Canadian split weakens auto workers union

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UAW negotiators (includes president Owen Bieber, with glasses) announce pact with General Motors last fall. Top of page is Canadian UAW striker.

forces opposed to women having reproductive choice.

Every day in front of the Morgentaler Clinic, which reopened on Dec. 10 in Toronto, 10 to 20 anti-choice fanatics picket, hoping to stop women from entering the clinic and to force the clinic to close. They are demanding that the provincial Conservative governleaving the clinic are followed and stopped by undercover policewomen who ask questions about the clinic's The women's movement has organized an escort service to aid patients entering the clinic and to assist them in the doctors, the Toronto abortion clinic remains open to provide women with referrals to Dr. Morgenthaler's Montreal clinic. Demonstrators have collected funds to establish a travel pool to aid women who will need to Leaders of 120,000 Canadian auto workers have threatened to break from the U.S.-based United Auto Workers union. The Canadian workers account for more than 10 percent of the UAW's membership.

Robert White, director of the UAW split he giant interational tention on Dec. 10 after the union's 25-member International Executive Board failed to approve White's demands for autonomy for Canadian auto workers.

Two months earlier, the Canadian union struck for 23 days to force contract terms better than those adopted in a settlement between the parent union and General Motors in the United States. Canadian auto workers will get 25 cents per hour in each of the three years of the new contract while U.S. workers get 15 cents the first year and lump-sum payments of $700 for the last two years of the contract.

While the total wage increases appear to be not far apart ($700 a year is equal to around 30 cents an hour, the lumpsum payment in place of an hourly increase is not just another name for the same thing. It means that whereas regular per-hour wage increases are cumulative (the second year of the Canadian GM contract is really a 50-cent-per-hour increase and the third year, 75 cents per hour), the lump-sum payments are not.

The refusal of the Canadian auto workers to go along with the giveaway contract negotiated by the Owen Beiberled parent union is entirely progressive. The strike against the Canadian division of General Motors, which resulted in a significantly better wage package, proved that the U.S. settlement was less than the relationship of forces dictated.

But the move toward splitting the union is a horse of another color. The AUTA man, who wrote the historic Jan. 22, 1973, Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, has also received such threats.

Women entering abortion clinics have been accosted by so-called "sidewalk counselors" screaming "murderer" at them; thrusting anti-abortion pamphlets and blown-up pictures of bloody mangled fetuses in their faces. The anti-abortionists often attempt to block the doorway, physically stopping people from entering.

"Evidence of involvement"

The deeply sexist attitudes of these groups is painfully apparent in their literature. A pamphlet from a group called "Women Exploited by Abortion" states that "an inability to think" is a normal part of early pregnancy.

Though the more "mainstream" right-to-life groups have denied any connection to the bombings of the clinics, there is evidence pointing to their involvement. As Barbara Radford, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, observed, "We have noted a change in picketing patterns shortly before violent acts. In three bombings this year, the pattern has been avoiding police harassment.

make the 500-kilometer journey. Canadian auto workers were able to win a better contract because they put up a more vigorous fight—not because they acted independently of the international Had GM workers on both sides of the border struck together they could have forced even more from the giant corporation. And had the 1 millionstrong auto union in both countries struck together against the whole auto industry, that fact alone would have immensely multiplied their economic pressure. This alone marks the move toward an organizational split in the ranks of the auto workers as a step backward.

It would be wrong, too, to assume that Canadian workers are intrinsically more militant than their counterparts below the border. While different traditions play a role (Canadian workers, for example, have their own political party-the New Democratic Party), there is no discernible difference in the capacity for struggle.

Even if it could be argued that Canadian auto workers were more combative, it would still be wrong to separate them from the main body of UAW members in the United States. Militant auto workers in Canada should stay in the UAW and fight for a policy that can advance the interests of workers on both sides of the border.

that picketers who have been coming for months don't show up for a week or two, and then an arsonist attacks."

In any event, their sympathy for such extreme tactics is clear. John Cavanaugh O'Keefe, co-founder of the Pro-Life Non-Violent Action Project, while claiming that his group opposes violence, added, "Any pro-lifer that does not feel the urge to respond to the violence of abortion with violencé has lost all feeling for anything."

The desperation of the "right-to-life" movement is a result both of their failure to win passage of the Human Life Amendment in Congress, and of the continuing widespread support of the general public for the right of women to make this fundamental decision about their own lives. Latest studies indicate that 75 percent of the American people support some form of legalized abortion.

It is time for abortion rights supporters to mobilize to defend the abortion clinics against attack and to demand that the government give top priority to the investigation and prosecution of those responsible. government allows clinics to perform abortions. The new arrests reflect renewed pressure from the ment call in the police to raid the clinic. The police have also been eager for a raid. Women procedure. So far the police have received no answers.

Meanwhile, despite the new charges brought against

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UAW STRIKE