BRITISH COLUMBIA

Cleaners escalating _ Strike against PO’s low-wage contractor

More than 200 pickets representing sev- eral trade unions converged on Vancouver’s main post office and halted mail delivery for a day to protest the use of scab janitors and to bring an end to a five-week old strike.

The Vancouver situation mirrors that of cleaners in Toronto, where 28 employees of Capital Building Services are picketing the large South Central sorting plant to achieve a first contract.

The Vancouver pickets gathered at 6 a.m. on Jan. 15 and halted all postal vehicles entering or leaving the building. The vast Majority of unionized postal employees, including members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Letter Carriers Union, stayed off the job in support.

Some 32 members of the Contruction and General Workers Local 602, have been On legal strike since Dec. 3 in an effort to win a first contract from their employer, the contracted janitorial firm, A&A Service Co.

“The post office claims that this is not their fight. We think it is,” said union local business representative, Bob Hart.

Hart said the union members are earning between $5 and $6 per hour, “and we know that no one can live on that.”

A&A, initially a non-union firm, won the cleaning contract from the post office six months ago when it underbid the former contractor, Modern Building Cleaning.

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Local 602, which represented employees of Modern, subsequently succeeded in organ- izing A&A’s staff, said Hart.

Janitors employed by Modern earned about $2 to $3 more per hour than A&A employees, noting that the local is seeking increases to bring wages up to $7.88 and $8.53 per hour.

But the company has so far refused to budge from its offer of 40 cents in the first year and 20 cents in the second year of a two-year contract, Hart said.

A&A has also been bringing in scab labor to cross the picket line — and Canada Post has played a role in facilitating this, he charged.

“We've been told it’s a question of money. But Canada Post has been spending thousands of dollars on security since this strike began,” Hart said.

Canada Post security staff, supplemented by Burns Security.guards, were monitoring the picket line by taking pictures and video- tapes of picket line incidents.

Managerial staff at one point attempted to start the first of a line of vehicles standing idle in the post office’s exit ramp. But when the picketers, whose numbers had dwindled by noon, stood firm, the attempt was aban- doned.

While most customers respected the picket lines, those who insisted on delivering their mail carried the bags across the line to supervisory staff inside the building.

Hart praised trade unionists for their support, including postal employees “who have been told they’d be fired or suspended for honoring our line, but who did so any- way.”

Sarwan Boal, president of the Canadian Farmworkers Union, was walking the line along with several other CFU members. “It doesn’t matter who’s fighting, as long as it’s for economic and social justice,” he said.

In Toronto, janitorial staff at the South Central sorting plant have been out since Jan. 8 to win a first contract from Capital Building Services and raise their wages from $4.50 an hour to $10 an hour.

The company in Toronto has also been using scab labor in an effort to break the strike.

Jean Claude Parrot, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which represents the cleaners, said the strike showed the impact of the federal govern- ment’s contracting-out policy.

“Where you used to see unionized workers doing these jobs and getting paid $12 an hour, the work was contracted out and people brought in to work for $4.50 an hour,” he told the Tribune.

Parrot also revealed at a press conference that Canada Post had forced Capital Build- ing, the successful bidder, to trim its offer by some $200,000, even though the company had submitted the lowest bid.

“They're contracting out to pay the cleaners less money so the government can take those savings and add them to the military budget. The cleaners get $4.50 an hour and the government gets another F-18 fighter jet,” he charged.

Talks broke down last September when —

the company refused to consider the union’s position of $10 an hour, paid sick leave, vacations, employer-paid medical insu- rance, job security and seniority rights. Inside postal workers and members of the Letter Carriers Union are crossing the line with permission, since Canada Post has

“threatened suspension or dismissal of

employees who refuse to cross the line.

But many CUPW members are walking the line on their own time, and the union has planned several support actions.

