Tee

Challenging Shell's
taxes in Burnaby

Economist Dave Fairey (right)
has appealed the assessments
on the Shell Oil refinery. It
could be worth $3 million for
Burnaby.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — FRED WILSON

Members of Vancouver's Filipino community marked the anniver-
Sary of the declaration of martial law in Philippines by dictator Mar-
cos with a demonstration at the Philippine consulate on Granville
St. last Friday. The demonstration was co-ordinated with massive

protests that rocked Manila.

The corporate policies of B.C.
Telephone — dramatized by the
company’s unilateral rejection of
the recommendations of federal
conciliator Ed Peck —will bea ma-
jor target for scores of intervenors
as the Canadian Radio-Television
and Telecommunications Com-
mission opens its hearings into
B.C. Tel’s application for a rate in-
crease Tuesday.

Several municipalities, the New
Democratic Party and the Com-
munist Party, the International
Woodworkers of America, the
Telecommunications Workers
Union and the Consumers
Association of Canada will be op-
posing the rate increase in formal
submissions to the CRTC. Several
other groups and individual in-
tervenors are expected to appear
before the commission.

This round of hearings, into the

company’s application for the 12.5
percent increase on residential rates
and 15 percent increases for
business subscribers, is particularly
critical for B.C. Tel because of the
rejection by the CRTC of its ap-
plication last May for an interim in-
crease.

The CRTC denied the applica-
tion, arguing that B.C. Tel’s finan-

cial position had ‘‘not
deteriorated” and an increase
could not be justified.

The arguments which backed
the contention that B.C. Tel did
not need the revenue — that
shareholders already receive an in-
flated rate of return on investment,
that there has been no
demonstrable improvement in ser-
vice since the last increase in 1977,
and that B.C. Tel’s profit position
already provides funds for expan-

fe The new leader

Workers Party, S
Polish

workers’
strikes

out.

red to the recent strikes across Poland as
legitimate “working class activity’ and has
pledged that all agreements reached between
the government and workers will be carried

“Serious errors in
in social life have become the main source of
a big wave of strikes,” Kania said in a speech
to the central committee of the Polish par-
ty. “We regard the strikes as manifestation
of the workers’ discontent, their protest be-
ing expressed within the framework of pure-
ly working class activity only. That was a
protest directed not against socialist prin-

of the Polish United
islaw Kania, has refer-
want.

economic policies and

wants to make use of the conflicts for pur-
poses which contradict what the workers

“We shall resolutely counteract attempts
to break the social order or to persecute
working people who honestly and with dedi-
cation work for the good of Poland.”

Kania ‘called for the broadening of the
rights of ‘‘people’s councils’ and ‘‘for a real
renovation of the trade unions so they will
effectively uphold the interests and rights of
working people.” -

The new trade unions organized during
the wave of strikes must ‘‘stand on socialist
positions” and ‘‘act within the framework
of socialist democracy,’’ he said.

showed
discontent

ciples and not against our inter-allied con-
tacts.”

Neither were the strikes directed against
the leading role of the Polish United
Workers’ Party, he said, but rather ‘‘against
distortions and errors in our policy. This is
why dialogue and negotiations became the
main method of solving the social conflict.’”

But Kania warned that the Polish party
would not only wage a struggle for the res-
toration of confidence in itself and the gov-
ernment, it would also conduct ‘‘an acute
struggle” against the enemies of socialism.

“We want to solve the country’s difficult
problems, whereas the anti-socialist enemy

A resistance fighter against fascism and a
long time functionary for the Polish United
Workers Party, Kania acknowledged that he
was taking on the duties of first secretary
‘under unusual circumstances.

“In my entire affiliation with the Work-
ers’ Party, I have never thought that peo-
ple of Poland would be confronted with the
difficult, dramatic and complex problems
they are facing today.

“Our most important task is to restore
public confidence in the people’s power, and
to restore the working people’s confidence in
the party.”

a,

sion — are all likely to surface

But it is the intervention by the
Telecommunications Workers
Union..which .may. be most
dramatic at the hearings when they
open Sept. 30.

TWU vice-president George
Yawrenko told the Tribune
Wednesday that the union had 500
members who were available, ad-
ding, “We might just march them
down there (to the hearing) to give
the CRTC an idea of where B.C.
Tel’s money is going.”

The 500-odd members are those
involved in job action by the TWU
following B.C. Tel’s arbitrary re-
jection of the terms of the Peck
report which could have provided
the basis for settling the year-long
contract dispute at B.C. Tel.

The TWU has been without a

See TWU page 11