LABOUR CRISIS IN CANADA

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 15

LABOUR CRISIS IN CANADA

(From MELVIN SUFFRIN. N.Z.P.A. Spcl correspondent) TORONTO, June 15. Canada is gripped

in the most serious labour crisis since the days immediately after the Second World War. Strikes lasting more than a month have closed down the waterfront at Montreal, Canada’s largest port, and halted municipal services in Vancouver, the country’s third biggest city. Workers on the Canadian side of the St Lawrence Seaway are planning to walk out within a few days, paralysing the important inland waterway as well as the Welland Canal, the busy link between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie that by-passes Niagara Falls. Air Canada clerks and ground crews are on the verge of a strike that would hamp-

er operations of the govern ment-owned airline.

Railway unions with 110,000 members are bogged down in negotiations for sizeable wage increases. Steelworkers are demanding major pay and pension increases from the International Nickel Company and the country’s steel firms. The forest industry in British Columbia, producer of half the Pacific coast province’s income, faces the threat of a shutdown with 26.000 workers ready to walk out.

Hospitals in Quebec province face a July 1 deadline in talks with unions representing 30,000 nurses, orderlies and maintenance workers.

The meatpacking industry is having difficulty in negotiations with 12,000 employees of three big firms—Swift Canadian, Canada Packers and Bums Food. Ltd. If all the potential strikes were to the result

would be more than 200.000 Canadians on the picket lines, or nearly 3 per cent of the national work force.

The result might even surpass 1946 when a post-war rash of strikes accounted for loss of 4,515,030 man-days. The way negotiations are proceeding there appears to be a real danger that at least some major strikes will be called. One factor Is that labour unions are demanding bigger pay increases than at any time in the last 15 years. In the case of 1200 seaway and Welland Canal workers, for example, they have asked for a 35-per-cent increase. They want wage levels of Canadian workers brought into line with those of Americans doini’ the same jobs. The steelworkers are also setting their sights on parity with contracts in the United States and reject the argument that higher pay for

American workers can be justified by greater productivity and the generally higher standard of living in the United States.

Generally speaking, Canadian wage scales all down the line are lower than those of the United States. At the same time the cost of living is as high and, after a period of relative stability, is going up rapidly. The most serious strike to date has been that of 4250 longshoremen at Montreal, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec City on the St Lawrence River. It began on May 9 and halted movement of grain to Europe, disrupted shipping and threatened to upset the deadline for completing work on the 1967 Montreal World's Fair.

This strike, affecting Canada’s foreign trade, is considered so critical that the whole Federal Cabinet has been involved in attempts to bring about a settlement.