me ai en LT 0 Labour — IWA-Can. members seek first contract in face of injunction By SEAN GRIFFIN Walking into the lean-to beside the picket trailer, striker Corrinne Stankowski picks up another piece of cordwood and pushes it vehemently into the fire. “Bill 19 sure isn’t helping out at all,” she Says, ‘‘it just means that the trucks go right through that picket line and we can’t even holler ‘scab’ without risking getting fined.” IWA-Canada_ Local — 1-367 member Stankowski and some 60 others, most of them women, have been out on strike at Leyland Industries in Pitt Meadows since Sept. 14, demanding a first collective agreement with the manufacturer of plastic bottles and containers. Today, it’s getting cold outside the picket trailer. The wind off the Fraser River brings a cold sting to the rain that has been falling Steadily for the past several weeks. And there’s an edge of anger in the strikers’ voi- Ces as they outline the issues. Most of those working in the plant earn between $4.75 and $7 an hour, as they take the plastic bottles from the injection molds, trim them and package them for shipment. “I’ve been here now for four years and three months — and I’m only getting $6.93,” Stankowski says. Beside her, Martin Walsh, a three-month employee, points out that he gets only $4.75. “There’s not one woman down here who €arns more than $13,000 a year,” she says. “And welfare says that’s the poverty line. _ “The majority of women sitting around the table in the lunchroom are single Parents — they’re women with young kids. ey can’t make it on what they earn.” In addition, Stankowski says, employees Usually work seven days straight, with only One day off before another four-day Stretch — all at straight time. “And I'll go home at the end of a day with my hands so Sore I can barely close my fingers.” Organized with the Maple Ridge local of the IWA-Canada during a sign-up drive this summer, Leyland employees backed the union solidly 62-8, in a vote that cluded a number of owner Don Leyland’s telatives. A few weeks later, they voted 92 Percent for strike action — without Indus- tial Relations Council supervision — after 4 month of negotiations failed to move the Company from its refusal to grant union Tecognition. “The company wanted contract lan- uage that would have eliminated the union Presence in the plant,” says Local 1-367 President Dave Tones. _ The solid votes, both for certification and Strike action, are an indication of a new Upsurge in union organization that has taken place among unorganized workers, Particularly women, in low-wage opera- Hons, But the three-month-old strike has dem- °nstrated the difficulties in getting a first @greement under the anti-labour regime Ushered in by Bill 19. _ The effect of the law is to deny us the Tight to picket effectively and gives the *Mployer the right to hire replacement Workers,” says Tones. “And if you interfere With their right in any way you get Cc arg ” 5 Only two days after the strike began, on ©pt. 16, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce meen issued a sweeping injunction prohib- ig the union and its members from: Trespassing on company property; Si Impeding or obstructing or interfering th any person entering or leaving the Property, including motor vehicles; Treating a nuisance near the employ- er’s places of business; ® Attending at or near the plaintiff's or employer’s residence. The injunction also limits pickets to four. “It’s pretty all-encompassing,” says Tones, adding that the union has had “a rough ride from the courts,” having been fined a total of $11,000, including $7,500 for the local itself and $3,500 for individuals. Stankowski was charged with impeding a truck picking up scab products from the plant, convicted and fined $350. “But it wasn’t even me — the trucker clipped a pile of hog fuel outside the plant across the street and claimed it was me,” she points out. “Some of the charges have been ludi- crous,” says Tones, citing the case of a striker who was fined $75 for intimidation when she brought her 1 l-year old Labrador retriever down to the picket line. At the same time, Tones notes, the com- pany has been recruiting scabs in the local community as well as Vancouver, Burnaby and elsewhere. Many of them are from the Maple Ridge Outreach Program, a local agency which tries to get school dropouts back into the education system. “They’re taking advantage of children, really,” he says. The scabs are picked up and dropped off at various points in the area and brought into the plant in vans with blacked-out win- dows, he adds. As the strike moves into its fourth month, however, the union local intends to step up economic action against the company. Leyland Industries’ bottles are used . extensively by generic bottlers of vegetable oils — producers of “no-name” brands — and the bottles themselves usually have no manufacturer’s mark, making it difficult to identify products for a boycott. But most of the products are bought by a company owned by Gainers’ owner Peter Pocklington which bottles canola (rape- seed) oil at a Lethbridge, Alberta plant under the Cambra label, Tones notes. The first vice-president of the local is in Alberta this week, meeting with officers of the Alberta Federation of Labour and the Retail Clerks which is reportedly certified at the Lethbridge plant, in an effort to get an agreement not to handle the scab-made products from Leyland. The B.C. Federation of Labour has also issued a hot edict against the Pitt Meadows company. Because of the plant’s location — in a new industrial area, well away from main arteries — “it’s been really difficult to get the public aware of this dispute,” says Tones. “The boycott is the most effective way to go at this point.” Included on the B.C. Fed’s boycott list are a number of products packaged in Ley- land Industries containers, including Uni- cure shampoo, generic canola oil, generic sunflower oil, stack and save containers, generic liquid hand soap, Overwaitea and Save-On re-usable juice containers, VIP products, West canola oil, generic vitamins, Gold Label Canadian crunchy cereal and Windsor and Lumberland 3-litre contain- ers. Out on the picket line, it’s been hard for strikers to watch the trucks go through the gate, each one signalled in by security guards newly hired for the strike. But “it’s made me more determined than ever to see this through,” says Walsh. “Tt looks like it may be Christmas now,” adds Stankowski. ‘But we’re going to stick with it. We’ve got to get that union con- tract.” TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN MARTIN WALSH (I), CORRINNE STANKOWSKI . .. on picket line at Leyland Industries Pitt Meadows plant. : Our hope is a New Year filled with peace for all humankind. Retail Wholesale Union Local 580 Serving workers in the telecommunications industry since 1949, 5261 Lane Street, Burnaby, B.C. VSH 4A6 437-8601 Doreen McMillan Secretary-Treasurer Larry Armstrong President Pacific Tribune, December 19, 1988 « 3