International Women's Day celebrated in Canada

Scan page 3

Subscribe today!

I 16 months for $4, I 11 year for $8 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL1990 Demonstrations celebrating International Women's Day took place in all major cities in English Canada and Quebec. In Toronto, 5000 spirited marchers rallied on March 3 to demand "Fight the Attacks—No Going Back."

The Toronto demonstration was organized around four major demands: (1) No to racism and police violence; (2) No new abortion law; (3) No to the GST [goods and services sales tax] and social cutbacks; and (4) No to violence against women.

The Toronto Labor Council set up a soup line outside a major restaurant on the march route to dramatize the negative impact the proposed goods and services tax will have on the standard of living of working people.

A large, vocal pro-choice contingent participated in the march, which ended at the Campaign Life office as demonstrators presented those anti-choice goons with a coffin and 1000 coat hangers to show how a new abortion law will affect women.

Toronto pro-choice activists continue to answer Operation Rescue's attempts to close down abortion clinics by mobilizing large numbers of pro-choice supporters to ensure the clinics remain open.

Whenever Operation Rescue threatens a clinic, the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics organizes to get as many people as possible to the clinic early enough to secure the door and physically maintain access to the clinic.

The clinic managers welcome pro-choice activists, recognizing that their presence helps demonstrate the majority support for abortion rights and pressure the police to arrest the Operation Rescue thugs.

Failing to attract public sympathy; Operation Rescue's clinic attacks have become smaller and smaller. Realizing they Ne move Back alley SUPPOR PORK LE can't outmobilize pro-choice supporters at the clinics on Saturdays, the anti-choice bigots have begun small attacks at unusual times.

While expecting more large Operation Rescue hits with warmer spring weather, pro-choice activists are also discussing how to effectively counter Operation Rescue's Name Address City Zip Send to: 3435 Army small, frequently violent, surprise attacks.

The Pro Choice Action Network, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women have called for a cross country day of action, Saturday, May 12. Demonstrations are planned in all major cities and a number of smaller towns.

May 12 marks the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the Abortion Caravan in Ottawa. This date was chosen to show that as the Parliamentary debate on a new abortion law continues, women face the same dangers as 20 years ago.

State

Tel.

St., Rm. Fran, CA

Scan page 4

Airlines machinists at San Francisco airport rally on March 3 to mark one year "If for one week-that's how long the strike would have lasted."

... Labor mov't.

Supporters of Eastern had closed the airport (continued from page 1: “Lithuanians confront an escalating war of nerves”) tions and incapable of organizing an effective fightback. The union officialdom, bereft of any fightback strategy and ensured of six figure salaries, has openly collaborated with the employers and the government in attacking the living standards of workers.

Conceding defeat before they've even made an effort to fight back, the current misleaders of the labor movement reject the proven tactic of mass picketlines to prevent scabs from taking strikers' jobs. Many of them question the effectiveness of any strike action at all.

They use the defeats of the 1980s— PATCO, TWA, Phelps-Dodge, Boise Cascade, Hormel, International Paper, and many others—as a justification for their inaction in the face of comany assaults. One labor official even told Time magazine, "Labor has an empty gun."

Greyhound, of course, is pegging its anti-union campaign around such expressions of defeatism. But the striking workers, small in numbers when compared to the organized labor movement as a whole, are receiving a groundswell of support from rank-and-file of strike. yoL unionists around the country.

In Boston, the AFL-CIO organized a demonstration on March 30 to close down the local bus terminal. In a call for labor solidarity, Local 6 Shipyard Workers in Bath, Maine, sent a telegram to International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 1305 in San Francisco requesting that they honor the picket line of ATU Local 1225 strikers at the S.F. Greyhound bus maintenance center.

(In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Greyhound bus mechanics, who are organized by the IAM, had been crossing the picket lines. Ironically, the IAM has been on strike for over a year against union-busting at Eastern Airlines).

But it will take more than well-meaning gestures of solidarity to reverse the decadeslong retreat of the American labor movement.

Labor must reconquer traditions.

In 1945, more than 35 percent of the nonagricultural work force was organized in unions. In 1980, it was 22 percent, and has fallen dramatically since. Many of the 19 million new jobs created during the 1980s are non-union and pay the minimum wage. At the same time, the restructuring of U.S industry, the maneuvers of leveraged buyouts, and the monopolization process endemic to capitalism, has lowered wages by an average of 15 percent.

The Greyhound strike is both symptomatic and symbolic of what workers can expect in the future. No amount of concessions will stay the hand of the capitalists. They have no choice-if they want to remain competitive-but to continue busting unions and driving down the living standards of workers.

Despite the setbacks of the last decade, the union movement still enjoys tremendous support in this country. In a recent Time magazine/CNN poll, 73 percent of those interviewed believed that American workers need unions.

If the Greyhound workers are to win their fight, and the American labor movement is to survive, the union movement will have to fight back the way it did in the 1930s. It will have to become a social movement. And it will have to have its own political agenda. In the 1930s, if the Greyhound workers went on strike-everybody would go on strike.

A winning strategy for today requires that the entire union movement organize its ranks to help the striking Greyhound workers shut down this union-busting company. Daily mass picket lines will be necessary to assure that not one scab bus is allowed to leave the terminals.

As a United Mineworkers of America representative told supporters of the Eastern Airlines strike at a San Francisco airport rally recently: "If you had closed this airport down for a week at the beginning of the strike-that's how long the strike would have lasted." That's the sentiment—-and the strategy-that is needed to win the Greyhound strike.

much heat on their phony union that it was

----- pull-quotes -----

SELF- RESPECT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY WE SUPPORT THE IAM