buses aren't welcome

the Pacific Coachlines terminal.

Pickets halt
Greyhound scab

Pickets hastily assembled by the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labor Thursday made it plain scab-driven
in Vancouver.
volunteer pickets from the unemployed action
centres affiliated to the Vancouver and District
Labor Council and the B.C. Building Trades
stopped a non-union Seattle driver from bring-
ing an American Greyhound bus into the yard at
PCL drivers
respected the picket, shutting down operations
during the 15-minute operation. The action
complemented sit-ins and pickets at stations
across the United States to stop the multi-
million dollar company’s efforts to break the
three-week strike by 12,000 Amalgamated Tran-
sit Union members with scab labor. Workers
voted 98 per cent to strike against demands for
a 25-per cent cut in wages and benefits, and
other ‘concessions. Greyhound’s response to
the strike was to advertise for scabs, receiving
more than 40,000 applications. Besides public
transportation, the company is involved in the
’ loans business and owns Dial Soap. Vancouver
pickets ran repeatedly between the two en-
trances to the terminal, forcing the driver to
deposit his passengers — only two, due to
pickets in Seattle — elsewhere downtown.

The

Building Trades launch job action at VGH 4

The Building Trades launched a second
phase of its campaign against a non-union
construction project at Vancouver General
Hospital Wednesday as some 100 Building
Trades members invoked the reservation
clauses in their collective agreements and
walked off an adjoining project.

Another 400 unionists, many of them
unemployed Building Trades workers, join-
ed them as they shut down the job, to stagea
noon-hour protest rally and mass picket.

The target of the rally was Kirkwall Con-
struction Ltd., a non-union firm in Rich-
mond which was recently awarded a $4.5
million dollar contract to construct Phase I
of a new research facility at VGH.

The Building Trades set up an informa-
tion picket line around the Kirkwall site Nov.

10 but following the company’s application
to the Labor Relations Board for a cease-
and-desist order, the Building Trades cam-
paign was escalated.

B.C. and Yukon Building Trades presi-
dent Roy Gautier said that meetings were
held among the four trades working on an
adjoining VGH building project, currently
under construction by union companies,
and the trades voted to take job action under
their reservation clauses. 2

Building Trades collective agreements
reserve the right for unionists to refuse to
work alongside non-union or non-affiliated
workers. :

By invoking the clauses, the Building
Trades is contending that the VGH con-
struction work, including the Kirkwall pro-
ject, is a “‘common site’’ under the Labor
Code, giving the trades the right to refuse to
work.

Gautier said that an application would
likely be made to the LRB soon for a com-
mon site declaration. ‘‘And we'll be looking
for an expedited hearing”’, he said.

The four prime contractors on the union
site have indicated that they will be pressing
the LRB for a... cease<and-
desist order to halt Building Trades job ac-
tion, thus moving the battleground over to
the labor board offices.

And that battle is likely to bea particularly
bitter one this time around. The actions of
the provincial government and the non-
union contractors have put the future of the
Building Trades and union conditions in
construction on the line.

““We’ve no alternative but to fight,”’
Gautier told the Tribune. ‘‘And we have to
sustain that fight or we’ll be left out in the
cold.”

The Kirkwall contract gave a new edge to
the threat from the non-union sector when it
was awarded Sept. 16 since it marked the
first time that a VGH construction project
had gone to a non-union firm. Building

Trades representatives later learned that the
award was the direct result of a provincial
government policy directive instructing
public bodies to accept the lowest bidder,
regardless of factors.

VGH planning director Bill Goodsir told
the Trades: ‘‘We take our marching orders
from Victoria.”’

Accordingly, Kirkwall was hired for the
multi-million dollar project even though it
had no expertise in the type of construction
required and ‘‘has never built’ anything
more than a three-storey frame apartment’,
according to the Building Trades.

The provincial government also interven-
ed earlier this year to ensure that Wigmar
Construction, a right-to-work contractor in

Victoria, was selected to construct a $3.8
million addition to Victoria’s Royal Jubilee
Hospital. The hospital’s board of trustees
had voted unanimously to reject Wigmar’s
bid but the hospital building committee,
made up of representatives of the govern-
ment, the hospital and the Capital Regionai
Planning Commission voted 2-1 to overrule
the elected board.

At the VGH site, Kirkwall has hired
several anti-union subcontractors, many of
which are members of the Independent Con-
tractors and Businessmen’s Association, the
chief proponent in this province of right-to-
work legislation.

Significantly, one of the subcontractors,
Viking Electric, was chosen despite the fact

that its bid was $80,000 higher than a bid
tendered by a union firm, Ricketts-Sewell.

