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Moscow May Day for Canadian

“ By MIKE PHILLIPS

‘*When it’s brought down to basics, their interests
are fundamentally the same as ours. We are all ‘Jock
Tamsen’s bairns’ and‘what’s good for one is good for
all.” .

Jim Bentley, an executive board member of the
Metro Toronto Labor Council and a member of Local
46 of the plumbers’ union reflected with the Tribune
last week on his participation in the grand-daddy of all

- May Day celebrations, Moscow, May 1980.

It was his first visit to the Soviet Union but his
second invitation by the World Federation of Trade
Unions to join in the celebration of international

working-class solidarity. Bentley had to tum down

the earlier offer in 1973 to meet a commitment to join
the United Farm Workers in Delano, California in
their bitter organizing drive among grape and lettuce
workers.

Determined not to miss this second chance,
Bentley arrived in Moscow April 29. ‘‘It was very
hard to grasp that I was allocated to a reserved spot,
as part of an international deputation, within 50 yards
of the Lenin mausoleum. Here I viewed the tremend-
ous march past of all those involved in the parade
from one end of Red Square, in front of my eyes, and
out of the other end,”’ he recalled.

He wasn’t only impressed with the million-and-a-
quarter trade union members who took part in the

demonstration. Bentley noted ‘‘the complete absence’

of military might in any shape and form’’, in the
parade. ‘‘In fact the police, or whatever they call them
over there, along the lines of the parade route as we
have in this country, didn’t have a night stick or a billy

_club, as we term it, never mind a revolver or any type

of weapon at all,”’ he said.

A long-time advocate within the Canadian labor
movement of workers in this country celebrating May
Day, Bentley had no trouble getting into the spirit of
the Moscow celebration. ‘‘May Day over there,”’ he
said, ‘‘reaches the actual ideal of what May Day is
supposed to be.”

A native of the ‘‘Red Clyde’’ area of Glasgow,
Bentley recalled how he grew up with an understand-
ing of May Day as a celebration of the rebirth of the
earth — a rebirth of the world. For him, the parade

symbolized *‘a rebirth of the earth where flowers and‘

mother nature and the likes of that, have given forth
produce for the benefits of mankind.”’

During his two-week stay in the Soviet Union,
Bentley visited Tallinn, the capital of Soviet Estonia,
and the cities of Yaroslav and Rostov. He found Tal-
linn to be a heavily industrialized city where he and
the North American delegation of 14 (half and half
from Canada and the U.S.) visited one of the largest
chocolate candy factories in the USSR and a diesel
engine plant which six years ago was converted from
the manufacture of autos.

To the satisfaction of Bentley’s sweet tooth, the
visit through the chocolate plant was extensive.
“‘Some of the slides I’ve got from the tour’’, he said
“show me caught on a number of occasions with my
hand in the cookie jar, which must prove that what
they were producing was very much to the likings of
my appetite.”

There were no restrictions on talking with the
workers in the plants he visited and the Toronto trade

unionist was struck by the language skills ofthe work- _
_ers he met. ‘‘I was amazed.to discover, that going to

some of those conveyor belts or some of those
machines that in the majority of occasions some could
speak English, and particularly French and Spanish,”
he said.

‘I found that the workers were quite easy to talk to,

and once the barrier of failure to understand was
broken they were prepared to answer any questions,”
Bentley said.

“The second thing I noticed was — yes — they
have conveyor belt systems over there. But I didn’t
see the Charlie Chaplin, ‘Modern Times’ attitude of
having to work your head off to keep up with that
conveyor belt’’, he noted. ‘‘Those guys seemed to be
paced more leisurely with the belt, in other words
instead of having to slave by the sweat of their brow,
there was understanding as to what the human frame
can take under these conditions.”

He was also impressed: by the close co-operation
between the labor movement and the management of
the enterprises. *‘ There seemed to be a unified action
that the first major issue was the welfare of the
employees of that plant or plants’’, he said, “‘which
meant health conditions and the social activities
which go naturally with communities.”’

A symbol of this for Bentley is the Palaces of Cul-

‘ ture. These are institutions financed by the state and

administered by the trade unions and the enterprises

which treat all the workers’ needs from health, cul-
ture, art, sports, trades, and day care, from the cradle
to the grave.

He saw everything in the Palace of Culture froma -

little platoon of toddlers crawling toward a swimming
pool, to a young elocution student reciting the poetry
of Robbie Burns in a flawless Scottish dialect.

Bentley, an accomplished jazz musician who held a
Britain-wide music award from 1927-33, and who
turned his talents to raising money and support for the
cause of the Spanish Republic during the 30s, was also
deeply impressed by the quality, feeling and technical
skill of the dixieland jazz players he heard in the
Palace of Culture. He felt that this could probably be
explained by the strong identification the Soviet
people have with the civil rights struggles of the Black
workers in North America and the memories of their
own bitter oppression under the czarist regime. .

His visit to Moscow, has strengthened Bentley’s
belief that similar exchange visits between the people
of both countries can be very rewarding particularly
to the organized labor movement.

