LABOR

OTTAWA — Canadian labor entered
the New Year appealing for unity with
other progressive forces to fight for
peace, jobs and economic progress.
Some, such as United Auto Workers
Canadian director Bob White, had addi-
tional and more specific goals targeted
for their members in 1984.

For White and the UAW, shorter work
time will be a top priority in the forth-
coming auto industry talks which will be
launched after the union lays down its
bargaining demands at collective bar-
gaining conferences slated for April.

Dennis McDermott, president of the
two million member Canadian Labor

for concessions, the attack on public sec-
tor wages and the assault on social ser-
vices in general, the technological rev-
olution and the growing peril of nuclear
holocaust as the major challenges
confronting Canadian workers today and
in the year ahead.

He accused the federal government of
““deliberately’’ worsening the recession
so it could fight inflation on the backs of
the people.

“The government’s scheme suc-
ceeded beyong its wildest dreams — but
at what cost to Canadians’, McDermott
asked. ‘‘There are now an estimated two
million people without jobs, and millions
of others whose real income has been
reduced by means of wage controls
high interest rates and increased taxes.””

He pointed to the people’s fightback in
British Columbia as an example, ‘‘of
what a determined labor movement can
do with the help of other people of good
will”. And, on behalf of the CLC
McDermott invited these ‘‘other
progressive groups”’ to ‘‘join us in our
fight for justice, equity, peace and free-
dom at home and abroad.”’

Congress cited unemployment, the drive :

Jobs and progress
labor's target in ‘64

Both the UAW and the _ 180,000-
member Public Service Alliance of
Canada entered the New Year with
specific goals in addition to the general
objectives laid out by leadership bodies.

PSAC president Pierre Samson in his
New Year’s message targeted on both, a
master agreement for public service
workers so they can all enjoy the same
benefits, as well as placement of all
PSAC members under the Canada Labor
Code so the union can have the right to

negotiate working conditions. Currently

PSAC can’t negotiate working condi-
tions under the Public Service Staff Rela-
tions Act.

“When negotiations resume in 1984’,
Samson said, ‘‘the Alliance will push for
a contract definition of technological
change to cover changes in work
methods and equipment and clauses on
advance notice, retraining and health and
safety protection.”

Shorter work time, the UAW’s White
said, is imperative today in the face of
massive unemployment, and the rapid
technological change. Labor has stres-
sed that it welcomes the technological
revolution provided its introduction
serves people’s interests rather than en-
slaving them just to maximize corporate
profits.

Both McDermott and Pilkey have wel-
comed the idea of shorter work time. The
OFL leader has stressed that shorter
work time as far as labor is concerned
doesn’t equal work sharing schemes
such as are promoted by the federal
government.

Work sharing that results in cutting
pay is unacceptable to the, labor move-
ment Pilkey has said, because workers
are in no way responsible for the eco-
nomic crisis.

CUPW campaigning |
Tor improved servic

OTTAWA — The 23,000-member Can-
adian Union of Postal Workérs, (CUPW)
followed up its campaign for a better postal
service Dec. 15, with a letter to all federal
MPS and the directors of the Crown corpo-
ration objecting to president Michael
Warren’s management of the Post Office.

CUPW president Jean-Claude Parrot
detailed the union’s opposition to Canada
Post Corporation’s five-year business plan,
which he said summed up Warren’s objec-
tive of achieving financial self-sufficiency
for the Post Office regardless of the cost to
the public and postal workers.

“He is directing Canada Post as if finan-
cial self-sufficiency is the only goal”, the
CUPW leader said in a press release. “To
that end, service cutbacks are being
imposed while labor-management relations

. deteriorate.

“This is directly contrary to the mandate
given to Canada Post by parliament in Bill
C-42, the act that converted the Post Office
into a Crown corporation.

Parrot listed the service cuts that have
already been implemented since the Crown
corporation was formed, such as closing
postal stations, reducing rural route deliv-
ery, reducing hours of service in many areas,
eliminating Saturday wicket services, cut-
ting back on wicket staff and dropping
categories of third class mail.

“Post office managers are currently step-
ping up their efforts to make Canada Post
into a cheap communications service for big
business”, Parrot charged. While the public
paid the shot for the $1-billion automation
of the Post Office the main beneficiary has
been big business.

The CUPW letter called on the federal
government to exercise its “power and
duty” to remedy the situation in Canada
Post. Parrot pointed out that the govern-
ment can direct the post office to maintain,
improve and extend its services and can also
appropriate funds to provide these services.

‘cutting measures in the Post Office as”

so
JEAN-CLAUDE PARROT. .

