_ | jobs for B.C.’s workers.

Housing,
jobs for
BC—Rush

A job-intensive, public hous-
ing construction program can
put B.C.’s unemployed back to
work, B.C. Communist Party
leader Maurice Rush told Van-
couver Island residents in a
series of public meetings this
week.

Rush said workers in B.C.’s
ailing forest and construction
industries could be on the job if
a $0,000-home construction
program and a $100 million
reforestation project were im-
plemented. The provincial
government could find the
money be cancelling its con-
troversial northeastern coal deal
said the C.P. leader, who ad-
dressed workers in Nanaimo,
Port Alberni, Campbell River,
Courtenay and Victoria Mar. 19
to 22..-

In his address, ‘‘Give Us
Back Our Jobs,”’ Rush also call-
ed for an ammendment to the
B.C. Forest Act requiring com-
panies leasing Crown lands to
guarantee jobs for forest
workers on the lands and
reinvest profits from forest cut-
tings back into B.C.

Rush demanded nationaliza-
tion of resource industries and
the creation of mineral- and
forest-related manufacturing to
end B.C.’s role as a raw
materials exporter and save the

There’s an outfit in the Lower
Mainland called Human Action To
Limit Taxes (HALT). Actually,
despite its fine sounding name
which is only a disguise, it’s just a
front for big corporations that
want to take over municipal ser-
vices such as garbage collection
that are now being carried out by
municipal employees. Private con-
tractors are already picking up
about 50 percent of the garbage
collected in the city. They’re not
satisfied with that — they want it
all.

The private contractor that is
trying to get our garbage collection
business is Haul-Away Disposal.
But it’s just a front too — it’s own-
ed and controlled by Laidlaw
Transportation Limited of Hamil-
ton and is one of the three biggest
garbage collecting companies in
Canada. Haul-Away hasn’t been
able to get our residential garbage
collection business. Wisely the city
has turned down its demands and
offers more than once.

The fact is that no private con-
tractor can provide the same service
at the same price as the city. The
private contractors are out to make
a profit. The city can do it at cost.
It’s as simple as that.

But now we have HALT coming
to the aid of the private contrac-
tors. Not lacking in arrogance, it

And he called the provincial
budget and wage restraint pro-
gram a Social Credit attempt,
“to balance the budget on the
backs of government
employees, school kids, the
sick, and old people.”’

The B.C. Communist leader
also called for cuts to the federal
government’s ‘‘disastrous’’
high interest rates, and for
unemployment insurance
benefits at 90 percent of normal
weekly pay for the duration of
the unemployment period.

Communist solutions to the
country’s crises are receiving
more attention, Rush also said.

In an interview with a
Nanaimo newspaper, Rush said
increased demand for CP
speakers ‘“‘reflects the fact that
people are realizing the capitalist
system is in a crisis and needs

more than just bandaid solu- | has demanded that the city provide
tions.”” Nanaimo’s local Cable | it with a detailed statement of gar-
10 station was slated to broad- | bage collection costs, claiming that
cast Rush’s entire speech. the figures already provided by the

Carnegie Centre head Jim McDow
Committee’s campaign to get 52 percent of Downtown Eastside
voters to the polls in this year’s Vancouver civic elections. Six pub-
lic meetings and other events are planned. For information phone

City resists ‘gar

BRITISH COLUMBIA
cca —__. Teachers, students,
unions form group
to fight restraints

1@

city are inaccurate. Its claims have
been proven false. It wants the city
to itemize the cost of garbage col-
lection on its tax notices, which is
just plain stupid. It wants the city to
make a study of North American
municipalities where private con-
tractors pick up garbage, hoping,
no doubt, that the figures will show
that the private contractors doit for
less. The city has made a study of
costs in Surrey, where Haul-Away
picks up the garbage, and found (to
quote the report of council’s stan-
ding committee on finance and ad-
ministration) that ‘‘Vancouver

Harry

| Rankin

costs are less than the contract costs
in Surrey in spite of the more dif-
ficult collection situation in Van-

couver because of greater traffic

congestion.”’

HALT also demanded that the
city withdraw from night service
and container service and turn over
part or all of its residential garbage
collection service to private con-
tractors. The city engineer has
recommended and council has
agreed that no action be taken on
these demands of HALT trying to
tell us how to run our business.

TRIBUNE PHOTO—DAN ‘KEETON ~

ell kicks off the Double the Vote

Six organizations representing
142,000 teachers, students and edu-
cation workers in B.C. have band-
ed together in a coalition to fight
the provincial government’s wage
and budget controls program.

Spokespersons for the newly-
founded Defend Educational Ser-
vices Coalition said their first ac-
tion would be to inform the public
about the declining quality of edu-
cation resulting from the 12 percent
increase restraints on school bud-
gets imposed by the Social Credit
program.
' Program cuts, increased tuition,
layoffs and low wages will be the
result of premier Bennett’s con-
trols, said representatives for the
coalition which comprises the

bage’ bid

Each time HALT is presented
with facts and figures showing
clearly that Vancouver operates
one of the most-efficient garbage
collection services in the country, it
comes back with further submis-
sions demanding more studies and
more proof. The city has wasted
hundreds of hours and thousands
of dollars complying with its
demands. It’s time we called a halt
to its antics.

