Caution, flexibility urged by delegates

TORONTO — Labor council
byelections to replace suspended
building trades delegates, support
for organizing farmworkers, and a
boycott of the CBC for the dura-
tion of the NABET strike, dom-
inated the June 4 Metro Labor
Council meeting.

A bid to encourage council de-
legates not to nominate replace-
ments for suspended building
trades delegates on the council’s
_ Standing committees and execu-
tive failed, but, the message the
delegates advocated this protest
were trying to get across to the
council — that the Canadian
Labor Congress and its subordi-
nate bodies should be more
fiexible and cautious in trying to
avoid a potentially dangerous and
tragic split in labor’s ranks —
reached most delegates.

Jim Buller, Local 91 Toronto
Typographical Union, responded
to president Wally Majesky’s call
for nominations by urging the de-
legates to delay the by-election
until the absolute last chance for a
possible reconciliation between
the CLC and the building trades
leaders, has passed.

Buller pointed out to the dele-
gates, ‘‘there’s no great haste at
this time to fill the executive vac-
ancies’’, and stressed that as long
as there was some hope for an
agreement between the building
trades leaders and the congress,
labor councils such as Metro,
should take the Vancouver labor
council's recent example of allow-
ing the building trades delegates
to remain affiliated.

Majesky countered that the
constitution required him to act
and that there was no way he
knew of to postpone the elections
indefinitely, which he said was

the intent of Buller’s proposal as
he understood it. He ruled that
the nominations should proceed.

United. Electrical workers de-
legate Al Rees (UE), suggested
that Majesky was meeting his
constitutional responsibilities by
introducing the nominations, but
that it was up to the delegates to
decide whether they should carry
through with the process.

Rees urged Majesky and the
delegates not to be too rigid with
the constitution in light of what
was at stake in the council and the
labor movement — unity. He
tried to point out that ratifying the
suspension of the building trades
delegates by replacing them
through the by-elections weaken-
ed those forces still fighting for
unity with the CLC, and Cana-
dian autonomy in the building
trades. .

However he wasn’t allowed to
make this point as council trea-

surer Bill Baker, and another .

delegate pressed for a rigid con-
stitutional interpretation of
Majesky’s ruling.

The council also unanimously
endorsed an executive board
statement calling on the Ontario
government to include farm-
workers under all labor legisla-
tion.

The statement blasted Tory
provincial agriculture minister
Lorne Henderson for his ‘‘totally
inexcusable’’ comments recently
saying that he thought ‘‘the
farmer is quite capable of running
his own business without this
kind of interference.’’ The inter-
ference Henderson was referring
to was the current organizing
drive by the Canadian Farm-
workers Union, (CFU).

CFU spokesman Frank Luce

LABOR

reminded the delegates that the
right to organize into a union was
a basic human right. “‘And, it’s a
right farmworkers must win for
themselves just like industrial
workers did during the 1930s and
40s’’, he said.

Luce stressed the difference
between the rich farmers, the
representatives of agri-business
and the poor farmers who are
being squeezed off the land by
rich farmers, the multi-national
food processing combines and the
Ontario Tory government.

There are some 100,000 farm-
workers in Ontario and he noted

occupational health and safety
laws, as well as the Ontario Labor
Relations Act.

“The organization of farm-
workers in Ontario has. finally
started to happen’’ Luce said,
‘‘and it’s about time.”

Emil Rosenthal, Local 91
TTU, supported the statement
but, with the agreement of the
chair, added an extra demand

calling for Henderson’s resigna-

tion. The other executive board

-demands endorsed by the dele-

gates included a public declara-
tion by the Ontario Government
that any threats of violence or

farmers against farmworkers will
be met by the full weight of the
law and will not be tolerated.

Attorney General Roy McMul-
try was called on to investigate
the threats of violence experi
enced by CFU organizers and see
if there are grounds for laying
criminal charges.

Finally, the government was
called on to make Henderson re-
tract his anti-union statement
and, to include farmworkers
under all provincial labor legisla-
tion. Tory Ontario and Alberta
are the only jurisdictions if
Canada where agricultural work-
ers don’t have the legal right to be

that they are excluded from all

further threats of violence by

certified into bargaining units.

47 hit by arbitrary firings

TORON TO — It’s a matter of principle for the
Ontario Public Service Employees Union, (OP-
SEU).

They’re refusing to resume contract talks with
representatives of the province’s 22 community
colleges until the situation involving the arbitrary
firing of 47 maintenance workers at Centennial Col-
lege is discussed.

In what the college called a cost-cutting move,

_the 47 workers, many recent immigrants and others

with as much as 15 years service were informed
two weeks ago that as of July 17 their services will
no longer be needed.

Many of the workers are recent immigrants, with
little formal education and. will find job hunting a
fruitless and frustrating experience. Cecile Kerr,
representing OPSEU Local 599 told the June 4
Metro Labor Council meeting, ‘‘their jobs aren’t
being phased out, the layoffs are because the com-
munity college is trying to contract the cleaning

work out. They want to hire workers to do the jobs

at the minimum wage.”

She urged workers seeking to support the 47
fired maintenance workers to phone the’ college
administration and register their protests.

