|Make peace an election
‘issue, says UAW leader

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TORONTO — Some 600 peace activists from all
walks of life roared their approval Mar. 9 to declara-

_ tions by peace movement and labor leaders that

disarmament and testing of the Cruise missile must

_ be made key issues in the forthcoming federal
elections. -

Organized just three days after the U.S. conducted

_ its first test of the Cruise missile’s guidance system
_ over Alberta, the rally sponsored by the Toronto
_ Disarmament Network reflected the impressive
_ breadth of forces in this country fighting for nuclear

disarmament.

Bob White, Canadian director of the United Auto
Workers, a TDN affiliate, earned.a warm response
when he declared the recent Cruise test would defi-

_ nitely not Stop the protest movement against the
_ deadly missile nor demoralize the peace forces.

He said he has written to Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau telling him that his current peace initiative
would have had much more credibility had he can-

_ celled the umbrella agreement that provided for U.S.
_ testing of the Cruise missile on Canadian soil.

White declared that Trudeau’s very peace initia-

~ tive was fueled on the massive public mobilization of

_ the peace movement and its effective campaigning
against the Cruise missile.

“Does anyone really think that Pierre Elliot Tru-

_ deau’s initiative would have happened without the
_ existence of a growing peace movement?” the UAW
_ leader asked. A resounding chorus of “No” from the
_ audience was the reply.

\

He added that the Canadian Labor Congress was

- committing its financial and organizational resour-

-ces to ensure that the Peace Petition Caravan Cam-

_ paign will be a huge success in both mobilizing

Canadians behind the petition’s demand for ending

Cruise testing, declaring Canada a nuclear weapons-

free zone and directing military spending toward

_ socially useful production.

The campaign he said would culminate sometime
this summer with the presentation of the petitions to
the federal government and the massive demand for

_ a free vote in the Commons to see “where the politi-

' cans Stand on world peace and nuclear

disarmament,”
Echoing TDN spokesperson David Craft, who

earlier in the program had made a similar appeal,

White told the assembly “in spite of the John

Turners and Brian Mulroneys of this world we’re
going to make peace a major issue in the next federal
election in this country.”

He also spoke of the crucial need to return to
detente between the U.S. and the USSR and to move
away from the corrosive practice of confrontation.
“The issue facing the world today is not whether we
in the west are going to change the political system of
eastern Europe, but whether or not we’re going to
live together in peace instead of under the threat of

nuclear war.

“And this can only happen through debate and
dialogue,” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
he said.

TDN spokeperson David Craft blasted Trudeau
for trying “to straddle the issue which has deeply
polarized public opinion in Canada” by simultane-
ously allowing the Cruise to be tested and carrying
through with his peace initiative.

Craft said the testing agreement was essentially an
exercise by the U.S. to prove to its European allies
that despite the majority opposition both in wetsern
Europe and throughout Canada to deploying the
Cruise and Pershing II missiles, it can still make some
of its allies toe the U.S. aggressive foreign policy line.
Calling the cruise testing “the thin edge of the
wedge,” Craft said it woud! draw Canada further in
to the U.S. military plans and would “‘open the door
to an ever more extensive commitment (by Canada)
to U.S. nuclear policy.”

U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s so-called two-
track policy ushered in a new stage of the cold war
Craft said. “The claim of Soviet nuclear superiority
won’t stand up to scrutiny,” he said. “We now know
that new weapons such as the Cruise and Pershing II
were already in production in the mid-70s before the
SS20s were deployed.”

He appealed to peace activists to step up their fight
for disarmament and against the Cruise and to make
sure that these two questions in particular become
major election issues.

Laurie Bell of Youth Corps linked the peace and
women’s movements and noted the growing under-
standing in both movements of the importance of
that relationship. Sister Rosalie Bertel spoke of the
urgency of the global nuclear danger and of the need
for people everywhere to make peace and disarma-
ment their number one concern.

MINERS BACK UMW
IN CAPE BRETON

GLACE BAY, N.S. — By a larger margin than last year’s
vote, coal miners on Cape Breton Island rejected a bid, March 8,
by the Canadian Mineworkers Union to displace the United
Workers of America as their bargaining agent. Some 60 per cent
of the Island’s 3,100 miners voted for the UMW, increasing the
margin of support from 347 in last year’s CMU bid to raid the
UMW, to this year’s spread of 553 votes. Some observers see the
results as an indication the miners see that in the battles looming
between workers and the establishment their interest are best
served by fighting within the ranks of the mainstream labor
movement rather than suffer weakness and silation on the labor
movement’s fringes.

STRIKE DATE |
SET AT DOUGLAS

MALTON — March 21 has been set by United Auto Workers
Local 1967 at McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft as the opening day of
strike action unless the U.S.-owned multi-national comes up with
an acceptable contract offer. McDonnell-Douglas is trying to
impose a two-tier wage structure on the Canadian workers, union
Officials say, like the plan U.S. workers were compelled to accept
after a prolonged strike. The plan would see new hires earning as
much as $3 an hour less than their fellow workers doing the same
jobs. UAW Canadian director Bob White has said such a settle-
ment is unacceptable in Canada. The contract for the 2,000
production and 350 office workers expired last Oct. 17.

