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LABOR

| | FREE TRADE

CANADIAN LABOR FIGHTS BACK

By MIKE PHILLIPS

The launching Sept. 16 of the Canadian Labor
Congress’ country-wide campaign against free
trade, deregulation and privatization can be the
decisive factors in turning local resistance to the
neo-conservative agenda into a unified counter of-
fensive by the entire labor movement.

Significantly, the CLC will unveil its two-year
fightback program with the backing of its affiliates’
ranking officers who’ve been called to a special
meeting in Montreal.

The congress, has been busy all summer laying
the foundations for what it sees as a counter offen-
sive to defeat the corporate blueprint for Canada
and replace it with an economic reform package for
joos and Canadian independence.

Whether it’s the Gainers or Suncor strikers in
Alberta; railway workers fighting privatization in
Moncton; Newfoundland provincial government
workers poised to resume their strike against
government cutbacks; B.C. woodworkers striking
for job security; Saskatchewan potash miners con-
fronting the RCMP on their picket lines and battl-
ing Tory court injunctions; the Inglis strikers defy-
ing the transnational’s naked blackmail for con-
cessions in the name of free trade; or scores of
other labor battles throughout the country, a com-
mon thread weaves these individual battles into a
significant national pattern.

All reflect one or other aspects of the frontal
assault by big business and right wing governments
to roll back the economic and social advances
working people have made, in order to create a
dog-eat-dog free market economy ultimately ex-
pressed in a free trade relationship with the U.S.

CLC vice-president Nancy Riche last week in an
interview said the congress expects the federations
and labor councils to play a ‘‘major role’’ in the
success of the campaign.

Labor Day Plans

She detailed the plans underway by the pro-
vincial federations and regional committees that
have been set up. The Manitoba Federation of
Labor will use Labor Day as the occasion for a
major festival which will focus on Free Trade. In
Toronto the labor council is planning to turn its
annual Labor Day parade into a mass protest
against free trade.

The B.C. federation is planning a‘series of reg-
ional economic conferences throughout the prov-
ince and lobbied premier Bill Vander Zalm, Aug.
22 demanding that his government call for a halt to
free trade talks until a full impact study on the
provincial economy can be made.

Riche said that in the Atlantic provinces a plan-
ning committee representing all of the region’s
labor federations, met last week. They plan a series
of provincial economic conferences in the spring

culminating next fall with a gathering for the whole
Atlantic region.

She added that setting up a similar Western
committee of provincial labor federation leaders
was being considered to assist in the imple-
mentation of the campaign. :

The Quebec Federation of Labor is planning a
provincial conference on deregulation and privat-
ization Sept. 20-21 and the Ontario Federation has
just completed its own anti-free trade campaign
with the publication of the results of the 20 regional
forums it conducted throughout the province last
winter.

OFL president Cliff Pilkey stressed that the
federations and labor councils should be the
catalysts for the CLC campaign. ‘‘It’s important
that they be seen as the delivery system for the
campaign. The overall co-ordination has to come
from the congress but the main thrust for carrying it
out has to come through the federations, labor
councils and affiliated unions’’ he said.

The Job in the West a

Labor reps throughout the west agreed that the
trade union movement has an important job to do
in that region in driving home the destructive im-
pact free trade will have on jobs, and Canadian
independence. The Alberta Federation of Labor’s
Jim Selby said there is growing understanding in
the province that labor’s battles against take-aways
and massive concessions are symptoms of a
strategy tied into the corporate agenda for free
trade and deregulation and are seen as a rationale
for attacking working peoples living standards.

But work remains to be done to link the dangers
of free trade to the threat to jobs. ““The Tory
government’s role in all of this is clear’’, Selby
said.

‘‘We see jobs lost in the inevitable restructuring
of the oil, brewery and meat packing industries, to

take a couple of examples, as well as in agricultural |

products.

‘*And along with the restructuring that is bound
to accompany free trade, there will be an inevitable
demand by the corporate sector and governments
to drop the social benefits and services net in the
interests of competitiveness’’ he said.

Ted Boyle, of the Saskatchewan Federation of
Labor, said that the federation has concentrated on
internal education and presented a brief to the pro-
vincial Tory government’s task force on Free
Trade analyzing the sectoral impact such an
arrangement would have on the Saskatchewan
economy.

