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

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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