ee
Rater a Tea, e

BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Grace McCarthy, the
minister of human resources,
has got to be the most ill-
appointed minister ever to head
that department (including Bill
Vander Zalm, and that’s going
pretty far) in that collection of

Harry

Rankin

car dealers and speculators in
Victoria who make up what is
called the provincial cabinet.

I don’t know what she uses
for transportation when she
rides from her plush home to
her plush office to do her dirty
tricks number on the poor, but
she should be using a
broomstick.

How else can you describe her
treatment of the people un-
fortunate enough to be on
welfare? She has arbitrarily re-
classified a whole number of
them as ‘“‘employable’’, cut
them off welfare and told them
to go out and get jobs. And who
are these people who have sud-
denly become ‘“‘employable’’?
Most of them if not all, are peo-
ple entirely without job skills:

Most of them are women,
some over 50 years of age. Many
are single parents with small
children. But there are no jobs
available for them and no
creches or day care centres
where they can leave their

children if they should be able to
get a job.

But none of this makes any
difference to our Gracie. She
has simply cut them off welfare
as of November 1. And if they

can’t get jobs; she has told them

they can Re to get back on
welfare and she might let them
back on temporarily, but they
have to take cuts of $35 to $55.a
month on their already
miserably low welfare
allowances.

Just think what such a cut
would mean to people who
already have to subsidize their
rents out of their food
allowance!

Our Gracie has the gall to tell
taxpayers that this program is
designed to provide ‘‘an oppor-
tunity to every employable per-
son in our province’’ and she
dismisses all opposition to her
cruel act as NDP-inspired pro-
paganda. What could be more
callous, and more untrue!

She doesn’t display the same
insensitivity when it comes to
providing business oppor-
tunities for her business
associates. She’s out hustling all
the time trying to raise funds
from Ottawa, the National Har-
bors Board and city council for

McCarthy cuts from needy | |
to foot bills for greedy

her pet project, the Trade and
Convention Centre, which she
told us would cost only $25
million and now has a price tag
of $100 million. For her
business friends she shows the
greatest concern.

Why are Gracie and the
government she represents so
intent on saving money at the
expense of the poor? What will
be done with the money she
saves? Will it go to the Trade
and Convention Centre or B.C.
Place? Will it be used to help
finance the coal giveaway in the
north to Canadian and
Japanese multinationals?
That’s a cabinet secret.

There are some things that
could be done for the people on
welfare, but they are the op-
posite of what Gracie is doing
today. Positive measures should
include:

@ Raising welfare rates to a
level that would enable people
on welfare to live like decent
human beings;

@ Recognize that mothers’

with small children have the
right to stay with these children
in their early years.

@ Establish along range pro-
gram of training employable
people so that they can get the
kind of jobs that mBy. be
available.

@ Help them get iobs once
they are trained;

@ Provide creches and day
care centres for the small
children of working parents at
rates they can afford.

STEVE GIDORA (left) .
Movement, discusses with Jim Carion (centre), Birch Housing Co-op
director, and Frank Izzard, B.C. Tenants Association secretary, the merits
of co-op housing. SAM school board candidate is Viola Swann, longtime
Surrey resident widely known for her work in community and sports
organizations.

; anvceiy cancidae for Surrey Alternate

Options Comox issue

Describing Comox city council’s
recent decision to change its pro-
perty tax base from Option A to
Option D as ‘‘a move to shift still
more of the tax burden from
business to homeowners,” Fred
Pearson, widely known
throughout the north Island as a
campaigner for environmental and
other progressive causes, announc-
ed his candidacy for alderman in
the Nov. 21 municipal elections.

“‘Of the three options, A, C and
D, Option D most heavily favors
industry and business,’’ Pearson
declared. ‘‘Council’s argument in
making the change is that business
now pays 17 percent of total taxes
while constituting only 8.6 percent
of the assessment basé. But this
fails to take into account the fact
that much of business is under-
assessed and benefits from a range

_ of exemptions.”

Pearson, a general executive
board member of the UFAWU
and president of its Deep Bay
Local, said he would make action
on the stalled Courtenay-Comox

Sewage system a major issue in his

campaign.

“The committee’s proposal was
to dump raw sewage into Georgia
Strait,’ he pointed out. ‘The
pollution control branch vetoed
that and ordered secondary treat-
ment after citizens forced a public
hearing.

“The project has been stalled for
three years and costs are escalating
by $600,000 a year. We have to
fight for provincial assistance, for
without it connection costs will rise
from $100 to $260, but council uses
costs as the excuse for its inaction
while citizens fume over the
delay.”

ncreasingly over the past half century as the trade union

movement has grown in strength and maturity, corpora-
tion presidents, professors and politicians of various stripes .
have been advancing ideas for regulating labor-
management relations. However they differed, their com-
mon thesis was that strikes were outmoded as a means of
resolving labor disputes and their common intent was to
limit or deny workers in law the use of their ultimate weapon
— withdrawal of their services.

Delegates to Kamloops and District Labor Council at
their September meeting heard a new variation of this theme
from Nelson A. Riis, new Democratic MP for Kamloops-
Shuswap. In his view, people in all segments of society are
dissatisfied with the present state of labor-management rela-
tions, the large number of strikes and lockouts, and the
economic consequences to those affected but not directly in-
volved. Not all blame labor, but labor becomes the

Oat.

Offering what he described as his modest proposals for
reducing the number of work stoppages while preserving the
right to free collective bargaining, Riis admittedly had a
novel approach although the effect would still be to limit use
of the strike weapon.