A recent government white paper he said, how-
ever, demonstrated that even with inflation con-

EN

Mulroney’s
‘New Direction for

Free Trade
Deregulation

Privatization
Cutbacks

Universality

The Wrong Direction!

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sidered, real investment in the provincial econom™
since Grant Devine’s Tories ‘‘opened’’ Sas
atchewan ‘‘for business”’ in 1982, has sharply de
clined in real terms despite a nominal increase ® |
one tenth of a billion dollars in overall investment |
over the past four years. 2

“The figures show that what we call the Devin®
government’s ‘Bend Over for Business’ strategy
hasn’t broadened the range of the provincial eco®
omy nor has it increased investment’’, Boyle sale
At the same time unemployment, at 8 per cent,
twice what the rate was when the Tories swept !©
power.

Campaigns and Coalitions

Where the impact of free trade, deregulatio#
and privatization is brought down to the local level, q
opposition to the Tory plan can be galvanized. fae

Unions such as those in steel, auto, electricals |
postal, communications and others are beginning
to see the results of their educational campaigns:

Mike Lyons, president of the Metro Toronl0_
Labor Council, stresses this and the importance %
coalition building as the CLC campaign proposes: |

The council has conducted its own forum an@ |
internal education and was a founding member
the Toronto Coalition Against Free Trade. On Oct
31 the regional municipal government is holding? |
free trade forum at which the labor council will AI
present a detailed analysis of the impact free trade |
would have on the Metro economy. a

‘We want to focus on specifics, what free trade
will mean to this industry on this street, that neigh
borhood. Then there’s the effect it will have on 1°
just the public sector but services. i

“If we do end up with the ‘level playing field’ the -
Tories want, whatrole will municipal councils have
regarding zoning, regulating environment® |
controls etc.,”” he said. aa

He also stressed the role of labor councils and
CLC affiliates in confronting the big business gam
plan. F
“‘T hope that labor councils right across Canada W!
take the same kinds of actions as we have and ge!
behind the CLC campaign. What’s especially crit!
cal is to get right down to specifics — what’s golie
to happen to our communities and towns.”

With Canada-US. free trade talks now
in progress, this country is fast approach-
ing one of the gravest decisions in its
history — and “Canada’s future as a sov-
ereign nation is the price that all Canadi-
ans will have to pay if a free trade
agreement becomes a reality,” Canadian
Labor Congress president Shirley Carr
warned last week.

In a message released for Labor Day,
Carr emphasized that it “doesn’t take a
wizard to predict who would get the upper
hand in negotiations between a country of
250 million on one side and a country of 25
million on the other.

“In such a (free trade) deal, hundreds of
thousands of Canadians will lose their jobs
as American-based multinationals close
their gates in Canada and move back
home to supply Canadians from there.

i

Just by increasing their production runs
by 10 per cent, they can serve the whole
Canadian market without their branch
plants. Those not laid off will be forced to
grant concessions and wage reductions to
hold their jobs,” she said.

The Labor Day message, aimed
squarely at the Mulroney government’s
stepped-up efforts to sell free trade, is part
of the Congress campaign against free
trade, privatization and de-regulation
initiated by the CLC convention last May.
The next phase of the campaign gets
underway Sept. 16.

In her message, Carr warned that the
effects of free trade on the Canadian econ-
omy, on living standards and social pro-
grams would be “devastating.

“Not only will we have to abandon
hope for improvements such as better

child care, but we’ll likely lose the pio”
grams we already have — medicare, P¥
lic pensions, unemployment insuratt ;
family allowances and many others. Th
American government sees all thes ay
‘unfair’ subsidies that wouldn’t fit into? |
free trade deal. ; ; |}
“Free trade will mean making all out |
policies — political, economic, sociat |
cultural — conform to those of the Un
ted States. It will also mean taking the U,,
lead in deregulation and privatizatio® |f
she said. eo
She added that the Mulroney gove™ |
ment is “already well on its way” to 10% |
ganizing industries to make them M™% |
vlad

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compatible with U.S. practice, particw#!
the airline and trucking industries “whi@, |
have been deregulated with little ree"
for jobs, safety or health.” q