ONTARIO EMPLOYEES
CHALLENGE STRIKE BAN

TORONTO — The Ontario Public Service Employees Union
and the province’s liquor board employees have taken the On-
tario Government to court to overturn the Crown Employees
Collective Bargaining Act, (CECBA). The legislation limits
provincial public sector workers’ bargaining rights and denies
them the right to strike. The unions representing in total some
65,000 Ontario Government workers asked the Ontario Supreme
Court, March 14, to declare CECBA beyond the Legislature’s
powers because the unions believe it-contravenes the federal
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. OPSEU president Sean
O’ Flynn called CECBA, ‘‘just about the most repressive labor
law in Canada,’’ and said the union believes the Davis Tory
government ‘‘will be unable to justify the existing restrictions.”

Shorter work day needs labor’s focus

Events in the past week give some indication that
Canadian trade unionists are about to challenge the
“hold the line — cutback”’ policies of Canadian govern-
ments and corporations.

Two unions, the United Auto Workers union and the
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation served

_ notice on their employers that they were putting pay

increases number one on their bargaining agenda this
year.

The UAW is in negotiations for 30,000 General Motors
workers and 13,000 Ford of Canada workers, with the
contracts due to expire in September. The OSSTF, rep-
resenting 35,000 teachers in 79 Ontario areas, faces a
September deadline in its negotiations with the Ontario
Govetnment.

The United Auto Workers settled three years ago for a

3 per cent a year agreement but was forced to give away
11 paid holidays and some other monetary items in a
period dominated by a crisis in auto and at the height of
the demand by corporations for major concessions.
' The OSSTF had their wages locked in by Bill 179
which tied the union to increases of 5 per cent for 1983 at
a period where inflation was running at 11 per cent, and
their right to strike removed.

The tough bargaining stance of these two key unions is
undoubtedly occasioned by the injustice forced on
workers by unfair imposition of wage controls and hys-
teria whipped up by governments and media which in-
fluenced the collective bargaining scene in the past sev-
eral years. :

Reports coming out of Ottawa show that wage in-
creases last year were held to 4.7 per cent, far below the

~

Labor in action

4 a William Stewart

rate of inflation for the year, while profits for the manu-
facturing industry went up from $19.88-billion in 1982 to
$34.75-billion in 1983, an increase of 54%.

This ‘‘recovery’’ for big business was attributed to
four elements: (1) higher export prices, (2) higher
productivity, (3) lower wage demands (4) lower taxes for
corporations.

All the gravy from three of these four elements was
lapped up by the corporations and the result showed up
in lower wages for workers and higher profits for cor-
porations. It is this gross injustice which is being chal-
lenged by the UAW and the OSSTF and their struggles
could well act as the catalyst to put the trade union
movement back on track in its never-ending struggle to
protect and extend its wages and living standards against
capitalist assault.

It is to be hoped that other unions, in and facing
negotiations this year, will take heart from the example
of these two unions and demand that workers be a part of
the so-called ‘‘recovery’’, not its victims. The United
Steelworkers union is locked in difficult negotiations
with Stelco and Algoma and facing demands for a roll-
over agreement, and other weakening of their contract.

It could benefit from the changed atmosphere made pos-

sible by the UAW, OSSTF militant stance and pick up
the tempo of mobilization of its membership to win
important gains in their agreement which expires July 31.

We notice at the same time the UAW has placed the
shorter hours question on the agenda as a serious item
for this year’s bargaining. Robert White, Canadian Di-
rector stated in a press conference that the question of
‘‘more time off the job’’ is going to be a central issue in
this year’s Canadian bargaining.

All workers will identify with Mr. White’s remarks,
but in the view of this column the matter would be better
put as “‘less time on the job’’. We can appreciate the
difficulties faced by a single union trying to break the
shorter hours barrier in a critical industry while the labor
movement as a whole has not dedicated itself to the kind
of struggles necessary to win such a demand. At the
same time however, the very experience of the UAW
with its PPH days shows the weakness of frill ap-
proaches to shorter hours as any long-term and mean-
ingful substitute to the demand for a shorter work day |
and a shorter work week.

Economically and culturally the need for less time on

_ the job, not more time off the job, is the critical issue

which stands before the working class of Canada. The
UAW will get, and deserves, full support from its own
membership and the labor movement for its efforts to
shore up workers’ time off the job. However in terms of
the coming Canadian Labor Congress Convention and

‘the more long-term struggle to put Canada’s one-and-a-

half million unemployed back to work, the question of a
shorter work day and shorter work week should be the
focus of organized. labor.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 21, 1984 e 7