Council president Wally Majesky, called Cen-
tennial College’s move ‘‘the most immoral, dirtiest
thing to do, to fire 47 people who are among the
most unemployable, semi-skilled and recent immi-_
grants.” :

Some of the fired workers learned they weré
losing their jobs from a xeroxed copy of a lettef
tacked to a bulletin board. :

‘That's a rough thing to go through after giving
an institution 16 years of hard work and faithful
service’’, Majesky said. He charged that commu-
nity colleges and other public sector employers are
“responding to the Tory budget cuts by indisscrim-
inately firing workers.

OPSEU is currently negotiating for 4,600 com:
munity college workers throughout the province.
The workers will be in a legal position to strike
against the Council of Regents for Ontario’s 22
Community Colleges, Oct. 13. :

Contract talks broke down between the union”
and the Council of Regents June 5 when the council
refused to talk about the 47 workers and wanted t0
keep discussions about job security in the abstract. —

OPSEU is taking the position that when 47
human lives are in the balance talks over job sec-
urity can’t be abstract.

Membership must now back Patterson:

The election of Dave Patterson as Director of District
6 (Ontario) of the United Steelworkers of America con-
tinues a trend which surfaced in the Steelworkers’ union
several years ago.

Patterson was elected as president of the local union at
the big International Nickel Company (INCO) opera-
tions at Sudbury and at about the same time Cec Taylor,
a left-winger and former Waffier, was elected president
of Local 1005 of the Steel Company of Canada Works
(STELCO) in Hamilton. There was a shift away from
the right to centre leadership also at the ALGOMA Steel
in Sault Ste Marie. These are three of the four major steel
producers in Ontario, the other being the non-union
Dominion Foundaries and Steel Company (Dofasco) in
Hamilton.

Patterson’s election as District 6 director therefore
clearly continues a movement away from the right-wing
leadership which has dominated the Steelworkers’
Union (USWA) in both the United States and Canada
since the early fifties and the cold war.

Three things seem to emerge from this election which
have considerable significance for the entire labor
movement in Canada.

The first conclusion one can draw jis that in spite of all
the efforts of monopoly, governments, and the media to
push politics to the right in Canada, the workers are
moving in an opposite direction, toward militant
fightback programs, economic and social, and toward a
militant leadership to carry these policies through.

This direction is evident in the strike struggles of

workers across Canada in recent years. What particu-.

larly manifests itself in the Patterson victory is the
determination and capacity of the workers to change
their leadership when it stands in the way of such
struggles.

In general, what appears here, taken together with all
of the militant actions of workers across the country, is
evidence that the workers are more prepared than a large
part of the leadership of the trade union movement to

fight back against the crisis policies of the big corpora-

tions and governments.
* * *

The second thing that is emphasized by the Patterson
victory is the developing sentiment in the Canadian trade
union movement for complete autonomy in their rela-

Ce : :
_ +s, Labor in action

_| William Stewart

tions with U.S. parent unions. This undoubtedly reflects
economic as well as national factors, industry as well as
national goals, and simple resentment by workers of any
and all manifestations of second-class status in their
unions.

Coming, as it does, in the midst of the present crisis
between the Canadian Labor Congress and the Building
Trades International roadmen, the Patterson vote rein-
forces the struggle of. building trades workers for full
autonomy. It serves notice on all those forces who seek
to shackle this demand, that the movement for complete
Canadian autonomy in the Canadian trade union move-
ment is not to be denied.

* * *

The third significant element in the Patterson victory

is the emergence of a new, young, militant leadership in

the trade unions, with great organizational skill, which’

refuses to be bound with the class collaborationist prac-
tices that have grown up in many unions during the
period of easy settlements. The daily press was probably
quite accurate in reporting on the victory when they said,
‘it sent tremors throughout the trade union establish-
ment’.

_ might as well‘be us’’ (in Sudubury).

It is important for left and. militant workers in steel, as
well as the entire labor movement to read these signs
properly. They do not for one minute signify that the
membership of the Steelworkers’ union, or any other
union, for that matter, is in the camp of the left. Un-
fortunately this is not yet the case. ‘What it does mean is
that the majority of workers have seen through the antics
of right-wing leadership and, in this sharp crisis, have
turned to the only visible alternative, left leaning and
militant leaders who put forward alternative policies to |
those class-collaborationist policies of the right wing.

There remains in the USWA a powerful right-wing
leadership. It reaches deeply into the staff and has its
base of support in the international leadership in Pitts-
burg, USA. It will throw all of its assets and energies into
turning this victory around and recapturing District 6 for
the machine. The direction of the union in Canada is
seen at stake here, as well as the effects of such a change
in direction on U.S. steelworkers. |

Thus, even as Patterson and the dedicated crew that
helped shape his victory celebrate, they must already be
wrestling with the massive responsibility which now
rests on his shoulders. :

The great Sudbury strike in 1978 played a major role in
galvanizing Canadian workers for the fightback against
monopoly. Patterson himself said at that time: “‘Some-
body has got to say ‘no more’ to these big corporations
who are trying to run our country and our lives, and its

The front of struggle has been significantly extended
since that time and it is fitting that the mantle of respon-
sibility for further expanding and consolidating the gains |
for class struggle trade unionism should come to rest on |
the shoulders of someone who has indicated that he
understands that his shoulders are only as strong as the
collective shoulders of his membership.

This column wishes Dave Patterson the best in his |
struggles to give the USWA back to its membership, he
can count us in his corner in this endeavor.

—

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 19, 1981—Page 8

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