a IL

RL |

Anti-labor bias was ‘what Socreds wanted’

Food prices report ‘utter nonsense’

A legislative committee report
‘Which recommends strikebreaking
and exonerates the food
Monopolies from any blame for ris-
ing prices was blasted by the B.C.
Federation of Labor this week as
“utter nonsense.’
And the president of the Retail

- Clerks, Rudy Krickan,. reacted to

the report with the statement, “‘If,
according to the report food prices
went up because of wages, then
Prices should only go up one per-
Cent a year.

“But everybody knows that
Sroceries go up every day,”’ he said.

The contentious report, prepared
for the legislature’s standing com-

: bd SCHOOL TAXES: New
assessmént procedures
enacted by the Legislat-
ure last week will result
in higher school taxes for
home owners — and a
gift to industry. An
analysis of the new ar-
rangement, page 3.

® MINERS: In Great Bri-
tain, the powerful Na-
tional Union of
Mineworkers is a main-
Stay of the labor move-
ment with militant tradi-
tlons going back for
9enerations, page 6, 7.

LABOR: The recent de-
Cision by B.C. Supreme
Ourt Justice Harry
McKay in denying a
Combines application
marked a milestone in
ne UFAWU campaign,
lag by the trade un-
On movement, page 12.

mittee, made up entirely of Social
Credit members, was produced by
two management consultants.

The report points to labor costs
as the main culprit behind rising
prices and recommends that stores
be allowed to break strikes with
scabs if they reach an impasse dur-
ing collective bargaining with their
employees.

And in what Kinnaird termed an
unbelievable ‘‘convolution’’, the
report exonerates Kelly Douglas
and H. Y. Louie, two companies
which control 93 per cent of the

~wholesale food industry between
them, from any responsibility for
rising food costs.

‘fAll across North America, in-
quiries into food prices have laid
the blame for ever-increasing prices
clearly on wholesalers and retailers
who have a monopoly in the food
market,’’ Kinnaird said.

“The committee which commis-
sioned this report has among its
members the most anti-union peo-
pie in. the *Socials Credit
government,”’ he said, referring to
committee members, Socreds Pat
Jordan, Terry Segarty, James
Hewitt, Jack Kempf and George
Mussallem.

“It is obvious that they got the
kind of report they wanted.”’

UTA deal heads
for a rough ride

The proposed agreement between
the Socred provincial government
and the Greater Vancouver
Regional District on the financing
and running of the public transit
system in the Lower Mainland has
met with wide opposition and could
be headed for rejection when it goes
before the GVRD board for
ratification.

See Harry Rankin, p. 2

The agreement would give the
provincial government pracically all
of the terms it wanted through over
ten months of negotiation. The pro-
vincially appointed Urban Transit
Authority would have control over
the budgets and all major decisions,
but local taxpayers would be forced
to pay a growing share of the transit
deficits, until now paid by the pro-
vince through B.C. Hydro.

The agreement suffered a major
setback Tuesday when Vancouver
city council refused to recommend
ratification of the pact and instead
approved a motion by alderman
Harry Rarikin to hold a special
evening meeting to. hear - public
delegations on the issue within 10
days. The city also asked the GVRD
to hold up its ratification vote until
after the city had come to. a deci-
sion. ;

The day before the agreement
was rejected by a seven to two vote
in Surrey municipal council and ac-
cepted by a five to two vote in Delta
municipal council. It is expected
that Burnaby council will also be
highly critical of the proposed
agreement.

In Vancouver council refused to
ratify the agreement after a hard

See ROUGH page 2

Trans Mountain plan
renews tanker threat

Environmental and Native
organizations scored a victory be-
fore the National Energy Board and
forced Foothills Pipeline Company
to withdraw its application for ap-
proval of an oil pipeline across Can-
ada to bring Alaska oil to the U.S.
midwest.

But with the strategic withdrawal
of Foothills from the NEB hearings
in Vancouver Monday, the spectre

of a west coast oil port is again
looming large over the B.C. coast,
through either the Trans Mountain
Pipeline Company or the U. S. Nor-

thern Tier Pipeline Company oil
port and pipeline projects.

Still before the NEB hearings is
the application of Trans Mountain
Pipeline Company which is seeking
approval for its plan to build a
supertanker oil port at Low Point,
Washington ‘in the Straits of Juan
de Fuca, and a pipeline across B.C.
to Edmonton, and then to the U.S.
midwest.

The Northern Tier proposal is all-
U.S. and does not require Canadian
approval, but it would also build a
supertanker oil port in the Straits of

See CYI page 3

VLC backs ferry workers |

The Vancouver Labor Council
Tuesday wired labor minister Allan
Williams demanding that he in-
struct the B.C. Ferries Corporation
to withdraw all disciplinary action
against members of the B.C. Ferry
and Marine Workers Union and
reinstate fired employee Bob
Peacock.

The motion backed the stand by
the ferry union which has refused to

hold ratification votes on the pro-
posed collective agreement until the
disciplinary action, including the
firing of Peacock, has been
withdrawn.

The disciplinary action stems
from a work stoppage Sept. 6 which
the Ferries Corporation artibrarily
claimed was illegal. The Labor
Relations Board has declined to rule
on whether or not it was illegal.

Al Peterson, representative for
the Retail, Wholesale and Depart-
ment Store’ Union echoed
Kinnaird’s comments, calling the
report a ‘‘whitewash of the com-
panies involved in the food in-
dustry.”’

“The whole thing is just-.as if the

_ government had asked the food in-

dustry to investigate itself,’’ Kin-
naird declared. ‘‘There were no
public hearings, no one was asked
for input and these consultants
come out with lopsided research
that blames labor for high food
prices.

“Is this what the people of B.C.

paid three million dollars for,’’ he
demanded. ‘‘We have received a
biased report prepared by two com-
panies who obviously knew where
the money was coming from and
said exactly what the government
wanted to hear.’’

Kinnaird said that the Federation
intended ‘‘to take a very close look
at the report, how it was prepared,
the data that was used and how that
data was collected -among other
things. We believe that this report is
unfactual and untrue,”’ he said.

The two-volume document
enclosing the results of the five-year
study was released Monday.

Stop the attac

FEDERATION PRESIDENT JIM KINNAIRD .

“we have to take

a page from the unemployed struggles of the ‘30's.”

‘Take cue from 30's!
Fed’s Ul rally urged

“This government is not con-
cerned with working people; it is
only concerned with appeasing
the corporate community,”’ Jim
Kinnaird, president of the B.C.
Federation of Labor told the
crowd of 1,000 at the Unemploy-
ment Insurance cutbacks rally at
the PNE Gardens Thursday.

Predicting that things are ‘‘go-
ing to get a lot worse’’ for the
more than one million unem-
ployed, he called on workers to
“take a page from the 1930s. . .
when workers organized them-
selves into unions- and made
their major demand an. unem--
ployment insurance scheme.”’

Thursday’s rally, called by the
Federation, was part of the pro-

test campaign by the Canadian
Labor Congress sparked by the
restrictions to the Unemploy-
ment Insurance program enacted
by the former Liberal govern-
ment and the proposed new re-
strictions outlined by the Clark
government.

Kinnaird, who was joined on
the rally platform by Federation
secretary Dave Mcintyre, unem-
ployment coordinator Joy Lan-
gan and NDP MLA Stu Leggatt,
cited a document produced by
Tory MP Paul McCrossan.

This paper undermines the
whole idea of unemployment in-
surance which working people

See FIGHT page 12