Graphic Communicator photos by Dennis B. Doris Jr.

Newly elected Canadian Vice Pres. Duncan K. Brown catches up on a grievance report at the GCIU's Canadian office in downtown Toronto. Brown lists organizing as his number one priority for the GCIU in Canada.

Located in a compact set of offices in downtown Toronto, the GCIU's Canadian office staff oversees the many details needed to provide effective representation and service to the GCIU's 18,000 members in Canada.

The office serves as the hub for coordinating collective bargaining agreements throughout Canada and analyzing and interpreting labor law and how it affects workers in each of the 10 Canadian provinces.

In Canada, the laws that govern labor-management agreements, health and safety and other worker rights provisions are enacted by each of the 10 provincial legislatures and the federal government – in contrast to the United States where an overriding framework of labor law is the domain of federal lawmakers and applies to all the states.

This means Canadian GCIU officials must be familiar with and work within labor law variations from province to province, according to new GCIU Vice Pres. Duncan K. Brown, who heads the Toronto office. Before his election to the vice presidency by having no opposition in the December nomination process, he served as Canadian organizing coordinator since 1986.

As the GCIU in Canada moves into the new millennium as partners with the membership south of the border, Brown sees four major priorities for his office.

His first priority is to organize unorganized print industry workers across Canada. Although about 55 percent of the nation's print industry is in the Toronto area and another 25 percent is around Montreal, "we need a whole new organizing plan for Canada," to expand the GCIU to shops where there is no union, Brown said.

A second priority is to develop better ways to coordinate contract bargaining. "In the past, we had a high level of coordinated bargaining. But the industry is changing. And we now have to deal with larger corporations who are not always eager to bargain. We have to find ways to deal with the multinational corporations that have become a big part of our industry," he said.

Education of the members is a third priority, according to Brown. "The bottom line is that the employers control investment, and that is an enormous tool. So, we have to educate the members about what they can do to enhance our power and build our bargaining strength. Employers are thinking multi-nationally, and we have to educate the members to do the same."

Improving pensions is Brown's fourth priority. "The GCIU has a proud tradition of negotiating and developing good pension plans, but we have to look at expanding these benefits. Cutbacks under right-wing governments in this country have eroded Canadian workers' pensions. So, that means working people have to rely on private plans.

"We plan to make pensions a national bargaining issue," Brown added.

Canadian workers join their American brothers and sisters in being victimized by right-wing governmental policies, Brown noted. One tactic when anti-worker provincial lawmakers take over is to keep the worker protection safeguards from previous administrations on the books but refuse to fund enforcement. "Conservative governments underfund agencies that have jurisdiction over labor law and amend laws and regulations so they become meaningless," he noted.

Brown cited the example of Ontario provincial lawmakers cutting funding for implementing labor law, making the worker protection statutes "worthless." And there is another effort in the provinces to cut back on workers compensation services "to reduce costs to employers on the backs of injured workers," Brown said.

Despite the hostility of some lawmakers and some international employers, Canadians still support the idea of unions, and the nation has good potential for organizing, he added.

"I do think Canadians are fed up with the ways their workplace protections are being cut and their interest in unions is picking up," he said, adding: "People see unions in Canada standing for good programs such as child care and pensions and locals getting involved in coalitions with other human rights groups. This is improving our standing with the public."

Considering how to cope with the trend to multinationals, Brown noted he had just returned from a meeting of trade unionists in Chile to discuss the best ways to deal with corporations that do business in many nations. One major player, Quebecor, which merged last summer with World Color to form Quebecor/World, is headquartered in Canada. The merger brought Quebecor, a mostly unionized printer together with World Color, another big firm with a strong anti-union bias.

How to deal with such international printing conglomerates will require new tactics and more personnel, he said. He intends to present his ideas at meetings of the General Board.

International Representative Alan M.Tate covers central and western Canada. He normally spends most of his time on the road negotiating contracts and helping locals handle grievances.

The GCIU Canadian office is also a home – of sorts – to International Representative Alan M. Tate. Although he technically works out of the Toronto office, Tate estimated that he spends about 70 percent of his time on the road assisting local unions that are spread across central and western Canada. Another GCIU International Representative, Claude Valade, who works out of Montreal, covers the eastern side.

In recent months, Tate has spent most of his time in Calgary helping to coordinate the campaign against management at the Calgary Herald, where the publisher under right-wing ideologue Conrad Black has been trying to bust its unions.

At Graphic Communicator press time, both the GCIU pressmen and other workers represented by Alberta 34M are out on strike against the Herald because of bad faith bargaining.

"[The strike] is clearly a tribute to Conrad Black's anti-union agenda," Tate said. "We have a person who owns more than half of our newspapers and clearly wants to eliminate unions."

During the Graphic Communicator's visit to the Toronto office, the widely noted New York Times carried a story on Black, discussing the media magnate's abusive criticism of Canadian Roman Catholic Bishop Frederick Henry, who urged the newspaper owner to negotiate with the Calgary Herald strikers.

Black called Bishop Henry a "jumped up twerp" and a "prime candidate for exorcism." But the fierceness of Black's diatribe to a well-respected churchman urging moderation illustrates the intransigence of management that controls the Calgary Herald, Tate noted.

The situation in Calgary looks like a "divide and conquer" strategy by management to weaken and bust the unions at the big newspaper and then move on to do the same at other Canadian newspapers, Tate noted.

So the GCIU in Canada – while holding its own and attracting calls from plants interested in organizing – still has major battles to win, he added.

Eileen deGruchy is the office manager at the GCIU's Toronto headquarters. She keeps the files and library up-to-date and deals with requests from Canada's 27 locals.

Administratively, the office is run by Eileen deGruchy, who keeps track of the well-traveled Brown and Tate and responds to requests from the 27 local unions in Canada.

"We have two separate pension funds, two training schools in Toronto and Vancouver, and we keep track of all the collective bargaining agreements here in Canada, deGruchy explained.

"We are a one-stop shop. If the locals call, we try to help them."

The small Toronto office is also the repository for contracts and records from GCIU activities north of the border. These include minutes of meetings and other valuable records.

In addition to servicing locals, the Toronto office and staff also communicate with GCIU officers and staff headquartered in Washington, D.C., on all major issues that involve members and retirees in both nations.