LABOR

By KERRY McCUAIG
The Ontario government is
_ playing a cynical game in trying to
- foist Bill 105 off as equal pay for -
equal value legislation.

The entire thrust of the Public
Service Pay Equity Act is
_ dangerous, it can, and in all likeli-
hood will, be used to override the
collective bargaining process.

The ‘‘phasing-in’’ period will
_ take months if not years to bring
in any pay adjustments. The
56,000 workers in the Ontario
Civil service, which the act
addresses, will be subjected to at
least two if not three job evalua-
tion processes.

Any evaluation method starts
from existing pay rates which
have been-established by the job
market. The Bill accepts this
‘premise and allows no mechan-
ism for challenging existing job
classifications and descriptions.

Section 10 of the act gives the
Commission the final say over
collective bargaining. It is unclear
that if and when the provisions of

fications which are 60 per cent
‘‘predominately female’’ and 70
per cent ‘‘predominately male’’.

Such guidelines are an invita-
tion to abuse. Employers can
manipulate their employee pools
to avoid eligibility. Hiring and
firing will become dependent on
the percentage composition of a
job classification. Affirmative ac-
tion gains would be undermined
as sexual ghettoization becomes
entrenched.

It is also worth noting that none
of the equal pay cases won under
federal legislation would have
succeeded if these guidelines had
been in place.

These are just some of the more
glaring problems with Bill 105. It
really must be called *‘bad faith
bargaining”
government.
principles are so flawed it is not
even a beginning point for dis-
cussion,

Many briefs submitted by
unions from the broader public

workers.

on the part of
It’s fundamntal

with equal pay.

sector and private sector have in-
formed the all-party committee
holding hearing on the act that
they do not want its provisions
extended to cover their members.
With good reason, minister Ian
Scott recently repeated his prom-
ise at a Nov. 17 meeting of busi-
ness leaders that the pay equity
bill for the private sector he plans
to introduce in the legislature be-
fore Christmas, will not affect On-
tario’s ‘‘competitive position’’.
He counselled employers to
begin ‘‘setting aside”’ parts of the
wage bill they had slated for gen-
eral wage increases and use it to!
bring up the pay of women

Scott has been brought to task”
for this approach before. It is in’
direct opposition to any equal
value provisions as outlined in
international statutes which state
no workers’ wages should be held
down in order to provide women.

Bill 105 — bad faith bargaining

GooD GOD...
NEXT EQuAL PAY

Bill 105 are extended into the
broader public sector it will pre-
vent unions from negotiating for
equal pay.
~ Job evaluation is not synonym-
Ous with equal pay. Equal pay is
Concerned with addressing the
Wage gap. The wage gap is dealt
With by.getting larger pay cheques -
into the hands of low paid (mainly
Women) workers. =
The pro-active mechanism
Bece some answer to this
“Question. Extra money can be al-
lotted to the public wage bill to
‘Immediately raise the incomes of
Workers at the lower end of the
age scale. This extra funding
an be administered through the
ormal collective bargaining pro-
edure. This would eliminate
ndue time lags or administrative
Costs since, current data already
Xists documenting wage dis-
Tepancies.
A major problem with the Billis
is based on ‘‘gender pre-
(Ominance’’. Comparisons can

>

HALIFAX — More than 3,000 Michelin workers in three Nova
Scotia plants were about to make labor history Nov. 20 as they cast
their votes to decide whether they would join the Canadian Auto
Workers union (CAW).

About a week earlier, CAW president Bob White told a press
conference here, that the union had succeeded in signing up 40 per
cent of the Michelin Tires Ltd. work force at three plants, in Granton, ~
Bridgewater and Waterville, as required by provincial labor legisla-
tion for a union certification vote to be conducted. ~ ok cat

The vote began Nov. 20.

Known disdainfully throughout the labor movement as the
Michelin Bill, it was tailored by the provincial Tory government in.
the mid 1970s to make it impossible to organize Michelin on a single
plant basis. Consequently, despite successive organizing efforts since ;
1973, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Uni-
ted Rubber Workers, and the Canadian Labor Congress were all
unable to crack the French transnational.

If the CAW wins majority support of the Michelin workers, they
will be the company’s only unionized work force in North America.

The vote is the outcome of a well-organized campaign that began
in August, but White and the union’s local leadership aren’t taking

CAW poised to sign Michelin workers

anything for granted. “This company will do everything possible to _
try and discourage the workers from voting for our union,” the
CAW leader said, adding the union would deal with whatever
roadblocks the company might try to put with the Nova Scotia

Labor Relations Board.

union movement.

