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PUBLISHED BY PROGRESS BOOKS FOR THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA, JAN. 1962. you can obtain extra copies of this booklet at 5 for 25 cents, from · 44 STAFFORD ST., TORONTO, ONT. HE Canadian trade union movement is today at T a turning point. Throughout the country governments and employ ers are working might and main to put labor on the defensive. To an alarming extent they have succeed ed in placing it in a legal strait-jacket. I Three recent examples illustrate the trend. i The first example was the ruling of Magistrate Ellsmore in Toronto who declared that the Ontario Labor Act does not give labor the right to strike. Thus, what the trade union movement considered to be an inviolable right, has been shown to be non existent. This was not a crackpot ruling. It regis tered the fact that the Labor Act in Ontario as in all other ·provinces, is meant to curb labor, not give it any rights. The second example was a two-column editorial on the front page of the Globe and Mail, Nov. 11 1961, (Remembrance Day, mind you!) entitled, "This Strange Neutrality." The sum and substance of this editorial which dealt with the Royal York Hotel Strike was a call for legitimizing strike-breaking. Coming shortly after Magistrate Ellsmore's ruling, it constituted a demand upon the Ontario govern ment for legislation which would place additional curbs on the trade union movement. 3 The third and most recent example was the un principled and violent attack on the trade union movement in Manitoba by Mr. Justice George Eric Tischler of the Manitoba Court of Appeals in con nection with events around the strike at the Man itoba plant of Brandon Packers Ltd., and his recom mendation that the Manitoba Labor Act be amended .to make the trade union movement a legal entity and therefore sueable in the courts, making solidarity support in strikes illegal, and that all strike votes in the future be government-supervised. Prior to that the Liberal Newfoundland govern ment adopted legislation taking away the right of workers to join a union of their own choice, while in British Columbia, Bills 42 and 43, passed by a Social Credit government, not only restricted trade union rights but took away the right of workers to support a political party of their choice. In Quebec, Bills 19 and 20 are still on the statute books. Thus in province after province the democratic rights of the workers are being whittled away. Be hind this drive, responsible for it and leading it, is monopoly and its insatiable desire to amass even greater profits at the expense of the jobs, living standards and welfare of the working class. Employers are uniting in this attack on labor with the aim of smashing wages and destroying unions. 4 Common sense would therefore dictate that the trade union movement also unites to defend ·itself. This is now the crucial problem for the ~ganized labor movement. How do matters stand in this regard? RETREAT OR ADVANCE? HE formation of the Canadian Labor Congress T. was looked upon by most workers as an im portant step forward in the consolidation of the unity of the trade union movement, ~aking possible new gains and new advances for labor. Hopes were high that the merger would result in a lessening of friction and conflict between craft and industrial unions· over questions of jurisdiction, that raiding of one union by another would stop, and that the main energies of a united trade union move~ent would be directed to organizing the millions of unorganized workers throughout Canada. For a period of time there appeared to be a les sening of friction and of raiding. But in the recent period the situation has taken a turn for the worse. Raiding which was frowned upon by the Canadian Labor Congress has again become official policy in a number of unions. 5 The leaders of the Carpenters' union are currently engaged in. a struggle with the International Wood workers of ·America as to which union will have jurisdiction over woodworkers in Newfoundland. The Seafarers International Union (SIU) has been involved in raiding operations against other unions on the Great Lakes. The Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers has been in a jurisdictional and raiding action against the SIU as to which un ion will represent Canadian seamen. The Canadian Labor Congress has itself stepped into the picture recently and undertaken to establish a Canadian Maritime Union with the aim of chasing the SIU off the Lakes and out of Canada. In the province of Quebec a number of CLC affil iates have been raiding unions affiliated to the Con federation of National Trade Unions (CNTU) with the aim of destroying these unions as well as the CNTU as effective spokesmen for the 100,000 work ers they represent. The Teamsters have been expelled for raiding. The Operating Engineers have been expelled for raiding. The Lithographers are suspended. The most glaring example of raiding is the pres ent effort of the Canadian Congress leadership to 6 destroy the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union. It has called upon all its affiliates to back the leader-: ship of the United Steel Workers of America in this union-wrecking drive. One could cite other examples in many parts of the country. But these are sufficient to indicate the seriousness of the problem and the extent of the divisions that are developing in the Canadian Labor Congress an.d in the trade union movement generally. Union wrecking through anti-labor legislation and union wrecking through raiding - these twin evils explain why the tra~e union movement is retreating instead of advancing. WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF RAIDING? SSENTIALLY raiding and inter-union conflict re E flects the capitalist practice of competition and individualism carried into the labor movement. It has nothing in common with the principles of unity, cooperation and solid~rity which constitute the foun dation of the trade union movement. Departure from these principles are at the root of the growing plague of raiding in Canada as well as in the USA. The forces which inspire such ugly practices are many. 7 Some of the jurisdictional and raiding activities of a number of unions stem from decisions arrived at in the USA. At the present time there is · a sharp rift within the AFL-CIO precisely on this question because the building trades 'unions have refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the industrial unions in some areas and are in a continiung running fight with them. This situation has now reached a point where questions are being raise~ within the indus trial unions as to whether the merger of AFL-CIO should continue on its present basis. There is the real danger that this jurisdictional dispute will spill over into Canada. It is a fact, known to many trade unionists, that many of the jurisdic tional squabbles and raiding activities are decided upon in the USA and brought into Canada. This is not to suggest that raiding is only a U.S. phenom ena. It arises also out of conditions here. In many respects it is inherent in the merger of the Trades and Labor Congress and Canadian Con gress of Labor out of which the Canadian Labor Con gress was ·formed. The merger brought craft and in dustrial unions together in one house and by virtue of this recognized the existence of more than one union in each industry. This created the basis for jurisdictional disputes, for conflicts and raids bet ween craft and industrial unions, although not only . 8 . between them. Thus, while formal unity was estab lished, real unity was not. That is still to be achiev ed. In a sense, therefore, raiding has been "built in to" the constitution of the Canadian Labor Congress. There is no question, too, that many of these raid ing activities are inspired directly by employers. Re actionary, labor-hating employers would like nothing better than to keep the trade union movement divid ed and therefore weakened and they work constant ly towards this end. They know well enough in terms of dollars and cents, the value of a divided union movement. Raiding gives them an opportunity for effecting "bargain basement settlements" at the ex pense of the workers. How true this is can be seen in the following reM. marks of "Executive," a Canadian business mag- / azine, which in its current issue carries four pages of ads from INCO and a story on the "Bitter Strug gle at Sudbury." "No matter who bargains for the nickel workers in January/' it says, "Gillis (Steel-supporting pres~ ident of Sudbury Local 598) will have triumphed. If the Steelworkers win, he will become an important cog in the first union to have more than 100,000 Canadian members. Even if Mine-Mill retains the local, he will have won; for the national union will 9 never be the same after being forced to expend so much of the energy and money that it can no longer afford to spare." The inference is plain enough: Win, lose or draw for this or that union, but the company \Vins all the ~~ . Still others were and are government-inspired. These have their roots in the cold war and the con tinuing efforts of the U.S. State Department to tie the tr~de union movement to its war-like policies. In line with this it has, with the full cooperation of right-wing leaders in the trade union movement, un ... dertaken to destroy unions whose peace policy and militant economic and wage policies are not to its liking.