LABOUR

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TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

Canad Post has already began hiring”
mail warehouses

lack told the Vancouver and District
Labour Council Aug. 18.

Pollack told delegates that the corpo-
ration’s preparations, which are also
reported to include the rental of buses for

transporting scabs, are part of the anti-
campaign

PO egiiaes's scabs’

isn’t on the table for CUPW.
strings in these negotiations,” Pollack

- want a settlement — but we have to be

announced last month
. Strike, the post office will bring in scabs,”

riers agreement provides a basis for set-
tlement “but Canada Post has stated
flatly that the Letters Carriers agreement

“The Tory government is pulling the

said, emphasizing that the talks were
“coming to a crunch.

“The conciliator is now writing his
report and we expect that process to take
two to three weeks. Seven days after he
sends his report to the government, we
will be in a legal position to strike,” she
said.

“We don’t want to go on strike — we

genes to fight. <i

“other unionists to join
eee on picket lines if a strike is called.
“We know the first day that we go on

Job security top issue

Continued from page 1
while employment security, contracting-
out, yard-switching limits, train operation
and retirement at 55 for CN workers were
issues still on the table.

There was some movement on the
retirement issue, but “on precious little else”
following the marathon bargaining, said
Paul Lawrence, editor of the ARU’s strike
bulletin for the Vancouver region.

“The railways just weren’t serious about
bargaining — that’s our feeling,” he said.

That the companies were determined to
force a strike was apparent from letters sent
to shippers as much as two months earlier
notifying them that they would be affected,
Lawrence said. The ARU has also learned
that shippers of bulk commodities were
informed about two weeks ago that a strike
was imminent, he said.

Confined by vague contract language
which has seen the employers strip the rail-
ways of half the work force since 1972, rail
unions have sought security against layoffs
that would cover all workers with four years
or more service. They also want guarantees
against the contracting-out of work which,
in past years, has seen much of the
maintenance-of-way work go to outside,
non-union contractors.

Still in the background, although not
directly involved in the current negotiations,
is the caboose, a key tech change and safety
issue which has hinted at the stakes involved
in de-regulation. Despite evidence showing
that end-of-train electronic monitors can-
not safely replace a caboose and crew, the
rail companies want to introduce the new
equipment and are awaiting a decision from
the Canadian Transport Commission.

For their part, the rail companies have

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, AUGUST 26, 1987

argued that in a de-regulated industry, they
will have to compete for freight traffic with
U.S. carriers and trucking companies whose
costs are lower.

But the argument has not swayed rail
workers since the companies would will-
ingly accept some form of de-regulation
that would enable them to get out from
under costly safety regulations, abandon
unprofitable rail lines and gain new leverage
in eliminating hundreds of jobs under the
guise of “management flexibility.”

Like Canada Post, the rail companies are
viewing a strike as a opportunity to obtain
their objectives. But unlike the post office
corporation, they are not seeking to scab
rail operations, depending instead on
government intervention and the prospect
of an imposed agreement or binding arbi-
tration.

The last two rail strikes in 1966 and 1973
have ended with back-to-work legislation
and it is likely that the Mulroney govern-
ment would follow suit although the Tories
will likely wait several days in the hope that
public sentiment will be running against the
strike.

“] think the companies may have worked
it out with the Conservatives, to let us sweat
it out for 10 days and then bring in heavy-

- handed legislation,” said Lawrence. “It may

even involve an imposed contract because
they can hit us with things in a legislated
contract that they can’t hit us with in nego-
tiations.”

To counter that, the unions will have to
rally trade union and public support over
the next several days, he said.

““We’re really going to have to go out and
do a PR job to make sure that the public
knows the issues involved,” he said.

-

IRC actions underlin
anti-union objectives

B.C. Federation of Labour president
Ken Georgetti charged last week that the
Industrial Relations Council was “doing the
job the government intended of discriminat-
ing against unions” by re-evaluating deci-
sions made by the old Labour Relations
Board and attempting to harass affiliates
into breaking the federation’s boycott.

“Matters that the old LRB dealt with are
being revived for a second look and unions
are being threatened by the IRC if they
support the federation boycott,” Georgetti
said in a statement Aug. 21.

