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City workers i :

Vancouver’s outside civic
workers are concerned about the
threat of losing many of their jobs
through contracting out — and

ing something about it.
They aremembers of Local 1004 of

the Canadian Union of Public

Employees and withthe help of the
national office of their union, they
have been carrying on an educa-
tional campaign among their
members and making representa-
tions to Vancouver city council.

In a circular published last July
they listed the following types of
work traditionally performed by
their members which are now being
done in large part by private con-
tractors:

City of Vancouver: Road

S.A. strike
leader here

Thozamile Botha, the Black
civic leader and trade unionist
whose forced resignation from
‘Ford Motor of South Africa
touched off an historic three-
month strike is scheduled to be
in Vancouver Nov. 18 and 19.
He will address a public meeting
Nov. 19, 8 p.m. at the Iron-
workers Hall, 8th and Colum-
bia in Vancouver.

Botha was the chairman and
a founding leader of the Port
Elizabeth Black Civic Organiza-
tion which, following its
establishment in October, 1979,
brought as many as 10,000 peo-
ple to its campaign meetings on
Black civic issues.

He was hounded by both the
police and Ford and was finally
forced to leave his job as a result
of his leadership of PEBCO,
sparking the strike which de-
manded his reinstatement and
the resolution of longstanding
grievances. It ended in January,
1979 with Ford accepting the
workers’ demands, including
Botha’s reinstatement.

Botha was arrested shortly
thereafter, however, and
following his release after seven
weeks detention, fled the coun-
try. His tour has. particular
significance in this country since
Ford South Africa is a direct
subsidiary of Ford Motors of

and civilian vehicles for the
apartheid government.

Canada and produces military | -

repairs, black topping, curb con-
struction, refuse collection (com-
mercial and apartments), construc-
tion and maintenance. Included in
this list was the excessive use of
hired trucks and construction

Vancouver Parks Board: parks

construction, landscaping and
ground maintenance,
prefabricating and erecting and

Pacific National Exhibition
Board: events preparation, display
area maintenance, building con-
struction and maintenance and
road construction and
maintenance.

Last summer, the 2,000-member
local union decided to call its
members to a study session on the
issue of contracting out and the
auditorium of John Oliver High
School was booked for the event.

However, the city of Vancouver,
the Vancouver Parks Board and
the Pacific National Exhibition
went to the Labor Relations Board
and charged the union with
violating the collective agreement
by counselling an illegal work stop-
page.

As a result, the local union ex-
ecutive and CUPE representative
appeared before the Labor Rela-
tions Board on July 15 and 16, to
answer to the complaints. The
board, looking for a compromise
short of issuing a cease and desist
order, offered to appoint two of its
members to discuss the problem
with the union and its employers.
The union agreed and called off the
study session, but only after the city
the Park Board, and the PNE
agreed, with some reluctance.
However, it continued its cam-
paign against contracting out.

On July 22, city council voted
10-1 to reject a proposal by the
privately-owned Haul-Away
Disposal Company to take over 50
percent of residential garbage col-
lection. This was an important vic-
tory for the local union, which has
appeared before city councill and
presented a brief which prepared in

conjunction with the national
research office of their union. The
fact that the brief was presented by
aresearch officer from the national
office demonstrated two things.
First, that contracting out is a na-
tional problem for Canada’s
largest trade union. Second, that
the local union has the backing of
the national office.

In August of this year, the cur-
rent issue of the Union News-
bulletin, published by the local
union, carried two significant ar-
ticles on their struggle against con-
tracting out. Sr

The first article by Don

Boudreau, an executive member.

employed as a truck driver in the
sewers branch, made this point:
“City council’s right to contract
out cannot be infringed upon by
the Labor Relations Board, nor
would a court interfere on our
behalf, mainly because nothing in
our collective agreement prohibits
contracting out. In other words, it
must be understood that no matter
how favorable a report the Labor
Relations Board arrives at — the
outcome will probably not affect
city council’s attitude. Only mili-
tant action by the membership
along with good public relations
will accomplish that. The best we
can hope for is that a favorable out-
come of the investigation will point
out that we civic workers can do
just as good or better work at less
cost than private contractors;
thereby giving support to our briefs
to city council and an argument to
use in our advertising campaign to
inform the taxpayer that contrac-
ting out means higher taxes.”’

Further, the. article states:
“Management has to realize that
our jobs are not negotiable, and
that we have no intention of stan-
ding by and watching our jobs
disappear. We are going to fight on
until contracting out is at a

“There may be times when it is
necessary tc hire outside equip-
ment and manpower on a very
short term basis, but certainly not
to the degree that it is happening
right now. The executive has a
record of the various amounts paid
out to each contractor in 1979. and
earlier years. The amounts in a
good number of instances were
enough for the city to have bought
new equipment, met the payroll to
run the equipment and still shown a

Continued from page 1
pack, and not only that, we are
going to get the right to bargain
for things like pensions.

“It’s our turn to have those
rights which other employees
around this province have, to be-
come first class citizens instead of
second class citizens.”’

Teachers were reminded by
former BCTF president Adam
Robertson, that in 1971 ‘‘teachers
turned their backs on classroom
duties,”’ in a provincial, one-day
strike: to demand adequate
adjustments to existing pensions.

He noted that the teachers
played an important role in
ousting the W. A. C. Bennett
government, by “‘tarnishing his
image as a benefactor of senior
citizens.””

Fresher in teachers’ minds were
the series of province-wide pen-
sion rallies staged by the B.C.
Government

at

Employees Union _

 BCTF sets action on

. which won their exemption from

Bill 29 which puts an eight percent
ceiling on pension increases.