Already, Michelin’s apologists in the business and academic
communities have begun warning that if the workers get unionized
the tire maker will pull out of Nova Scotia. Such predictions, includ-
ing one made recently by Dalhousie professor Alan Rugman, have
been dismissed by the union as a company scare.

this campaign is about.”

White and other CAW organizers were on the plant gates just
about every day leading into the vote wearing “Vote Yes” T-shirts
and urging the workers to join Canada’s 2.5 million-strong trade | i

White has pointed out that unionization won’t significantly affect
Michelin’s labor costs. ““This campaign is about a voice on the shop
floor for the Michelin workers,” the CAW leader said Nov. 14.

“There’s really no human rights on the job here, there’s no right to
vote in terms of job posting or recognition of seniority. That’s what

nly be made between job classi-

Commentary

By ED McDONALD

Nakina, a tiny town of 750, located
dout 300 kilometres northeast of Thun-
er Bay, hit the international map Nov.
2 with a headline story in the Globe and
ail: “‘ Nakina asking Soviets to boost its
tiling economy”’.
Nakina has been dealt some devas-
Ing economic blows over the past year
‘at have seen its population shrink from
14 to 750.
Canadian National Railways and
Nberly-Clark of Canada have been the
Or employers. However last summer,
CNR discontinued using Nakina as a
W stop, eliminating several jobs. Then
as the woodcutters in the community
Te returning to work after a two month
Off, the rumors started that Kimber-
lark will be closing its pulp and paper
in Terrace Bay, just south of Nakina.
hen it seemed little else could go
®ng the word dropped that the Hud-
n’s Bay Company wants to sell the
Wn’s only grocery and dry-goods store.
would not leave Nakina without a

grocery store’’, the Globe article quotes
a spokesperson for the Bay’s northern
store group. ‘‘But we'll sell anything at
the right price’’. (emphasis added).

It was then that Reeve Victor Fournel,
a woodcutter and heavy equipment
operator decided to contact the Soviet
Union. ‘‘We’re going to write them ...
The federal government allows them to
import Lada cars. Why shouldn't Can-
ada ask them to build them around here?
All we’re trying to do is attract new
industry or business,”’ he told the Globe.

It is interesting that Mr. Fournel would
look to our northern neighbor for assist-
ance just days after it celebrated the 69th
anniversary ofits revolution. The revolu-
tion freed them from capitalist exploita-
tion and imperialist wars, and ushered in
the first socialist state ... a state, which
since 1929, has never known unemploy-
ment.

For every Nakina we hear about, there
are scores of other examples across the
country that we don’t. Particularly the
one industry towns, dependent for
generations on a single resource, left
scarred and abandoned after giving its
best to a faceless transnational corpora-
tion. :

Collingwood, Ontario on Georgian
Bay was once the thriving centre on the
Great Lakes marine. Last August its
shipyard closed.

The experience of the now jobless Col-
lingwood workers was in sharp contrast
to the shipyard workers I spoke to while
vacationing in Varna, Bulgaria. Six thou-
sand of Varna’s 300,000 population are
employed in ship building.

The members of the administration,
Communist Party and trade unions |
spoke to were aware of the Collingwood
closure. Their yard had built two ships
for Canadian owners recently, but both
were registered in Panama.

There is no Canadian registered fleet.

Victor Fournel took some action on
behalf of his town. The Soviet Embassy
in Ottawa will no doubt answer his letter.
The Soviet Union, like the other socialist
countries, is willing to trade with our
country on a mutually beneficial basis.

But it will take more than a letter to put
the brakes on the neo-conservative poli-
cies emanating from Ottawa which are
turning centre after centre into ghost
towns.

As the general secretary of the Com-
munist Party, William Kashtan put it ina

Socialism holds lessons for ailing economies’

recent article in Communist Viewpoint:
‘*What the situation calls for is the forma-
tion of a Canada-wide alliance, a power-
ful people’s movement strong enough to
check and stop the pro-U.S. imperialist
turn of the Mulroney government.
‘**Must Canada take the road to free
trade? No. Canada’s future does not de-

pend on free trade — Canada’s future —

depends on opposing free trade, and in-
stead taking the road of economic inde-
pendence, an independent foreign policy
of peace, a democratic Canadian culture.
Thus, in opposing free trade we are
working for a different kind of Canada,
one which is sovereign and independent,
a Canada in which the people, not the
multinationals and monopoly, make the
decisions.”

Yes Brother Fournel, we share your

concerns and those of working people in —

Nakina, let’s together create such a peo-
ple’s alliance ... one which puts people
before profits, and opens up a brighter
future for the youth of our country. Un-
ited we can do it.

Ed McDonald is secretary of the Central

Trade Union Commission of the Communist —

Party of Canada.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 26, 198605