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Volum© On©^ Numb©r Six BEHIND BARS: Women who break with traditional roles often end up in prison, and sometimes life's easier there than on the streets or in the home. Page by Deena Rasky 10. When you gci your monthly Beil Canada bill in the mail, you'll notice thaï the envelope cheerfully informs you the com• pany is celebrating its 100th birthday. The image Bell would like to convey to its customers is of wise old Alexander Graham Bell creating his invention, of smiling operators and of phone users marvelling over modern technology. MILKING THE THIRD WORLD: In• But instead of celebrating, 7,400 fant bottle-feeding formula is big operators and dining service attendants ac• business, especially in Third World ross Canada were on strike for iwo months countries, where it's pushed as the without a contract. 100% of the Bell "modern way". Protesters strike back workers have been exploited, 95% are with the Nestlé Boycott. Page 6. women. The top wage an operator in the major cities such as Toronto and Montreal BASEMENT VIOLENCE: Kate Miliett couid expect to make, regardless of how talks about society's violence towards long she'd been working was $194.29 week• women, women's violence to each other, ly. The cafeteria workers made only eigh• and hei recer.c book The Baseme.it, ?u teen cenfs more than the Quebec minimum the Univeïsily of British Columbia Pc.£f; wage. Most of fhese workers are new Cana• dians and a considerable number have been working part time at an even lower wage. The operators and dining service atten• COMMENT dants arc members of the Communications Workers of Canada (CWC). The union was PAPER POLITICS: A" The o-„ ". certified in 1979 but its members hadn't Politic goes to 'rial agdn. Eve Zaremba received a wage increase since November questions the politics is the issue 1977 when the company declared a wage freedom of the press o-- homophobia? freeze. Before certification of the CWC, the Page 4. operators were members of the Traffic Employees Association (TEA). TEA had WHO DID YOU VOTE FOR? In been fabricated by the company to avoid Canada's recent election the copulace walk-outs and to muscle out unions such as voted, contends Susan G. Cole, not Tor a the International Brotherhood of Electrical chips and the like. Another spokesman for keyed and how often the operator switches government but for an arrogant shrug Workers, who had been soliciting on Bell the company said this money will be used to the terminal off to go to the washroom. vs. a chinless wonder. Page 5. territory for new members. Bell continues create new jobs. This allows the supervisors the opportunity to use such tactics to keep their employees Bell's one hundred year history has seen to find out at their whim an individual's IN OTHER NEWS: Francis Fox' follies in line, at the same time trying to give the the company opt for automation that has Average Work Time by the touch of a but• are forgiven, and the Olympics are sug• impression that these workers have some been paid for largely though government ton. The operators are handling 750 to gested as a means to settle International say in the workplace. grants and remissions. There are several 1,000 calls per shift on the TOPS system, territorial clashes. Broadsides, page 12. The 15,000 clerical workers at Bell are government programmes in Canada that over 50% of what they were used to dealing with on the switchboard. The scabbing members of the Canadian Telephone subsidize businesses with high technological ARTS Employees Association and during the re• components. Bell, which has subsidary out• managers were being measured by the same cent strike received a substantial wage fits such as Microsystems and Northern computer and the word is they were not too increase. This political manoeuver was Telecom, has taken full advantage of what happy about it, even at $23 an hour. WHAT'S IN A FRAME? Several designed to prevent the clerical workers the Canadian government has been giving When the Communications Workers of feminist posters depict naked women in from getting any ideas about joining the away freely. Bell has also been working Canada stepped in to represent the workers, a variety of guises. Susan Sturman takes CWC. The ploy wasn't entirely successful closely with the US giant, AT&T, management refused to negotiate and re• exception to women's use of our bodies — the clerical workers showed support for throughout the years to plan its strategy quested a conciliator from the Ministry of to sell something. Page 14. their striking co-workers by donating carefully and profitably. Or as Robert Labour. Bell then created