Continued from page 1

While the pickets were up July
4, a seven person delegation led by
Don Lee, human rights director
for the Ontario Federation of
Labor, met with Tory external af-
fairs ministers Flora MacDonald
to demand the government cancel
its sale of Candu_ nuclear
technology to Argentina, and
press the fascist government there
to release immediately 17 political
prisoners, some of whom have
been held since 1974.

The delegation, which included
representatives from the Canadian
Union of Public Employees, the
United Church of Canada, the
United Auto Workers, the Inter-
national Association of
Machinists, the OFL, and the No
Candu for Argentina Committee,
also pressed MacDonald to urge
the Tories to speed up the govern-
ment’s program to provide asylum
for 100 Argentinian refugees.

To date only one person has
been allowed to leave the country
= the agreement between

‘Docker's solidarity backs
labor rights in Argentina

Argentina and Canada. The
military dictatorship isn’t anxious
to release people who could bear
witness to the repression and
vicious oppression being inflicted
on the working people of Argen-
tina.

MacDonald’s response to the
delegation was characterized by
Don Lee as ‘‘non-committal.’’ He
said the group reminded her of the
new commitments she promised to
bring to her responsibilities as ex-
ternal affairs minister in the field
of human rights and nuclear non-
proliferation.

“We said acting on our
demands in this issue would
enable her to strike at both objec-
tives at the same time,”’ Lee said.
But the minister’s response was to
say that the matter had to be settl-
ed at the international level and
that Canada had to honor its con-
tracts with Argentina.

In addition to the half hour in-
terview with MacDonald, the
delegation met with the first
secretary of the Argentinian em-

bassy to advance the same
demands.

The New Brunswick action
unleashed a flood of more than 50
telegrams and messages of sup-
port from labor and other
organizations across the country.
OFL president Cliff Pilkey called
the demonstration ‘‘a powerful
expression of solidarity with our
sisters and brothers in Argentina’’
and said the labor movement
would not stand by ‘‘while the
government and Atomic Energy
of Canada feed the economic and
military power of a regime bent on
the destruction of any movement
for freedom in Argentina.”’
Art Jenkyn, director of
organization for the
20,000-member United Electrical
Workers, called the action ‘‘an
outstanding display of our bonds
with working people in other
countries and will broaden the de-
mand in Canada for a halt to the
sale of Candus until labor and
other democratic rights are
restored in Argentina.’’

Hall report vindicates C UPE in Kootenays

Dr. Noel Hall’s arbitration report
in the West Kootenay School.
dispute has completely vindicated
the position of the Canadian Union
of Public Employees and has sharp-
ly criticized the accredited
employer, the B.C. School Trustees
Association.

But according to CUPE
spokesman John Calvert, Hail’s
report also throws into question the
actions of the Social Credit govern-
ment in legislating an end to the
strike-lockout in December of last
year, and in bringing in the sweep-
ing extensions to essential services
legislation which accompanied it.

“Williams and McGeer have
some accounting to do,’’ Calvert

said of the Socred labor and educa-
tion ministers in an_ interview
Wednesday. ‘‘Now that the union
has been exonerated from respon-
sibility in this dispute, and most of
the its demands judged fair and
granted, they should be asked to ex-
plain to the public why they carried
out that legislation. And given that
the union is not at fault, how can
they justify keeping that anti-labor
legislation on the books?’’

The 250 Kootenay school board
employees were legislated back to
work December 8 of last year after
six weeks. Just prior to legislation
being introduced in the legislature,
CUPE had offered to the BCSTA
to lift its picket lines and continue

negotiations. Although the BCSTA
negotiators agreed to the proposal,
it quickly reversed its decision, pro-
mpting charges from the labor
movement that the Socred cabinet
had intervened because it wanted
the dispute to continue as a pretense
to introduce Bill 46, extending
essential services legislation to cover
all employees of colleges, school
boards, municipalities, regional
districts and water improvement
districts.

Hall was appointed as the sole ar-
bitrator in the dispute between the
BCSTA and five CUPE locals in the
West Kootenays. After a series of
five arbitration hearings, Hall’s
final report released Monday grants

BCTF demands review of funding
as board backs teachers firing

The action by a Vancouver:
Catholic school in firing a teacher
who married a Protestant, upheld
this week by a provincial human
rights board decision, has sparked
demands’ for re-examination of
public funding of Catholic schools.

Al Blakey, president of the B.C.
Teachers’ Federation, called on the
provincial government to re-
examine government funding of
private schools following the an-
nouncement of the human rights
board judgment Friday.

The board ruled two to one
against an appeal by Margaret
Caldwell, a Catholic teacher who
was dismissed from St. Thomas
Aquinas High School in North Van-
couver because of her civil marriage
to a divorced Protestant, Ron
Caldwell.

In ruling on the case which was
heard in May, the board accepted
the school’s contention that, be-
cause of the special nature of
Catholic schools, St. Thomas
Aquinas was justified in dismissing
a teacher who did not live up to Ca-
tholic belief and law. U n d er Ca-
tholic law, a civil marriage is not
recognized and marriagetoa
divorced person is considered
bigamous.

