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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Vancouver joins world's cities
in demanding n-weapons ban

Vancouver city council’s new peace
committee has as one of its first tasks
consideration of a worldwide appeal by
city leaders for the “total abolition” of
nuclear weaponry and the “elimination”
of world poverty.

Council voted to refer to the commit-
tee three appeals, unanimously adopted
by mayors from 29 countries at the First
World Conference of Mayors for Peace
Through Inter-city Solidarity in Japan
Aug. 5-9.

The documents were tabled by Mayor
Mike Harcourt, who with representa-
tives of 97 other cities from five conti-
nents adopted declarations from the city
councils of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
two Japanese cities atom-bombed at the
close of the Second World War.

The city heads also adopted their own
six-point request to the United Nations
Secretary-General calling for a third spe-
cial session on disarmament in 1986.

The mayors, who toured the peace
memorial centres in the two cities,
pledged through the Hiroshima appeal
“to unite ourselves by establishing firm
bonds of friendship and soldiarity, trans-
cending national boundaries, ideologies,
and creeds in order to secure the lives and
properties of our people and bequeath to
future generations the history and cul-

ture of our cities, which took thousands
of years to develop.

“We shall urge the leaders of the U.S.
and the USSR to respect each other’s
initiatives to reduce nuclear arms and to
stop testing, improvement and produc-
tion of nuclear weapons,” stated the dec-’
laration adopted by the mayors of
western cities and those from the socialist
countries, the Soviet Union and Viet-
nam.

The Nagasaki appeal urged city lead-
ers to “increase our knowledge concern-
ing nuclear weapons. . .and not allow the
arms race to spread to outer space.

“We must free ourselves of the eco-
nomic burden of the arms race, turning
our attention to international problems
such as starvation in developing coun-
tries,” the appeal stated.

Harcourt told council the mayors also
agreed “to each go back to our cities to
let our people know of the reults of the
first world conference. . .As well, the con-
ference wants to continue to play an
active role with the UN disarmament
conference, encouragement of the U.S.
and the USSR Geneva discussions and
negotiations, a reconvening of the may-
ors for a peace conference sometime in
the near future, and the establishment of
a permanent secretariat, most possibly in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

City vote answers
Call for sanctions

against South Africa

Vancouver city council ‘has taken an
“important first step” in the battle against
South Africa’s racist apartheid system, in
the words of an alderman, with the passage
Aug. 27 of a “disinvestment” resolution.

“T agree it’s only as good as the monitor-
ing of it. Our job now is implementing this
resolution,” said Ald. Harry Rankin during
debate on a motion calling on the city to
withdraw funds from any financial institu-
tion having links, or doing business with,
the South African government or enter-
prises.

Council voted 7-3, with Mayor Mike
Harcourt absent, for the motion which
declared that apartheid was “inconsistent

with the goals and policies of the city of

Vancouver.

“The city of Vancouver will not invest or
deposit its own public funds or trust funds
under its care in financial institutions which
do business with the Republic of South
Africa, or its agencies, and will divest itself
of any such investments as may be in its
trust funds or may be received for its trust
funds,” the motion, opposed only by right-
wing aldermen Don Bellamy, George Puil
and Gordon Campbell, declared. ~

The same voted greeted another resolu-
tion requesting the Federation of Canadian

Tory government’s drive to privatize
the real cause of post office mess

The post office is being deliberately run
into the ground in preparation for privat-
izing the whole operation. That’s the only
logical conclusion that can be drawn from
all that’s been happening to the service for
the past four years.

Rates for all types of service to ordinary
citizens continue to climb while the level of

Letter rates are exactly double what
they were in 1981 (34. cents compared to 17
cents). Dog teams could deliver the mail
faster than the methods now being used.

Michael Warren, until recently presi-
dent of Canada Post corporation, said that
door-to-door delivery would soon become
“a thing of the past.” The post office has
plans to force all of us to pick up our mail
at communal mail boxes.

During his four years as president, he
tried to convert the post office from a
aM sree financed party out of general

ue, into a “user-pay” business.

ie price increases he instituted have
been outrageous and entirely uncalled for.
The increases instituted last June (with the
consent of the Mulroney government)
included boosting letter rates from 32
cents to 34 cents and, putting a hold on
your mail or having it re-directed to a new
address, increasing the rate from $1.59 to
$9.50, with plans to soon increase it to $15.

Change of address forms which could
be sent free before will now have to be paid
for at letter rates. The rent of small post
office boxes has gone up from $16.96 a
year to $25.44. A $200 money order now
costs 75 cents instead of 42 cents. Special
delivery has been boost~d from $1.06 to
$1.96. The registered mail charge has
increased from $1.96 to $2.46, and small
Se ee .24and

But the service is not getting any
better — if anything it’s getting worse. On
top of that, 600 to 700 postal workers are
being laid off each year and post office

plans call for the layoff of another 3,000.
The post office has a big deficit, some-
where between $200 to $350 million, or so
it says. Why this deficit?

The first thing that should be made
clear is that neither the deficit or the
decreasing level of service are caused by
postal employees or their unions. They are
the reuslt of deliberate mismanagement.

