ne eee a ee | 0 | A Labor in Action By GEORGE HEWISON charges! Outrageous sentences imposed upon the International Bro herhood of Electrical Workers grass roots leader Barry ~ Fra T, and several other IBEW members, merely underline just desperate the Washington-based leaders of the international ing trades unions are. With their concessions strategy framed around ‘‘Ensuring Our ; ture” ripped to ribbons, the International roadmen are search- for Scapegoats for their failure to accurately read their Cana- Members. aay latest rebuff to ‘Ensuring Our Future,”’ came last week » 2 Ontario building trades workers, and in particular striking wees of the IBEW. a. Tecently reported that the contractors were demanding ia Concessions from the unions on their hiring hall rights, : 'S of work, overtime provisions, etc. 1, © union members responded by giving their negotiators a 8¢ strike mandate. The concessions were consequently with- “Wn and a 60 cents an hour wage increase was tabled by the “Mployers, ; “Old Faithfuls” Still the workers, feeling the need to make gains while the in i © Construction economy was buoyant, voted overwhelm- y to reject this picayune offer. Deeply concerned by the Withi Clans’ response, the bosses called on their “old faithfuls”’ 4s In the house of labor, as they have so many times before and “ret meeting between top union leaders and the contractors ved at a settlement. h © meeting concluded that a75 cents an hour wage increase in ~, Year of a two year agreement would set the pattern that all Tees would have to settle for. nis; IBEW members’ rejection of the pattern proved how Informed and out of touch the international reps are. The €r of building trades workers at the secret negotiations and the ds trying to figure out what it will take to get construction ts back on the job as the electricians strike threatens to to cover all the trades. Roadmen Exposed ie international building trades leaders have indeed lost | Brip on reality. Their treatment of Fraser is precisely what & on does not need. It needs the responsible and far-sighted Ceri of people like Barry Fraser. « tOwledged champion of building trades workers’ rights, for letey me” of carrying on the fight against concessions, com- ite Y exposes to IBEW members which side of the fence the ‘py ational reps are on. Dot . the charges and attacks on democratic trade unionists do a at the sentences handed down to Fraser and his union BBW ition to the spate of other charges against the Hamilton ent Members, there are charges outstanding against the presi- bis the London IBEW local; charges against two leading hanpe tS for business agent in the Toronto Carpenters local; ae Only recently dropped against Sheet Metal Workers Labon George Ward; the trusteeship imposed on a Toronto Ters’ local; and, the list goes on. ‘Th United, Democratic ey se sentences and threats of additional charges will not 0; ©nt Canadian building trades workers from achieving their a United, democratic, autonomous building trades organ- Orkin ©pposed to concessions and fighting for decent living and Nor’ conditions. " Will they prevent the international union leaders from thing increasingly isolated from the membership. In fact, the ners and the resultant anger flowing from these abuses of eo Workers will likely result in precisely the opposite. ad € are the days when building trades leaders could pit one nly 48ainst another. Building trades workers want unity, not mong themselves but also with their brothers and sisters in hited adian Labor Congress, which is increasingly moving to a Ong, Combative stance. : Big! Canadian workers know that concessions never t Jobs. The international building trades unions leaders a learn this and get off the concessions kick. n dian workers want to elect their own leaders and run their de, US free from stooges for the leadership of the American The won of Labor and the U.S. State Department. ard €ndulum has swung in the Canadian labor movement 8s Class Struggle, autonomy and unity. International building aders need to wake up and smell the new pot of coffee 8. Drop the trumped-up charges and the sentences against Drop trumped-up | quate settlement now has the contractors scratching their . "tainly a five year suspnsion from holding union office, for: "an building trades workers! IBEW members reject ‘secret’ pattern TORONTO — The strike launched May 12 by 10,000 On- tario electricians has released a - powerful fightback current among - the province’s building trades workers that runs against the - concessionary mentality of their top union leaders. When eight of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Work- ers’ 14 construction locals reject- ed a two-year deal with a 75 per cent wage hike in each year, they were scuttling a pattern settle- ment for the whole industry that has been cooked up in a secret meeting, May 6 between top hon- chos for the contractors and the ~ unions. Operating Engineers business manager Joe Kennedy, Laborers’ leader John Stefanini and Matt Whelan of the Carpenters were among the union heads who met with top negotiators for the contractors. The IBEW recommendation to its members to accept the cooked-up pattern flew in the face of an alliance the electricians had been part of with the ironworkers, plumbers and sheet metal work- ers to seek a $2 an hour increase over the two year deal. The $2 pattern is based on the prevailing average wage increase in other industries of about 4 per cent. The first signal that. the con- tractors were getting a militant feedback from the workers came a couple of weeks ago in the IBEW talks when the conces- sionary demands were taken off the table. The contractors had warned they were coming into this round of province-wide talks to push all of the trades back to a 40 hour work week, to cut overtime pay to time and a half, weaken hiring hall procedures, and to introduce a two-tiered wage structure for dif- ferent areas throughout the province. In the latter they had the sup- port of such leaders as Stefanini who advocated a $2 an hour in- crease in the areas where