“While I may not live to see it,’’ Bentley con-
cluded, *‘I hope that in the very immediate future

Toronto Labor Council executive member Jim Bentley

(right) in Moscow during May Day celebrations.

labor in Canada, the western democracies and the
Soviet Union could have some way of getting together
and understanding each other.

‘*We need to understand that the interests, feelings,
and desires of workers in other parts of the world
‘when brought down to basics are fundamentally the
same as ours.” =

Cape Breton fights layoffs _

By GEORGE MacEACHERN

~Y.DNEY; “N.S =.2~<: The
announcement that Sysco Steel
Co., is to cut its staff by one third
beginning Aug. 15, has sparked a
massive public response to save the
plant from disappearing for good.

More than 800 people attended a
public meeting Aug. 19, which cal-
led for a moratorium on lay-offs and
authorized the executive of Steel-
workers Local 1064 to select a
broadly based committee to go to
Ottawa and try to pry loose from the
federal government the $50-million
promised before the last federal
election. a

Local 1064 and the Cape Breton
Labor Council sparked the protest
when the provincially-owned Steel
corporation announced as of Aug.
15 some 250 workers would be laid
off as the opening shot in a barrage
of layoffs which will see 1,200
employees cut from the Sysco pay-.
roll.

This isn’t the first time the work-
ers andthe community have had to
act to save their jobs and livelihood.
The plant was saved in 1967 when
the owner, Hawker Siddely an-
nounced it was closing down and
moving out. A massive protest
movement featuring a ‘‘march of
concern’”’ by 20,000 citizens and a
huge mass rally at the local race
track convinced the Tory govern-
ment of the day to take the plant
over, placing Pictou County indus-
trialist R.B. Cameron in charge.

In this, Cameron was to be aided
by a government-appointed board

local union executive who fought
and won.

The bar mill continued in opera-
tion until early this year when it was
“‘temporarily’’ shut down. Rumor
has it that parts of this mill are be-
ginning to disappear.

Something over $200-million was
raised by the Nova Scotia govern-
ment to modernize the plant. This
was used to buy a new rail finishing
mill and to build a continuous caster
while the coke ovens are about

.Teady to collapse and the blast fur-

naces and open hearth are left in
decrepit condition.

Management bungling and gen-
eral mismanagement were the order
of the day and this fact, known to
steelworkers for years, is now being
recognized by the public.

A change was made in top
management by the Liberal
government of Gerald Reagan when
Cameron was replaced by Tom
Kent, a Liberal journalist. Now
with the Tories back in power, Kent
is gone, Cameron is back and Local
1064 is demanding he be taken out.
The $50-million promised by the
federal Liberals during the recent
general election is being held back
by the federal government allegedly
until Cameron is replaced.

Now the cry has gone up from the’
provincial Tory government: ‘‘The
Sysco Steel plant is losing $1-mil-
lion a week. We can’t stand this any

longer.”

Layoffs are the best solution
Cameron and the government can

come up with. There is no public
record of how this money is being
“‘lost’’. How much was paid, or 1S
still being paid to Hawker Siddeley
has not been made known. How
much interest is being paid on the
$300-million debt, or how much is
being paid out in preretirement
allowances and non-funded pen-
sions remains a secret, known only
to top management and government.

Speakers at the Aug. 19 public
meeting revealed some interesting
information. Steelworkers Cana-
dian director Gerard Docquier

- commented, “‘it seems that those
charged with the responsibility of
operating the plant were more con-
cerned with proving that publicly-
owned industry cannot succeed.”

The union’s research director
Peter Warrian urged the meeting:
“Don’t be shy about demanding

that your plant be modernized. Al-
goma, Stelco and other steel plants”

have received far more moderniza-
tion than you are asking.”’

Mayor Sydney Manning Mac-
Donald ‘summed up the mood of

many in the meeting. “‘It is about -

time the politicians started telling us

the truth about the Sysco plant’ he -

said.

A young woman got the only

standing ovation of the meeting
when she introduced herself as ‘‘not
an alderman or anyone important,
just the wife of a laid-off steel-
worker who has to try to look after
her family with unemployment in-
surance.”’

of directors, most if not all of whom
would not know a billet from a
bloom.

During the first two years of
Cameron’s management basic steel
production records were broken
and the plant was able to show a
profit. Then came the shut-down of
the wire and nail mill. This was
made permanent by the disap-
pearance of some of the machines
and the melting down of others.

Next to be closed was the rod
mill. It then became pretty gener-
ally accepted that Cameron’s main
job was to phase the operation
down to basic steel and a rail mill.

The United Steelworkers. ac-
cepted this with little protest, al- 3
though the. Cape Breton Labor ¢

Council tried to make a public issue During the last féderal election the Liberals promised $50-million to modernize
of it. Rank and file steelworkers say Sysco Steel. Federal foot-dragging has prompted the people of Sydney, to
the bar mill was next on the list but authorize Steelworkers Local 1064

PHOTO — SHANE PARKHILL

rm

».

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPT. 5, 1980—Page 8

- was saved by the election of a new the money loose.

to lead a broad delegation to Ottawa to pry