eer CHANGEC:
USSR Vi IANGES:

JOBS, ENVIRONMENT:

The second Tin-Wis
conference set for October will
offer unionists and
environmentalists a chance to
chart a new future.

— page 8

The impact of perestroika is
changing the political
landscape of the Soviet Union,
with more changes in the
CPSU to come.

— page 6

July 9, 1990
50 cents
Volume 53, No. 25

PNE back
on track
following
protesis

A management decision to cancel this
year’s Pacific National Exhibition show was
overtumed July 3 after a huge public outcry
over the refusal to consider a no-strike
pledge from the union representing PNE
workers.

And potential embarrassment forced the
provincial government to step into the dis-
pute and press management to continue the
fair for 1990, union official Gary Johnson
said.

The Canadian Union of Public
Employees, Local 1004, will not picket any
PNE-related event, and instead concentrate
on the National Hockey League season after
the PNE ends if no settlement is reached by
then, said the local business agent.

The union has proposed a resumption of
negotiations “as soon as (mediator) Vince
Ready can call the parties together,” Johnson
said.

Union and management have held 20
meetings since the last contract expired Dec.
31, including a marathon 48-hour session
June 22-23. “At the close of that weekend, it
became clear that the negotiating committee

see CUPE page 2

Psychiatric nurses Margaret Varcoe (I), Joan Carpenter and Sandra Coast occupy tent erected inside
boardroom of administration building at Woodlands mental health facility in New Westminster. Some
35-40 members of the Union of Psychiatric Nurses and the B.C. Nurses Union were maintaining
occupation last week to protest managements’s failure to adhere to minimum staffing levels sought
and won at the Industrial Relations Council. some 2,400 nurses at mental facilities around B.C. have
been on strike for four weeks in bid to close the wage gap between themselves and general hospital
Aobeseet and to achieve job security provisions against Socred “downsizing” of mental health care
nstitutes.

Psychiatric nurses are tired of being treated like second-class

citizens, a union spokesperson said during an occupation of Wood-
lands mentally handicapped facility in New Westminster last week.

Members of the striking Union of Psychiatric Nurses and the B.C.
Nurses Union entered the administration building of the facility June
30, to protest employers’ failure to meet minimum emergency
staffing levels sought at and granted by the Industrial Relations
Council. They were vowing to stand pat, even in an anticipated
injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court came down by the week’s
end.

The key issue in the strike is wages. Some 1,200 UPN members,
and an almost equal number of BCNU members employed at
government-run facilities around the province, struck June 12 after
failing to achieve an agreement to close the gap between their wages
and those of general hospital nurses.

But other issues include job security and retraining as the Social
Credit government continues its “downsizing” program aimed at
closing several facilities and tuming patients over to privately-run
programs — creating a two-tiered system of mental health care and
threatening the livelihoods of thousands of health care workers.

“The idea is to get people off the payroll,” said Stewart Johnson,
union spokesperson and one of those occupying the Woodlands
administrative offices.

see NURSES page 3

i Te