Special to the Tribune MONTREAL — The battle between 8rossly unpopular Parti Quebecois 80vernment and its 320,000 public sector Workers entered a new stage last week With the rejection by health and social rs workers of a strike mandate for their unions.

Facing the PQ government's brutal _ threat of mass firings, and of seeing their Unions smashed by special legislation, 7000 members of the Social Affairs ederation (FAS) affiliated to the Con- ‘ederation of National Trade Unions, (CSN), voted by 55%, Feb. 9 not to re- sume their so-called illegal, unlimited

8eneral strike against Bills 70 and 105. The strike was suspended Jan. 31 after | One day on the picket lines when nego- _| ‘ators for the government and the union ie pout a tentative agreement. However, ‘53 Was later rejected by the 750-member _| *AS executive council by 72% and a E Strike mandate was sought from the The Proposed agreement, which the ae Tejécted as inadequate, exemp- roll Part-time workers from the wage backs of as much as 20% over the first

; m : Bill 105 aes of contracts imposed by

»). Lhe government claims its offer

SO increased job security over the a aka Imposed in the 109 separate con- 4 ts decreed by Bill 105, and sup- ; x Sedly opened the possibility of more 48es in 1985 in the unlikely event of an

Homic recovery.

-ommon Front union leaders have maintained from the beginning of the e Roel Strike that back-to-work legisla-

| 70n wouldn’t bring a halt to the labor

: bovement’s fight to restore collective rights, the right to strike and

SP repressive laws like Bills 70 and The new stage of the fight against the t-union assault by the government of Mier Rene Levesque, union leaders d Strikers at the grass roots say, will ) piuire “all out support of the entire | ~4nadian labor movement to the remain- ; = 30,000 teachers and education work- Si Who are standing firm on their deci- ©n to stay on strike, and greater moral

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and financial aid to the thousands of strikers and their unions facing massive fines and the risk of jail terms for defying the government. Union leaders are al- ready fleshing out plans for new forms of struggle againt the unjust laws and to regain their trade union and bargaining rights.

Teachers and education workers who are still on strike held a protest in Quebec City Feb. 9 against the government’s ‘terror’ tactics in dealing with hospital workers and in response to the threat of

back-to-work laws the government is’

threatening them with, if they don’t call off their strike by Feb. 14.

Over the weekend, the remaining’

90,000 strikers, represented mostly by the Centrale de 1l’Enseignement du Quebec, (CEQ), la Federation Nationale des Enseignents et Enseignentes du Quebec, (FNEEQ), a section of the CSN representing teachers in the junior col- leges (CEGEPs), and about 7,000 mem- bers of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, affiliated to the Quebec Federation of Labor, (QFL), kept their picket lines solid as union leaders met to

discuss how they would respond to the’ - government’s ultimatum.

The teachers have been the backbone of the strike since their members launched it Jan. 27. The CEQ went into the fray with an 80% mandate from its members to strike with or without a Common Front.

The government’s back-to-work law for the teachers will be at least as vicious as the legislation it had prepared for hos- pital workers if they would have voted to remain on strike.

Drafts of that law, leaked to the labor movement in order to intensify what CSN leaders in a prepared statement cal-

led ‘‘a climate of fear and intimidation’,

would have meant immediate dismissal for any striker defying the back-to- work-order; the cancellation of the automatic dues check-off and annulment of the Rand Formula in all bargaining units where 75% and less of the strikers didn’t return to work; and, termination of the established practice of the employer maintaining workers’ wages when they

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| Teachers denounce gov’t ‘terror’ tactic

higher paid workers.

are off the job on union business.

Teachers stand to lose 8,500 jobs next September because of staff cuts decreed by Bill 105. Like the other members of the Common Front, they see job security as one of the key issues in the general strike.

Bill 70 was brought down by the government last year as a naked grab of some $400-million from workers’ wages to shore up the provincial deficit. While Levesque and his cabinet were waxing eloquent about the natural ties and shared economic interests between Quebec and the U.S., the PQ govern- ment slashed social services and at- tacked the labor movement to prove its

‘responsibility’ to the U.S. financial (

monopolies.

Bill 70 proposed a 20% across-the- .

board rollback in wages for the first three months of 1983, the last year of the p.e- vious contracts in the public sector. Bill 105 setting new three-year pacts, came down after the unions refused to re-open their contracts to accept wage cuts, at- tacks on job security and working condi- tions such as staff cuts and lengthening work time without any raise in pay. Bill 105 modified the earlier law by exempting workers earning less than $20,000 a year from the rollback, and proposing a sliding scale of cuts for the rest, leading to as much as 20% for the

The Common Front proposed a wage freeze in the first year of the new three- year pact, modest increases in the sec- ond and third years and maintenance of the status quo on working conditions and

_ job security provisions in the collective

agreements. Attention will now focus on the

teachers and educational workers and their showdown with the government. Support for them and the rest of the Common Front has been expressed from labor across the country.

