LABOR

Organized in seven days,
workers take on Eaton’s

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Making the
move that may prove to be the
first crack in one of Canada’s old-
est bastions of paternalism, about
85 per cent of the workers at a
Brampton, Ont., Eaton’s store
have joined the Retail, Wholesale
and Department Store Union,
(RWDSVU).

When the Ontario Labor Re-

lations Board gets around to certi-_

fying the RWSDU, the union will

be the first to penetrate the stub-

bornly anti-union Eaton’s empire
since the ill-fated million-dollar
organizing drive at Eaton’s during
the late 40s.

Some 40 years later RWDSU
members from the Eaton’s store
in Brampton crowded into a
board room at the Ontario Labor
Ministry March 2, to support their
union’s application for automatic
certification. In its application the
union showed it had signed up 43
of the 53 full time sales people,
102 of the 115 part time sales staff,
three of the five full time office
and clerical staff nine of the 12
part time office and clerical
people. In all, 157 of Eaton’s
185-member workforce eligible
for union membership signed
RWSDU cards and paid their dol-
lar.

‘‘From the signing of the first
card to filing the notice of the ap-
plication took us exactly seven
days’’, union organizer Carole

Currie told reporters after the
March 2 hearing.

Two-Pronged Attack

While provincial labor law pro-
vides for automatic certification if
a union can show it has signed up
more than 5S per cent of the eligi-
ble workforce, a two-pronged at-
tack by Eaton’s lawyers and a
worker pushing an anti-union pet-
ition blocked the workers’ path to
union recognition,-March 2.

The board panel rejected the
company’s opposition based on
technical points of the Labor Re-
lations Act, which the union de-
monstrated were irrelevant.
However, the board agreed to
postpone the application hearing
for another week so it could con-
sider charges by the union’s op-
ponent in the store, that she was
harassed by union supporters and
prevented from circulating her
petition against the RWSDU.

Ironically, Michael Horan the
lawyer representing the inter-
vener against the RWSDU appli-
cation was also named in another
case being heard at the board on
the same day involving a bid by
the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union (UFCW), to or-
ganize some 2,500-3,000 workers
employed at Swiss. Chalet
restaurants in the company’s 46
restaurants and six takeout out-
lets, throughout Ontario.

tion of four restaurants, with
another five applications to come.
It is challenging the legitimacy of
existing collective agreements be-
tween Swiss Chalet and a com-
pany union, the UFCW says
merged with the Hotel Em-
ployees and Restaurant Em-
ployees International Union to
block its organizing drive.

Horan has been named in that
situation as the legal advisor, with
whose assistance the company
union the Canadian Restaurant
and Related Employees was set
up.

Frivolous Charges

The pro-union forces at
Eaton’s heaped scorn on the
anti-RWDSU petitioner’s allega-
tions contained in a letter sent to
the Labor Board by Horan March
1. One Eaton’s worker who pre-
ferred to remain anonymous
echoed remarks made before the
board by union representatives
that the charges were frivolous
and didn’t provide grounds for
satisfying the petitioner’s demand
for a board-supervised vote.

“‘Those allegations aren’t cor-
rect’’, she said, “‘I can’t believe
an attorney would type up some-
thing like that.”’ j

“I’ve never seen so much gar-
bage on paper before in my life’,
echoed RWDSU representative
John Clark.

Outside the hearing, workers
spoke of how support for a union

isn’t reached.

Boycott Federated Co-op — SFL

REGINA — The 60,000 member Saskatchewan Federation of
Labor has called on its affiliates and allies to boycott selected
_ Co-op products that are marketed and distributed by Federated
Co-op Ltd., throughout the province. ;
The decision to launch the boycott of Co-op and Harmonie
brand canned goods including coffee, tea, cereals, pet foods, :
paper supplies and-other merchandise, was pompted by a request |
from the Moose Jaw Labor Council and Local 1400 United Food |
~ and Commercial Workers Union on strike against Federated.
SFL president Nadine hunt promised the boycott would stick
until the strike was settled and warned it could be escalated to
other products and beyond Saskatchewan if an early settlement

time in the Brampton store, as:

_Eaton’s got cheaper and cheaper
with wages and became more
relentless in displacing full time
sales staff with part timers.

One worker described the last
four per cent wage increase over
26 months as “‘an insult to our
intelligence. It made us darn
mad,”’ she said.

“We're so fed up with this re-
cession band wagon, there’s
money out there and we want our
share’’,

“Draw vs Commission”
Salesman Paul Wannamakerde-
scribed the ‘‘draw against com-
mission’’ system he and the other
sales staff work under. Eaton’s
advances the sales personnel $254
a week. Operating on a straight
five per cent commission on the
total sale price of the goods they
sell they have to pay Eaton’s back
for whatever shortfall may occur
between their commission and

the draw.
When business is good, the
sales people say they can knock
out a decent living with quite a bit
of hard work. But lately the com-

pany has been pressuring the
sales people to carry merchandise —
and perform other customer Ser
vices that eat into the amount of
selling time they have on the
floor.
Eaton’s.recent increase of the
draw from $200 to $254 a week
further stacks the deck against the
sales staff. ‘‘It means that I’ve got
to make another $1,000 in sales t0
make up for the increase in the
draw’’, Wannamaker pointed
out.

