By MIKE PHILLIPS

The Yukon-Northwest Territories Federation of

bor is targeting on every household in Whitehorse for
petitions as their part in the Canada-wide Peace Petition
Caravan Campaign. :

In Quebec, where the committee has succeeded in
getting unanimous endorsation for the campaign from

_ the Quebec National Assembly, the three labor centrals

are the heart and soul of the peace drive. The Quebec
Federation of Labor has offered space in its own offices
to headquarter the Quebec campagin committee.

bor will be up front in the massive April 28 peace

_ | Protest in Vancouver, where organizers expect to attract

as many as 100,000 participants. Some 300 marshals will
Come from the ranks of the trade union movement. The
€vent will be used to launch the petition campaign, and
the B.C. Federation of Labor is organizing volunteers to
collect Signatures on the peace petition right at the rally.
With the joint sponsorship of the Peace Petition Cara-
van Campaign by the two-million member Canadian
Labor Congress, organized labor from Victoria to St.
John’s, Newfoundland is gearing up to make the cam-
Paign a powerful expression of the Canadian peoples’
desire for peace, detente and nuclear disarmament.

Momentum Building

“The campaign is snow-balling right across Canada’,
petition campaign national co-ordinator Beverlee Bell
Armstrong says. ‘‘The momentum is building as people
begin to realize that together we can make a difference.
This is the first time there’s been such a national sense to
a peace campaign; that fact gives other groups
€ncouragement.”’

She’s full of praise for labor’s solid backing for the’
campaign, noting the financial and organizational help
the CLC, its provincial federations and its labor councils
have given. The congress is represented on both the
petition-caravan national committee and its executive.

Neville Hamilton one of the CLC staffers assigned to
work on the campaign says that the congress is looking to
April, May and June as the periods of the highest in-
tensity of activity with another push in the early fall
leading to the wrap-up in October, when the petitions
Which will have been circulated in every federal parlia-
Mentary constituency throughout the country, will be
presented to the MPs.

In most centres labor’s part of the campaign is just
getting under way. But there have been some important
developments already. In Victoria the campaign com-
mittee has finished its canvass and scored a 65.per cent
Positive response to the petition’s demands which in-
clude: Cancelling the Cruise testing agreement, declaring
Canada a nuclear weapons-free zone, shifting the funds

_ Wasted on the arms budget toward civilian, job-intensive

Production and finally, placing these demands before
parliament in a free vote.

Right Through Summer

Across the country, the first steps have been taken.
Alberta Federation of Labor president Dave Werlin re-
ports the fed has assigned its political education standing
committee to work with the peace movement and com-
munications from the AFL have gone out to all affiliates
and labor councils urging them to join or help form Peace
Petition Caravan Committees.

In Edmonton the campaign committee is targeting on
the city’s 137 neighborhoods, which take in the federal
ndings, while in Calgary the aim is to canvas all five
ridings. As each Edmonton neighborhood shows itself in
the Majority for the aims of the petition, each will be
declared a nuclear weapons free zone. The Edmonton
drive was launched April 14, while April 28 is the launch-
ing date for the Calgary campaign.

““We’re urging the utmost co-operation of our affiliates
with the existing peace movement’’, Werlin says.

We’re also urging them not to let up the pace over the
summer months but to keep the campaign running right
through to the fall. =

“The fact is that peace is union business. It’s every-
body’s business and this has become a recognized fact
throughout the trade union movement through the

LC’s participation in the campaign. Any reluctance
there may be to the campaign ought to be set aside in the
interests of a maximum effort by the whole labor move-
ment.”’

Atlantic Provinces Begin

_ On the Atlantic seaboard, the trade unions are in-
volved in helping other organizations set up petition

committees. Activities are under way with labor’s help

in Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and efforts are
under way to get the ball rolling in the remaining prov-
inces. =

Along with B.C., Quebec and Ontario will be decisive
areas of concentration. Robert Demers, of the Quebec
Federation of Labor and a member of the Quebec Peace
Petition Caravan Committee executive, is proud of the
committee’s phone humber — 1-613-526-PAIX. —

Labor’s on the
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TRIBUNE PHOTO —MIKE PHILLIPS

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Canadians ready for the Peace Petition Caravan Campaign, a coast to coast effort to bring disarmament issues to the
doorstep of every home, and organized labor is prepared to play a major role.

The teachers’ federation (CEQ), has made a joint ap-
peal with Quebec’s federation of parents’ organizations,
to have the petitions and information related to the cam-
paign distributed through the schools. Given the
government’s unanimous support for the drive, March
20, the caravan campaigners are very optimistic of suc-
cess in this initiative.

