Vol. XLXI No. 1 VANCOUVER, B.C.

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IN MEMORIAM

JIM KINNAIRD: 1933-1983
A GRIEVOUS LOSS TO LABOUR

ISSN 0049-7371

Bennett Refuses Job Action

Asked for his government’s response to The official figure for unemployed
the appalling B.C. unemployment problem, throughout Canada is 1.6 million. That
Premier Bennett refused further action. excludes so-called “discouraged workers’,

“The private sector has to create jobs,” he young people just graduating from school,
said. ¥ h persons trying to return to the work force

The Vancouver Sun estimates that in after a long absence, Indians living on
February, 404,000 British Columbians yeserves, and the partially employed. The
relied on unemployment insurance, and true figure is well over 2 million, or 2'2 times
200,000 on welfare. About 10,000 British as many as were unemployed at the worst of
Columbians run out of unemployment the Great Depression.
benefits every month.

FOLLOWING ARE CURRENT
UNEMPLOYMENT ESTIMATES

Number  %
B.C. IWA Members 13,952 27.9
B.C. Total 206,000 15.1

ee
f ge B.C. Economic Regions Jan. ‘Feb.
ets 91 East Kootenay 10.8 16.0
GESzs 92. Kootenay-Columbia 116 184
= 93 Okanagan-Boundary 187 «19.7
E 94 Thompson-Lillooet 26.3 21.3
Eg E G5 TawerMainland 146. «124
as 96 Vancouver Island 172 ‘116
97 Central Interior 18.5 16.4
98/9 Northeast-Northwest 219 © 19.0

The Canadian Council on Social Develop-
ment estimates that:

e 10% of Canadian families live in
poverty.

© 66% of elderly women are poor.

© 46% of single women are poor.

e 20% of families with two wage-earners

have poverty incomés.

The OECD estimates that in Western
Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Japan, there
are 85 million unemployed. The Interna-
tional Confederation of Free Trade Unions
believes it will be over 40 million workers, or,
with dependents included, about 100 million
people.

That is the score card for the far right
* economics preached by Reagan and prac-
ticed so faithfully by Bennett.

Wages and
Contract
Conference

Delegates to Region 1’s Wages and Con-
tract Conference held in Vancouver March
3-5, adopted a twenty-point bargaining
package to be presented to the Canadian
forest products industry. :

The package calls for a substantial
across-the-board wage increase “‘to improve
the standard of living for Western Canadian
Woodworkers” and a triggered Cost of
Living Allowance (COLA) to protect that
standard of living from the inflation which
is still burning in the Canadian economy.
° WAGES

That we demand an across-the-board
increase to maintain and improve the stand-
ard of living of our members in a one year
agreement.

° C.O.L.A.

That we demand a “triggered” COLA
clause that will fully protect our wages
against inflation.

e HOURS OF WORK

That we demand a new article (Hours of
Work) to include among other changes;

(a) Double time for all overtime worked.

(b) a banking system for all overtime
worked,

(c) Details of shifts shall be negotiated
with the Local Union. These details to
include:

— hours of work

— days of work
rest days

— starting time

— rest periods

— lunch periods

— marshalling time
e STATUTORY HOLIDAYS

That we demand that the Statutory Holi-
day provisions be amended by deleting any
reference to the sixty (60) day restriction.

_ @ TRAVEL TIME

That we demand that all Travel time
spent on company property between leaving
the designated marshalling point and
returning to the said point be at the approp-
riate hourly rate.

Continued on page 2

@

NDP Promises Jobs

Provincial NDP Leader Dave Barrett
proposes a municipal job program, financed
by $500 million from provincial coffers, to
create jobs already on the drawing board.

“They are the projects that really need
doing, not just ‘make-work’,” said Barrett.

They include street improvement projects,
replacing sewage systems, building civic
facilities, etc.

When the NDP formed the government in
September, 1972, they began immediately to
increase the number of WCB inspections,
and as the accompanying table shows,
reduced the forest industry fatality per
million cubic meter rate by almost half
between 1978 and 1976 (from .9838 to .5466).

APRIL, 1983