It appears that the independent
union known as SORWUC (Service,
Office and Retail Workers Union of
Canada) has reached the end of the
road in its current campaign to
represent bank employees in
collective bargaining: .

SORWUC holds 24 individual
branch certifications in British
Columbia and two in Saskat-
chewan. It has run into great
difficulties in collective bargaining
because of the devious tactics of
the banks. Because of these dif-
ficulties and because of a financial
crisis, SORWUC recently an-
nounced it was withdrawing from
negotiations and recommended
that the members seek decer-
tification or join another union. In

our opinion, SORWUC should .;

reconsider the offer of the
Canadian Labor Congress to ac-
cept the bank workers into af-
filiation. That would be the best
way to consolidate what has been
achieved and to protect the
organized bank workers from

being victimized.
Jackie Ainsworth, a_ vice-
president of SORWUC’s bank local,

made these points in a recent
statement to the press:

e “Our backs are against the
wall. We could go on strike or-sign
a lousy contract.

e “We cannot afford a strike
without help from the affiliates of
the Canadian Labor Congress, but
we can’t get that help because the
CLC is now organizing bank em-
ployees.

e “Negotiations with the Bank of
Nova Scotia, the Bank of Montreal
and the Toronto Dominion Bank
were called off, because we
couldn’t pay our negotiators. Four
paid organizers were laid off.

e@ “We gave our members in the
certified branches a free choice:
Apply for decertification or join
another union. If they. become
decertified, they will be entitled to
the salary increases and improved
benefits given to non-organized
bank workers.” (Once a union is
certified in a unit and _ starts
bargaining, wages and conditions
are frozen until a new contract is
signed, in accordance with the
labor code.)

In my article on organizing bank
workers in the Tribune of
December 9 of last year, I gave

recognition to the pioneering work
of SORWUC, but I also warned of
the dangers that lay ahead. I
pointed out that although it was an
achievement to win a ruling from
the Canada Labor Relations Board
that a single branch is a unit ap-
propriate for collective bargaining
purposes, it should be remembered
that there are some 7,000 branches
across the country, in addition to
data centers. I also pointed out that
the banks could stall individual
branch negotiations almost in-
definitely and thus make it very
costly for any union they were
dealing with.

There are some on the fringes of
the trade union movement, and a
few inside the movement, who feel

LABOR
COMMENT

BY JACK PHILLIPS

that my article was slanted against
SORWUC in favor of the CLC. To
set the record straight, this paper
does have a bias, in favor .of
Canada’s 140,000 banks employees.
We make no apologies for ad-
vancing the idea that the CLC, with
all of its faults, has 2.3 million
members and is the logical center
to take on the job of organizing the
bank workers. Any other position
would be utopian.

The directors of the big five
banks are the commanding figures
in Canada’s ruling class. They will
do.everything they can to prevent
unionization of bank workers, and
they have tremendous wealth,
experience and power on their
side. SORWUC, despite all good
intentions, is no match for them
and will not be in the future. These
are the facts.

That’s why my December article
closed with this paragraph:

“The CLC, with its great
resources in membership and
money, will be in the best position
to undertake the kind of a
sustained campaign the situation
calls for, provided no jurisdictional
quarrels develop among the af-
filiates. However, the CLC would
be well advised to study the grass
roots techniques used by SORWUC

in its organizational campaign to
date.”’

The difficulties predicted in the
December article were reflected in
the following month at a meeting of
SORWUC’s bank section. SOR-
WUC’s Linda Read told the Van-
couver Sun the meeting had
decided that while negotiations
would continue on an individual
branch basis for the first contracts,
the union had concluded that
province-wide bargaining was the
best way to go.

“In a small branch of perhaps 10
people’ she said, ‘‘it’s not too hard
to figure out who is involved in the
union, and those people have a
rough time. This way, by applying
for the whole province, banks will
have a harder time intimidating
people, because everyone will be
anonymous.’’ She also said that
SORWUC’s target was to obtain
master contracts covering all
branches of each bank in the
province. :

Now, a few months later,
SORWUC has publicly announced
it can’t pay its rent, is $30,000 in
debt, can’t pay its negotiators, has
laid off its organizers and has no
money to contest the appeal of the

—Royal Bank against the ruling

making a branch an appropriate
unit for collective bargaining.

If the leaders of SORWUC are
responsible people, they will place
the interests of the workers in the
certified branches before all other
considerations, including personal
pride and their dislike for the
leadership of the CLC. Instead of
recommending that these workers
apply for decertification . (which
would mean opening the door to
widespread discrimination by the
employers) or else join another
union, they should be giving a
strong lead to these workers to join
up with the CLC. All talk of giving
up the current negotiations with
the idea of continuing the
organization of bank workers in the
future is no more than idle chatter
divorced from reality — and it
makes SORWUC’s position even
more untenable.

To cover up the weakness of their
position, the leaders of SORWUC
are issuing public statements in
which the CLC leaders are named
as villains, for refusing to finance
SORWUC on the latter’s terms.

