HAMILTON LABOR RAPS CONGRESS

HAMILTON — The labor council here passed an emergency resolution Nov. 3, for the forth- coming Ontario Federation of Labor Convention calling for the federal government’s resignation

_ for its behavior in the postal strike,

and for total labor support for the postal workers.

Delegates argued that if the CLC had acted to defend CUPW the re- sults of the strike would have been different. Harold Keeton of the Rubberworkers, who introduced the resolution, said the CLC’s stand-offish position encouraged the ponent to act against

PRESS STRIKE END IN NYC

~NEW YORK — After three months on strike, against both the Times and the Daily News, which won them the job protection clauses they were looking for in the new contract, the city’s print- ing trade unions returned to work Nov. 8.

The strike was triggered by a walkout by the Printing Press- men’s union over job security and other questions in negotiating a new contract. .

WORKERS’PROTEST

WINS JUSTICE

TORONTO — Four construc- tion workers, fired by Canadian Gypsum Ltd., for demanding de-

cent toilets, eating facilities and

clean ing water on the mine sight they were building, were or- dered reinstated by the Ontario Labor Board, Nov. 2.

The board decision ordered the workers to get back pay and to be offered new jobs in the completed mine. It also described toilet condi- tions as “‘sitting in a water hole half full of human excrement?’, and ‘“‘a 5-gallon pail with a garbage bag

inside overflowing with human.

waste.’’

CLC WANTS FREE INFO LAW

OTTAWA — CLC president Dennis McDermott called on prime minister Trudeau, Nov. 2, to introduce a strong freedom of information law that guarantees access to government documents by private citizens.

“For too long the CLC has been denied access to technical

_ data and other information neces-

sary for our evaluation of the true socio-economic situation in Canada today, as it affects work- ers... . The list of topics on which information may be denied on grounds of ‘national security’ is excessive and ridiculous’’, the CLC letter to Trudeau said.

AUTO PACT WILL COST $10 BILLION

A study compiled for the U.S. government supposedly to allay Canadian fears that the Canada- U.S. Auto Pact is not a one-way funnel for Canadian money and jobs to the U.S., instead shows we are going to be $10-billion short in the auto trade over the next 10 years.

VANCOUVER LABOR BACKS STRIKE

VANCOUVER — The labor | council here voted full support —

Nov. 7, for the Newspaper Guild, the Printing Pressmen and four other unions on strike or locked out for more than a week, by Pacific

Press owners of the Vancouver «4

Sun, and the Province. Charges that Pacific Press is out

to break the unions were confirm- ©

ed when it was learned that Bill Hamilton president of the B.C. Employers’ Council had threatened the Publishers of the Columbian, whose presses also run the thrice weekly strikers’ news- papers the Express, with an ad- vertisement boycott. Pacific Press is owned by FP publications the owners of the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Star which has been shut down since June.

Labor support flows ,

in for Inco strikers

SUDBURY — In an important display of labor solidarity, Local 598 Mine-Mill and Smelter Work- ers union at Falconbridge Nickel Mines voted at an emergency meeting Nov. 5 to donate $10,000 a month to the striking Inco workers.

Local 598 Mine-Mill, rep-

resenting 2,100 Falconbridge

workers also voted to allow members of Local 6500 United Steelworkers to conduct. plant gate collections twice a month. Support has been pouring in from other parts of Ontario. In St. Catharines, the labor council voted Nov. 1 to conduct a toy and food campaign for the Inco strik-

i

Local 6500 president, Dave Pat- terson, left, accepts the first $10,000 monthly donation from Mine-Mill president Jack Gignac.

ers, and called on the council’s biggest affiliate, Local 199 United

_Auto Workers, to conduct plant

gate collections between now and Christmas.

Labor council president Gordie Lambert, in a letter to Dave Pat-

. terson, president of Local 6500,

pledging the- council’s support said, “‘the whole labor movement must rally.around your strike as we are all victims of . multi- national corporations who must be defeated and nationalized, so in fact, your courageous members are in the forefront of this struggle.” i

Stu Cook, Steelworkers’ dis- trict 6 director has sent out a call to all Steel locals in Ontario re- questing financial support for Local 6500, and: suggesting that each union member donate $5 a month.

The 800,000-member Ontario Federation of Labor, (OFL), has also issued an appeal for moral and financial support from its af- filiates on behalf of the striking miners and smelter workers. The OFL will provide Local 6500 with a forum at the annual federation convention in Toronto, Nov. 13-16. ;

The 21,000-member United Electrical (UE) workers has sent the strikers a $1,000 donation. UE Local 514 in Toronto, represent- ing the workers at E.S.B., an Inco subsidiary, in a solidarity mes- sage to Local 6500, said the

Steelworkers decision to take on Inco, “‘has earned you the admi+ ration of all trade union members everywhere . .. your refusal to be influenced. by the superficial arguments of the doom spreaders in our midst reveals an insight into the real crisis confronting the working class in Canada that some labor spokesmen have not and will not recognize.”’

