Settlement in Poland

A comprehensive settlement has been reached between the
Polish government and striking workers. The basis of the
settlement was outlined in a speech by Edward Gierek (right)
to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party.
Excerpts of Gierek’s speech, page 7. More news, analysis on
Polish situation next week.

Soviet unionists in city

A delegation of trade unionists representing Soviet construc-
tion unions were in Vancouver last week, and they were Im-
pressed with building trades workers in B.C. The Tribune
spoke with them, page 11.

Outrag

sacre

ress mas

: ' " t ¥, : e The carving up of the Canadian
f e gk “ "1  f <4 ; ; newspaper market by the giant
= i . eS ; * Re Fs , Southam and Thompson chains

- =? ' mf : ‘ which has closed three long

established daily newspapers and
eliminated almost 1,000 jobs has
been met by outrage by newspaper
industry employees and by
demands for a full inquiry into cor-
porate concentration in the in-
dustry.

In cartel fashion, Southam and
Thompson announced last
Wednesday the closing of the Win-
nipeg Tribune and the Ottawa
Journal, and the sale of Thomp-
son’s interests in the Montreal
Gazette and Vancouver Sun to
Southam. Earlier Thompson has
acquired ownership of both the
Times and Colonist in Victoria and
this week merged those papers into
a single daily. Thomson now has
complete control of the Victoria
and Winnipeg markets, while Sou-
tham’s papers now have a monop-
oly in Vancouver, Ottawa, and in
the English language market in
Montreal.

“It was a media massacre,”
declared the presidents of The
Newspaper Guild, International
Typographers Union, Graphic
Arts International Union, and In-
ternational Printing and Graphic
Communications Union.

In a joint statement the four
union leaders called for immediate

: TRIBUNE PHOTO—SEAN GRIFFIN

# ~ y me a

Vancouver-New Westminster Newspaper Guild president Brian Hill
(left) addresses members of the Guild, the Printing Pressmen and
the International Typographical Union who rallied outside the Pa-
cific Press building in Vancouver Tuesday to protest the corporate
manoeuvres by Thomson Newspapers and Southam Press which

resulted in lost jobs and the closure of two newspapers. Hotline
broadcaster Jack Webster also addressed the rally along with B.C.
Federation of Labor publicity director Tom Fawkes who reiterated
the Federation’s call for a parliamentary inquiry into the Thomson-
Southam moves. :

Dump Pol Pot at UN

Several hundred postcards
have been circulated in this pro-
vince calling on the federal gov-
€mment to vote against the seat-

ing of the ousted Pol Pot gov-
ernment when the vote on Kam-

puchean representation comes
up in the United Nations later
~ this month.

The postcards addressed to
prime minister Pierre Trudeau
Tead:

“T strongly urge that this Sep-
tember Canada vote against
seating the deposed government
of Pol Pot at the United Na-
tions.

“‘No criticism of the present
government in Phnom Penh, or
of Vietnam’s role in establishing
it can justify diplomatic support
for Pol Pot'and Qhieu Samphn.
They do not in fact govern
Cambodia. Their brutal record
forfeits any moral claim to in-

ternational backing and has left
a legacy of fear among the Kh-
mer people.”’

The text of the postcard was
prepared by the Friends Service
Committee (Quakers). And in
this province, the Canadian Aid

for Vietnam Civilians commit-:

tee is urging Canadians to send
that or a similar message to the
federal government.
The Pol Pot regime success-
fully maintained the UN seat at
the last vote with strong backing
from the western bloc, including
Canada, as well as the ASEAN
bloc countries. :

Since then, several world or-

ganizations, including the
Christian World Vision have
condemned the western support
for Pol Pot.

The accreditation vote is
scheduled to come up Sept. 16.

Court ‘intrusions’
target of Fed brief

Alarmed by the increasing intru-
sion of the courts into the jurisdic-
tion of the Labor Relations Board,
the B.C. Federation of Labor
headed its list of demands in its an-
nual brief to the provincial cabinet
with the call for the increase of the
powers of the LRB through
amendments to the B.C. Labor
Code.

The Federation’s executive
council, which in previous years
went to Victoria with its annual
brief, announced their decision last
Friday to mail it because of the
“rude indifference”’ they received
from the government last year.

“Virtually none of the recom-
mendations made in our last brief
were acted on,’’ Federation presi-
dent Jim Kinnaird declared adding
that was the reason that demands
for the repeal of the essential ser-
vices dispute legislation, the

“substantial upward revision of the
minimum wage” to $5 an hour and
the enforcing of the Public Con-
struction Fair Wages Act were be-
ing repeated, and new ones added.

One new demand dealt with the
growing trend of the B.C. Supreme
Court to issue injunctions against
picket lines approved by the LRB at
the request of the ‘‘worst type of
employer.”

The most recent example of this
occurred Aug. 5 when Stacey’s
Furniture owner Amold Sibler
won an injunction from the court
against striking Teamsters Local 31
regarding secondary picketting of
what the union considered an allied
employer of Stacey’s — Better
Value Furniture. (An appeal has
been launched by the Teamsters, in
which the LRB is involved, slated
to be heard late October.)

See B.C. FED page 12

action to halt ‘‘an unbroken march
to control by a handful of cor-
porate giants of one newspaper
towns from coast to coast.”’

Robert Bertrand, director of the
Combines Investigations Branch,
said his department was ‘“‘looking
into”’ the closings, but the Cana-
dian director of The Newspaper
Guild, Bill McLeman, called for in-
junctions to stop the closings while
a full public inquiry is held.

The demand for a full public in-
quiry was backed by Senator Keith
Davey, who headed the last major
inquiry into corporate concentra-
tion in the media in 1970. ‘‘The
problem of press concentration has
gone on and on and gotten worse
and worse,’’ he said.

Both Davey and former con-
sumer and corporate affairs
minister Warren Allmand admit-
ted that if the Combines Branch
does invistigate the deals between
Thompson and Southam, it will
have no power to act. ““The Com-
bines Act lacks teeth. We’ve never
had convictions on mergers,” said

1and,
See VIGIL page 2