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JARY 6TH

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

_ PICTURES OF FEDERATION'S NANAIMO RALLY

SPEAKERS AT THE RALLY included B.C. Government
Employees Union General Secretary John Fryer, left, and Federa-

tion President Jim Kinnaird, right. Bob Rogers, centre, past Presi-
dent of the Nanaimo & District Labour Council and 2nd Vice-
President of Local 1-80, was chairman of the rally.

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The business community and
its political allies are calling
for more contracting out of
public sector work, arguing
that contracting out is the ideal
remedy for fiscally strapped
municipal governments and
other public agencies.

But, Canadian Union of Pub-
lie Employees researcher
Larry Katz notes in a recent
article that CUPE’s experi-
ence has shown that con-

_ tracting out, rather than being
a financial blessing for govern-
ment agencies, “can more
— be described as a
raid on the public treasury.”

: seems, to Katz,
that contracting

corporate coffers but
ers but
a number of

cases are just a drop in the
bucket compared to those
frauds and deceptions that
either go unreported or unde-
tected.

In one instance, 11 men and
nine companies now stand
charged on a total of seven
counts of .conspriacy to ‘‘de-
fraud by deceit, falsehood, or
other fraudulent means” the
federal government, Ontario
government, and the Toronto
Board of Harbour Commis-

sioners of more than $4 million.

The accused companies not
only represent most of the
Canadian dredging industry
but six of the eleven men in-
volved are listed in the Cana-

‘dian Who’s Who.

Last year in Ottawa, a clean-
ing contractor was found guilty
of trying to bribe the mayor.
The contractor wanted the

2 mayor to persuade a com-

peting “company into with-
drawing its lower bid for clean-
ing several municipal build-
ings.

Although contractors may be
collecting our garbage, they’re
also collecting profits while
paying little more than mini-
mum wage hiring non-union la-
bour and often aiding govern-
ments to oust unions.

Katz points to an issue of
Waste Age, a’‘magazine known
as the ‘“‘voice of resource man-
agement,’’ in which the profits
of a number of waste disposal
firms are printed.

Topping the list of the seven
major waste service con-
glomerates is Browin-Ferris
Industries.

BF is now doing business in
ten major cities across
Canada, having increased its
sales by 300 per cent between
1970 and 1977, 75 per cent of

which were from waste collec-
tion and related activities. In
1977, BFI’s profits topped $33
million, 20 per cent higher than
the year before.

Katz notes that two Canadian
companies, Superior Sanita-
tion, a division of Laidlaw
Transportation, and Tricil
Ltd., are not listed in Waste
Age.

Laidlaw, operating in sev-
eral cities across Canada, in
1976 derived 40 per cent of its
revenue from municipal con-
tracts. Tricil jointly owned by
Canadian Industries Ltd. and
Trimac Ltd., made in 1975 45
per cent of its $14 million
revenue from solid waste.
Tricil recently won a $60 mil-
lion contract to operate an
incinerator in Hamilton and to

provide other waste services
for the area.

The push for more con-

tracting out is irrational and
wasteful, Katz argues, when
the profits made could be used
to improve wages, expand or
introduce new public services
or help balance the budgets of
financially strapped govern-
ments.

EMPLOYEES
TO SHARE

The French government
agreed ona bill that would give
employees shares in the comp-
anies for which they work.

If the bill is approved by the
National Assembly, all comp-
anies which are traded on the
stock exchange and have paid
two dividends in the last three
years will be obliged to dis-
tribute shares of up to three
per cent of its capital.

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