BY JOE YOUNG
GRAND-MERE, Quebec - After five months on the picket lines
against Abitibi-Consolidated, 4,500 paperworkers, members of
the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP), voted nearly
74 percent in favor of a new contract that registered gains for
the union. The results were announced November 19.
Abitibi-Consolidated is the world's largest newsprint producer and its biggest paper exporter. The strike affected about half of its production involving 10 mills in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland. The contract establishes a pattern for 25,000 CEP members in eastern Canada.
Workers walked off the job June 15 when the company refused to negotiate with all the union locals together as had been the case in the past. Finally, at the beginning of October, the owners backed down and accepted negotiating major issues such as wages, pensions, and holidays in one contract.
The company tried to weaken the strike by threatening to close two mills if the workers didn't go back to work. While workers at the Wayagamack mill in Trois Rivieres did return July 27, unionists at the Chandler mill in Quebec's Gaspé peninsula refused to give in to the bosses' threats. "It was important that Chandler stood fast. If they'd given up, everyone would have given up," said CEP member Réjean Chevalier, who works at the Beaupré mill near Quebec City.
At the ratification meeting at Grand-Mere, this reporter asked Pierre Buist who works in the heating plant and has 20 years with the company, what had been won with the strike. "We succeeded in negotiating together," he answered. "At a certain point, you have to fight. We rejected by 97 percent. There was nothing on the table." In the last week of October, union members rejected a company offer by 97.4 percent.
At Shawinigan, Denis Turgeon, a member of the strike committee with 25 years service, expressed the same opinion. "The first objective has been achieved," he said. "We are recognized as a group." He explained how the union ran the picket lines: "We planned to mix up the different groups of workers, the mechanics, the office workers, the production workers, in order to unite people."
Gérald Forget, who works at the mill in Iroquois Falls in northern Ontario, said in an interview, "We were going for signing as a group. They really tried to break us up and it didn't work. The Quebec mills really backed us up. I was afraid they'd walk out on us, but we really stuck together."
Many paperworkers who were not on strike contributed to the strike fund in an important act of solidarity. "We were fighting for everyone," Buist said. "We were receiving CAN$189 (CAN$1 = US $.65) from all those locals." In addition to the basic strike pay of $200 a week, the strikers received an additional $189 a week from solidarity contributions, bringing their weekly strike pay to $389.
Dennis Bertrand, president of CEP Local 109 in Iroquois Falls, said, "People were very very pleased because we did get very good support. From the CEP lots of unions sent in monetary support. We're still receiving support coming in from other unions. The community here backed us 100 percent."
The six-year contract includes a lump sum payment of $2,750 followed by two annual increases of 50 cents an hour and then three annual increases of 2 percent a year. According to the chief union negotiator, Elmo Whittom, the average pension of a worker should increase by $5,000 a year. According to Forget, this will give retirees 72 percent of their wages when all the provisions kick in four years from now. Strikers were not able to win their priority contract demand for retirement at 55. The retirement age remains unchanged at 58.
This led Denis Turgeon to say, "The young people don't stay here, there is no work here. This contract will not create jobs. That is my great disappointment." According to him, the contract was rejected in a very close vote in Shawinigan.
Asked about the length of the contract, Alain Boucher, a production worker with 10 years seniority at the Grand-Mere mill, commented: "It doesn't really bother me. I haven't always earned this wage. I was a landscaper at $8 an hour." The starting wage is nearly $20 an hour.
According to Bertrand, the company was aiming for 365-day-a- year operation. However, working Christmas, New Year's Day, and Labor Day remains voluntary.
The gains of the strike are significant when compared to the outcome of two other long strikes that took place in Canada over the last year ending in defeats for working people. The first was the nine-month strike by paperworkers in British Columbia in which workers were forced to concede to job "flexibility" aimed at eliminating jobs.
The other was the four-month strike by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers in Alberta and Ontario against Maple Leaf Foods, in which workers took wage cuts up to 40 percent in return for onetime lump sum payments.
Some workers like Gilles, who was at the meeting at Grand- Mere and didn't given his last name, thought that the other CEP members who had contributed to their strike should be asked their opinion on the contract because it established the pattern for other CEP paperworkers in eastern Canada.
Joe Young is a member of the United Steelworkers of America. Katy LeRougetel in Toronto contributed to this article.