In northern Ontario support keeps coming in. Faculty mem- bers at Laurentian University in Sudbury have pleged $800 a month after voting for a voluntary deduction from their pay cheques for the Local 6500 strike fund.

Steelworkers’ Local 2251 at Algoma Steel Corp., in Sault Ste Marie has donated $10,000 to the strike fund and will contribute $5,000 a month until the strike ends. Falconbridge office work- ers, members of Local 6855 Steelworkers are continuing to donate $1,000 a month to the strike fund.

>

‘Drop charges against

By MIKE PHILLIPS TORONTO — Metro labor council, Nov. 2, re-iterated its solid support of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in their fight for justice from the federal government, but delegates

leveled angry criticism at Cana--

dian Labor Congress Dennis McDermott’s betrayal of CUPW when the crunch came.

The council’s executive board statement calling for the govern- ment to drop all charges against the union, its members and of- ficers, to start serious negotia- tions with the CUPW for a new contract, and to resolve the union’s 56,000 outstanding grie- vances, was passed unanimously at the regular bi-monthly meeting.

CUPW Toronto president Ar- nold Gould, was applauded warmly, when he told delegates, ‘“‘we as postal workers may be down, but we’re not out.”’

“The fact is,’ Gould said, ‘that I as a postal-worker and an officer of the union knew I was breaking the law. But, what I be- lieve I was fighting for was for everybody’s right to free collec- tive bargaining, the right to

negotiate without legislation

being forced on you — the right to strike.”

Harassment and intimidation of postal workers by postal super- visors he said was at an all time high. Stewards, and members who had participated on the pic- ket line were receiving letters from management notifying them they are being investigated- and that action will be taken. On the spot suspensions and dismissals are the order of the day for dis- obedience of direct management orders.

‘“One supervisor had the nerve and the power to force our people to get on their hands and knees on the floor to pick up elastics and paper’, he said. “‘Anyone who tried to refuse were told: ‘If you don’t do it you’re going home — you’re suspended.”

Gould said the union intends to fight every way it can to get a just contract. ‘‘We realize we have the greatest job in the world’’, he said, ‘‘we have to fight the Government of Canada with all their control of the media and everything else.

CLC president Dennis McDermott came under fire from angry delegates for the Congress’

HEALTHY ff PROFITS

refusal to back CUPW during the strike, and more specifically for his comparison in the press, of the strike to ‘‘a.charge of the light brigade’? doomed before it started, to defeat.

Art Jenkyn, director of organi- zation for the United Electrical Workers, (UE), was applauded when he charged McDermott with siding with the most reac- tionary, anti-union circles in the campaign against the postal workers.

‘‘What struggle of the workers is not a charge of the light brigade,’’ Jenkyn asked? ‘‘What struggle of the workers is not fought with the greatest hand- icaps? If there had not been charges of the light brigade, in years gone by, we wouldn’t be standing here today in this labor movement” |

“Is Brother McDermott going to come out next, and say he’s not going to support Inco workers be- cause they’re in a charge of the brigade?”’

Jenkyn said the responsiblity of labor leadership is to come out in full support of the working class without equivocation. The coun- cil, he said, should send the executive board statement to the CLC leadership, ‘‘and tell them to get off their ass and represent the workers of this country, or get the hell out of office.’

Toronto Typographical Union president Jim Buller-endorsed the executive statement and said a similar resolution from his local to the labor council had requested the council relay its action pro- posals to the OFL and the CLC for action.

Buller said he was ‘‘horrified’’

CUPW’

by McDermott’s statement, quoted in a Globe and Mail edito- rial. As leader of the Canadian labor movement, McDermott must have been aware of the or- chestrated attack on the union by the federal government, Buller said, but chose to criticize the CUPW leadership rather than hit the government. ‘‘I think this is absolutely deplorable,’’ he said, “‘we have to take a stand on the fundamental principle of the trade union movement, that an injury to One Is an injury to all. When one of our affiliates is being attacked we have to come to its defence — it’s as simple as that.”’

In an impassioned defence of the CLC’s refusal to defend CUPW, council president Fox, a member of the CLC executive council which unanimously as- sessed the strike in the way McDermott later expressed to the media, indirectly attacked the CUPW leadership and claimed the CLC had to develop a coordi- nated fightback plan to counter the general assault on public ser- vice workers rights.

In effect, despite his record of solid support with the labor coun- cil for the CUPW strike, Fox added his voice to McDermott who essentially said the CLC shouldn’t support a battle it thought couldn’t- be won.

CUPW president Jean Claude Parrot’s question in Ottawa Oct. 27, remained unanswered in Fox’s defence of the CLC brass.

“It’s obvious the CLC didn’t want to lose its credibility. The question is: credibility to whom, the membership or the. govern- ment?” —