“In this case taxpayers are being
forced to pay for religious in-
tolerance,’’ Blakey said, pointing
out that St. Thomas Aquinas, in ac-
cepting public funds under the
terms of the Independent Schools

Support Act, ‘‘also accepted that
clause in the Act that says publicly-
funded school may not promote
religious intolerance.

“I think it is rather sickening,’’
he said. ‘‘Mrs. Caldwell, a
Catholic, is being fired in this day
and age for marrying a Protestant
and the government financially sup-
ports such intolerance.’’

Blakey said that the BCTF has in-
sisted that the decision of the
Human Rights Board be appealed
immediately and that the govern-
ment ‘‘re-examine its policy of fun-
ding Catholic schools in -this pro-
vince.””

Provincial human rights director
Kathleen Ruff had earlier called on
labor minister Allan Williams,
whose ministry is responsible for
human rights, to appeal what she
called a ‘“‘devastating decision
which will set human rights legisla-
tion back 10 years.”’

Ruff said Friday that the Board’s
decision threw into doubt the validi-
ty of existing human rights legisla-
tion and warned that it could open
the way for widespread abuse.

“‘Now they can say religion is a
bona fide qualification for employ-
ment and want only Catholics for
the jobs,’’ she noted, ‘‘or that sex is
a bona fide qualification and want
only men...”’

Under present legislation,
discriminatory preference can be
given to one group of people if it

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 13, 1979—Page 8

can be demonstrated that such
preference is based on ‘‘bona fide
qualifications.”

In its ruling Friday, the human
rights board stated, ‘‘. . .this board
concludes that religion and marital
status can be considered as bona
fide qualifications in respect of
employment.”’

Ruff also raised the question of
government funding for Catholic

schools pointing out that the human -

rights board made no response
whatsoever to the arguments
presented by Caldwell’s lawyer,
David Vickers, that St. Thomas
Aquinas could not practice religious
intolerance if it was receiving public
funds. The school receives approx-
imately $500 per student from the
provincial government. under the
terms of the Independent Schools
Support Act.

This week, the New Democratic
Party opposition raised the issue in
the Legislature with Vancouver
Centre NDP MLA Gary Lauk call-
ing for the withdrawal of funding
from St.. Thomas Aquinas.

The demand for a review of
public funding for independent
schools was earlier raised in May of
1978 when it was revealed that some
Catholic parishes were withholding
church grants from schools upon
the receipt of public funds. The ac-
tion had the effect of making the
public grants a direct subsidy to the
church—in violation of the con-
Stitutional principle of separation
of church and state.

CUPE almost all of its demands, in-
cluding its full wage demand of 10
percent in the first year and six per-
cent in the second_year of the con-
tract, and the union’s demand for
separate agreements with the school
boards and Selkirk College.

The arbitration report indirectly
puts the blame for the dispute on
the employers and broadly suggests
that the school boards’ accredita-
tion with the BCSTA was a major
factor in provoking the. strike.
Through three pages of the report,
Hall speaks of the ‘‘fundamental
instability of the BCSTA’’ which
saw four different negotiators head
its bargaining team in less than six
months. Hall recommended that
the Kootenay school boards look
seriously at a non-accredited joint
bargaining structure along the lines
of the Fraser Valley school boards.
' “The message of t h e award is.
clear: accreditation is not
working,’” Calvert said in a state-
ment Monday. ‘‘The comments

' made on the damage accreditation

has done to collective bargaining in
the West. Kootenays have a wider
application throughout the public
sector.”’

Hall’s criticism of the BCSTA ac-
creditation take on a_ special
relevance as they coincide with the
issuing of a policy document recom-
mending accreditation for school
boards, sent by the BCSTA to every
school board in the province.

Although the arbitration report
generally supported CUPE’s posi-
tion, ‘‘the union does not believe
that this interest arbitration or any
other arbitration can give
employees justice,’’ Calvert empha-
sized. The wage demands may have
been appropriate a year ago, but af-
ter the lengthy delays of the back-
to-work legislation and the arbitra-
tion, inflation has already eaten

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away the real value of the award
said, and West Kootenay schi
board employees still trail beh
municipal employees and _ pri
sector employees in wages.
“Hall did a reasonable job iff
bad system,’’ Calvert added, “B
cause interest arbitrations deny
ployees their basic right of free
lective bargaining, employe) |
always suffer as a result of such Ié
islation. It is time the provin¢
government woke up to the f
that essential service legislation
wrong and took measures to abolls
it. ”

Continued from page 1

the terms of the proposed pa¢é
urge a return to the ‘no contract,
work’ stand. The coast agreem
expired June 15. F

A meeting of some 1,400 LO
1-85 members in Port Alberni
day heard virtually every speak’
the floor voice dissatisfaction W
the pact because of the lack of ©?
of-living protection and the in
quacy of the second-year incr

The executive board of the 10
had itself voted against the proP
ed agreement, overturning an
ier officers’ 5-1 vote in favor.

Complicating the situation
Port Alberni was the contin!
shutdown of the MacMillan Blo
mill and members’ anger at ©
failure of the local meeting to

duct a membership vote on a ret!
to work. Instead, mainten i?
workers, who had initially set ov
picket lines, held their ‘
meeting to decide whether of
to lift pickets.

The results of that meeting ¥
not known at press time-

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