) THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER thewestern canadian lumber worker the official publication of the INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA ional Council No. } Affiliated with AFL-C!O-CLC ai Drive, Vancouver,8.C. Phone 874-5261 Kerr Subscription Business Manager—Wyman Trineer WA in Western Canada in accordance with convention decisions rate for non-members $2.00 per year HE strong vote of acceptance for the new agreement by coastal and Southern Interior |IWA members indicates they agree with their Provin- cial Negotiating Committee that the settlement is a good one. The IWA can take pride in the fact that it was the pace setter among the forest unions in negotiating the agree- ment which is the richest package ever wrested from the industry. The settlement represents a total value of more than three dollars an hour to [WA members and it is esti- mated will cost the industry more than three hundred million dollars. The agreement besides giving IWA members better wages, healthy rate revisions, an improved pension plan and substantial increases to plywood, sawmill and logging rates, has also achieved a number of important breakthroughs such a travel time for loggers and a troubled employee’s programme. The Union’s Negotiating committee Ce ee ee ] spent three months at the bargaining table hammering out the agreement. The decision to recommend accep- tance was made only after they were unanimously convinced that to demand more would have provoked a strike in the industry. This they considered sheer non- sense when they already had on the table the largest settlement in the Union’s history. The leaders of Local 8 of the Pulp, Paper & Woodworkers Union at Har- mac on Vancouver Island, lacking the sound judgement of the IWA negotia- tors, refused a similar agreement and took their membership on strike. After three weeks they returned to work with no improvements to their agreement. The strike it is estimated cost each member fifteen hundred dollars in lost wages. IWA leaders are just as militant as the leaders of the PPWC but they believe also that common sense has priority when decisions are made that affect the livelihood of their members. NDP, ALBERTA FED. OPPOSE HOSPITAL FEE New Democratic MLA Stu Leggatt will introduce a private member’s bill in the British Columbia Legislature that would end the use of commercial lie detectors in this province. Leggatt said that the danger of lie detectors in the private hands is that they are not voluntary as is their use in criminal matters. He said they are growing more popular as more companies bring them on the market at cheaper prices. “It’s just one more edge to the totalitarian state that we don’t want to see” he said. Leggatt said that banks and commercial institutions use lie involved in theft. Leggatt noted that lie detectors are unreliable but a The Alberta Federation of Labour along with the New Democratic Party are fighting to stop the provincial Tory government from imposing a $10 a day user fee for hospital patients. Describing the government’s move as “taxing the sick” Alberta NDP leader Grant Notley said that the NDP is ready and willing to give the Alberta Tories a real fight over the erosion of the medicare system.” Alberta’s Minister of Hospi- tals and Medical Care, recently proposed that a per day fee might be imposed on Albertans who had to spend time in a hospital. At the time he said that $10 sounded as a reasonable amount to charge. Dave Eastmead, AFL ist vice-president charged that the hospital user fee is ‘‘contrary to the principle of medicare.” He said that ‘‘both the federal and provincial governments must exercise their responsi- bility as defined in the Medical Care Act of 1968 and insist that health premiums and user fees be eliminated from the provin- cial medicare programs.” “We resent the fact that this government is thinking of introducing user fees without ‘in conjunction with facing the electorate on this issue,’’ Eastmead said. Notley announced that he introduced two private member’s Bills in the legisla- ture to stop the government’s proposed move. One bill would outlaw user fees and remove from Cabinet the power to set fees while the other would put an end to double billing by Alberta doctors. Eastmead said that the AFL the Canadian Labour Congress is actively supporting a nation- wide campaign to save and im- prove medicare. He also served notice that the Federa- tion has sent letters to provin- cial organizations to mobilize the ‘Friends of Medicare’. Another AFL spokesperson, Eugene Mitchell said that “‘if the government doesn’t get enough negative responses “they will be implementing the hospital user fee ‘‘down the road. If we allow things to go on as they are we won’t have any medicare system left,” Mitchell warned. Although the AFL along with other provincial groups ‘‘don’t have a plan of action set’, Mitchell said that ‘“‘we are not going to sit by and see cutbacks. in the medicare system when we want to improve it.” JUNE-JULY, 1979 “Does height ever give you an’ urge to jump?” fee ey =s CORPORATIONS NOW LISTED BY POST By MICHAEL DECTER CPA Columnist Crown corporations for the first time have been listed by the Financial Post in its annual ranking of Canada’s largest corporations. As well member owned co-operatives, credit unions and caisse populaires are listed. The List ranks six corpora- tions owned by Canadians through their governments among Canada’s 50 largest companies. The two largest corporations ranked by assets are Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec. Together the six crown corporations created about. 170,000 jobs and in 1978 accounted for more than $39 billion in assets and $10 billion in sales. Of the 300 industrial companies listed, 17 are crown corporations accounting for more than 200,000 jobs. Although listing crown corporations among privately owned enterprises must be causing consternation among businessmen, they would be hard pressed to deny that - crown corporations are not performing well. With careful examination of ‘who owns what’ in Canada combined with a little fore- ‘sight, Joe Clark would not be threatening to sell Petro- Canada to private interests. A glance at the 500 list makes it perfectly clear that with few exceptions most corporations operating in Canada are foreign owned. Petro-Canada along with Dome Petroleum are two of the notable excep- tions. Instead of dismantling Petro-Can Joe Clark’s energy would be better spent devising ways in which Petro-Can could buy Dome before it is snatched up by some American conglo- merate. Co-ops size impressive There are more than 2,500 active co-operatives in Canada with the largest, operating in grain and agriculture. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, ranked by assets and earnings is the largest co-op with $1.2 billion in sales and assets worth $405 million. Federated Co-operatives, however, which acts as a wholesale for hun- dreds of co-op retails stores employs 16,000 workers where- as the Wheat Pool had a pay- roll of 4,300 in 1978. Together the ten largest co-ops em- ployed about 36,000 people and had a membership of nearly one million. Although the size of co- operatives in Canada is im- pressive, credit unions must not be forgotten. A review of the Financial Post’s statistics on credit unions indicates that they are as equally impressive as the’ co-ops. Across the country there were in 1978, 4,100 active credit unions and caisses with nine million members and $24 bil- lion in assets. Quebec has the most active and largest move- ment that is primarily concen- trated in caisse popular rather than in individual credit unions. The ten largest Canadian credit unions had an average five year growth rate of more than 40 per cent per annum. This growth rate can only be described as spectacular when compared to chartered banks which experienced a growth rate of less than 20 per cent during the same period.