Passed in June, Bill 29 discon-
tinued the quarterly indexing of
teachers’ pensions tied to the con-
sumer price index Jan. 1, 1981
and substituted one annual in-
crease. That increase is based on’
the amount accumulated in a
special inflation fund over the
previous 12 months through
payroll deductions (one percent
of teachers’ salaries) and a mat-
ching contribution from the
government plus interest.

“The government says that
pension funds are in trouble and
that it’s not possible to go along
with indexing,’’ Blakey said.
‘But let’s look at who has been
fiscally irresponsible.

“The money we put into the
pension kitty didn’t go into in-
dustrial bonds but into govern-

ment bonds, B.C. Rail, B.C. Hy-_

e \
pensions

dro and other gilt-edged invest-
ments.”’

_ He noted that while teachers’
pension funds were getting 7.81
percent on their investments, in-
dustrial bonds were giving returns
of around 8.46 percent.

Blakey projected the pension
action plan of one of the.79 teach-
er locals as a blueprint of the kind
of job action the BCTF would be
launching. “‘It will mean the with-
drawal of extracurricular ac-
tivities in January, work-to-rule
in February with study sessions
sprinkled in, and a one- to five-
day strike in March,”’ he declar-
ed.

This week, Blakey said he
would not attend a meeting with
Wolfe proposed by the minister
Saturday because teachers are
tired of the minister repeating the
same ‘‘pious platitudes’? about
_pensions. J

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 14, 1980—Page 12

sizable savings in tax money in the
longrun.”

A second article in a recent issue
of the Union Newsbulletin, from
The Public Employee, published
by the national office, makes some
very telling points on the issue of
contracting out'as it affects public
employees and the taxpayers.

@ Privatization, or contracting
out of public services, is really a
return to the philosophy of every
man for himself.

@ Forty-six percent of
Canada’s gross national product is
controlled by various governments
and the business community is
looking at the public sector as un-
tapped sources for new profits.

_ Inlight of these projections, it is
interesting to note some of the
comments made in a memo to the
Vancouver city council on July 3°
from its engineering department,
on the subject of the application of
Haul-Away Limited to take over
half of Vancouver’s residential gar-
bage pickup.

‘“‘Haul-Away Disposal Ltd.,
part of a large Company known as
Laidlaw Transportation Limited,
collects municipal garbage in Sur-
rey and Delta under contract. Both
operations are small, using five
trucks each. In general, each con-
tract is operated by sub-contracting
the work on the basis of collection
areas, to a garbage truck owner-
driver. Each truck operation is set
up as a separate company with the
driver and/or swamper owning
shares.

“Serious labor problems will be
encountered by the city if the pre-
sent collection service is substan-
tially reduced. There are approx-
imately 100 personnel employed on
the dayshift collection system, and
therefore, contracting out half the
work will result in a reduction in
this work force of: about 50 per-
sons. The union can be expected to
react very strongly to a reduction of

~ this size in their bargaining unit and

the implications would have to be
carefully assessed. CUPE 1004 has
requested to appear as a delegation
before Council on this matter.
“Because the proposal by Mr.
Remple would have no unions in-
volved, there would be some ad-
vantages with respect to the
maintenance of services during a

_ Strike situation. Special ar-

rangements, however, would have
to be arranged for a disposal site so
that a non-union site would be
available to receive the refuse.
“‘The proposal suggests that the
contractor would purchase half the
city’s collection fleet. Once such a
large portion of the truck fleet and
experienced staff are no longer
available, it would be very difficult
and costly to re-establish the service
if this were desired in the future.”
The Canadian Union of Public
Employees should receive the sup-
port of the labor movement, the
homeowners and many business
people in its campaign against con-

tracting out. On their part, the
Vancouver Civic Employees Union
should, in my opinion, give every
possible support to the call of the
Vancouver Labor Council to vote
for COPE candidates for city
council, parks board and school
board, along with Mike Harcourt
formayor. ~ :

There is no doubt in my mind
that most of those who hold con-
tracts with the City of Vaneouvet,
or who hope to get such contracts
— for work that should be done by
civic employees — will be suppor
ting the candidates of the Non-_
Partisan Association. In the last
analysis, the question of contrac:
tilng out is a political question. The
independent political action being
pushed by CUPE — briefs to
municipal authorities, advertising
campaigns, study sessions and
demonstrations would be greatly
strengthened if they joined with
organized labor on a systematic
basis to ensure the election of local
officials committed to expand
rather than to reduce the public sec-
tor.

The people who have the final
say on whether the jobs of civic
employees are to be contracted out
are the members of city council and
such bodies as the parks board and
school board. Why vote for men
and women who will take away
your job?

om

CONSTITUTION

Continued from page 1

“‘could have considerable implica-
tions for B.C.”’ 3

“The premier tipped his hand,’
Rush charged. ‘‘He wants to be
free to alienate provincial re
sources, and he wants no interfer-
ence in current government plans —
for expanded exports of hydro-
electric power to the U.S. or in fur-
ther plans he apparently has for the
export of water.”’

He cited the $18 billion program
for hydroelectric power generation
much of which is for export to the
U.S., and impending coal deals
with the Japanese as graphic i-
lustration that both ‘‘Bennett and
his father before him have presided
over the giveway-of British Colum-
bia’s resources to foreign and
Canadian multinational corpora-
tions.”

The CP leader was also critical
of the NDP agreement. with
Trudeau for strengthened provill-
cial control of resources, warning
that it would ‘“‘play into the hands’
of such governments as Bennett’s.
or that of Peter Lougheed in Alber-
ta.
“The real issue is; What use is tO
be made of these resources?” Rush
said. He reiterated the Communist -
Party’s stand for public ownership
of resources and their development
under joint federal-provincial
cooperation to establish secondary
processing and manufacturing in-

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