TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

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Members of the Carpenters Union, including B.C. and Yukon Building Trades

Council president Roy Gautier(centre) were among unionists taking part ina
B.C. Fed rally outside Marjorie Hamilton Aug. 24 in support of the ILGWU’s

demand for a first contract.

Union wins fi

After'more than 30 months since its
Organizing drive at the plant first began,
the International Ladies Garment Work-
ers Union (ILGWU) has won a first col-
lective agreement with Vancouver cloth-
ing manufacturer Marjorie Hamilton.

That agreement, signed with the com-
Pany Sept. 14, came three weeks after the
B.C. Federation of Labour began a
Campaign of escalating pressure against
the company, launched with a union
Support rally outside the plant Aug. 24.

“This is a good day for all garment
workers,” declared ILGWU representa-
tive Phyllis Webb who first began organ-
izing at the plant in January, 1985.

“This collective agreement will show
Other workers in the growing garment
industry that we can organize them, pro-
tect them from employer harassment
and win a contract for them.

“Tt also sends a clear message to the
employers of our industry that the
ILGWU is not just one small union
Operating on its own, that we have the
Support and strength of the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labour,” she said.

The first contract at the plant is a
Significant achievement for the union
Which has carried on its organizing cam-
Paign under particularly difficult condi-
tions.

<eteeme

rst contract

The garment industry has grown sub-
stantially in Vancouver in recent years
but the conditions have barely changed
from half a century ago for the mainly
immigrant women who work for a var-
iety of companies at piece work rates far
below the minimum wage.

ILGWU organizers had to apply
repeatedly for certification, each time
facing a campaign of legal obstruction
orchestrated by the law firm of Jordan
and Gall. There were several hearings
before the Labour Relations Board as
the union sought reinstatement of
members laid off just prior to a vote and
argued against employer attempts to
have the bargaining unit declared inap-
propriate.

The company’s industrial relations
practices typified those in the industry,
including 14-hour days without over-
time, and the common practice of laying
off older workers, supposedly because of
a shortage of work, while simultaneously
advertising job vacancies.

Over the past two years, the ILGWU
has staged several ‘““Garment Awareness
Day” rallies, together with the Van-
couver and District Labour Council, to
highlight the union’s organizing cam-
paign.

ON THE LEVEL PHOTO — RON JOHNSON

Shell Oil boycott
targets apartheid

Continued from page 1
He said the network would be approach-
ing Vancouver city council and the provin-
cial government for support.

Network spokesman Basil Freeman said ©

that Shell’s investments in South Africa
have increased over the past few years,
growing from $400 million in 1985 to $1
billion this year.

“It fits into a special category, in that it
has not observed the embargo imposed by
oil producing countries,” he said.

Freeman said Shell supplies oil and gas to
South Africa’s repressive military and
police forces by order of the National Supp-
lies Procurement Act, meaning the com-
pany “has chosen to do so rather than
withdraw from South Africa.”

Louie Ettling of Southern African
Women Against Apartheid noted that as a

_ prelude to the Commonwealth Conference,

Britain sent its foreign minister, Sir Geof-
frey Howe, to Ottawa to tell the Canadian
government that sanctions aren’t working.
Canada’s limited sanctions, which have
won some praise from anti-apartheid
forces — who still stress that total eco-
nomic, cultural and trade sanctions are the
best way to fight apartheid — will occupy
centre stage when the member nations of
the British Commonwealth meet in Van-
couver next month.

Asked Ettling, “How can they say sanc-
tions aren’t working when they haven’t app-
lied them yet?

“We know that sanctions have been
effective. For one thing, the people inside

‘ : ae
TOM ANTHONY ... Shell Oil fuels apar-
theid.

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Fed

JOHN WEIR . .. full support of B.C.

pledged.

South Africa that are fighting, the people
inside its borders, have been encouraged by
at least the first step towards full sanctions,
small as it might have been, and they have
had small successes, successes we don’t read
about in our press.”

Ettling, a former South African citizen,
said the small South African community in
Vancouver is in constant touch with the
country’s liberation forces.

