L |i Ai | ivi A ela RT LL LLL BL July 15, 1987 40° Vol. 50, No. 27 Lockout picket hits Skytrain bridge project bs i ikhai joi i i 4 i World Congress of Women Del t leader Mikhail Gorbachev join hands during children s presentation at the held in’ eee Se weeks ago. The moment, described as an “‘“emotional high” during which even the Communist Party chairman reportedly wept, was one of several memorable moments recalled by B.C. delegates to the historic conference. Stories on page 3. TASS PHOTO feces The B.C. Federation of Labour has Pledged to launch a court challenge to What trade unionists have termed the “illegal,” “scandalous” and “‘unbelieva- ble” refund of $99.3 million in employ- ers’ assessments by the Workers Comp- €nsation Board. : B.C. Fed president Ken Georgetti says the federation will launch the challenge, on advice from lawyer Connie Munro, if the board fails to justify its action. “We think it’s illegal and a breach of trust,” said B.C. Federation of Labour president Ken Georgetti. In statements fast month WCB chairman Jim Nielson said the board had realized a $263-million surplus at the end of 1986 — compared to a $500- million deficit only four years ago. “Isn’t it amazing that they’ve gone from a $500-million deficit overnight to a Surplus today,” said Cathy Walker, national health and safety director for the Canadian Association of Industrial, Mechanical and Allied Workers (CAI- MAW) province’s employers, CAIMAW has 150 appeal claims out of a B.C. member- ship of 3,000. Walker said the reduction in claims paid out to workers and the payback lend credence to rumours that Nielson is planning to “gut” the appeals system. That’s one reason why trade unions are demanding a Royal Commission into the workings of the Workers Com- pensation Board. ' The other is the recently released report on the board and its workings by B.C. Ombudsman Stephen Owen. The liberally inclined Owen makes 48 recommendations for reform, several of which trade unionists say should be implemented immediately. Couched in diplomatic language, the recommenda- tions regarding first-stage claims, and the role of review boards and medical review panels, are a damning indictment of the board’s abuses over the years. B’s past practices have caused per parent a humiliation” for compensation claimants, says Carmela Allevato of the Hospital Employees Union. In a typical case, Allevato said a claim- ant can wait up to two years to get.a ruling on an appeal to the board of review — only to have a favourable rul- ing ignored by the WCB commissioners. One can wait six months to a year for the commissioners — possibly including the same person who refused the claim in the first place — to decide on the review board’s ruling. If the ruling is again unfavourable, the claimant can appeal to a medical review panel. In one case a claimant had to wait one year before the panel affirmed that they would examine the case, and another three months before the doctors con- vened the panel. “And if you win, it will never compen- sate for the hardship that lengthy process causes. People who do make it through the system are made to feel that they’re liars and cheats and that their pain is not real,” Allevato, in-house counsel for the HEU, said. - see WCB page 8 Labour demands WCB overhaul | While the board is giving gifts to the » Locked-out B.C. iron workers are picketing the Skytrain extension bridge construction project in Surrey and New Westminster in a dispute that turns the spotlight once again on how the provincial government and corpora- tions are trying to de-unionize B.C.’s construc- tion industry. B.C. and Yukon Building and Construction Trades Council president Roy Gautier said a Labour Relations Board decision allows pick- eting for the first time of the project, denounced by trade unions as a blatant attempt at union-busting. Iron Workers Local 97 business manager Wayne Foot said Can West Steel imposed the lockout Monday after its employees refused to supply a non-union firm working on the site, Caribou Steel, with reinforcing steel. Caribou Steel pays employees $10 an hour — far below the Iron Workers rate — on the project, Foot said. cates “Where it really smells is that Caribou has its office in the same building as Can West,” Foot noted. “So we’re facing this even before Bill 19 has been proclaimed,” he said. Under the new Industrial Relations Reform Act, unionized companies are virtually free to create non-union subsidiaries to get around collective agreements. The process, known in the construction industry as “‘double-breast- ing,” is harder to initiate under the outgoing Labour Code, but Gautier said abuses of that sort have been increasing over the years. Foot said Can West has a letter of under- standing with the Iron Workers stating the company will abide by an agreement with the construction companies’ bargaining arm, the Construction Labour Relations Association (CLRA). The provisions stipulate that union employees do not have to handle goods com- ing from or going tc non-union operations. The Skytrain bridge project has been boy- cotted by the B.C. and Yukon Building and Construction Trades Council’s 17 members because it has been contracted to a partnership of Hyundai, a government owned firm in South Korea operating under some of the world’s worst anti-labour legislation, and J.C. Kerkhoff and Sons, the province’s most notor- ious anti-union contractor. Foot said the lockout and picket will also “bring to the public’s attention the unsafe working conditions and the violation of Workers Compensation Board provisions that take place on the site.” He said CBC television has film footage of a man climbing up several hundred feet to the control centre of a construction crane, in viola- tion of regulations that cranes contain mechan- ical hoists. “The public should also know that Koreans are working there — operating cranes, direct- ing traffic, driving forklifts and smoothing concrete — jobs our workers should be doing,” Foot said. He said the Korean nationals were issued “hands-on” work visas by the Canadian embassy in Seoul. Gautier said the incident shows that B.C. Transit, the provincial Crown corporation, made an “unwise decision” in granting the project to Kerkhoff-Hyundai.