Demers says the emphasis in Quebec will be less on
door-to-door canvassing, where there isn’t much of a
tradition for that sort of campaigning, and more on each
participating group in the campaign working through
their organizations.

Quebec’s Mass Effort

The QFL, and the Confederation of National Trade
Unions, (CNTU), are contacting all of their affiliates and
urging each to activate their locals in the campaign.
‘“We’re buying one button, one poster, and petition post
card for each of our 2,000 affiliated locals at a cost of

- about $1 a piece as a start,’’ Demers says. ‘‘The idea is

for the locals to reproduce them, order more, and distri-
bute them among their members. At the same time we
get a head start on the campaign with a donation from the
QFL to the Quebec committee of about $2,000.”’

’ The other labor centrals are expected to do the same.

The committee is even working on an idea for a peace
telethon on Radio Quebec, where people could phone in
their support for the campaign and its demands.

In Ontario, committees are under way in Thunder
Bay, Sudbury, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Toronto
and other centres. The Ontario Federation of Labor has
sent representatives: throughout the province speaking
to every labor council urging them to link up with the
other broad participants in the drive and to launch local
peace petition caravan campaigns where they don’t al-
ready exist. :

“There seems to be a fair amount of activity on the
ground’’, reports the. OFL’s Duncan Macdonald.
**Many labor councils are getting involved with local
peace groups.”’ He says the federation is looking beyond
the current campaign to the point where more and more
union locals and labor councils will take an active in-
terest in the burgeoning peace movement and set up
peace committees in their organizations.

Ontario Centres Busy

In Sudbury, the Women’s Centre is planning a mass

petition drive on Mother’s Day while the local petition -

committee will be conducting door-to-door canvassing

throughout May and June.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, about 100 canvassers have
already volunteered, with the labor council assisting
with canvass workshops. ak

About 100 people turned out to the founding meeting
of the Hamilton committee, March 23, where an 11-
member steering committee was elected including solid
labor and community representation and participation
by prominent clergy people. The meeting was opened
with greetings from the mayor.

Door-to-door canvassing and factory petitioning are
on the Hamilton committee’s agenda for the campaign.

Toronto will be a key concentration point for the cam-

paign. The labor council has shown the importance it
places on the campaign by financing a full-time labor
co-ordinator until the drive ends in October. The main
emphasis right now is educational, getting the message
out to the affiliates, drawing them into a three-part series
of educational forums dealing with the myth of deterr-
ence; survival and the health implications of nuclear
war, and the economic impact of the war budget and
arms spending.

At the same time the co-ordinator is working with the
locals getting them to contact their members, and
recruiting volunteers for the door-to-door canvassing
being conducted by the Toronto committee. Also with
the help of the labor council’s Peace and Disarmament
Committee she’s helping to lay the ground work for the
labor council’s workplace petition drive in September.

Permanent Peace Groups

Anne Swarbrick, the committee’s chairperson, hopes
to see the campaign result in the establishment of peace
committees in many locals affiliated to the council. A
long term ambition for the council, she says, is to see
locals build committees and participate in the petition-
ing, and from that organization and authority bring their
locals into the mainstream of the peace movement.

There’s been considerable activity also among indi- -
vidual unions, such as the United Auto Workers, the
.UE, Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and
others in educating and mobilizing their members on the
issue.

The UE’s Val Bjarnason says the issue will be a top
priority at the union’s biennial convention in Toronto -
this week. ‘‘In our documents and resolutions at the
convention we will be urging our members to go all out to
support the campaign and wherever possible take the
matter up in their local labor councils.”’ :

The UAW has made peace and the petition campaign a
central focus of its policies for the past year. It’s been
endorsed by the Canadian UAW Council, locals have
been contacted right across the country and provided
with information of the peace organizations in their
communities to contact and get committees started.

UAW staff rep Pat Clancy, who’s co-ordinating the
union’s work on the peace front, says the UAW in its
education of its members emphasizes the question of
survival and the terrible economic and social cost of the
destructive arms race. He admits that the labor move-
ment faces a big job in gearing up workers to understand
the need to be in the front ranks of the fight for peace.

‘‘The major reason is because up till now the trade
union movement has been so far behind in the peace
program’’, he says. ‘*For too long, too many of us we-
ren’t up front on the issue. Our union and a few others
have gotten out front and we have to encourage the rest
to do the same and to do the hard work that needs to be
done. :
“It’s probably the most important question we have
before us, to ensure peaceful survival, and if we want to
tackle our unemployment crisis, we have to deal with
that idiotic war machine.

‘‘There’s no doubt that it’s a tough job that’s got to be
done, but we don’t always pick the nice things to do in
this labor movement.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 2, 1984 e 17