Local 1004 of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees, which
represents Outside workers
employed by the city, has proposed

that a ‘“‘joint union-management
committee be struck to examine the
garbage collection service in order
to discover and implement ways of
providing the highest quality and
cost-efficiency.’’ It states: further
that the union, ‘‘is committed to
examining all aspects of this ser-
vice, including scheduling, routes,
levels of service, equipment,
method of operation and any other
relevant factors.’’

With such a positive attitude by
municipal employees, we can’t go
wrong by keeping the garbage col-
lection business in our own hands.

R eaders will notice in alderman Harry Rankin’s column on this page
WX that Haul-Away Disposal Ltd., has been actively lobbying Van-
couver council to convince aldermen that he really could collect gar-
But Vancouver hasn’t been the only target: Haul-Away has been put-
ting pressure on councils in several cities and municipalities. And just
last week, Haul-Away president Len Remple went back to North Van-
couver council to convinced aldermen that he really could collect gar-
bage more cheaply than city workers — and to remind the council just
which side it would be on if it didn’t take his suggestions.

According to Remple, garbage collection is on the front lines in the
world battle of ideologies.

: Actually he had been to council Mar. 8 to tender a price for “‘priva-
tizing”’ municipal collection. But when the city said it could do the
work itself at a lower cost, Remple turned up at the following meeting
on Mar. 15 to insist that he could do it at less than city cost.

In case councillors weren’t convinced by financial considerations, he
lectured them on the real issue at stake. According to the North Shore
News, he suggested that a vote against private contracting-out was ‘‘a
vote for communism.”’ To illuminate his point, he recited a homily

about a friend who was planning a trip and found that a Soviet liner
would provide the best transportation value. But he refused ‘‘to give
money to the Russians,’’ Remple said, because that would be support-

ing communism.

Since council voted to defer any action on the matter, Remple will

probably be back to try again. And who knows? Maybe next time he’ll
bring Alexander Haig in with him.
Mee eo Pg ey

Ww e havea note from Freda Knott in Victoria telling us that Danny
1 Thibodeau, a long-time supporter of the Tribune, passed away in
Victoria hospital Mar. 14. He was 85.

Born in Nova Scotia the eldest of nine children, he moved to Saskat-
chewan while still in his 20s and farmed there for 30 years. In 1946 he
moved to Duncan on Vancouver Island where he joined the Commun-
ist Party, remaining a member until his death. An active supporter of
the Tribune, he distributed the paper for many years until illness forced

him to retire.

Danny is survived by his wife Marjorie and his son James, as well as
several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A memorial service
was to be arranged later and the family has asked that any donations in

lieu of flowers be made to the Victoria Peace Council at 2745 Fifth

Street, Victoria.

* *

he said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 26, 1982— Page 2

y

3,000-member B.C. Teachers’
Federation; the 70,000-membet
Canadian Federation of Students;
the Canadian Union of Public Em-
ployees, with 2,500 members; and
the Vancouver Municipal and Re
gional Employees Union, which
has 1,250 of its 4,000 members
working in Vancouver’s secondary
and post-secondary education in
stitutions. :

The establishment of the coalt
tion comes just after the recent
march in Vancouver to protest edu-
cation spending cuts Mar. 12, of
ganized by five of the groups.

Informing-the public about the
effects of the restraint program,
and lobbying MLAs are the int
mediate priorities of the coalition.
Political action may follow if pre
dictions that Bennett may soon ca!
an election are true.

““We’ve joined with othef
groups in education because thé
budget cuts demanded by Victoria
are going to hurt everyone. They’ ré
especially going to hurt kids. You
can’t chop $30 million out of ak
ready tight school board budgets
without badly damaging pro
grams,’’ said BCTF president
Larry Kuehn. He noted that the
Kamloops board has already al
nounced cuts which will scrap sp
cial programs, create bigger classe _
and cut 40 teachers and 15 support
staff. ;

If other boards follow suit, 1,300
teachers could be laid off province-
wide, he said. So far many school
boards and their organization, thé
B.C. School Trustees Association,
have refused to implement cuts un-
til the program becomes legisla
tion.

CFS representative Gordon
Moore said four years of undet-
funding from Victoria has bar
many students from receiving 4
“post-secondary education becausé
of increased tuitions. And it fits
government plans to ‘‘change the
face’’ of education into short-term
job training for industry and gov
ernment at the expense of gene
arts programs, he said.

His remarks were echoed by
Gordon Bryenton of the collegé
faculty association who, with
Moore, also stressed the particu-
larly negative effects of cuts on thé
Interior and northern B.C. colk
eges. ‘By cutting programs which
are not ‘cost-effective,’ the govern
ment forces students in the outsidé
regions to move to the Lowél
Mainland, which is a very costly
venture for low-income people,

The controls program als?
threatens free collective bargaining
and ‘‘the hard-won gains of all ul
ions in the public sector,”’ he said-

Owen Dykstra of CUPE said the
cuts will mean the ‘“‘physical detet-
ioration’”? of schools, while thé
VMREU president David Cadmat
reiterated comments already made —
by the Vancouver school
that the Socred restraints will mea
the end of special programs for
needy students.

The livelihood of school workef$
will be threatened through layoffs
and loss of jobs through attrition
according to Lid Strand of AUCE:
He said the Socred wage restraints
take deliberate aim at the wages of
women, who constitute about °F
percent of AUCE’s membership