Patterson says Inco pact

With the end June 3 of the largest and most important labor battle of the decade at Inco in Sudbury, the ©

labor movement in Canada can never

be the same. By taking on Inco Metals in an eight and a half month

strike, the 11,700 members of Steelworkers Local 6500 proved that with sheer determination and guts, a

group of workers could take on one
Not only did the Inco strikers win, b
support them. As the anti-Inco offensi

Dave Patterson, Local 6500’s
militant president headed the
union leadership and negotiating
committee which brought the
miners and smelterworkers their
victory. In a lot of ways he was a
symbol of the grass roots deter-
mination and action which
guaranteed the strikers would
win.

The son of a Teamster father
and Steelworker. mother, Patter-
son helped steer the local through
frustrating contract talks which in
the beginning saw Inco press the
union to take an insulting and
threatening one-year pact. He
helped lead the union through the
toughest winter days of the strike
when voices from the top eche-
lons of the Steelworkers unions
and other so-called friends chas-

Canada’s toughest and largest
strike in terms of man-days lost is
over. After 8’2months (291 days)
on the picket lines, Sudbury’s
miners and smeltermen are back
at work. The importance of this
(Inco) strike and its lessons go far
beyond the economic gains made
in the final settlement. What this
strike proved was that, given the
needed unity and solidarity, a
strike can be won even in the most
unfavorable conditions and
against the toughest multi-
national corporations.

The Inco strike ‘started with
odds almost 100% against the
workers. The company had a
larger than ever stockpile of nic-
kel on hand. It had already laid off
thousands of workers and plan-
ned more of the same. These
massive layoffs were ac-
companied by an insulting new
contract offer ‘to its employees.
The company planned on reduc-
ing the workers’ income and
simultaneously. to weaken the
union by propasing unacceptable.
changes in its grievance proce-
dure. Capital and jobs were being
exported from Sudbury, Port
Colborne and Thompson to
Guatemala and Indonesia. This
policy not only undermines the
economy of communities directly
involved, but concerned Canada
and all its working people and
non-monopoly business.

The choice facing the Sudbury
miners and smeltermen was to
either capitulate before Inco or to
face its challenge in a strike they
knew would be long and difficult.
They wisely chose the latter
course over the opposition of voi-
ces of defeatism; such as former
New Democratic Party leader
Stephen Lewis, and the union’s
District 6 director Stewart.Cook,
who claimed a strike would be a
lost cause from the beginning.
This defeatist view was chal-
lenged editorially by the Welland
Evening Tribune as a superficial
analysis of the situation and

tised the Sudbury workers for

daring to stand up to Inco.
They called the strike

““madness”” but in the end had to

’ bow to the strikers’ determination

not to return to work until it
would be with pride, dignity, and
significant concessions by Inco.

On June 3, these conditions
were present for the Inco strikers,
and Patterson’s election promise
to Local 6500, three years ago,
that he wouldn’t sign a sell-out
agreement was fulfilled.

Last September the Tribune in-
terviewed Patterson when the
strike began. With the victory
achieved, another talk with the
Local 6500 president was consi-
dered an appropriate post script
to this epic strike.

A few days after the strike was

“‘pushing a major issue into the
background’’, a reference to In-
co’s attitude and the Ontario
Government’s failure to hold Inco
to accountability.

* * *

In announcing the decision to
strike, the president of the
Steel Workers Local Union 6500
in Sudbury, Dave Patterson,
pointed out: “‘It’s happening
everywhere, companies are try-
ing to blackmail their workers into
giving up what they had in the
past. It is time somebody took a
stand, and it might as well be the
workers of Sudbury.’ This
statement underlined the grim de-
termination of the members of the
union not to capitulate to Inco’s
blackmailing tactics. The support
for this position received instan-
taneous and effective backing
from the Sudbury community.

The three local members of the
New Democratic Party in the On-
tario Legislature and the NDP
federal MP from the Nickel Belt
issued a joint statement in which
they stated: ‘‘Make no mistake
about it, the workers had a
choice; strike now or sign an
agreement, endure a layoff and go
through the same struggle a year
from now.”’

Both the Ontario and Central
Committee of the Communist
Party issued statements con-
demning the transfer of capital
and jobs from Canada to
Guatemala and Indonesia. The
CP said the capital Inco was ex-
porting came from ‘‘the blood,
sweat and toil of the miners and
smeltermen in the Sudbury Basin
and other Inco operations in Can-
da.”’ Moreover, the CP charged
that Inco’s export of jobs was
made possible by the complicity
of governments in Ottawa and at
Queen’s Park (Toronto). The
party called for complete all out
support and solidarity with the
Inco strikers.

* * *

The support of this strike be-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE —JIUNE 22, 1979—Page 10.

‘Unity, solidarity
means victory

of the world’s biggest multi-national corporations, and win.
ut they inspired workers and their organizations from coast to coast to
ve grew ever stronger, the company became more and more isolated.

over Tribune labor reporter Mike
Phillips spoke to Patterson in
Sudbury, and the result is a two-
part interview which will con-
clude next week. :
After congratulating Patterson
and Local 6500 on their stunning
victory over Inco, Phillips asked
him how he felt about the settle-
ment. Patterson: I can’t look at
this settlement any other way but
as a victory. Some guys weren’t
happy with it, but I know one
thing, when we went on strike,
40% of our members said they
weren't in favor of going on
strike. When we went back to
work, it was only a matter of
22-23% who said they weren’t in
favor. That means that the major-
ity was respected by the minority
back in September. When we go

/

came unique and historic. It em-
braced the whole community,
Starting with the strikers’ wives
and the community of Sudbury
and, extending to all organized
workers across Canada. The sol-
idarity also extended to large sec-
tions of the international trade
union movement, _and included
donations from the Polish Miners
Federation, the Metal Workers
TU International and the World
Federation of Trade Unions. The
Inco strike became a Canadian
symbol of the trade union
fightback against multinational
corporations in the international
arena.

