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LABOR

Class collaboration offered by PM :

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau, the man who's planning to
drop wage controls on Canadian workers
if he can get away with it, was invited to
speak to the founding convention of the
Canadian Federation of Labor, (CFL),
March 3i. Not surprisingly, Trudeau
who became the first prime minister to be
invited to speak to a labor convention in
20 years, made a pitch for class colla-
boration to the 160,000-member building
trades break-away from the Canadian
Labor Congress.

Trudeau told the mostly-handpicked
delegation of 350 union staff representa-
tives and selected delegates that
““management, labor and government
can sit down and share the responsibility
for governing,’ and referred to the kind
of tri-partite set up existing in Sweden,
West Germany and Japan. He said he
would like some kind of trade off — labor
*‘volunteering’’ to accept self-imposed
wage controls and the government re-
ducing the rate of inflation. He didn't
suggest how this could take place.

The CFL convention, which was de-
layed once because of lukewarm interest
by some of the building trades unions,

was not attended by two of the three
largest building trades organizations
formerly affiliated to the CLC. Both the
92,000-member Brotherhood of Carpen-
ters and the 55,000-member Laborers
International boycotted the CFL con-
vention. They were joined by the 18,000
member International Association of
Ironworkers.

There were some building trades
workers in attendance who put up a fight
against the ‘““Gompers’’-style political
action policy of ‘‘rewarding’’ labor’s
friends and ‘‘punishing’’ its enemies.
Dave Johnson business manager for the
Toronto-Central Ontario Building
Trades Council, an opponent of the split
from the CLC, was quoted in the media
as saying that he hung his head in shame
as the new labor body convened.

Many see the creation of the CFL as
the culmination of a made-in-
Washington policy of trying to impose on
the CLC the reactionary, ‘‘business
unionism’’ domestic policies and
reactionary pro-U.S. imperialist foreign
policies of the most right-wing elements
of the AFL-CIO. CFL leader Ken Rose
and other top building trades ‘“‘road

runners’? objected to the democratic
structure of the CLC and of its con-
ventions, and steadfastly opposed the
right of self-determination for the trade
unions in Quebec.

When the CLC leadership wouldn't :

surrender to the made-in-Washington re-
structuring proposals in line with what the
AFL-CIO wanted, Rose and company
were able to pull 10 of the 13 building
trades unions formerly affiliated with the
CLC into the CFL. The Ironworkers,
Laborers and the Carpenters were pulled
out of the CLC by their international
officers who refused to pay their per
capita dues payments to the Congress.

These unions tended to take the lead in
Canada in the fight against the split in
labor’s ranks and some, such. as the
Ironworkers and the Laborers, are on
record as favoring re-affiliation to the
CLG.

Also, the absolute refusal by the top
building trades leaders to shift from their
undemocratic positions and opposition
to Quebec unions running their own af-
fairs, which culminated in the creation of
the CFL, indicates that the break away
from the Congress was inevitable.

Trudeau became first prime minister to
speak at a labor convention in 20 years.

A split was the desired objective of the —
right-wing building trades leaders and
this was demonstrated by obvious lack of
sincerity in negotiations with the con-
gress. .

Certainly the warm reception Trudeau
was given by the CFL delegates, and
rumors the building trades are pondering
a split within the AFL-CIO itself, in-
dicate that big business and their rep-
resentatives in the building trades unions
are working Overtime to try to weaken
the labor movement as capialism is con-
sumed by its worst crisis ever.

ae

By MIKE PHILLIPS

OSHAWA — Cutting its daily output of mid-size front
wheel drive Chevies and Pontiacs in half, General
Motors of Canada announced last week that it was
throwing 1,750 members of United Auto Workers Local
222 on the streets Apnl 12, indefinitely.

The union’s immediate response at both the local and
top Canadian leadership level was to stress that the move
wouldn’t soften the UAW’s determined and principled
opposition to concessions, cutbacks and giveaways in
the forthcoming contract talks which begin this fall.

The announcement came in the wake of the tentative
agreement reached between GM and the UAW in the
U.S., and a similar pact with Ford in the U.S. which saw
workers surrender their personal paid holidays, once the
much-heralded breakthrough toward the shorter work
week, deferred cost of living adjustments to the end of
the 30-month contract and no wage increase for the term
of the agreement.

The UAW has responded to the on-going campaign by
the auto companies to blackmail them with their own
jobs with pressure on the federal government to restrict
foreign auto and parts imports (other than from the U.S.,
covered under the Canada-U.S. auto pact) to a level
commensurate with their Canadian production and im-
pose work content quotas which require foreign auto
makers to guarantee that cars sold in Canada will have a
specific amount of the production done in Canada. The
more cars a company sells in Canada, the greater would
be the required Canadian content in its production.