. letter to MPs.
CUPW, the letter said, rejects any cost :

“inappropriate” because “any financial”
shortfalls . . . should be considered as the”
cost of postal service, and Canada Post”
should exercise its right to public subsidy as
provided for in the Canada Post Corpora-
tion Act.” ;

Furthermore, the letter continued, cost —
cutting measures aren’t needed because
expanding services to the public would —
reduce the deficit. The letter also noted, —
“financial difficulties can in large measure —
be avoided by reducing or eliminating cor-_
porate subsidies.” 3

CUPW’s Service Expansion Program, —
the letter said, is aimed at not only reducing —
the Canada Post deficit but improving ser-
vices and creating more jobs. It calls for:
providing new services such as parcel wrap-
ping; banking; expanding wicket services”
with more staff and longer service hours; —
maintaining and expanding postal stations; —
re-establishings six-day rural delivery; and
extending door-to-door delivery.

Eo
re

Strike a blow for peace and jobs

One of the buzz-words, prominent in the British Col-
umbia Solidarity-Socred confrontation last year, was
““trigger’’.

The trade unions had to have a “‘trigger’’ to get their
members to hit the bricks. In the case of the government
employees it was seniority, in the case of teachers mass
layoffs.

The whole gamut of legislation brought down by the
Socred government was not, apparently, a “‘trigger”’
which could bring the private workers to the picket line.
According to prevailing wisdom they could respond to
nothing other than a direct attack on their own individual
pocketbook.

When the workers went back for what was dubbed by
their leaders as a “‘truce not the end of the war,”’ those
who argued for a resumption of economic action as it
become clear Bennett’s government did not intend to
live up to its promises, were told they needed a “‘trigger”’
before they could resume the strike. This ‘‘trigger’’ was
apparently provided by Bennett when he publicly denied
any agreement had been made at Kelowna with Jack
Munro of the International Woodworkers of America,
(IWA), to keep the $18-million saved on teachers’

salaries during the strike, in the education budget, and
thus forestall any layoffs.

Five Minute Protest

Whether or not the “trigger” was set on a blank will
become clearer this month when Operation Solidarity
meets to consider the issue.

The purpose of this exercise in “triggerism”’ is not so
much to go back over the event in B.C. as to raise the
question of what the labor movement considers to be a

“trigger” for economic action in Canada, and in the rest
of the world.

The workers in the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG) and Denmark both struck for five minutes for

Labor in action.

William Stewart

peace in December. Now, there is a trigger for you!

Apparently they are convinced that their lives are
worth more than so many cents an hour, and that they
are fighting for their very lives in the struggle against the
deployment of the Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe
and the escalation of the nuclear arms race that is bound
to result.

Communists would be the last to deny that workers,
just as capitalists, are motivated by self-interests, the
difference being that the self-interests of capitalists are in
conflict with those of the overwhelming majority of the
people. The self-interests of working people coincide
with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the
people.

Working people can and must more and more define ©

their self-interests on a much broader scale than hitherto.
Likewise they must prepare to use their economic might
to back up these self-interests.

Sharp Differences Remain

Anyone observing the struggle of B.C.’s great Solidar-
ity Coalition and its labor component, Operation Solidar-
ity, was bound to note the conflict that arose when the
settlement was made at Kelowna.

Those sections of the Solidarity Coalition who were
outside Operation Solidarity, which included a very
broad and influential cross section of the community,
felt, with some justification that immediate trade union
considerations prevailed and that the broader range of
issues such as rent control, human rights and social

services were not sufficiently addressed by the settlement.

Trade unionists, on the other hand felt that they were
the ones who were on strike, or about to be on strike and
therefore they had a right to make the main determina-
tion as to the cut line for withholding their services.

This was a very difficult contradiction to resolve and it
is to the credit of the Solidarity movement in B.C. that
they were able to keep the coalition intact even while
rather sharp differences remain on the outcome of the
first stage of the battle.

Which all gets us back, in a sense, to the “‘trigger’’
question.

Unsatisfactory Situation
The trade union leaders in B.C. may very well be

correct when they estimate that such ‘“‘triggers’’ are

necessary at this time to move their members into
economic action against employers and governments.
What is left unsaid however is that this cannot be ac-
cepted as a satisfactory situation in the trade union
movement in the stormy period we now face.

We, for example are not proposing a general strike of
five minutes, more or less, against the testing of Cruise
missiles in Canada. But we most surely wish that it were
possible, and we should work toward the day that it will
be.

Likewise on a whole range of major economic and
social issues which do not find themselves directly on the
bargaining table, we must look to the day when workers
will treat these issues just as militantly and directly as

they treat their own negotiations for a collective |

agreement.

It is in this way, together with electoral political action
that workers can bring the full range of their power to
bear against state-monopoly capitalism and against U.S.
imperialism’s nuclear threat to mankind. _

Strike a blow for peace, strike a blow for jobs.

6 ° PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 11, 1984