The Metro Toronto Labor Council, Feb. 3, extended its ‘‘total and un- equivocal support’’ to the leadership of the Common Front and pledged ‘‘to do everything in (its) power to provide mor- al, financial and any other kind of support we can mobilize.”’

Jean Claude Parrot, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), told a teachers’ meeting Feb. 8, ‘‘nobody has the right to discredit your cause ... just the way you stand before the government must tell the people something.” oe

The teachers, who have also been defying injunctions trying to force them back to work, heard Parrot say that the PQ government, which has pretended to be progressive in the past, has lost con- trol. ‘‘Corporations dictate to the government what to do. The government is just the messenger boy”’, Parrot said.

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Your friends are showing, Dennis .. .

Last week a reader asked us why we started so many columns with “‘old sayings’’. Our answer to him was we don t know any new ones. ; Which reminds us of an old saying that you can judge a man by the company he keeps. December minutes of the Executive Council Meeting of the Canadian Labor Congress contains the following item: “Soli idarnosc. . “In November McDermott was invited tg address ae Polish Congress in Winnipeg. He presen the CPC (not the Communist Party of Canada, WS) with the Canadian Labor Congress Award for Outstanding Tvice to Humanity, enthusiastically accepted by the CPC on behalf of the working people of Poland.” Anyone with a passing knowledge of Canadian politi- Cal life and the history of the Canadian Polish Congress know that if there is one thing the Polish Congress is

" Roted for, it is hostility to the labor and trade union

Movement in Canada as well as in Poland. . One would search in vain for a single example of Mtervention by the Canadian Polish Congress on behalf Of working people in Canada, on strike, in struggle, oistitute, under attack, unemployed victims of racism, etc., etc. Its political support has been for the parties of big

USiness, Its hatred of the working-class movement and Socialism has colored its every action. It has opposed any and all peace movements, lining itself up behind Policies of arms build-ups and war to ‘‘liberate’’ Europe. its present positions place it behind the policies of U.S. imperialism on the international front.

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It has wilfully distorted the results of the Second World War, and vilified the decisions of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements for equitable settlement of east European boundaries. It strives to stir up regional and reactionary nationalist sentiments in the Balkans to fan the flames of armed conflict in that area. It is linked together with a network of reactionary Polish emigre

organizations around the capitalist world, closely-

hooked up with the CIA led by deposed Polish capitalists and landowners and privileged aristocrats.

In its ranks are to be found many ex-supporters of Hitler fascism who were afraid to return to their own country following the war, including many who are war criminals being protected by the Canadian Government.

This is the organization the Canadian Labor Congress chooses to award for outstanding service to humanity. This action clearly shows that when you get on the

_anti-communist, anti-Soviet bandwagon as Mr. McDer-

mott has chosen to do on the Polish question, your actions are no longer determined by the needs and inter- ests of the working class, but by other forces altogether.

We would not suggest for a minute that everyone who gave their support to Solidarnosc did so from anti work- ing-class positions. In fact the strength of the support lay precisely in the identity of working people with the prob-

lems of the Polish workers, and how they saw the solu- tions they were striving for. Ican only assume that it was

from this position that Mr. McDermott and the CLC

devoted such energy to support for Solidarnosc. We think that such support and energy was misdirected and wrong for reasons which we have argued previously in this column. However, it is quite another thing to carry over from such a campaign, awards of virtue to an or- ganization whose history in the Canadian political and social movements has been quite hostile to the working- class movement.

One of Mr. McDermott’s virtues is his quality as a scrapper. No working-class leader is worth his salt with- out such a quality. We would suggest however that he sometimes combines this with another quality that, tak- ing into account the position he holds, leads to some problems.

When he gets the bit in his teeth he sometimes does not know when to shake it out. Circumstances in Poland have not turned out the way Mr. McDermott predicted or hoped, and he is somehow still trying to punish the Polish workers, and all those who disagreed with him for that fact of life.

Drop it Dennis, let’s get on with the fightback in Canada which requires every ounce of that scrapping quality you have, and the struggle for peace and detente, in which the Canadian trade union movement lags badly.

By the way, we make one confident prediction. The organization you gave the humanitarian award to will not show up at your side when you are in battle against concessions, wage controls and for new policies and new governments for Canada, and for a peaceful world.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 18, 1983—Page 7 =:

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