Freedom Flyer 5

Photo caption: PROTESTERS harassing innocent shoppers and workers at a store not involved in the strike were acting illegally and unfairly, says Business Editor Turner. There also are two sides to the propaganda war (though we usually only hear about the union side), as these pamphlets from opposing groups of workers indicate.

Garth Turner
Business Editor

The Eaton's strike is a scam. In fact, it shouldn't even exist - and probably wouldn't, if other unions weren't pulling the wool over our eyes.

This is organized labor's finest hour. It has picked a very visible, consumer-oriented target and then manufactured a strike. The support among Eaton's workers is miniscule and the attempts to turn this charade into a workers-versus-rich or (more laughably) a "women's issue" border on fraud.

Not to mention irresponsibility.

It's no wonder the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is losing. It couldn't organize a sock drawer.

Doesn't anybody else see what's happening? Why does the media concentrate on the few bandit strikers and their bussed-in supporters? Why did 1,500 workers join the union and 30,000 didn't?

And while the papers report 1,500 workers are on strike, it's not true. Eaton's employees tell me a great many of the unionized souls either never went out or have drifted back to the shop. One informed estimate puts the number on the pavement outside the six struck stores (of 111 in the chain) at only 300.

Worse, a majority of those people are said to be part-time employees, who work only 12 to 24 hours a week - and don't have as much to lose as full-time workers.

So, if just 1% of Eaton's workers are on the outside and 99% are on the inside; if 95% of the company's stores are not affected by the strike - then where do these people come from and why are they media darlings?

Last Saturday, in a spectacle I couldn't believe, more than 3,000 people stormed the Eaton Centre, and paraded through the store disrupting business, offending shoppers and slinging verbal abuse on the workers.

But that store isn't unionized. The workers who took the slurs aren't involved in the strike. And neither were the people marching through the aisles.

No, they were participants in an International Women's Day parade, made up of women's groups, various left-wing splinter political groups and unions. There may have been 50 legitimate Eaton's strikers, but the other 2,950 were women downtown for a good time.

What right did they have to bust up Fred Eaton's store?

They had none.

Tomorrow it's going to happen again.

Sixteen striking female Eaton's employees will lead an assault on the Eaton's store at Scarboro Town Centre. But when they get there at 11 a.m., their numbers will be swelled by followers of the United Auto Workers, the Ontario Federation of Labor and the Metro Labor Council. On at least three occasions already, stores have been entered or forced to close - which is illegal.

Like the Eaton Centre, the Scarboro Town Centre is private property.

Jack McGee, a car dealer in Peterboro, represents the view of the majority of decent people.

"I grew up with Eaton's, and a better family you couldn't find," he writes me. "My father took three pay cuts during the Depression and still Eaton's kept him on - as they did most of their employees in those dark days.

"Every Irishman that got off the boat had only to appear at Eaton's door and he was immediately hired by Timothy Eaton.

"Unions refuse to compromise their position. Unfortunately, over the past several years they did get it their way initially, and now they're finding out that business can get along without them very nicely."

Meanwhile, the current issue of Toronto Life carries a huge story on the Eaton's strike written by David Olive. It is tremendously slanted towards the union, does not point out that the overwhelming majority of workers rejected it, and does not include the company's view.

It also implies that my opposition to the union, its tactics and its unsavory fiends is somehow influenced by the company.

This, natch, is a crock. I admire Fred Eaton. I like Eaton's. I like to see a family succeed on hard work, value-for-money and entrepreneurial guts.

I do not like to see half-truths or innuendo. Ditto for listless and lumpy lemmings parotting empty slogans and dirtying Mr. Eaton's carpets.