BRITISH COLUMBIA

Cleaners escalating
_ Strike against PO’s
low-wage contractor

More than 200 pickets representing sev-
eral trade unions converged on Vancouver’s
main post office and halted mail delivery for
a day to protest the use of scab janitors and
to bring an end to a five-week old strike.

The Vancouver situation mirrors that of
cleaners in Toronto, where 28 employees of
Capital Building Services are picketing the
large South Central sorting plant to achieve
a first contract.

The Vancouver pickets gathered at 6 a.m.
on Jan. 15 and halted all postal vehicles
entering or leaving the building. The vast
Majority of unionized postal employees,
including members of the Canadian Union
of Postal Workers and the Letter Carriers
Union, stayed off the job in support.

Some 32 members of the Contruction
and General Workers Local 602, have been
On legal strike since Dec. 3 in an effort to
win a first contract from their employer, the
contracted janitorial firm, A&A Service Co.

“The post office claims that this is not
their fight. We think it is,” said union local
business representative, Bob Hart.

Hart said the union members are earning
between $5 and $6 per hour, “and we know
that no one can live on that.”

A&A, initially a non-union firm, won the
cleaning contract from the post office six
months ago when it underbid the former
contractor, Modern Building Cleaning.

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Local 602, which represented employees of
Modern, subsequently succeeded in organ-
izing A&A’s staff, said Hart.

Janitors employed by Modern earned
about $2 to $3 more per hour than A&A
employees, noting that the local is seeking
increases to bring wages up to $7.88 and
$8.53 per hour.

But the company has so far refused to
budge from its offer of 40 cents in the first
year and 20 cents in the second year of a
two-year contract, Hart said.

A&A has also been bringing in scab labor
to cross the picket line — and Canada Post
has played a role in facilitating this, he
charged.

“We've been told it’s a question of
money. But Canada Post has been spending
thousands of dollars on security since this
strike began,” Hart said.

Canada Post security staff, supplemented
by Burns Security.guards, were monitoring
the picket line by taking pictures and video-
tapes of picket line incidents.

Managerial staff at one point attempted
to start the first of a line of vehicles standing
idle in the post office’s exit ramp. But when
the picketers, whose numbers had dwindled
by noon, stood firm, the attempt was aban-
doned.

While most customers respected the
picket lines, those who insisted on delivering
their mail carried the bags across the line to
supervisory staff inside the building.

Hart praised trade unionists for their
support, including postal employees “who
have been told they’d be fired or suspended
for honoring our line, but who did so any-
way.”

Sarwan Boal, president of the Canadian
Farmworkers Union, was walking the line
along with several other CFU members. “It
doesn’t matter who’s fighting, as long as it’s
for economic and social justice,” he said.

In Toronto, janitorial staff at the South
Central sorting plant have been out since
Jan. 8 to win a first contract from Capital
Building Services and raise their wages from
$4.50 an hour to $10 an hour.

The company in Toronto has also been
using scab labor in an effort to break the
strike.

Jean Claude Parrot, president of the
Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which
represents the cleaners, said the strike
showed the impact of the federal govern-
ment’s contracting-out policy.

“Where you used to see unionized
workers doing these jobs and getting paid
$12 an hour, the work was contracted out
and people brought in to work for $4.50 an
hour,” he told the Tribune.

Parrot also revealed at a press conference
that Canada Post had forced Capital Build-
ing, the successful bidder, to trim its offer by
some $200,000, even though the company
had submitted the lowest bid.

“They're contracting out to pay the
cleaners less money so the government can
take those savings and add them to the
military budget. The cleaners get $4.50 an
hour and the government gets another F-18
fighter jet,” he charged.

Talks broke down last September when —

the company refused to consider the union’s
position of $10 an hour, paid sick leave,
vacations, employer-paid medical insu-
rance, job security and seniority rights.
Inside postal workers and members of
the Letter Carriers Union are crossing the
line with permission, since Canada Post has

“threatened suspension or dismissal of

employees who refuse to cross the line.

But many CUPW members are walking
the line on their own time, and the union
has planned several support actions.