“T joined the union because I
want to make sure that two years
down the road I’m not making
less than what I’m earning
today.”’ aa

Replacing the full time staff
with part time salés people lets
Eaton’s get away with paying less
than the already meagre benefits —
its workers presently get,
drives down the company’s wage
bill.

‘“‘The more part time help they
bring in, the more money theyTé
taking out of my pocket’’, another
sales person said. ‘‘These are the
reasons we want a union, thesé
are the issues.”’ : ;

Ce A PRIS LSE TTC IE ELT

UFCW was seeking recogni-

had been building up for a long

The pulp industry lockout in British Columbia has
brought the labor movement face to face with an ines-
capable reality. Unity takes on the form of organization
but its essence lies in the policies and programs around
which it groups. :

Therein is the essential weakness in the pulp dispute:
The three unions involved, International Woodworkers
of America (CLC), Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of
Canada (CCU), and the Canadian Paperworkers Union
(CLC), originally had a three-way pact, going into nego-
tiations, to stand firm against the pulp-paper and timber
corporations. Unfortunately the WA broke the pact and
signed a rather weak agreement with the lumber industry
leaving the pulp and paper workers by themselves. Tak-
ing advantage of the split in the ranks of the forest
workers the pulp industry locked out its employees and
has dug in its heels, refusing to budge from a three-year
agreement and concessions.

Subsequent events in the province have found the
whole labor movement caught up in internecine warfare.
The IWA has been attacking the pulp unions for placing
pickets at their operations, accusing them of irresponsi-
bility. Some unions in turn have gone so far as to demand
the resignation of Jack Munro, president of the IWA,
from the B.C. Federation of Labor executive. The feder-
ation itself stepped into the stituation and undertook to
co-ordinate trade union support for the locked out work-

ers and pledged their full support.

General Strike

The latest act in the drama is a proposal by Munro that
either the pulp workers pull their pickets off the IWA
operations, or the dispute be carried to what he calls the
only other logical conclusion, a general shut-down by the
whole trade union movement in B.C. for some period or
another — a general strike, limited or otherwise. Munro
says the matter is one for Operation Solidarity to involve
itself with.

is is a matter which we are sure the trade union
movement in B.C. will iron out very quickly. Our pur-

L

The struggle for trade union unity

Labor in action

4 William Stewart

pose in raising the matter here is to get at why the mat-
ter should come up only at this late date and after much
damage has already been done to the unions’ collective
cause in B.C.

The answer to this, we would suggest, lies in the.
gaping difference in approach on how to fight back
against the employer offensive in B.C. There is a studied
resistance by the Munro-type leadership to get down to
the grass roots and mobilize the membership for a de-
termined and militant fight back against the overall
employer-government offensive, and as well the particu-
lar form this offensive takes in each industry.

This view vacillates between two concepts. One con-
cludes it is not possible to conduct a serious fightback
during a severe economic downturn, as at present, and
workers will have to await a better day to settle
accounts. ‘

The other puts off the fight until election day when the
New Democratic Party will make everything right.
Meanwhile the employer is having a field day sowing
disunity, distrust of the labor movement and condition-
ing workers for still further assaults on their wages,
working and social conditions.

_ Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

This disunity, confusion and lack of perspective is
further used as an argument by trade union leaders for
failure to act. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy by right-wing
trade union officials who never did have any confidence
in anyone but themselves, and finding themselves unable
to deliver results any longer on the basis of top level
manoeuvering, are instead developing theories which

-which can mobilize labor to go over to the offensive

blame the membership for their inability to deliver..
At the same time other leaders in the movement see
the need for a new approach to negotiations and to the
entire trade union structures. They see the need to
mobilize the rank and file, to broaden the base of
leadership and participation in the entire movement; and
the possibility for mass action, struggles and strikes

against the corporations and their governments.

These differences surfaced in the heady days of the
Solidarity struggles in 1983, and they are again appearing
in the pulp dispute. They are an inevitable part of the
struggle for labor unity in B.C. as elsewhere in Canada.

Class Struggle Policies

There can be no lasting or meaningful unity, at the
level needed to turn matters around for labor in Canada,
that is not based on policies of class struggle; policies of
principled mass, grass-roots trade unionism, coupled
with labor political action to elect new governments to
reinforce these policies and programs.

What was lacking, going into the forestry negotiations
last year, was precisely such a program for the entire
industry, tied together with a policy for all labor in B.C.
The lumber and pulp negotiations needed to be seen as
the logical continuation of the battles begun by Operation
Solidarity, a critical element in labor’s campaign to de-
feat the employer and move into the offensive. -

The struggle for trade union unity, the heart of the
struggle for labor unity, and behind labor unity of all the
democratic forces in our country, remains the principle
need for all working people. The left and more clear-
sighted forces in the trade union movement have the
main responsibility of helping forge the programs and
policies around which unity can be achieved and winning ~
the movement for their acceptance.

B.C. remains in the forefront of this process but it is
taking place at the same time everywhere in Canada. _
Change is indeed blowing in the wind in the labor move-
ment. :

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MARCH 14, 1984