in
order to squeeze every possible
concession out of the company
before putting the proposal before
the workers.

Women fight Tories, business

Ont. equal pay law

TORONTO — Bill 3, an
amendment to the Employment
Standards Act, is now going
through clause by clause dissec-
tion in committee at Queen’s
Park. The bill would require
companies to pay men and
women performing work in the
same establishment using the
same skill, effort, responsibility
and working conditions the same
wage. =e

Introduced by NDP Ted Boun-
sall (Windsor-Sandwich) it would
give women the opportunity to
demand equal pay for work of the
same value. Present laws force
women to prove each criterion of
their work the same as a male
counterpart.

If passed the law would be a
step in narrowing the increasing
gap in earnings between men and
women. In 1977, the last year
figures are available, shows
women making 56.8% of men’s

’ earnings. Ten years earlier they

made 54.5%. In dollar terms men
averaged $15,225 in 1977, women
$8,622.

Women’s organizations and
labor unions have put up a strong
lobby in the bill’s defence. When
hearings were held in January the
Ontario Women’s Commission of
the Communist Party presented
its case.

While supporting the amend-
ment, Nan McDonald, commis-
sion spokesperson expressed
concern over limitations within
the Act. Presently only jobs
where men and women work to-
gether are included. This
excludes 63% of working women
who are employed in the ‘‘female
job ghettos’’ — sales, service,
clerical. These are the industries
that notoriously underpay their

workers, said McDonald.
Charging that wage discrimina-
tion was another method for cor-
porations to make super-profits
from women workers, McDonald

‘pointed out that with 40% of the

workforce being female these
profits were considerable.

Both the Retail Council of
Canada, which represents most of

. the country’s big retailers and the

Canadian Manufactures’ Associ-
ation were at the hearings urging a
‘“‘no’’ vote. The manufacturers
took a “‘wait and see”’ stand, until
similar legislation passed by Ot-
tawa and Quebec could be asses-

- sed.

The retailers bluntly stated the
law would drive up their costs and
they didn’t want it. While arguing
the present provincial laws
guaranteeing equal pay for sub-
stantially the same work are
working well within the retail
industry, Retail Council presi-
dent, Alasdair McKichan was un-
able to explain why a woman sel-
ling women’s clothing is paid less
than a man selling men’s clothing
in the same store.

The obvious message from On-
tario business is that women
alone should bear the burden for
keeping costs down by accepting
lower wages, said Lynne Gordon
of the Ontario Status of Women, a
government advisory body. But
business has many avenues for
remaining competitive in the
world market, wage discrimina-
tion is just the easiest and should
not be allowed to continue.

Groups working for the bill's
passage are asking people to
phone their MPPs urging the
government to bring the bill to the
house for third reading as soon as
possible.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 15, 1980—Page 4

While welcoming the pension
improvements Jackson pointed
out that the overall increase and
CGE’s refusal to reduce the age
for early retirement fell short of
what the UE and its members
needed, and far short of what the
workers are entitled to for their
long years of quality service with
the company.

The total wage and COLA pac-
kage he said will barely keep up
with the anticipated increase in
the rising cost of living and that
the company had refused to pro-
vide wage increases that reflect
the high productivity of CGE
workers. .

Jackson remarked, ‘‘once
again this giant corporation has
placed their profit take ahead of
their social responsibility to the
workers, local communties, and
the economy.”’

Recently the Financial Post
wrote that.... ‘‘Canada and
most other industrialized coun-
tries will see zero growth ih pro-
duction in 1980, or even declines
with rising unemployment and
double digit inflation.’ The
Economic Council of Canada in
its 10th Annual Review pointed
up the fact that the period of
post-war prosperity, which ran
almost uninterruptedly for two
and a half decades, is over.

Dealing with this in his report to
the 24th Convention of the Com-
munist Party of Canada, William
Kashtan, General Secretary of
the CPC pointed to the following
consequences for Canadian work-
ing people:

“In 1977 family income, in real
purchasing, according to Statis-
tics Canada, dropped by 2%. In
1978 it dropped by 3%. According
to the Canadian Labor Congress
this was translated into a loss of
$22 in weekly wages. The: same
tendency holds true for 1979.”