Oshawa GM layoffs seen as blackmail

The union wants the auto pact revised so that cars and
parts brought into Canada equal what Canadians pro-
duce. It has also called for government involvement in to
create a high technology Canadian parts sector and
Canadian-based research development and engineering,
as well as for policies to lower interest rates so people
can afford to buy cars.

Auto a key test

Auto workers, and their union have turned to, and
been supported in their fight against concessions by the
entire Canadian labor movement which sees the auto
industry as one of the key testing grounds for big busi-
ness in Canada to coerce the working class into com-

mitting economic suicide, and save capitalism from the -

crisis it alone is responsible for.

Their fight is also being supported by other detach-
ments of the labor movement including the Communist
Party of Canada which has projected an auto program for
discussion among workers calling for a Canadian,

publicly-owned and operated auto industry producing a’

Canadian car. The program also calls for the necessary
government actions to protect the Canadian auto market
and to find export markets for such a project.
Canadian workers, facing much higher interest rates,
mortgage rates and inflation than their brothers and sis-
ters across the international border don’t buy GM’s pov-

erty act when they see that in the U.S. the company paid —

out some $17-billion in stock dividends and interest
payments to shareholders and banks in 1981. Not only
that, GM had enough cash to buy 5.3% into Suzuki

Motor Co. of Japan, increase the company’s assets by

$4.4 billion and to buy some.$9.74-billion in real estat
and new equipment.

Workers also can see that GM and the other aul?
companies are trying to rob their wages and benefits
re-organize and re-tool the industry in order to catch up
with growing Japanese production and sales. They don H
see, however, why workers should have to foot the bill
for the disaster brought on the North American aul?
industry by the greediness of the companies’ drive fo!
profits. Their outlandish pricing policies, slowness !#
downsizing to more fuel efficient cars and their outdat®
engineering and design opened the door to foreig!
competition which was prepared to supply a car t
growing economic climate demanded.

In fact concessions only lead to more concession:
The way to really fight them isn’t to accept the system ®
it is, in its decrepit state and impotence to solve peoples
demands for a better life. The way to solve the proble#!
lies in the direction pointed to last December by UAW
director for Canada Bob White in a newspaper inte!
view.

“If our economic system can no longer move fo!
ward’’, White said, *‘the solution isn’t to increase
sacrifices of those who already face difficulties — it's
start asking whether the existing system is still a vehi’
for progress or if it must be fundamentally changed. |

As the pressure mounts on auto workers and work
in general to sacrifice all they’ ve gained so far, to prop uf
big business, it’s clearer than ever that fundamet!
change to eliminate the power of the corporations and
their governments over our lives, is what is desper.
needed.

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Fired
Sudbury

hospital

strikers
get jobs

back

SUBDURY — It was on a Fri-
day February 13, more than
a year ago, that Justin Legault,
president of Local 161 Canadian
Union of Public Employees
(CUPE), was fired from his job at
Laurentian Hospital for leading
the six-week hospital workers’
strike the Tory government
crushed.

Ironically, on April 1, April
Fool's day — Legault returns to
his job at the hospital completely
re-instated and in his mind totally
vindicated for his militant stand in
defence of hospital workers’
bargaining rights. Details of the
negotiated settlement reinstating
Legault, are being withheld by
both parties, but the outcome is

consistent with most of the other
firings which resulted from the
strike throughout Ontario.

“T feel pretty good about it’’,
Legault told the Tribune last

week. ‘“‘The thing that really

makes me feel good is being back
on the job site with my members
after being fired for more than a
year.”

Despite his dismissal, Legault
was re-elected president of his
local for a two-year term which
expires next year.

Kay Macnamara, president of
CUPE Local 1023 at Sudbury
General was also reinstated to her

_job last month after a successful

arbitration ruling in her favor.
Macnamara made headlines dur-

ing the last provincial election
campaign with her eyeball-to-
eyeball confrontation with On-
tario premier William Davis in
which she raked him over the
coals for his government’s vicious
attack on the striking workers,
ordering them back under threats
of heavy fines and jail sentences.

CUPE national president
Grace Hartman, Ontario division
president Lucie Nicholson, and
staff representative Ray Arse-
nault were imprisoned by the
Tory government for refusing to
order their members back to work
after the anti-union law was
rushed through the provincial leg-
islature.

“As far as I know, the hospital

workers’ strike is one of the firs
where workers who were fired fo!
participating in a so-called “‘illee
al’’ strike have been reinstated '
Legault said. ‘I think this is ?
kind of breakthrough for the labo!
movement and it shows the di
ference between the law and ju*
tice. Fi
While I’m not pleased that
was out of work for a year, I thi
this settlement indicates that jU*
tice was served,” he said. “Ww
had a just cause in our strike, we
went out and I'm glad we did:
Most of the workers who wé
punished for exercising their r
to strike are either back to wort
or in the process of going back. It
shows the union was right.

TM