“We raised hell about the low biddet
policy in meeting, with (Labor Minister) M&
Clelland,’’ Gautier said, ‘“‘but the goverl
ment is totally hypocritical. They say they’
concerned about the state of the unionize
sector of the construction industry but it® |
those same people who make the decisions!@
promote the non-union sector.”’ :

The B.C. Federation of Labor, the Val
couver and District Labor Council and thé
Hospital Employees Union, had earliet
pledged their support to the Building Trade:
in their campaign against the non-uniol
contractors. :

Jobless meet targets

B.C.’s unemployed — more than
200,000 of them — were, in a sense, buried
within the avalanche of opposition
brought down by the Socred government’s
budgetary bills.

That’s partly because there was within
the Solidarity Coalition and Operation

- Solidarity too much emphasis on accepting

government-imposed ‘‘restraint’’ and its
attendant unemployment, said George
Hewison, head of the Vancouver and
District Labor Council’s unemployment
action committee, to some 60 delegates at
the second annual unemployment con-
ference in Vancouver last weekend.

Taking up that theme, representatives of
the VDLC committee and its active wing,
the Vancouver unemployed action centre,
joined with delegates from. centres and
committees in other B.C. communities and
as far away as Saskatchewan in hammering
out a series of resolutions that charted and
enhanced a more independent role for
unemployed organizations within the trade
union movement.

The representatives of the jobless,
gathered at the Ukrainian and UFAWU
halls Nov. 18-19, also adopted a nine-point
program detailing an economic alternative
to the cutback policies of the Socreds and
several other provincial, as well as the
federal, governments.

The end result was a conference in which
‘the level of understanding about the role
of the unemployed was raised from that of
last year’s conference,’’ said Vancovuer
action centre co-ordinator Kim Zander in
an interview.

“‘A year ago people were just getting
around to talking about organizing the
unemployed. This year, we could assess
our experiences from activities over the

year and talk about ways to expand the
unemployed movement,”’ she said.

Delegates ‘were presented with a key
paper outlining the Vancouver centre and
committee’s past actions, including jobless
demonstrations, briefs to city council, the
park board and federal commissions and
largely successful advocacy work on behalf
of the area’s Unemployment Insurance
and welfare recipients. The paper also urg-
ed consideration of an expanded network
of unemployed groups, and suggested
several actions jobless advocates should
consider for the immediate and longer
terms.

Motions hammered out in three concur-
rent workshops Saturday morning, most
of which were adopted in the subsequent
plenary session, reflected the key theme
that the independence of the unemployed’
movement is enhanced by strong connec-
tions — including formal affiliation —
with organized labor.

Among the motions were those urging:

@ Unions to allow laid off or fired
members to retain union membership, and
for those affected, delegate status in larger
bodies such as local labour councils;

@ The election or representatives of
unemployed groups — by committees and
action centres set up by labor councils, and
unemployed workers groups working with
labor councils — as delegates to local labor
councils, with full speaking and voting
privileges;

@ Labor’s support for a cross-Canada
communications network among
unemployed organizations;

@ Labor and jobless groups to consider
a province-wide conference of
unemployed workers organizations.

This latter point was underscored by

restraint’ —

B.C. Federation ot Labor president Art
Kube, a guest speaker at the conference,
who noted that the co-ordinators of the 31
labor-sponsored action centres in B.C.
would be attending the upcoming B.C.”
Fed. annual convention.

Kube, who also told of an upcoming
“training session”’ for centre co-ordinators
sponsored by the federation, received the
strongest applause when he envisioned the
possibility of a union of the unemploy!
affiliated to the B.C. Fed.

The conference also produced action
proposals, including campaigns around
the long-standing demand for extension 0
UI benefits to cover the full period of
unemployment, at rates established at 90
per cent of the recipient’s working wage,
and raising welfare rates significantly
above the poverty level.

Another resolution urged unions t0
develop unemployed committees for theif
own members.

Delegates also approved a motion of
support for “‘strong actions’ to battle
unemployment, up to and including poss
ble job actions.

And the stamp of approval — with some
additions and changes — went to the nine
point alternative economic program
unemployed activists and trade unionists
laid before a prehearing of the MacDonald
Commission on the Economic Union at!
Development Prospects for Canada 4
Simon Fraser University last spring. é

Delegates added a shorter work week at
the same rates of pay to the program, —
which included nationalization of banks,
increased taxation of corporations, an €n
to social service cutbacks, and cuts #7
defence spending. _