John Weir, community relations director
for the B.C. Fed, said the federation and the
Canadian Labour Congress pledged their
support for the boycott after being asked by
South African trade unionists.

“We understand that apartheid is an
economic system and a means of exploiting
cheap labour,” he said, stating that the boy-
cott has “mainstream” support.

The network notes that campaigns to
boycott Shell have already been launched in
the United States, Britain, the Netherlands,
France, West Germany, Australia and New
Zealand.

The boycott was launched after South
Africa’s largest black-member union, the
National Union of Mineworkers, called for
international pressure on Royal Dutch/-
Shell. Along with labour groups and inter-
national South Africa liberation support
organizations, the World Council of
Churches supports the boycott.

Shell products in Canada include: Shell
gasoline and Diesoline; motor oils such as
Aeroshell, Rimula, Rotella and Super Shell
TLO; additional products such as Super-
Shell Snowshoe tires, Shell Superlife batter-
ies, air fresheners and roofing supplies. _

Peace forums

For thousands of peace activists across
the country — indeed throughout the
world — the idea of an “enemy” is a.
throwback to the hostile Cold War atti-
tudes of the 1950s. For peace activists the
enemy is nuclear war — and the ultimate
Weapon is disarmament.

Yet the idea of the Soviet Union and the
‘Warsaw Pact countries as the “enemy”
has been thrust back into Canadian policy
by the federal government’s white paper
On defence, tabied earlier this year by
Defence Minister Perrin Beatty. Under-
Pinning the Conservative policy on
defence is the idea that Canada must
acquire new arms and military hardware
to defend the “democratic values of the
west” against the ever-present threat of
attack from the Soviet Union.

For that reason, the two public forums
Scheduled as part of End the Arms Race
Peace conference next weekend, are expect-
€d to provide a dramatic focus for a debate
that peace activists hope will continue
across the country.

~ Bob Wenman, parliamentary secretary
to Defence Minister Beatty, will be repres-

fo dramatize danger of Tory defence policy

FAIREY
enting the government at the opening pub-
lic meeting of the conference which will
debate the government’s white paper. The
panel of speakers includes Wenman; C.G.

Gifford, national chairman of Veterans
against Nuclear Arms; Carole Chris-

CHRISTOPHER

topher, a co-ordinator for the Christian

Anawim Community; trade union econ-

-omist Dave Fairey and University of B.C.

political science professor Michael Wal-
lace.

The meeting is set for Friday, Sept. 1 8,8
p.m. in the Woodward Instructional
Resource Centre at the University of B.C.

Lee
GIFFORD

The following night, Sept. 19, at 7:30
p.m., Dr. Tom Perry, a member of Inter-
national Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War, will be moderator for a
panel discussion on the “enemy” concept
of the Soviet Union.

Three speakers are scheduled to discuss
the subject from three different points of
view: the business perspective with char-
tered accountant and investor Michael
Francis, the co-chair of the Vancouver
Centennial Commission who travelled to
the USSR this summer; a Christian and
feminist approach with Carole Chris-

PERRY

topher of the Anawim Community’s Cen-
tre for Peace and Justice; and an Israeli
citizen’ perspective with Ernesto Kahan, a
professor of medicine at Tel Aviv Univer-
sity. Kahan, who is also president of the
Israeli Committee for the Prevention of
Nuclear War, is currently on sabbatical in
Seattle.

The meeting will also be held in the
Woodward Instructional Resource Cen-
tre.

More than 200 delegates are expected to
take part in the day-time sessions of the
two-day peace conference, organized by
End the Arms Race to “wage peace”
against the government’s white paper and
to develop plans for peace action on a
local, provincial and national level.

Workshops and plenary sessions are
expected to centre on action around two
key campaigns, the Canadian Peace
Pledge Campaign, aimed at making peace
a primary issue in the next federal election,
and the campaign to extend nuclear wea-
pons free zones. The conference sessions
will be held in the auditorium of the Stu-
dents Union Building at UBC.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 16, 1987 e 3