It was this exemplary solidari-
ty, plus the courage, tengcity and
readiness for self-sacrifice of the
Sudbury miners and smelter-
workers, that made victory in the

__ Struggle possible of achievement.

This strike has served as a
warning to Inco and other multi-
nationals that they can expect to
be held to account by their
employees and the communities
in which they live and work for
the way they behave from now
on. Also that an injury to one
group of workers is an injury to all
workers, and that the working
class and democratic movement
will fight back with increasing
effectiveness against the
monopolies and their profiteering,
which is the root cause of inflation
and unemployment in the capital-
ist world today.

Perhaps the most important
lesson for workers everywhere is
not to allow any multi-national
corporation, like Inco, to try to
play games with their union con-
tracts and their lives, or to trust
any capitalist government to pro-
tect their own and their commu-
nity’s interests. This is something
that.calls for vigilance, good or-
ganization, unity and solidarity of
the working class and democratic
forces everywhere and at all
times.

labor victory _

Local 6500 president Patterson with CUPW president Parrot during a

strike support rally last winter.

back to work, same thing applies.

Look, you don’t get every-
thing. But now you don’t have to
put out stickers saying 30 and out,
anymore. You don’t have to put

out stickers saying CWS (Co- °

operative Wage Study). You
don’t have to put out stickers say-
ing LTD (Long Term Disability
benefits). You don’t have to put
out stickers saying anything about
SUB (Supplementary Unem-
ployment Benefits), or a lot of
those issues, ’cause they’re in the
agreement and they’re realistic.

A guy looks at that and can say:
‘“‘They’ve already done it. All
you’ve got to do next time is just
add to it.’” That’s how you make
gains. .

I don’t think there’s been a bar-
gaining committee, or set of
negotiations “which has ac-
complished as muchas we did this
time.

You also can’t forget, that we
managed to hang onto the things

HEUAEDUOSUAUENATEOSVANEAUAUOCLUAGOUOSUSONONDOOAUREROOEUOIUE
‘Playing Russian
roulette with

out of empty
chambers...’

we already had. We didn’t sacri-
fice a thing in this set of negotia-
tions. Inco didn’t take away the
grievance procedure from us.
They didn’t take away our senior-
ity clauses. They didn’t touch our
partial credits in the pension, or
any of those things.

In the final analysis, this mem-
bership said: ‘‘Look Inco, you’re
not doing those things. You're not
going to do it!’

The multi-national was told in
no uncertain terms. The last sen-
tence of the memorandum read —
all other company items with-
drawn.

Tribune: What kind of impact do
you think the strike had on the
climate of the labor movement in
Canada, in general?

Patterson: I think this strike has
opened the eyes of a lot of people
who never had the Opportunity to
see a strike of this magnitude be-
fore. I think it changed the labor
climate in Canada. People who
didn’t know anything about Sud-
bury, were helping the strike.

They knew a lot about Inco.
Inco is a four-letter word, they
said. The workers in Sudbury de-
serve a lot better, they had no
hesitation in saying that.

They sympathized with the

people in our sttike and Local
6500 because, I guess they’ve all
been in a position where they
have been up against the wall and
faced that situation. «

Maybe deep down inside, all
across Canada people said: ‘‘This
time, if we just do it once and
convince ourselves that it can be
done, the next time it won’t be as
hard.”’ A lot of workers realized:
“Your fight is our fight! We’ll beat
the corporations we all work for
and prove to them once and for all
that, by God, next time you de-
cide you're going to take on any
local union... If we mobilize
ourselves as well as we did this
time — we’re going to be in a win
Situation continually:”’

Tribune: Frequently you’ve
warned of the high degree of
foreign capital invested in the
economy. What are your
thoughts on this at this point?
Patterson: I’ve been saying that
foreign investment has just taken
over. There’s more now than at
any other time in our history, and.
it’s not on the decrease but on the
increase.

Basically what it means is that
Sudbury, Murdochville, Yellow-
knife, Trail and Grand Duc, B.C.
— all those areas are natural re-
source areas being exploited as a
periphery society with everything

being fed into the centre of society .

whether it’s Toronto, the indus-

trial basin of Canada, or the indus-

trial basin of the U.S.

We're just playing this game of

Russian roulette with our re-
sources, and the trouble is, we’re
running out of empty chambers.
We have no economic strategy
based on our resources, and we
have no legislation in this country
that really gives us any kind of
guarantees that 10 years down the
road those mining. companies
aren’t going to leave us high and
dry. ‘

’ We’re also subject to the worse
type of abuse, and that is the cyc-
lical approach to metal marketing.
When the metals market goes
down they lay off. When it’s

good, they maintain a lean, hun- —

gry work force expecting that
with the next lay off, they’re going
to get the chop.

The effects of these things
aren’t our responsibility. We’re
the people in this country who
have the right to say these re-
sources belong to me, and they
don’t belong to Inco, and they
don’t belong to Noranda or Alcan
or any other corporation. The
wealth produced from these re-
sources belong right here in
Canada. There’s no reason why
we can’t make mining equipment

right here.
To be continued