A report by a Toronto management
firm stated that management squandered
$100 million on sorting machines that are
much slower than manual sorters. That’s
because the management has this fixation
that they must get rid of labor. This is only
one example of mismanagement; there are
many others.

A second reason for the large deficit is
that corporations that use the postal ser-

Harry
Rankin

vice are not paying their fair share of the
costs. The rates to business are unreason-
ably low, with the result that the ordinary
citizen is subsidizing business. Compared
to letter rates, magazines and newspapers
and advertising sheets cost next to nothing
to put through the mails.

What’s the solution?

John Bullock, the red-necked president
of the Canadian Federation of Independ-
ent Business, and a great admirer of U.S.
President Reagan, says the post office
should ban strikes, lower wages and con-
tract out post operations.

But, formally banning strikes would not
prevent strikes occurring, lowering wages
would not improve service, and contract-
ing out would raise the costs enormously.
So those proposals are no solution; they’re

just another example of right-wing
employers venting their spleen on labor.

Roger Hamel of the Chamber of
Commerce wants the post office to “bring
in (more) mechanical equipment.” All he
can think of, it seems, is ways and means
to get rid of labor. But the mechanical
equipment the post office has already
installed is slowing up the mails, so that’s
no solution either.

The Mulroney government has appoin-
ted a private sector task force to come up
with solutions. From it we can expect only
more of the same thing the post office is
already doing, and more proposals of the
kind being advanced by the Canadian
Federation of Independent Business.

In my view, the government and its
business friends will continue to reduce
service and increase rates to the point
where they will be able to privatize the
whole operation without, they hope, much
public protest. That’s what they are really
after.

They refuse to accept any longer the
principle upon which the post office was
founded — namely that it is a public ser-
vice, that shouldn’t be required to show a
profit, and should not be run like a private
business, which it was never meant to be.

Privatizing the post office will not
improve service — it will only increase

costs for even less service. Under private.

control, the rates could easily soon be five
or 10 times what they are now. All that
privatization would do is give a lucrative
financial plum to the Tory’s corporate
friends.

Privatization is not the solution.

The solution is to place the post office
under genuine public control, a control in
which labor and the ordinary citizen have
a significant say. If the union’s proposals
were listened to by the government, we
would have an efficient, inexpensive, well-
run post office operation, the kind we used
to have before they tried to turn it into a
profit-making private business.

_ 2 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1985

ee

Municipalities circulate the policy, which
mirrors that of Vancouver’s sister ci
Edinburgh, among member municipalities.

But council was unanimous in if
demand, a reiteration of a May 3 resolution,
that the B.C. government pull South A:
can wines from liquor store shelves. (So fi
six provinces have taken that action.) :

Urging adoption of the motions wett
representatives of Afro-Canadian, antr
apartheid and other organizations,
Vancouver Centre MLA Emery Barnes.
Many called on council to go further that
the motion to disinvest in banks, prompting
a response that the city will consider boycot
ting any firm dealing with South Africa.

That drew predictable fire from Vi
couver’s right-wing circles, including
Board of Trade and the Province ne
paper, which editorialized against council's
action. The claim, never substantiated, was
that the pullout would cost taxpayers “
lions.”

right-wingers Puil and Campbell,
either tried to play down the violent sup”
pression of South African demonstrators by
comparing these to conflicts in other Aff
can states, or by deriding the worldwide
drift towards economic sanctions agaii
the racist regime.

“TI believe economic sanctions and dis”
investment will lead to greater bloodshed, —
said Puil, arguing that apartheid would dix
appear gradually through internal reforms
by the South African government.

“It’s easy to be a black here and oppose
apartheid,” said Puil, in a veiled reference t0
MLA Barnes. He claimed that “blacks
fighting to get into South Africa,”

Barnes, noting his roots in Louisiana an@
his experience with U.S. racial segregation
— “I have lived under apartheid” =
praised council for its “courageous”
motion. 3

Zayed Gamiet, a former South Africa?
and head of the Southern Africa Actio?#
Coalition, remarked: “Council has shown
good example for other cities and munic’
palities, and I hope they’ll follow suit.” _

University of B.C. professor To
Anthony noted the arrest of “my frien
Rev. Allan Boesak (head of South Africa
United Democratic Front) that mo
remarking that “both he and (Anglicé
Bishop Desmond) Tutu have made it
that disinvestment, from private enterp'
and not only from banks,” is the way
“freedom in South Africa.”

Ald. Bruce Yorke cited a recent survey
the London Sunday Times newspap
which found 77 per cent of black Sou!
Africans support economic sanctions as
means of ending apartheid.

Ald. Libby Davies said the “isolation”
the South African government would he!p-
and apartheid “‘and it’s through econo:
sanctions that we can do that.”

“T can’t understand why anyone can
support what the people who are facing
slaughter are asking us for,” said Ald. Bru
Eriksen.

The fact that moderate South Afri
leaders such as Desmond Tutu have joi
the call for sanctions was not lost on so
council right-wingers. Both May Bro
and Marguerite Ford voted for the san
tions motion, with Ford citing Tutu’s su
port for the move.

Canadian banks contacted by the ©
either claimed to have no business relatio
with South Africa, or refused to di
information on their financial dealings. B
it is known that the Royal Bank, is a n
shareholder in the London-based Ore
bank which does major business in
country. 7