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COUNCILS ‘HARD LINE
PROLONGS CITY STRIKE

Labor hits RCMP violence at Lenkurt

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jected.

Meeting Monday night the Out-
side Civic Workers voted 958
to 27 in a secret ballot to reject
the City Council’s proposal for
compulsory arbitration.

FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1966
VOL. 27, NO. 20

According to Jack Phillips,
union secretary, the vote united

E> *¢ 10¢

Injunctions and massed police

won’t settle labor disputes

® Mounties and anti-labor
injunctions! These have be-
come the mainstays of the
bosses’ attack in B.C. against
Unions seeking just contract
awards this year.

® Above are some of the
forty or more Mounties massed
last Thursday at the Lenkurt
picket line, not counting those
in plainclothes.

/

© At the right is the anti-
Union injunction issued by the
Courts ordering a halt to picket-
_!ng under threat of punishment.
This is the latest one of many
such injunctions issued in the
Past year.

®@ Labor unity is the only

Onswer to these attacks on the
Unions.

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RAR TE, <
SHER fi TR TRE MUNTCIRALATY OF
BoRtany aN Tun PRIVANES OF, BRITTON COLVATA

defendants

— pepane ure uoxoUR guboE { Semlay the ad Day of
BIRKS snire SETTING aS BK 2 Mays, ADA, LEEK
ESCAL JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT) :
IN CHAMAESS. * & ?

UPON THE APPLICATION of the Flaintife ano veow

“READING the Writ of Summons issued herein the 2th day of
Avril A.D., 1966, the Hotica of Motion herein’ issued the uth
Gay of ABEL ADL, 196 the Affidavit of Arnold Gordon LiAdie _

worn the 28th day of April, a,b. 1986 and: €iled “and the.
: Agidaytt or Frank Shortlett Frasex sworn the 23th ore
ApEAL, Mod. 1964 and Filed, and the Order of thle Kosourable
ot the 28th day of April, ALD. 2BSEy AND
+ Exj. o£ Counsed for the PLaintife,
t8 counsel undertaking to abide

the members more firmly than
they were at any other timeafter
the strike began at midnight May
6, Also according to the secre-
tary, by voting so decisively
against binding arbitration the
union opened the door to much
more active support from the
trade union movement,

The trade union movement gen-
erally is apprehensive about the
pressures from reactionary big
business and certain government
circles to replace free collective
bargaining by compulsory arbi-
tration,

At the same meeting where
arbitration was torpedoed, union
members voted to reject the pro-
posal of two aldermen to call in
a mediator, provided the union
agreed to a return to work while
mediation was taking place, Ac-
cording to the union, if it agreed
to this, Council could stall for
weeks, or months, and then say
“do as you please but you’ll get
no more of a wage increase than
you rejected before mediation,”

As the P.T. went to press, the
union was stepping up its picketing
and was appealing to organized
labor and the general public to
send letters to City Council de-
manding the reopening of nego-
tiations, :

Meanwhile, the dispute at Len-
kurt Electric remained stale-
mated at press time as the man-
agement arrogantly rejected pro-
posals which would see the
workers returned to their job,
The company has repeated its
stand of May 9, that workers
would be considered for re-hiring
but with loss of pension and
seniority rights, Under this plan
many of the workers would also
lose their jobs. 5

In a letter to the Vancouver
Labor Council Tuesday night the
B.C, Federation of Labor put
labor’s position on the Lenkurt
Electric dispute squarely on the
line,

The letter stated that “the 250
Lenkurt employees did not walk
off their jobs without good cause

“The public be damned”’ was the attitude of Vancouver City Council this
week as it adopted a “hard line’ towards proposals for mediation of the Out-
side Workers’ strike. Proposals for government mediation came both from the
union and Vancouver Labor Council. In an action which threatens to extend the
strike and add to the public’s inconvenience, City Council attempted to force
compulsory arbitration on the union, which the members overwhelmingly re-

76 unionists
face charges

At press time Mr, Justice
J. S. “Aikins of the B.C,
Supreme Court .ordered that
contempt-of-court action be
taken immediately against 76
trade unionists, including six
union officials, arising out of
the injunction issued last week
at Lenkurt Electric,

This sweeping court action
is unprecedented in B.C, Labor
history.

and under extreme provocation,
The BCFL has no intention of
submitting to this kind of intimi-
dation.”

Following the BCFL letter the
VLC executive introduced a mo-
tion “deploring the use of the
RCMP in and out of uniform” on
picket lines, charged the RCMP
with “extreme provocation”, and
demanded that “all charges be
dropped against those workers
arrested,”

Many VLC delegates from af-
filiated unions who had partici-
pated in the “citizen picket” dem-
onstrations at the Lenkurt
Electric plant demanding the
reinstatement of workers fired
from their jobs, reported their
experiences at the hands of the
uniformed RCMP, and the large
number of RCMP “dressed up
as working men” on the picket
line, acting as “spotters” for
their uniformed colleagues, and
attempting to provoke “inci-
dents.” Several VLC delegates
related such experiences and
branded RCMP activities as “a
planned attempt to create inci-
dents of violence for which
labor could be blamed,”

VLC secretary treasurer C,P,
“Paddy” Neale branded many of
the RCMP statements charging
picket violations of the Lenkurt
Electric injunction as “sheer
lies, It is about time we went on
the attack against RCMP tactics,”
stated Neale, “if they are going

See LABOR PROTESTS, pg. 3

Lenkurt

What is

Profile of an Anti-Labor
U.S. Monopoly

SEE PAGE 2

Electric