‘sh a a win wage parity Left without a collective agreement since June 30, 1989, members of two locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees set up picket lines at schools throughout the Langley school district early Tuesday morn- ing March 6. The district’s 1,100 teachers, who them- selves were forced out on the picket line for 5 % days last year, honoured the CUPE lines, effectively closing schools across the Fraser Valley municipality. The two locals — Local 1260 represents clerical workers, bus drivers and teaching assistants, Local 1851 represents mainte- nance and janitorial staff — are demand- ing parity with school board employees in neighbouring Surrey. “We’re running $2 to $3 an hour behind the wages in Surrey school district and the gap has been growing over the last eight years,” strike co-ordinator Roy Stevens told the Tribune. New Titles THE FATE OF THE FOREST By Susanna Hecht $31.50 (hardcover) DEFORESTATION AND : “DEVELOPMENT” IN CANADA AND THE TROPICS. Edited by Aaron Schneider. $19.95 (paperback) Drop by the store to see our other new titles on the environment. 1391 COMMERCIAL DRIVE VANCOUVER, B.C. V5L 3X5 TELEPHONE 253-6442 Langley workers were at par with those in Surrey a decade ago but have lost ground since the provincial government’s 1982 restraint program, largely because local members accepted the school board’s call to hold the line on costs, he said. - Stevens also cited job classifications and retroactive pay as key issues in the negotia- tions which began last October. Mediator John Kinzie, a former chair of the Labour Relations Board, was involved for six days in bargaining earlier this month. Locals 1260 and 1851 voted 77 per cent and 88 per cent respectively for strike action in a vote taken Feb. 10. Last week, union negotiators turned down the board’s latest offer which would have provided parity with Surrey by 1992 — but only if Surrey workers got no increase themselves over the next two years. Union members also showed up at Mon- day’s school board meeting to outline their position and to offer to continue negotia- tions “until midnight if necessary,” Stevens said. “We gave them every opportunity to avert the strike but they just told us: “You’ve got our final offer. Go away.” he said. He added that two strikes in one year in the same school district “has got to say some- thing about the board’s position.” Although part of any new contract would involve the board’s budget for last year, the strike has outlined a scenario that may be repeated elsewhere in the province as school district employees face hard-nosed school trustees and a new provincial government policy which would force boards to go to referendum for any money required beyond the basic needs specified by the government. The new policy, which is being opposed by trustees, teachers and parents, would effectively allow the provincial government to dictate limits on wages and salaries for school districts simply by restricting the funding it makes available. Board chair Marlene Grinnell has already used the argument, saying that the board will have to go to referendum, Stev- ens said. She also told the media last week that she planned to visit picket lines in an effort to convince CUPE members to hold a vote on the board’s last offer. “Our reaction to that is: if you want to negotiate, get back to the table,” Stevens said. He said the response from union members has been “amazing” since the strike began, with more than three-quarters of the membership involved on the picket line or in the strike headquarters. And sup- port from teachers has also been solid, he noted. “We supported them 100 per cent during their strike last year and they’ve responded in kind,” he said. eee ee ee ee i : FUIB UNE i | Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street | Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5. Phone 251-1186 a es a fines os Ss. PS es DORE a ca ee cass Ss Ss eR 4 - SER a Nee SR EA ROO) Oe gw ws. ses 5 eee i g ‘amenciosing 1yr.$200 2yrs.$350 3yrs. $5001 Foreign 1 yr. $320 g 3 Bill me later ~ Donation$........ # 12 e Pacific Tribune, March 12, 1990 _ [WA-Canada pres- Premier urged to act to save fish industry B.C. fishing industry workers, faced with further U.S. encroachment on fisheries resources and jobs under an -agreement signed by the federal govern- ment, last week won a commitment from the Socred government to consider pro- vincial action to protect B.C.’s third za est industry. But they still don’t know what form that action will take or if it will come soon enough to affect the $50 million roe herring fishery slated to open this month. Following a call from the B.C. Feder- ation of Labour, Premier Bill Vander Zalm and International Trade Minister Elwood Veitch met March 2 at the World Trade Centre with United Fishermen and Allied eiotkers Union president Jack ° Nichol, B.C. Fed president . Ken Georgetti and ident and Cana- {% dian Labour Con gress vice-presi- dent Jack Munro. Vander Zalm told reporters fol- lowing the meet wt \. ing that the gov- NICHOL ernment “would be continuing