Labour

Protect fishery, UFAWU demands

Continued from page 1 objected and Canada immediately scrapped the proposal.”

The action left advisors with no choice but to walk out “totally frustrated,” Nichol said.

The members of the industry working group subsequently met with provincial officials, including Premier Bill Vander Zalm. Consultations were continuing be- tween Victoria and Ottawa at press time but the provincial government's position was expected to be of critical importance.

Nichol said that Crosbie fears that the U.S. would go after the East Coast fishery — currently exempted from the free trade agreement — if the Tories press for landing requirements on West Coast salmon and herring. But in taking that position, the trade minister is prepared give the U.S. unfettered access to west coast fish and sacrifice thousands of pro- cessing jobs, Nichol warned.

“Clearly, we must insist that Ottawa get much tougher with Washington, tabling a comprehensive package of proposals,

including grading requirements, which meet Canadian needs,” he said.

He said that the UFAWU has the ba¢k- ing of the Native Brotherhood, represent- ing Native fishermen, as well as the Amalgamated Shoreworkers and Clerks in Prince Rupert if the union is compelled to take job action to protect jobs and the Canadian fishery.

The union was expected to work out a comprehensive program of action at the UFAWU convention which opens in Vancouver Jan. 30.

JACK NICHOL.. tough with U.S.

. Canada should get

Mergers make Canada ‘the most monopolized _

The takeover of Texaco Canada by Imperial Oil, the merger of Molson Breweries and Carling-O’Keefe and the acquisition of Wardair by Canadian Air Lines International are part of a new wave of corporate re-structuring, launch- ed three years ago but gaining in momen- tum‘in recent months.

Since 1985, 135 major acquisitions, each worth more than $100 million, have been carried out, with a total value of $54 billion’ Both the numbers of acquisitions and the size have increased over those three years.

The snowballing merger momentum, according to University of B.C. com- merce professor William Stanbury, has given Canada a level of corporate con- centration unmatched by any other capi- talist country.

In 1986, the 100 largest non-financial corporations in Canada controlled 55 per cent of the country’s business assets, a degree of control far exceeding that found in other countries. It is nearly double the concentration in the U.S. where the top 100 non-financial corpora- tions control 28 per cent of the business assets.

The rapidly increasing trend towards, greater monopolization in Canada has echoed the trend throughout the capital- ist world as major corporate groups

merge and acquire new companiesin an _

effort to control major markets. The corporate re-structuring has involved billions of dollars in assets while

creating few new companies and reduc- _

ing jobs substantially. The chief objec- tives have been increased profitability and market domination.

The shrinkage of employment that has resulted from re-structuring has also been accompanied by a stepped-up demand from the corporate sector for reductions in social programs as well as “safety net” programs such as unem- ployment insurance and welfare.

In this country, the merger process has been accelerated by the free trade agree- ment which is itself part of a massive corporate re-structuring plan, intended to integrate the North American econ- omy and create a powerful trading bloc in which huge multinational corpora- tions dominate the various sectors of the economy.

(Ironically, the companion to free trade — de-regulation — which was touted as a means of enhancing competi- tion, has the opposite effect in the War- dair takeover. After a brief period of competition, the industry has emerged with an even greater degree of concentra- tion than existed before de-regulation. Unionists and others opposing govern- ment de-regulation had predicted just Such an outcome.)

eventually have to remove discrimina-

The Molson’s-Carling-O’Keefe merger was clearly a re-structuring prompted by free trade considerations even though the brewing industry was nominally exemp- ted from the'trade deal. As the result of a ruling of the General Agreement. on Tariffs and Trade last year, Canada will

tory pricing on Canadian beer, opening the way for big U.S. and European brewers.

It was revealed this week, in fact, that Canada has given an undertaking to the European Economic Community that it will seek an end to the discriminatory pricing systems currently used by pro- vincial liquor control boards. In order to protect Canadian beer and wine sales, imported beer and wine is subject to a higher price markup — a system which the EEC has demanded be removed.

By completing the merger, which will give the new company a 53 per cent share of the market, Molson’s wants to posi- tion itself both to dominate the market when the new trade regime comes about and also to make new inroads into the U.S. market.

The company has also declared its intention to launch an assault on decades-old provincial regulations which stipulate that beer companies must maintain a brewery in any given province in order to sell there. The policy has been a major factor in providing stable employment in many communities.