Sale of WKPL linked to Davis energy plan

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accepted UtilCorp’s bid of $80 million, which was $30 million above WKPL’s book value, without allowing other bidders, including the Central Kootenay Regional District, to finalize their bids. But the foreign ownership issue, par- ticularly since it involves a public utility, is also a.major source of opposition. Earlier hearings in Penticton and Trail heard several opponents condemn the

MAURICE RUSH... creation of pub- lic utility urged.

provincial government for allowing ownership of a utility company to be transferred to the U.S.

Rush charged that the Socred govern- ment’s implicit support of the U.S. takeover was part of the government’s policy of allowing hydroelectric resour- ces to be alienated to private interests. He noted that it was part of the new Davis Plan which would open the door to the development of privately-owned and foreign-owned utilities which, while separate from B.C. Hydro, would receive the benefits of power distribution from the Crown corporation.

“Your support of the sale of WKPL to the U.S. company and support for Investment Canada’s position has turned the Kelowna hearings into a farce,” Rush said in his telegram to the energy minis- ter.

“The Communist Party calls on the B.C. government to act now to keep WKPL in Canada,” he said. “It should oppose the sale to the U.S. and bring WKPL under public ownership and con- trol through a takeover by B.C. Hydro.”

Demand for jobs at top at YCL rights campaign

Canada’s young communists have a plan they’d like to discuss with the youth and student movements, says the national leader of the Young Commu- nist League.

Called The Charter of Youth Rights, the document will be the focus of discus- sion at the YCL’s upcoming 22nd national convention in Toronto Feb. 6-8.

“Young people are being clobbered with unemployment and unattainable education costs, and there’s no good rea- son why they shouldn’t have a charter of rights,” says Chris Frazer.

In British Columbia recently as part of a national tour, Frazer met with several youth and student organizations to pro- mote the YCL’s charter.

Frazer in an interview said Canada’s youth are organizing and speaking out against unemployment, education cut: backs and high tuition fees, and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

“Jobs and wages are really the coalesc- ing point,” said Frazer, “and we think it’s time to put aside whatever political differences we have and get down to find- ing solutions to joblessness.”

The hunger strike last year by Liberal Senator Jacques Hebert over the Mulro- ney government’s cancellation of the

Katimavik youth employment program —

“put youth unemployment on the politi- cal agenda for a while,” said Frazer.

The YCL gave “critical support” to Hebert’s protest, he said.

YCL representatives joined four other groups — the Catholic Youth Corps, the Toronto Disarmament Network, student members of the University of Toronto board of governors and the Ontario Federation of Students — in launching a caravan to Ottawa to draw attention to the issue.

“In the wake of that, there were sev- eral protests,” said Frazer, pointing to an occupation by Ryerson students of the Canada Mapower centre on campus, a peace and jobs conference in the Mari- times, and a civil disobedience at the Alberta legislature.

The Charter of Youth Rights focuses on eight key issues facing Canada’s young people: peace, jobs, accessible education, sexual equality, racial equal-

ity, Canadian culture and ‘ta democratic solution to the national question.” The latter point refers to instituting full sov- ereign rights for Quebec.

Frazer estimated he’d met with about 12 organizations since his tour began Nov. 23:

In B.C. he met with student society leaders and staff at Simon Fraser Uni- versity, with the provincial branch of the Canadian Federation of Students, and the provincial Young New Democrats, as well as participating in a picket line at the labor ministry’s Vancouver office with the recently formed Lower Mainland Youth Coalition.

Nationally, the YCL is a member group of the Montreal-based Regroupe- ment Autonome des Jeunesses.

Frazer said concern is mushrooming among Canada’s youth over unem- ployment and nuclear war, but that many “are uncertain about which direc- tion to take.

““We’ve found a new receptiveness among young people to the ideas the

_YCL is putting forward. At the very

least, there is some recognition that they

should listen, whereas before we had

found the doors closed pretty tight,” Frazer observed.

The upcoming YCL convention will be open to other youth groups, and sev- eral have been invited, he said.

CHRIS FRAZER ... on cross-country tour.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 21, 1987 e 3

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