a first in the money to the strike fund. Scrivener, chairman of the Canadian af• Ministry's history by refusing the con• MUSIC: Lorna Glover, with cat on one It was hard going for the strikers. Stan• filiate Northern Electric, stated in 1976," ciliator's report, even though the union was shoulder and violin on the other, talks ding outside in freezing weather is no pic• "I'll sing the Star-Spangled Banner if its go• willing to accept it. Instead, Bell wanted the about her life as a musician. Page 15. nic. The CWC coffers were low to start ing to help my sales by $100 million." union to accept an offer that was with, since the technicians, installers and Throughout the years, the trend toward significantly inferior to this report, going so FILM: Angi Vera, a film about the linemen went out on strike last year. The automation has done much to reduce the far as to try to take away what the union Communist regime in Hungary, is operators and cafeteria workers were of• size of the company's roster of employees. had already won. The issues on which Bell reviewed by Jean Wilson. Page 17. fered an emergency $20 weekly food During the Depression, Bell blamed their would not budge are basic ones: vacation allowance and that was about it. Mean• staff reductions on the financial crisis, time, union security, and dismissal with just while, the managers who filled in for them when the real culprit was advanced cause. It's obvious that Bell was out to at Bell made a flat $23 an hour overtime. technology and a forced increase in produc• break the union. It's been reported that some managers tivity. Bell shareholders in the meantime made $900 a week off the strike. The cost to barely noticed the Crash. As one observer Bell has been estimated at a minimum of $1 stated in 1939 at a Communications Com• BELL CRACKED million weekly. mission: "It will be significant to tell the The company can easily afford it. In shareholders that every dollar of dividends As Broadside goes to press, the ratification 1979, Bell Canada's net profit was over per share received during the Depression vote is being tallied at the Communications $433 million. Their total assets were over 10 was at the expense of leaving at least 18,000 Workers of Canada headquarters. Ann Barbara Halpern Martineau billion dollars. These figures surpass any of people on the relief rolls." Newman, VP of CWC local 50, said the looks at the advantages of documentary the other "biggies" in Canada, including Today in Toronto the computerized outcome of the vote is hard to judge. film, and the making of In the Best In• General Motors and Imperial Oil. Statistics system TOPS (Traffic Operator Position But the strike is not over as far as she is terest of the Children. Page 16. Canada shows that Bell deferred taxes in System) has been instituted, reducing the concerned, because the contract will expire 1978 to the tune of $933.9 million. George number of operators by 40%. The whole November 24, 1981. And while manage• THEATRE: The Trudeaus are the sub• Newton, the company's manager of oper• operation is fed through the computer, the ment eventually accepted most aspects of ject of Lynda Griffiths' revue Maggie & ator services, justified this amount by calls are sent directly through the operators' the conciliators' report, the actual gain for Pierre. Page 17. stating Bell is a capital intensive operation headphones instead of the old switchboard. workers was minimal. and needs the money for computers, silicon The computer indexes how many errors are y two Volley number six: Collective Members: Beverley Allinson Susan G. Cole A Sugar-coated Pil Jacqueline Frewin Jane Hastings In this issue we tell the story of the Nestlé panies, Ortho Pharmaceutical (a division of a pat on the back and assurances that all Judith Lawrence corporation's attempts to encourage Third Johnson and Johnson) and Wyeth (a sub• will be well. And how much more accepted Alex Maas World women to administer the Nestlé for• sidiary of American Home Products) a form of infantalization than when women Philinda Masters (editor) mula to their young babies. The fact that monopolize 70% of the oral contraceptive are numbed by valium into a false sense of these women haven't the facilities to market in Canada. The profits from the calm so that no questions need come to Deena Rasky (design) sterilize the bottles, the fact that the instruc• Oral contraceptive in 1976 were two and a mind? Susan Sturman tions for the dilution are remarkably vague, half times higher than the profits of the The news is not all bad. In fact there have Jean Wilson the fact that this has caused a near epidemic drug industry as a whole.