‘* |... operating profits for the
first quarter of 1979 for 134 of
Canada’s largest companies
soared to’ $3.9-billion — up 50%
from the $2.26-billion earned
(1978) during the same period.”

* * *

Speaking of the current elec-
tion campaign one has to take
note of what the Clark Govern-
ment did for the people, particu-
larly the working people of this
country. _

By tightening Unemployment
Insurance Regulations they suc-
ceeded in cutting off some
260,000 unemployed from bene-
fits. By this means it saved hun-
dreds of millions of dollars at the
expense of the jobless. In Nova
Scotia so-called ‘‘overpayments’’
to about 5,000 Nova Scotians to-
talled $1.3-million, with indi-
vidual cases averaging between
$200 and $600. ‘‘Unemployment
Minister’’ Ron Atkey claims the

‘law requires the money be paid

back.
However, the. N.S. Coalition
for Full Employment strongly

VOTE FOR A _/ CHANGE —

disagrees and occupied the office
of the Tory candidate in Sydney.
‘Target of the sit-in today’’, re-
ported the Toronto Star Feb. 4,
‘“‘was the office. of Joyce
McDougall, PC candidate for

Cape Breton-The Sydneys.”’ Ac- :

cording to the Star: ‘‘the coalition
has occupied five Canada
employment centres in the prov-
ince last week to press demands
that Atkey write off 1977
unemployment insurance over-
payments.”

In the meantime, Prime Min-
ister Clark told about 600 Tory
supporters in Moncton, New
Brunswick, that the priority for
spending by his government has
been and will be armaments. He
revealed that during the short
time in office his government
implemented a 17% increase in
armaments expenditures.

At the same time the chief
executive of the Montreal-based
economic policy research body
(the C.D. Howe Research Insti-
tute), Carl Beigie, says the U.S.
may avoid a forecast recession if
the crisis in Afghanistan and Iran,
together with pressure in the Per-
sian Gulf to secure oil supplies
result in significantly increased
military spending. The same
source is also quoted as saying
that ‘increased military spending
in the United States would auger
well for Canadian exports.”

Thus, while. the arms mer-
chants and the multi-national cor-

~ porations rub their hands in glee

over the prospects of what they
call a ‘‘U.S.-Soyiet’’ confron-
tation, the bourgeois politicians
are assigned the job of putting the
working people on a starvation
diet. All of which raises the ques-
tion of: ‘‘Where do we go from

here?”
* 5 *

This brings me to the ‘‘Opinion
on Labor’ column by Ed Finn, in
the Toronto Star of Feb. 4, the
very last two lines of which says:
‘All signs point to a resumption
of the cold war in industrial as
well as international relations in
the 1980s.”

Workers’ choice: |
guns or butter

——

Speaking frankly, Ed, my Pel.
sonal opinion is that no let-up
the hot — never mind cold-war by
capital against labor has ever OC
curred except in the imaginatiot
of right-wing misleaders of labor.
Consequently, what is now
happening is that the mult
nationals aré stepping up their ab
tack on both organized and uno
ganized labor in all capitalist
countries, and particularly in the
advanced capitalist countries:
such as the U,S. and Canada. ~

To come to grips with this
menace, the leaders of organize?
labor in United States, Canada,»
and other capitalist countries WH
have to drop their united front
with imperialism against the
socialist world system and theil
participation ‘in the capitalist
sponsored cold war propaganda
and preparation for hot wal
against the Soviet Union and
other real socialist countries
where the working class holds
political power.

The disgusting behavior of
some AFL-CIO leaders in. thé
USA in this respect has often
been copied by some so-called
union leaders here in Canada. All
that this does is to help the ruling
class to hide behind the smoke-
screen of anti-communism to in-
crease the exploitation of labor in
every aspect.

What trade union leaders in
both the U.S. and Canada have to
learn, is that there is no such thing
as a two-front cold war. The class.
conflict here at home has to be-
come an anti-monopoly struggle
in which the organized working
class here as well as abroad join
hands to curb monopoly both at
home and abroad. This has to be-
come an international united front
against cold war as well as pre-
parations for hot war to re-
establish capitalist exploitation
where it has already been
abolished. Workers of the world
and all exploited people unite!
You have nothing to lose, but you
have a world to win!