the industry is booming and lower rates where construction is slack and unemployment is high. By week’s end 12,000 pipe- fitters and 6,000 sheet metal workers had set strike deadlines of May 21 and 23 respectively raising the prospects of the strike spreading throughout the construction industry. Ironworkers Local 721 presi- dent John Donaldson was re- ported last week as saying his members had instructed him to demand the provincial council get into a strike position as soon as possible. Militant Mood The IBEW’s rejection of the 75 cent pattern was the first time building trades workers had ig- nored a bargaining committee recommendation since the On- tario government legislated prov- ince-wide bargaining in 1978. With the construction industry doing very well in major indus- trial centres like Toronto, Kitch- ener, Oshawa, Ottawa and soon Hamilton, building trades work- ers throughout the province are aiming to recover some of the lost purchasing power inflicted on them by previous skimpy wage settlements. They're also sending a clear message, that many of them want to get in step with the ~ Building trades on the move mainstream of the Canadian trade union movement and fight against the employers’ drive for concessions and wage and bene- fit rollbacks. In short they’re fed up with brainwashing efforts such as the “Ensuring our Future’’ docu- ment jointly drafted by the con- tractors and top building trades union leaders. This document is spurned by grass roots building trades work- ers as a dirty effort by the employers to convince workers — they have to accept massive rollbacks in wages, benefits and conditions under the phoney pre-. text that this will stop the spread of non-union contractors. Meanwhile in British Columbia the same militant mood prevails, with building trades workers, there, voting 95.3 per cent last month to strike if talks with the Construction Labor Relations Association fail. The CLRA, the employer group is pressing for major concessions in its talks with B.C.’s 16 construction unions. Provincial building trades council president Roy Gautier told a May 5 rally organized by the Dandel- ions, a group of unemployed building trades workers, that the unions’ bargaining committee were determined not to accept concessions. “‘There will be no cuts and no rollbacks,’’ Gautier said. ‘‘ That message will be repeated to them (the CLRA) again. Either they review their position and sweep the cuts they’ve demanded right off the table or — if they want to play hardball — then, we’ve got the strike vote.” Lakes fisheries unionize LEAMINGTON — The drive is On to organize Great Lakes fish plant and fisheries workers. In slightly more than a month’s organizing, the fledgeling United Fisheries Association of the Great Lakes has been able to sign up 347 members, with more to come. The organizing drive will affect seven major fish processors and more than a dozen fisheries along the southern shore of the Wind- sor-Chatham peninsula, jutting - into Lake Erie. The union has already applied to the Ontario Labor Relations Board to certify the fish plant workers at Lake Erie Foods Ltd. Two of the remaining six proces- sors are already organized. One of them, Labatt’s Brew- * eries-owned, Omstead Foods Ltd., is represented by the Team- sters, but a majority of the work- ers have gone to the Labor Board with a request to decertify so they can bring in another union they hope will represent them more ef- fectively. Meanwhile at Lake Erie Foods, the UFAGL has had to fight man- agement’s bitter resistance to unionization. Four union mem- bers were recently fired by the company for their efforts to or- ganize the workers. During a heated meeting be- -tween the union and the com- pany, last month, a company of- ficial was overheard by reporters to pledge never to allow a union in ‘the plant. The workers’ response has been even more determined. Re- sponding to the firings, more than 250 union members took to the streets to picket the homes of company president Nick Rubino and general manager Tony Gia- calone, April 20. So far, some 27 union members have been fired for their union ac- tivities, according to local re- ports. John Radosevic, a business agent for the B.C.-based United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, who is assisting the Great Lakes union in its organ- izing drive, accused Lake Erie Foods of trying to pressure plant workers to sign yellow dog agreements — pledging not to join the union. He emphasized however that the union is determined to forge ahead with its plan to organize the plant workers. *‘ The law is clear on what procedures must be fol- lowed and we intend to follow the procedures set out in the Ontario Labor Relations Act,’’ he said. Responding to company and media claims that the large num- ber of employers and variety of economic interests involved in the drive make organizing impos- sible, Radosevic pointed out that UFAWU successfully faced exactly the same situation 45 years ago when it was formed. _ He noted that on the west coast the union deals with many more independent boat owners than there are on Lake Erie and still negotiates contracts in 90 per cent of the cases. UFALG organizer Domingos Bello said the key demands by the mainly Portuguese workers are a- fair share of their catch and to be treated like human beings by the owners and plant operators. The union is pressing five main contract demands, including: a guaranteed SO per cent of the catch for crew members; partici- pation in weighing the fish in at the dock; job security guarantees; — better safety equipment; and guaranteed minimum fish prices. The shore workers, he said, want decent washrooms, clean lunch rooms, and coffee and lunch breaks, as well as better wages and benefits. Ninety-five per cent of the union’s members are of Portu- guese origin with about 55 per cent of them landed, new Cana- dians. Safety and cuts in catch percentages to the crews have been the main issues around which organizing has taken place. 4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 21, 1986¢7 — ee ee ee