But Molson’s, together with the former parent company of Carling- O’Keefe, Australian multinational Elders IXL Ltd., has put heavy pressure on government for the removal of the pro- vincial regulations so that it can close several plants and centralize beer pro- duction. And to no one’s surprise, the news of the merger last week was fol- lowed by an announcement by Robert Knox, a representative of the federal ministry of Industry, Science and Tech- nology, that provincial officials are being invited to re-open the question of brew- ery regulations.

As has been the case in all the mergers, the Molson’s re-structuring will produce no price reductions for consumers — - and will kill thousands of jobs across the country. The Texaco Canada takeover is also expected to result in the closure of dozens of service stations and higher pri- ces resulting from the increased market control.

Jim Matkin, president of the B.C. Bus- iness Council, in statement this week, acknowledged that the increasing tempo of mergers was not producing new jobs or new companies. “It’s paper capital-

ism,” he said. — Sean Griffin

12 « Pacific Tribune, January 30, 1989

Job losses predicted

Continued from page 1 of Molson’s with Carling-O’Keefe. “The impact of this merger and every other merger of large companies holds the

same potential,” he said in a statement Jan. 20. “Corporate Canada benefits — but

what about the rest of us?”

As the Molson merger was_ being announced, Fletcher-Challenge — the pro- duct of two-year-old takeover by the New Zealand multinational of Crown Forest and B.C. Forest Products — announced it was rationalizing plywood preduction and cutting 115 jobs.

Georgetti noted that the direct job losses .

resulting from the brewery merger would be repeated throughout the economy because of lost business to other companies which are dependent on employees’ incomes as well as reductions in tax revenues.

“Unless we are prepared to accept a much different Canada than what we have had in the past and have today, we must force the government to regulate such mergers and approve them only when the overall impact of the mergers have been analyzed and addressed,” he said.

The demand for federal regulation was echoed by others who have called on the director of Bureau of Competition Policy, which administers the federal Competition Act, to use its powers to hold up the mergers until all the issues have been addressed pub- licly.

John Fryer, president of the National Union of Provincial Government Employ- ees, whose members include brewery workers, demanded last week that the bureau conduct public hearings on the recent mergers before the required approval is given them.

Under the 1986 Competition Act, which replaced the old Combines legislation, mergers, acquisitions and takeovers must be approved by the Bureau of Competition Policy, headed by Calvin Goldman, who has 21 days in which to study the effects of the corporate re-structuring before making a report.

Although Goldman has in the past -

ordered some modification of corporate plans, mergers have usually gone through without opposition and all three companies are clearly expecting the same routine approval.

But the legislation does provide for refer- ral to the Competition Tribunal which is

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empowered to hold public hearings before granting approval or demanding alteration of corporate acquisition programs. And it is that course which unionists are urging be taken.

Kamloops NDP MP Nelson Riis, speak- ing for the federal NDP caucus, also called for review of the mergers under the Compe- tition Act in a news conference this week.

But if the mergers are to be held up to public review, there will have to be “‘enor- mous heat” generated on the federal government, Fred Wilson, B.C. organiza- tional secretary for the Communist Party, emphasized this week.

He noted that the Competition Act was contradictory in its intent in that it stresses both the need to “maintain competition” while allowing companies to “expand opportunities for Canadian participation in world markets” — in other words, giving the Bureau an opening to justify the mergers on the basis that Canadian companies have to get bigger to compete with other multina- tionals.

“The Competition Act itself won’t stop these takeovers,” Wilson said, “but enough pressure on the government might.”

He pointed out that the Canadian Labour Congress was holding a special ranking officers’ meeting Feb. | which is scheduled to discuss protection for workers in the wake of passage of the Canada-U.S. trade deal. That meeting could provide a forum for the labour movement to discuss how it will deal with the mergers and its own proposals for economic alternatives, he said. a

He added that there was “a major role” for the CLC and other groups in the “social solidarity” network, such as the churches and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, in pressing for public hearings and full consideration of the public interest before corporate re-structuring is allowed to proceed.

The mergers also highlight the need for — the labour to renew its demand for plant closure legislation — and to step up the campaign around its own economic alter- native program, outlined in the CLC’s “‘Workers’ Agenda” and echoed in various programs adopted by provincial federations of labour.

“The prospect of a new round of corpo- rate re-structuring makes that more impor- tant than ever,” he said.

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