Sale of WKPL linked
to Davis energy plan

Continued from page 1

accepted UtilCorp’s bid of $80 million,
which was $30 million above WKPL’s
book value, without allowing other
bidders, including the Central Kootenay
Regional District, to finalize their bids.
But the foreign ownership issue, par-
ticularly since it involves a public utility,
is also a.major source of opposition.
Earlier hearings in Penticton and Trail
heard several opponents condemn the

MAURICE RUSH... creation of pub-
lic utility urged.

provincial government for allowing
ownership of a utility company to be
transferred to the U.S.

Rush charged that the Socred govern-
ment’s implicit support of the U.S.
takeover was part of the government’s
policy of allowing hydroelectric resour-
ces to be alienated to private interests. He
noted that it was part of the new Davis
Plan which would open the door to the
development of privately-owned and
foreign-owned utilities which, while
separate from B.C. Hydro, would receive
the benefits of power distribution from
the Crown corporation.

“Your support of the sale of WKPL to
the U.S. company and support for
Investment Canada’s position has turned
the Kelowna hearings into a farce,” Rush
said in his telegram to the energy minis-
ter.

“The Communist Party calls on the
B.C. government to act now to keep
WKPL in Canada,” he said. “It should
oppose the sale to the U.S. and bring
WKPL under public ownership and con-
trol through a takeover by B.C. Hydro.”

Demand for jobs at top
at YCL rights campaign

Canada’s young communists have a
plan they’d like to discuss with the youth
and student movements, says the
national leader of the Young Commu-
nist League.

Called The Charter of Youth Rights,
the document will be the focus of discus-
sion at the YCL’s upcoming 22nd
national convention in Toronto Feb. 6-8.

“Young people are being clobbered
with unemployment and unattainable
education costs, and there’s no good rea-
son why they shouldn’t have a charter of
rights,” says Chris Frazer.

In British Columbia recently as part of
a national tour, Frazer met with several
youth and student organizations to pro-
mote the YCL’s charter.

Frazer in an interview said Canada’s
youth are organizing and speaking out
against unemployment, education cut:
backs and high tuition fees, and the
threat of nuclear annihilation.

“Jobs and wages are really the coalesc-
ing point,” said Frazer, “and we think
it’s time to put aside whatever political
differences we have and get down to find-
ing solutions to joblessness.”

The hunger strike last year by Liberal
Senator Jacques Hebert over the Mulro-
ney government’s cancellation of the

Katimavik youth employment program —

“put youth unemployment on the politi-
cal agenda for a while,” said Frazer.

The YCL gave “critical support” to
Hebert’s protest, he said.

YCL representatives joined four other
groups — the Catholic Youth Corps,
the Toronto Disarmament Network,
student members of the University of
Toronto board of governors and the
Ontario Federation of Students — in
launching a caravan to Ottawa to draw
attention to the issue.

“In the wake of that, there were sev-
eral protests,” said Frazer, pointing to an
occupation by Ryerson students of the
Canada Mapower centre on campus, a
peace and jobs conference in the Mari-
times, and a civil disobedience at the
Alberta legislature.

The Charter of Youth Rights focuses
on eight key issues facing Canada’s
young people: peace, jobs, accessible
education, sexual equality, racial equal-

ity, Canadian culture and ‘ta democratic
solution to the national question.” The
latter point refers to instituting full sov-
ereign rights for Quebec.

Frazer estimated he’d met with about
12 organizations since his tour began
Nov. 23:

In B.C. he met with student society
leaders and staff at Simon Fraser Uni-
versity, with the provincial branch of the
Canadian Federation of Students, and
the provincial Young New Democrats, as
well as participating in a picket line at the
labor ministry’s Vancouver office with
the recently formed Lower Mainland
Youth Coalition.

Nationally, the YCL is a member
group of the Montreal-based Regroupe-
ment Autonome des Jeunesses.

Frazer said concern is mushrooming
among Canada’s youth over unem-
ployment and nuclear war, but that
many “are uncertain about which direc-
tion to take.

““We’ve found a new receptiveness
among young people to the ideas the

_YCL is putting forward. At the very

least, there is some recognition that they

should listen, whereas before we had

found the doors closed pretty tight,”
Frazer observed.

The upcoming YCL convention will
be open to other youth groups, and sev-
eral have been invited, he said.

CHRIS FRAZER ... on cross-country
tour.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 21, 1987 e 3

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