JACKIE AINSWORTH ..
bank organizing campaign.

For example: ‘‘As long as most
unions in B.C. continue to kowtow
to the CLC executive, thousands of
workers will remain unorganized.
The CLC and its affiliates must
take the responsibility for that.”

Thus, the CLC leaders, and not
the big tycoons who control the
banks and are bitterly opposed to a
union for bank employees, become
the main enemies of the bank
workers. What twisted logic!

In 1977, SORWUC reported 381
members to the _ provincial
department of labor, of whom 300
were said to be bank workers. In
the same year, the CLC had more
than 314,000 members in the
province and more -than 2 million
members across the country.

We have here what is yet another
example of how small fringe
groups (including some honest,
militant people) set up what they
consider to be a “‘perfect’’ union
free of all the faults of the major
trade unions. First they publicly
declare that they and only they
have the answers to the workers’
problems and that the established
unions are incapable of accepting

Building trades denied autonomy

Continued from pg. 1

In an_ interview, Robert
Georgine, president of the AFL-
CIO Building Trades Department,
admitted to reporters that the
structure would not meet the
CLC guidelines for autonomy
which, among other provisions,
_call for the election of Canadian
officers by Canadians.

Later he told the convention “‘the
CLC has its rules. If you feel they
can do a job for you go to that
forum. But, you belong now to an
organization, a club, — the unions
affiliated to the building trades
department.”

In his opening remarks Geogine
outlined how the new structure
arose, replacing the Canadian
Advisory Board dissolved June 1.
Each of the 15 members represents
one of the international unions and
is appointed: by the general
presidents of their U.S.-based
organization. In addition, Jim
McCambly, executive secretary of
the department’s Canadian office
who in turn is appointed by
Georgine, also sits on the Canadian
board as executive secretary. The
only elections that ever take place
are within the executive board
itself for a chairman.

ROBERT GEORGINE .. as a
body you don’t have the authori-
ty to change the structure.”

Of the 165 registered delegates,
only 37 representatives of local
building trades councils, and seven
from provincial councils were not
appointed by the _ general
presidents.

A key debate over a resolution
covering some nine others sub-
mitted by local and provincial
building trades councils, which
would have provided for
representation from the provincial

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 11, 1978—Page 8

councils on the Canadian
Executive Board, both set the tone
for the entire convention, and
highlighted how far out of touch the
U.S. leadership is with its
Canadian affiliates.

As in the debates that were to
follow, the non-appointed delegates
led whatever real discussion that
occurred, raising the issues vital to
Canadian building trades workers.
Cy Stairs of the Prince George and
District Building Trades Council
called on the committee to take the
resolution back and change it ‘‘to
give us some input from the rank
and file — the guys who are out
there actually doing the work.”

Jim Kinnaird president of the -
B.C. and Yukon Building Trades
Council blasted the committee for
“opting for business as usual’”’. He
noted that the resolutions ex-
pressed the overwhelming
demands for autonomy by the local
and provincial councils and the
Winnipeg meeting in 1974 where
the drive for Canadian autonomy
was launched by grass roots
building trades members.

In countering the demand,
Georgine said the the Los Angeles
convention of the Building Trades
Department held last year had
mandated the _ international

executive to establish a structure
for Canadian building trades
members. But he told the con-
vention bluntly that it did not have
the right to establish or change
rules or structures as they were
determined by the AFL-CIO.

Since it is a creature of the
building trades department, the
Canadian structure is bound by
international convention, he said.

“As a body,’ he told the
delegates,” you don’t have the
authority to change that struc-
ture.”

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. SORWUC at the end of the road in its

those answers. Then they say to the
established trade union movement

“you must either finance us
stand exposed as people who have
failed the workers.”’

Their tendency is to concentraté
too much on the negative features
of the trade union movement an
too little on its positive features:
Also, they forget that most workers
who belong to CLC unions are ti
to them by loyalty, tradition,
custom and a network of group and
personal interests. Instead of
trying to set up perfect unions
outside the main centers 0
organized labor, militant and
progressive workers should be —
fighting inside the main stream 0! ©
the organized working class.

Having said all this, we must —
also say that the CLC should get itS _
own house in order and get on with ©
the job of organizing the bank
employees, including the in:
volvement of provincia) —
federations of labor, local labor |
councils and hundreds of voluntee!
organizers in every province. @
addition, the CLC must deal with
the fact that two of its affiliates, —
the Retail Clerks and the Office —
and Professional Employees, hav®
not accepted the CLC master pla)
to organize bank employees an@
are insisting on asserting their ow?
respective  jursidictions:
irrespective of the CLC. Even !
these two unions were given the —
exclusive right to organize t
bank employees and worke
together, they would not be strong
enough to do the job. Moreover, thé
CLC approach of organizing b
employees and letting them deci
later whether they want to have a
union of their own or join one of
established affiliates is a mu
more democratic approach. It i§
also more in keeping with
concept of an independent,

sovereign and united trade unio?
movement for Canadian workers:

SAS

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