LABOR Tory task force labelled ‘blueprint for disaster’ By MIKE PHILLIPS OTTAWA — “The real corpo- rate agenda for Canada” — that’s how labor leaders last week were describing the impact of Deputy Prime Minister Erik Neilson’s $3.7 million Task Force on Program ‘Review. In what one commentator called aclear picture of the Tory party’s true convictions, the Neilson Task Force studying virtually every one of the federal government’s approx- imately 1,000 programs and un- loaded a barrage of recommenda- tions which studiously avoided enumerating the jobs toll that will result from its demand for more cuts, privatization and accelerated deregulation. Daryl Bean, president of the 180,000-member Public Service Alliance of Canada called the task force “a blueprint for disaster,” warning that if implemented, the recommendations “will result in greater expense and less efficiency in providing services to Canadi- ans.” From top to bottom, it was a big business project. The 22 volumes of reports were prepared over the past 18 months by a battery of 222 corporate executives and business- oriented academics. It wasn’t sur- prising that the main thrust was to slash government’s role in the social and economic affairs of the country. United Electrical Workers pres- jdent Dick Barry called the report a clear definition of the corporate agenda to deliver Canada more firmly into the hands of the trans- national corporations. “The three Tory budgets, the 1) Macdonald Commission, and now the Neilson Task Force are along the lines of a corporate vision as to how big business wants to shape Canada,” Barry said. _ “Tt will result in loading more of the costs of the economic crisis on |h the backs of the people and taking more off of the corporations, while at the same time it will facilitate the delivery of the Canadian economy into the hands of the transnational corporations. “To accomplish this the Tories want to scuttle government pro- grams, eliminate regional transfer payments — in short, they’re aim- “ing to deliver Canada lock, stock HEU hits concession _ Continued from page 1 and group life plans — currently fully employer paid — and 100 per cent of the long term disability plan. Preliminary costing done by the union indicates that the average cost per month to an employee would be $133 based onan average “gross salary of $1,600. Significantly, the concessions do not mention wages, indicating that they would follow the CSP guide- lines Also sought by HLRA are cuts in the vacation schedules, cuts in the notice required for layoff and an unfettered employer right to ‘contract-out and to convert full- lime employees to part-time. Union secretary-business man- ‘ager Jack Gerow called the conces- iti DICK BARRY...Neilson task agenda. and barrel to the Americans,” he said. Barry predicted the public sector cuts sought by the corporations would decrease government rev- enue, throw workers out of their jobs and escalate further slashing of social programs. This attack on consumer pur- chasing power in the long run Barry added, would further increase the deficit. The PSAC’s Bean was scathing in his critique of the task force pap- ers. The eorporate panel which drafted the reports were mandated to bring out recommendations to increase the contracting out of public sector work to the non- union private sector. Bean noted the authors even admit they used American gov- ernment policy as their model to draw conclusions regarding the Canadian experience. “Thus the authors unequivocally state they had no time to do a proper cost analysis (of the impact of their recommendations) relying on ques- tionable data from other jurisidic- tions,” Bean said. “To meet their mandate they developed hypothetical, and unre- searched conclusions,” the PSAC leader charged. The task force panel admits in one of the reports that the authors couldn’t “produce empirical evi- dence to show contracting out is cheaper. ..” sions “outrageous” and “unparal- leled with anything ever seen before in the public sector.” One particularly outrageous demand would see the union pay- ing $276,000 per year — $1 per member per month — to HLRA for the use of bulletin boards, administrative costs of issuing pay- cheques and other administrative expenses. “Our members are just coming off a 51-month collective agree- ment that included wage’ freezes and rollbacks,” Gerow said in a statement. “There is no mood amongst the membership to accept further attacks on their collective agreement or their pay cheques.” The concessions package tabled by HLRA has also lent credence to the idea that Bennett is attempting force part of Tories’ corporate Bean went on to cite a confiden- tial 1984 treasury board report on contracting out which revealed wasteful abuses through govern- ment patronage which cost the tax paying public some $2.7 billion. He predicted that such costs would soar higher if the task force recommendations were imple- mented. Dick Martin, executive vice- president of the Canadian Labor Congress, attacked recommenda- tions that could undermine educa- tion and medicare programs through reducing transfer pay- ments from Ottawa to the provin- ces Calling such a move “a betrayal of the provinces,” Martin also warned the government against pursuing polices of wholesale deregulation. The labor movement will not stand by and let Canadians be thrown to the wolves by this government he said. UE president Barry said the Neilson Task Force ought to be a signal for labor to mobilize its ranks, and join with allies through- out the country in “the most con- centrated fight back in its history. “We have to get out there and build the coalitions and stimulate that fightback. Labor has to get into action and mobilize the work- ing class of this country into an unprecedented, broad