And another unionist charged this week
that the IRC is already beginning to move
punitively against trade unions, making
unprecedented decisions restricting picket-
ing.

The federation cited three recent cases in
which the IRC decided to re-examine deci-
sions already made
by the former Lab-*
our Relations Board
or called for new
hearings when all
the submissions and
evidence had long
before been heard.

Two of the cases
involve union appli-
cations to the LRB
for union successor ‘
status. In one, filed GEORGETTI
by Carpenters Local 1928, the application
goes back to 1984.

Catherine Wedge, the lawyer handling
the case for the Carpenters, said that the
submissions had all-been filed at that time
and “the LRB was treating it as if it was a
case in which all that was required was a
decision.”

Despite that background, the IRC
informed the union by mail Aug. 13 that a
hearing was being called on the issue and if
the union did not confirm that it would
appear, the IRC would consider the appli-
cation to have been abandoned.

“ven though all the submissions were in
and even though all that was required was a
decision, the IRC now says it is putting it
down for a hearing and if we don’t show up,
they will consider the case to have been
abandoned,” Wedge said.

She added that there was no reason that
the IRC could not simply make the long-
awaited LRB decision. “The only thing we
can assume they’re not making a decision is
because of their attitude to the federation’s
boycott,” she said.

For the Carpenters, the issue has become
largely academic because the company
involved, Artisan Manufacturing, has since
gone bankrupt. But for Local 40 of the
Hotel, Restaurant, Culinary and Bartenders
Union, a 1986 application for successor sta-
tus is an immediate issue.

The union applied last year for continua-

tion of its certification when a hotel in

Nanaimo was sold to new owners. All of the
union’s evidence was submitted and
although the case was delayed pending the

—~

never seen a hearing held anywhere else but

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outcome of another, similar case, a decision
was expected following the board’s favou-
rable decision in the earlier case.

But on Aug. 17, the IRC told the union
that it was conducting new hearings in Vic-
toria Aug. 20, 21 and instructed the union to
appear or forfeit the application. The letter,
signed by IRC vice-chair Richard Longpre,
stated: “The council will wait until Aug. 28"
for receipt of confirmation (that Local 40
will attend) and if no confirmation is
received within that period of time, we will
be obliged to conclude that Local 40 has
voluntarily withdrawn the matter and the
council will close the file.” 3 3

“The IRC could easily have made
decision without any hearing,” said |
40 secretary-treasurer Marie Decaire. “The
hotel was sold, the same people were still
working — it was a straightforward case
and all the evidence was in.” a

But the case that has clearly demon=
strated the employer bias of Bill 19 and the
IRC involved Local 882 of the Operating
Engineers which was on strike for two
weeks at the Coquitlam Intermediate Care
Home.

Before its demise, the LRB had made a
formal designation of essential services at
the facility, ruling that the union should
keep 14 members working over a 24-hour
period during the dispute. But the day after
the strike began, the IRC ordered a new
essential services hearing — and then sche-
duled it to be held at a site that was behind
the union’s picket line.

Local 882 business manager Bill Kadey
said the union obviously wouldn’t cross its”
own picket line and, in any event, was
honouring the federation’s boycott. The
IRC subsequently increased the number of
workers designated as essential.

He added that it was unprecedented fora
labour relations body to hold hearings at an
employer’s business, let alone one behind
picket lines.

“In the 17 years I’ve been around, I’ve

at the LRB offices — except during the
Solidarity strike in 1983 when there was
such an overflow, a couple of hearings wea
held at the Holiday Inn,” he said.

Also unprecedented — and an example
of what unionists can expect from the
IRC — was a subsequent decision ordering
the union to lift its picket lines comple
during the hours of eight and 10 in the
morning and four and six in the afternoon.

“At one point, our members had stopped
a couple of garbage trucks,” Kadey said,
“But its significant that the picket line was
tested just at the time when the employer
and representatives from the IRC were
there to watch. And the next day, we got te
order restricting picketing.”

He charged that the interference by i
IRC had “dragged out the dispute far more

than it need have. =
“Tt sure as hell wasn’t done in the interests
of industrial peace,” he said.