IWA national fourth v.p.

assumes solidarity job
New national fourth vice-presi-
dent Joe da Costa, former presi-
dent of Local 1000 in northcen-
tral Ontario, has been assigned
the role as officer responsible for
the union's international solidari-
ty activities. To add to his
already growing duties, Brother
da Costa is highly involved in
the union's joint education pro-
ject with the CTF (see story
right). “Joe isthe right choice
for the job,” says IWA national
president
Dave
Haggard.
| “He's a pro-
| gressive and
passionate
individual
who has a
great deal of
knowledge
and a keen instinct on issues
affecting workers in underdevel-
oped countries.”

Born in Azores, Portugal, the 46
year-old da Costa, immigrated to
Toronto in 1967 and lived there
until the age of 19. Joe's last job
as an IWA member was as a rip
saw operator at the Lajambe
Forest Products in Sault Ste.
Marie. He also worked in boiler
room maintenance, as a core
saw operator in the veneer mill
and in the filing room. Before
becoming a president of the
local for 17 years, he was a local
union trustee. Brother da Costa
has been to Chile twice, in 1999
and 2002, to co-write courses on
leadership training, activist train-
ing, and occupational health and
safety. “What the union has
decided to do in Chile is great,”
he says, adding that success can
take place over the long-term.

Solidarity Network pushes
for labeling of apparel

The Toronto-based Ethical Trading
Action Group (ETAG) is pushing
the feds to
force compa-
4 nies __ selling
apparel prod-
ucts in Canada
to disclose
where those
products are
produced. In
late May the
CLC-endorsed ETAG was still wait-
ing for the feds to live up to a
promised round table policy dis-
cussion on its proposal and review
of policy options. In February, the
group presented a petition signed
by over 20,000 Canadians, with
tens of thousands of clothing
labels, to Industry Minister Allan
Rock. The objective of the cam-
paign is to force public exposure
of clothes made in the Third
World, allowing human rights
groups to investigate conditions
and support foreign workers.

MAQUILA SOUDARITY NETWORK

Tijuana worker

SSETERIN cTF - wa Education P

PHOTO COURTESY CTF

= Ateam of (I. to r.) Local 2693’s Rolando Quintul, Local 2171’s Brenda
Wagg, CTF Women’s committee leader Silvia Leiva, and the union’s Bev
Humphries worked together in February to co-write a women’s course.

A full year of activities slated with CTF

Joint CTF-IWA education
centre to expand into new

areas with Chileans
The IWA’s pro-
ject with the CIF
(National
Confederation of
Forest Workers of
Chile) is headed
into another year of
activities and plans are underway to
deliver and write new courses at the joint
CTF-IWA Education Centre in
Concepcion, southern Chile.
Joe da Costa, the union’s national
fourth vice-president, says that the edu-

cation centre is scheduled to conduct an
intermediate course for organizers
between June 23 - 26, where twenty CIF
members will participate. The candidates
will be chosen from a list of eighty indi-
viduals who have already taken a two-day

introductory course on organizing.
“Following the more advanced orga-
nizing class, we hope to see the CIF
choose a smaller, dedicated group of
activists to get out in the field and bring
new members into unions and the con-
federation,” says Brother da Costa, who
adds that the IWA and CTF are in com-
munication with the Geneva-based
International Federation of Building and
Woodworkers (IFBWW) to see if there

are ways that the international body can
work with the CTF and IWA for the ben-
efit of Chilean forest workers throughout
the country.

In August, the project should deliver the
first-ever week-long course for CTF women,
utilizing course materials put together by a
writing team of union representatives
Brenda Wagg, Bev Humphries, the CTF's
Silvia Leiva and IWA Canada International
Solidarity Coordinator Rolando Quintul.

“We're proud to have put together this
course and it will be interesting to, see
how it will be received by CTF women
when it is delivered,” says Sister Wagg,
chairperson of the IWA national
women’s committee.

In the late fall or early winter of this
year, the Education centre plans to deliv-
er another course on collective bargain-
ing, which is gaining popular interest
among the 45 affiliate unions of the CTF.

CIF president Sergio Gatica, co-
author of the collective bargaining
course, says that almost all affiliate
unions have expressed interest in send-
ing representatives to study collective
bargaining and how to strengthen the
functioning of their committees.

“We are encouraged by the response
to collective bargaining and hope to
repeat the course, several more times in
the future if possible,” says Brother
Quintul, who has been to Chile on four
occasions to instruct a group of instruc-
tors and co-write several courses.

In the winter of 2004 it is hoped that
the CTF will send some representative(s)
to Canada to co-write a communications
course.

The course should involve how to put
together a union newsletter and publica-
tions and develop media strategies. It will
also focus on how to put together com-
munication strategies at the federation
level and individual local level.

“One of the priorities that the CIF has
pointed out for the next year is the devel-
opment and distribution of a publication
ona regular basis,” says Brother Quintul.

Autoworker links art
to workers’ struggles

WHAT DO THE IWA, CHILEAN for-
est workers and an American autowork-
er have in common? Simple. The bonds
of international solidarity!

For the last couple of years, our
union has utilized dozens of labour car-
toons developed by Ricardo “Rick”
Flores to spruce up course materials
developed for the joint IWA-CTF educa-
tion project in Chile. No matter what
the subject area has been — from orga-
nizing to collective bargaining, to safety
or women’s issues — the labour cartoon-
ist and painter, has art work which fits.

The 56 year-old former UAW Local
977 member from the General Motors’
stamping plant in Marion, Indiana,
began drawing pictures at an early age.
Born in Kerrville, Texas, Rick and his
family followed the stream of predomi-
nantly migrant Mexican farm labourers
from Texas, to Indiana to Michigan and
back to Texas for many years. The
Flores family also picked cotton in
West Texas, and endured a difficult
life, although Rick fondly recalls the
closeness of his family and good times
together. Those experiences and

COURTESY RICK FLORES

= Brother Flores with acrylic painting.
activism as an autoworker (he worked
at the GM plant for 30 years) led Rick
into the production of labour cartoons
and paintings. Among the more than
150 clients, that the award-winning
artist serves, are numerous national
and international unions, university
labour studies programs, and unions in
New Zealand and Canada.

Rolando Quintul, from Local 2693,

the IWA’s International Solidarity
Coordinator, says Brother Flores’ cartoons
“are appealing and, at the same time,
they make you laugh — even though
some of them can be dealing with serious
matters in underdeveloped countries,
such as exploitation by transnational cor-
Pporations.”

CTF president Sergio Gatica says
Rick’s cartoon “tiene sentido” (have
meaning) for Chilean workers in that
many of them concern the universal
Latin American experiences of poverty
and exploitation mixed with emotions of
optimism and hope.

Brother Flores also has a keen eye for
issues involving human rights, including
democracy and freedom of speech, and
often addresses con-
temporary political [Um
issues. Now that
he’s retired, he is
able to focus more
intensively on paint-
ing. Rick mixes
bright, mysterious
acrylic colours to
create abstract art
which he describes as “art of the soul”
versus “art of the eye.” See his paintings
and labour cartoons at: www laborart.com

Struggle!

12 | THE ALLIED WORKER JUNE 2003

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