to seek ways of addressing the problem that was created, unfortunately, because of the agreement that was signed between the U.S. and Canada.” Vander Zalm refused to discuss any specifics, arguing that whatever the pro- vince might do “will have to stand the test of legal challenge.” He noted, how- ever, that he would be meeting with the trade ministry to emphasize the urgency of the problem. “We have a resource that the people of the country and of the province may to maintain ...,” he told reporters, ““We didn’t raise that resource to see it shipped elsewhere to create jobs, other than in our province and country.” The meeting followed last month’s signing of the four-year fisheries agree- ment between the U.S. and Canada that gives Americans access to 20 per cent of all B.C. salmon and herring this season and 25 per cent for the next three years. The agreement is the latest act in a series of giveaways to the U.S., which began with the federal government’s 1988 acceptance of a decision by a panel of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which called for elimina- ~ tion of long-standing Canadian regula- tions stipulating that salmon and herring be processed in Canada before export. In their place, Ottawa enacted weak land- ing requirements, but the U.S. chal- lenged the new regulations under the Free Trade Agreement. A panel set up under the FTA later ruled — despite a Canadian majority on the three-member body — that the U.S. should be entitled to some Canadian fish. That ruling was subsequently referred to negotiators which formalized it in last month’s Canada-U.S. agreement. The federal government has repeat- edly downplayed any impact on Cana- dian jobs that the agreement would have but industry workers point to Canadian processors setting up plants in Washing- ton state and cite their own experience during last months’ salmon strike when fish was trucked fresh or frozen across the border for processing. B.C. Fed president Ken Georgetti said following the meeting with Vander Zalm that the union leaders had impressed on the premier that “‘the industry that is the province’s third largest employer is at risk,” with 15,000 jobs potentially threa- tened, including those in ancillary indus- tries. He said that the unionists had put forward a number of proposals to Vander Zalm, ranging from provincial regulation of licences at landing stations to enactment of legislation similar to the U.S. Magnuson Act which gives the U.S. industry the right to determine whether resources are superfluous to its needs before they are exported. “The premier has been given a number of options,’ Georgetti told reporters. “The premier is committed, as ‘he says, to protecting the economic live- lihood of those that work in the fishing industry and we’ll give him a chance to do that.” Whether there will be anything sub- stantive from the provincial government remains to be seen, however. The UFAWU and others have pressed Victo- ria for assistance at earlier stages in the dispute only to find that the Socred government, which has supported the Free Trade Agreement unquestioningly, has made it clear that it will not take any action that would expose the province to countervailing trade action by the U.S. Ottawa has also been quick to mobil- ize supporters for its policies, including former royal commission chair Peter Pearse, who argued last week that the agreement would have little effect and claimed that last year Canadians pro- cessed more U.S. fish than was the reverse. But Pearse “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” UFA WU president Jack Nichol told reporters following the meet- ing March 2. Last year, Canadian processors did process a lot of U.S. salmon — but that was because of an enormous run in Alaska which was beyond the U.S. capacity to handle, Nichol said. “And it doesn’t happen every year.” In fact, most U.S. salmon off Alaska is “seographically inaccessible” to Cana- dian buyers, he added, and although Canadian buyers can purchase fish from Washington state fishermen, much of it is salmon bound for the Fraser River anyway. But as a result of the new agreement, U.S. buyers will be guaranteed access to one-fifth of the roe herring catch — even though there is no comparable fishery off the Washington coast, Nichol emphas- ized. “They have a nice tight little ship but they want to encroach on Canadian industry,” he said. Nichol also met later in the day with newly-appointed federal Fisheries Minis- ter Bernard Valcourt but there was little of substance that came out of the meet- ing, one of several that Valcourt is hold- ing as the industry on both coasts heads ~ into deeper crisis. The trade dispute erupted before Val- court became minister “‘and he took the position that it wasn’t his bailiwick at the time the agreement was signed,” Nichol said. But the union has made clear its stand, he added. “The minister is well aware of our position ... that if there’s a move to send all our fish out of the country, then we'll oppose that, and if they want to arrest us, then that’s what they'll have to do.”