and united fightback.” s demand to use bargaining as an issue, forc- ing workers to accept benefit costs as the price of maintaining hospital funding at current levels. “The approach taken to collec- tive bargaining by this employer represents an extension of govern- ment policy towards working peo- ple in B.C.,” Gerow said. “Premier Bennett, through the HLRA, is apparently determined to use HEU members to fund the health care system and has declared war on hospital workers. “But we will not allow this attack to go unchallenged,” he declared. Andstein said the federation was expected to discuss the HEU bar- gaining at a meeting this week, part of the co-ordinated bargaining program. Labor in Action By GEORGE HEWISON CLC leadership needed to meet Tory onslaught The Sixteenth Constitutional Conventional of the Canadian Labor Congress slated to begin in Toronto April 28th could be the most important in its history. The trade union movement of Canada is going through a severe test, as employers and govern- ments attempt to roll back the clock of history. The ferocity of their attack is witnessed in the unprecedented demands for concessions, in lay-offs, and outright union-busting. In Newfoundland, the police force gathers information to sen- tence trade unionists for contempt of court: while in Sask- atchewan, the government orders its’ employees back to work, just as the National Citizens Coalition, successive Tory budgets, and the Nielsen Task Force conspire to emasculate the federal civil service. So while the metiiods of the attack differ from region to region and province to province, the thjust is clear — make the working class pay for the crisis aggravated by big business. There has been no crisis for big business as they pad their profit sheets. Their incestuous affair with the new Mulronéy government adds insurance that there will be no crisis for them in the future as well, while working and’ poor Canadians brace themselves for the worst. In a system whose basic law requires ever greater amounts of profit, monopoly capital casts around to find ever more areas of capital accumulation. The first and most obvious area is a reduction in the wage package. Real earnings have been declining by an average of 2 per cent every year since 1977. Clearly big business and their govern- ment hacks are after more. The introduction of technology at breakneck speed offers yet further opportunities for expanding profits, while wrecking weaker competitors and adding to unemployment rolls. Dis- regarding health and safety, and environmental standards is another area where profits sheets are being improved at worker expense. Since the Twenties, state intervention has been used to aid the largest of corporations. The state has intervened to provide mar- kets, perform research and development, and provide scores of services in areas considered too risky for business; it has absored the costs of providing social safety nets, and costs of reproducing future generations of worker-educational training, child up-bring- ing previously financed by the individual worker’s pay packet. Now the big business state casts around for yet other areas to loot in their quest for profits. And looting they are. They have landed on deregulation as one opportunity for more quick bucks. The Nielsen Task Force recommendations are the flagship for a more comprehensive approach designed to put Canada in ““synch”’ with Reagan’s U.S.A. in preparation for ‘‘free’’ trade. The latest Tory budget serves to underline the determination of the Mulroney government to continue the attack on the living standards of Canadians to serve the interests of big business. So far, the response of the leadership of the Canadian Labor Congress has been inadequate. Rather than mobilizing the con- siderable strength of the trade union movement which is daily demonstrating its willingness to fight and gathering around itself the powerful forces who are equally alarmed at the destruction of hard won gains — such as women, churches, pensioners, welfare recipients, etc., the top leadership has done the minimum — a press release or conference (as important as they are) here, anda denunciation there and even then only after considerable heat from the ranks below. This Convention of the Canadian Labor Congress will be electing a new leadership to lead the trade union movement of Canada. So far the incumbent Administration has thrown the mantle to sister Shirley Carr to fill the most important role, perhaps in all of Canada. The CLC does not need another potential ambassador in these difficult times. It needs women and men who can unite the labor movement: mobilize it against Tory big business reaction, and to rally the other people’s movements which are springing up all across the country in a mighty coalition directed against the aims of the neo-conservatives and their big business backers. In the weeks remaining sister Carr could pre-empt any possible contest for leadership while simultaneously allaying the fears of many trade unionists that we could be in for another two years of fine words and resolutions at Conventions which only gather dust, by seizing the baton she’s been passed, and mobilizing now to advance labor’s fine alternative economic and social policies to the Tories and free trade; and by beginning to bring together the People’s Coalitioncalled foratrecent *‘ Dialogue 86” Conference. Publicly dissociating herself and any future CLC administra- tion she might head from that giant Quality of Work Life fraud- the Canadian Labor Productivity Center would go a long way to demonstrating that she intends to place herself squarely at the head of a combative labor movement — not a submissive one. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 19, 1986 e 5 been %