Wednesday, October 23, 1985

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Newsstand Price 40°

Vol. 48, No. 39

PR CA RTA OE SEE AE

Labor’s fightback, bargaining blunted ‘under Hawke accord

By SEAN GRIFFIN

For four months, in 1984 and the beginning of 1985, workers at the Rosella-Lipton plant in Melbourne, Australia walked the picket line in a now historic dispute that began with the demand for reinstatement of 14 fired workers but quickly became a

complicated strike involving the centrepiece of labor relations under the Labor

government, the Prices and Incomes Accord.

Seventeen weeks after the strike was launched, in January, 1985, the workers, members of the Food Preservers Union (FPU), scored a major victory, winning reinstatement for the 14 as well as pay and benefit increases.

But that victory only came after actions by the government of Prime Minister

Robert Hawke had nearly driven the union out of the plant — and nearly forced FPU members to give up the 2.6 per cent national wage increase granted by the

Arbitration Commission, Australia’s wage-fixing agency.

“We won but we were taken to the very brink of our destruction as a union,” FPU organizer Gail Catton told the Tribune from Melbourne. “And even after we won, we still had to fight to get the national increase passed on to our members.”

The strike at Rosella-Lipton, a div- ision of the huge British Unilever mul- tinational, is only one of a growing number of disputes which have erupted in Australia in recent months

and which, because of the nature of }

the Hawke government’s Prices and Incomes Accord, have become as much strikes against the stifling wage restraint of the accord as they have strikes against the employer.

The much-vaunted accord, origi- nally signed in February, 1983 between the soon-to-be elected Labor

Party and the Australian Council of |

Trade Unions (ACTU) established a

mechanism to control wages, based |

ona pledge from the government that

special programs, tax reforms and | other measures would be introduced | in return for workers submitting to |

wage restraint.

Under the accord, wage increases are set for most unions on a national scale by the Arbitration Commission which takes the Consumer Price Index for the previous two quarters and establishes a twice-yearly wage award accordingly.

“But in order to gain the arbitra- tion award, you have to accept an undertaking that you will make no further claims on the employer for two years,” said Catton. And itis that restriction — one of several guide- lines which accompany the accord — that has created enormous tension between the government and many Australian trade unions.

“The employers hide behind that — they say ‘no’ to everything. The guidelines have been used to bludgeon workers into accepting the status quo,” she said.

In the Rosella-Lipton dispute, the FPU was able to buck the trend, and win increases outside the accord. But the union faced an attempt by the

government to force the workers back’ }

on the job with an Arbitration Commission-imposed ballot on the resumption of work — a vote that was rejected 83-52 — as well as legal action to restrict the union’s right to sign up members.

Second of two articles

Nine months on the line

: oe y

see ACCORD page 12

Bruce Usui (I) and John Campbell man picket line outside AAF Ltd. in North Burnaby where members of the Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Workers, a local of the United Association of the Plumbers and Pipefitters, have been on strike since Jan. 29. The employer, who manufactures filters for air conditioning units, has stonewalled negotiations since the strike began and has maintained the operation with scabs, reflecting an ominous and growing trend in disputes across the province.

Court injunction still hangs over Cdn. Tire boycott

An ex parte B.C. supreme court injunc- tion barring the Retail Clerks and the B.C. Federation of Labor from virtually any action in support of the Canadian Tire boy- cott at 21 Lower Mainland Canadian Tire stores, was set aside on a technicality Oct. 17. but its sweeping provisions are still hanging over unionists’ efforts to mount the boycott on behalf of striking Canadian Tire workers in Prince George.

Retail Clerks lawyer Morley Shortt told the Tribune Oct. 18 that the injunction order, issued by Justice H.A. Callaghan Oct. 12, was set aside by the court because the counsel for the union had not been notified of the application for an injunction. The application had been filed by G. Ver- non Forster, co-owner of Pacific Associates Stores Ltd., the franchise owner for Cana- dian Tire’s 21 stores in various Lower Main- land municipalities from North Vancouver to Chilliwack.

Shortt added that the company could not make a new application for an order unless there was leafletting or picketing at the stores. “And at the moment there’s no pick- etting so there’s nothing to complain about,” he said.

“Right now, it’s a stalemate.”

The original injunction order, considered one of the most sweeping and punitive since the “injunction heyday” of the 1960s, and granted the same day as Forsters’ applica- tion and accompanying affidavits were filed, was prompted by leafletting at several of the stores Oct. 11. The action was part of

. the campaign mounted by the Clerks and

the B.C. Federation of Labor to win a set- tlement of the two-year-old strike at Cana- dian Tire in Prince George.

The order prohibited the Clerks, the B.C. Federation of Labor, “and their respective officers, members, employees, servants or agents,...or any other person having knowledge of this order” from:

@ “Watching or besetting or causing to be watched or beset any of the 21 stores;

@ “Persuading or attempting to persuade any person not to enter the store or do business with the store;

e “Distributing any handbill or other material urging a boycott of the store;

@ “Attending the store with placards or handbills that “convey information with respect to any aspect of the plaintiff's busi- ness;

e “Interfering, hindering or obstructing ingress and egress to and from the plaintiff's place of business by any means what- soever.””

“Tt basically ordered us not to look at the stores, to leaflet them or do anything that

see ORDER page 3