Under his scheme, operations would continue
throughout the first 10 weeks of a strike or-lockout, with
employees reporting for work as usual. The major part of
company revenues and workers’ wages would be deposited
in a venture capital fund, less a minimum amount required
for plant operations and workers’ subsistence.

If the dispute were resolved in the first week, the company
would get 100 percent of revenues and workers 100 percent
of wages returned, with a progressive reduction of 10 per-
cent each week the dispute continued, and at the end of the
10-week period a full strike or lockout would take effect and
workers would take to the picket lines.

This process, as Riis envisages it, would be supervised by a
20-member commission, established by ‘‘using similar pro-
cedures as presently employed to appoint arbitration
boards,”’ whose responsibility would be ‘‘to assist the com-
pany and the union to operate within the spirit of the pro-
posed legislation.”’

Whatever amount withheld from company revenues and
workers’ wages was retained in the venture capital fund
would be used to provide venture risk capital for new
manufacturing industries, preferably labor intensive.

Riis told delegates that his intention was ‘“‘to initiate
discussion and dialogue,’’ asking them to study his pro-
‘posals and give him their opinions at the October meeting.

He got some opinions immediately. CUPE Local 900

business agent Bill Ferguson told him his picpesis were far
too simplistic an approach to a complex problem. And
Carpenters Local 1540 business agent John Harper said
bluntly that they would not work.

We note that Riis apologized to Ades for having
neglected their affairs, promising to attend their meetings in
future whenever he could. It would seem to be a good idea if
he wants to know their opinions about the problems of in-
flation and high interest rates which are causing the strikes in
the first place.

* *k *

ou could say that Tribune editor pa Griffin is a

casualty of the federal government’s energy conserva-
tion program. Informed that it would take 18 years to
recover the cost of adding insulation to his home but con-
cerned about the soaring cost of gas heating, he was putting
up storm windows over the Thanksgiving weekend when the
ladder slipped from under him.

Despite what proved to be a deeply gashed and broken
knee, he picked himself up, climbed his back steps, walked
through the house, got into his car and asked his wife to
drive him to the hospital, all in order not to alarm his son.

At this time of writing he is in Vancouver General
Hospital, encased in a cast from hip to foot after an hour-
long operation. He’s expecting to be discharged before this
reaches most of our readers, but it will be some weeks before
he is back at his desk.

* eR
ee Columbia’s forest industry, beset by contracting
markets and widespread layoffs and facing the conse-
quences of reckless cutting and belated reforestation, now
faces a new threat.

The report just handed down by a parliamentary commit-
tee notes that precipitation monotoring stations in the Van-
couver area have measured rainfall acidity four and five
times the amount in normal rainfall, and at the Haney
forestry research centre up to 10 times the normal amount.

‘Reflecting the concern over the effect on forests and
fisheries on the south coast (but hardly by the provincial
government which did not appear before the committee),
the report says:

“Thre is no consensus about the source of British Colum-
bia’s acid rain. It is possible that local industries and motor
vehicles are responsible, but there is a theory that some, at
least, is due to Jarge polluted air masses drifting across the

Pacific Ocean from Japan.”’

It’s hardly a comforting thought that the more coal we
ship to Japan, the greater the pollution we can expect in
return.

* *
|b fearon he to Vancouver city council have no trouble
finding out who their friends are these days, because if
they represent the labor movement or people’s organiza-
tions they are likely to be insulted and abused by the right
wing politicians still in a majority at 12th Ave. and Cambie.

The Telecommunications Workers Union found that out
two weeks ago when they approached city hall to present a
10-minute slide tape show to council members on ‘‘Opera-
tion Interconnect.”

Interconnect is a plan presently before the federal CRTC
Commission to permit ‘‘competition”’ in the areas of sales
and servicing of telephones. However, the union warns that
what really is involved is a restructuring of telephone charges
to eliminate internal subsidizing and balancing of costs
which, for example, maintain telephone repairs free of
charge. Interconnect means that repairs and other servicing
will be billed according to an hourly rate of $37.50 or more.

Mayor Mike Harcourt had received the union’s request
and referred it to the standing committee on community ser-
vices, usually chaired by ald. Harry Rankin.:At the meeting
at which the TWU was to appear, Rankin was absent and
ald. Nathan Divinsky was in the chair. Together with NPA
ald. George Puil and Don Bellamy, Divinsky refused to hear
the TWU delegation and had a motion rammed through to
refer the delegation back to the mayor’s office to be heard by
the mayor at his convenience.

In council last week, a furious Harry Rankin attacked the
NPA’ers for their actions, charging they had insulted the
union and the mayor. The NPA’ers were beside themselves
attempting to rationalize their action, claiming they had no
advance notice of the delegation and were uninformed
about the issue, and that no insult was intended. Rankin
pointed out that a brief from the union on the issue was at-
tached to their committee agenda, and he restated what was
obvious — the referral back to the mayor’s office was a
chippy insult to the union and the mayor.

Finally, NPA ald. George Puil admitted, ‘‘perhaps it was
aninsult.’’ And he went on to say that the insult was justified
because of the strident tone of the TWU brief to council
which had the audacity to state that the union favored na-
tionalization of B.C. Telephone. ‘

However, Rankin’s sharp condemnation of the action
resulted in a unanimous vote to hear the TWU delegation at
a full council meeting Oct. 20.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 16, 1981—Page 2