‘Employer violations

encouraged by govt’

Members of the Carpenters Union
began picketing two Vancouver-area
employers this week to dramatize the
danger to workers’ rights posed by the
amendments to the Labor Code.

On Tuesday, unemployed unionists
targeted a construction site on West
Broadway where the owner, DBS Con-
struction, cancelled a contract with a
union. contractors Petco Construction
Management, after the Carpenters
Union put in an application for certifi-
cation of Petco.

After Petco was dismissed from the
job, the non-union contractors re-hired
some of the non-union carpenters who
had been working for Petco before the
application for certification.

The incident highlights the new sec-

_ tion of the Labor Code which provides
for cancellation of the certification with
a contractor once the project is finished.
And since, according to Carpenters
organizer Jeff Roger, a certification is
rarely granted in less than six weeks, the
project could be finished before the
union is certified.

On Wednesday, the union was to
begin picketing outside the Creator’s
Gallery on Robson Street which is
owned by Regis Pictures and Frames of
Richmond. The Carpenters industrial

local applied-to certify Regis, at which
point the company terminated several
employees.

“This is another example of employ-
ers trying to take advantage of their
employees and the climate created by
the provincial government by violating
the Labor Code and denying workers
their rights,” Roger charged.

In the case of the Regis certification
application, new code provisions stipu-
late that a vote must be held which, said
Roger, “opens up the whole certifica-
tion process to delays at the Labor
Relations Board and abuse by the
employer.”

He emphasized that DBS, the owner
of the Broadway <onstruction site,
“took the action at the same time as the
Labor Code amendments were being
pushed through by the provincial
government.

“Just as the labor movement has
warned, these amendments are creating
an atmosphere in British Columbia
where employers feel they have a free
hand to discriminate against union
workers,” he said.

The Carpenters Union has launched
actions before the Labor Relations
Board charging both companies with
unfair labor practices.

Guild ratifies contract

Members of the Vancouver-New
Westminster Newspaper Guild voted
91 per cent May 18 and 19 to accept the
new tentative contract hammered out
with Pacific Press, publishers of the
Vancouver Sun and Province.

The new pact, which addresses the
major job security issues highlighted by
the Guild, was worked out-during four
days of bargaining following the rejec-
tion of an earlier Pacific Press offer
which contained only money.

The 950 Guild members will get the
wage increases of five, five and seven
per cent over three years contained. in
the agreements worked out with the
printing craft unions, but they will also
get new contract language covering
health and safety and technological
change as well as continuation of an
earlier clause covering seniority.

The new language covering video
display terminals provides for regular
testing of the units by a two-member
team consisting of one from the union
and one from management, trained at
company expense. In addition, the
union’s two-year-old VDT health and
safety committee will be recognized by
the company.

The fechnological change clause
provides that layoffs for technological
change can only be effected through
attrition for all employees on the pay-
roll after Mar. 1, 1984.

Pacific Press also agreed to continue
the plant-wide seniority, a demand it
had not acknowledged in earlier
negotiations.

The contract was considered of some

importance since the company had
stonewalled the job security demand
from the first day of negotiations and
had expected the initial offer covering
wages only would be endorsed.
_ But company negotiators ‘“‘were sur-
prised” by the 60 per cent rejection
vote,” said Guild administrative officer
Roy Tubbs.

“That was the turning point — it
made them sit up and take notice of our
demands,” he said.

The Guild had struck Pacific Press
Apr. 11 although its members had been
honoring picket lines set up by the five
striking printing craft unions two weeks
earlier.

> Both the Sun and the Province were
expected to be back on the street at the
end of the week.

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12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 23, 1984

ART KUBE, (r) MIKE KRAMER. ..mood of delegates was more militant than federation
officers expected.

‘Fightin the trenches
on amendments seen

Continued from page 1
under these circumstances what is just
rather than what may be legal,” Kube
asserted.

The federation president also emphas-
ized, in response to questions about Build-
ing Trades action over Expo: “If the
Building Trades engage in job action, they
will have the full support of the federation”

Significantly, it is over Building Trades
issues that any battle in the trenches is likely
to be touched off. The Socred cabinet, utiliz-
ing the new powers under the amended
code, is expected to designate Expo 86 as an
economic devleopment project, thus pros-
cribing the Trades right to defend them-
selves from the encroachment of non-union
contractors.

In response, Building Trades unions are
expected to take job action. In addition, the
Trades are likely to come in conflict with the
new code as they press their campaign else-
where against non-union contractors.

But wherever the “fight in the trenches”
comes, it may well come sooner rather than
later, as delegates from Wednesday’s meet-
ing go back to their local unions and press
for implementation of those proposals that
are in the federation executive’s program.

The full program calls for:

@ The federation to assist Operation
Solidarity committees in each local labor
council area to support union organizing
campaigns; to take action against employ-
ers engaged in human rights violations,

unfair labor practices or anti-union actions»
to support every union engaged in a strike
or lockout; and to boycott the goods of an
employer where a union is decertified;

-@ The federation to “endeavor to statt
co-ordination of bargaining among
unions to maximize economic pressure Of
employers in an effort to switch from con
cession bargaining to economic progress
bargaining”; 5 :

@ The federation to “‘scrutinize the activi-
ties and decisions of Labor Relations
Board” and if the board is being used 10
“frustrate organizing, to undermine union
strike action or picketing or as a tool tO.
decertify unions,” then the exectuive council
will meet to decide a course of action includ-
ing resignation of labor members from thé
LRB, a boycott of the board or any
government labor tribunals;

e All unions to “respect the application
of labor’s historic tools” — political pro-
tests, secondary picketing and others — i
conjunction with the federation and t0
“support fully any unions who find them-
selves in conflict because they apply thes¢é
historic tools.”

Two final points call on the unions tO
undertake “economic reprisals” against
employers who use the new human rights
legislation or the code amendments to
undermine workers’ rights and instruct the
federation to undertake an education pro-
gram among union members and. the
public. :