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Demand reiterated as UFAWU court writ denied

‘Call off Combines probe’, says VLC

Actions this week by the Van-
couver and District Labor Council
and the annual convention of the
United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union that the federal
government cease the ‘‘flagrant
abuse of Combines _legislation’’
gave new impetus to the demand,
already voiced by unionists across
the country, that the attack against
the fishermen’s union be ended

once and for all.

Tuesday, delegates to the Van-
couver Labor Council voted

unanimously to send a wire to
federal consumer and corporate af-

fairs minister Warren Allmand
demanding that he instruct Com-
bines director Robert Bertrand ‘‘to
discontinue the flagrant abuse of
the Combines branch.”’

The labor council will also be
considering further action on the
issue.

Tuesday’s motion was in
response to an eloquent appeal
from UFAWU president Jack
Nichol who sparked wide applause
when he told the meeting: ‘‘There is
no question in our minds that this is
an attempt to drive to the heart of
our union and our right to organize,

strike and win a collective agree-
ment. There is no question that this
is a plot by the government to
destroy our bargaining rights.

‘*We may end up with criminal or
civil actions, but they can’t put an
organization and an idea in jail,”
he declared.

The same day, delegates to the
UFAWU annual convention,
meeting Vancouver gave their ap-
proval to a tough resolution deman-
ding that the current Restrictive
Trade Practices Commission hear-
ings in Vancouver ‘‘be terminated
as an obvious misuse of the Com-

bines Act’’ and failing that, that
‘hearings be adjourned insofar as
compelling attendace of UFAWU
witnesses at least until the union has
decided upon the question of an ap-
peal to the Supreme Court of
Canada and, if the union decides to
appeal, that the adjournment be
continued until it is disposed of by
the courts.”’

A third. demand, that the
scheduled appearance of UFAWU
president Jack Nichol, secretary
George Hewison and trustee Homer
Stevens be adjourned until after the
union’s week-long convention, was

granted Tuesday as Stevens was re-
scheduled for a February 22 hearing
and Nichol and Hewison for March
13 and 14.

The demands were made in
telegrams to L. A. Coutoure, acting
chairman of the Restrictive Trade
Practices Commission, the minister
of justice and consumer and cor-
porate affairs as well as prime
minister Trudeau.

The UFAWU had sought earlier
to halt the Combines hearings with
an application in Federal Court for
a writ of prohibition — a course of

See HEARINGS page 8

23

Parti Communiste du Quebec president Sam Walsh charged this

week that the recommendations of the Pepin Robarts commission
would “deliver Canada to the U.S.” Walsh was in B.C. this week to

address the Bethune Forums. See page 7.

Richard Blackburn photo

‘New de

solidarity needed

In a passionate appeal for ‘‘a new
definition of labor  solidarity’’,
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
first vice-president Andre
Beauchamps called Monday for
new tactics from the labor move-
ment to turn the tide on the attack
against the Canadian labor move-
ment.

Beauchamps was a featured
speaker at the annual convention of
the United Fishermen and Allied

. Workers Union and he used the oc-

casion to place the struggles of his
embattled union in the context of
an attack on the whole labor move-
ment.

“Tt is obvious that the attack on
workers who use their democratic
rights to negotiate upon the
strength of the members is by no
means directed solely to a few
specific groups of workers,’’ he
said, ‘‘It is an attack on the rights

Minister's firing demanded
over French-Canadian slur

A demand for the removal of
municipal affairs minister Bill
Vander Zalm was voiced this week
following the release of the words
to a piece of doggerel written by the
minister in which he spoke of a
“frog’’ in reference to Quebec
premier Rene Levesque.

Vander Zalm, who has become
notorious across the country for his
bigoted remarks, .made the
reference in a ‘‘song’’ which he per-
formed for the Social Credit

Next edition

to 12 pages

Budget considerations, coupled”

with the extra costs of two
unscheduled 12-page editions
earlier this year, compelled us to cut
back to four local pages this week
but the change is only for this issue.

Next week, the Tribune goes to
12 pages and will continue with on
that schedule until July when it will
go over to the summer schedule.
Our special feature issue will also
appear for May Day.

regional convention last weekend in
Williams Lake. :

He later compounded the slur,
dismissing his remarks as nothing
more than ‘‘humor’’ since he said,
he had German friends to whom he
referred as ‘‘krauts.”’

Provincial Communist Party
leader Maurice Rush who demand-
ed in a wire to premier Bill Bennett
that the municipal affairs minister
be fired, stated that Vander Zalm’s
verse was an “‘insult to French
Canadians’”’ and ‘‘did a_ grave
disservice to a united Canada and
was in no way representative of the
views of British Columbians.

‘*As premier you must make this
clear at the first minister’s
meeting,’’ Rush said in the wire
Monday. He warned that the
government ‘‘and all British Col-
umbians are tainted with this insult
unless you take action by firing
Vander Zalm and removing. him
from the government.’’

That demand was followed Tues-
day by a unanimous resolution by
the Vancouver and District Labor
Council, terming Vander Zalm’s
doggerel as a ‘“‘racist slur against
our French-Canadian brothers and
sisters.”’

The motion condemned the
minister for his. remarks and called
on premier Bennett to remove him
from the cabinet.

Although* Vander Zalm has ar-
rogantly dismissed his remarks
merely ‘‘satirical humor,’’ others
have seen them as a dangerous com-
ments, particularly because they
were uttered by a government
minister.

See RECORD page 7

inition of labor

of the entire working class and, as
such, each attack becomes a test for
the entire labor movement.’’
Beauchamps cited the 144 day
strike at INCO in Sudbury,. the
Skyline Hotel strike in Ottawa
where two weeks after a collective
agreement was signed the employer
fired all the workers and contracted
out the work, the West Kootenay

school board strike in B.C. and the

miners strike in Baie Verte, New-
foundland.

“Each of these struggles are be=
ing closely watched by all
employers,’’ Beauchamps stated,
“Tf we leave them to fight alone,
then all employers become far more
confident that they can attack their
employees, that they too can de-
mand rollbacks and contract out
jobs.”’

With the type of employers —
public and private — facing labor
today, ‘‘telegrams of support are
just not enough”’ he said, ‘The
labor movement as a whole is going
to have to find a new definition of
solidarity, one that can help us to

- win these struggles — one which the

membership of the UFAWU has
already adopted in practice.

‘Surely it would not take much
imagination to think of ways to
make the Skyline Hotel wish that it
had never contracted out the work
of its maintenance workers,’’
Beauchamps declared, ‘‘Surely it
should not be too much for labor to
organize so that all unions can res-
pond to a request for a mass picket,
if this is asked for by any union.
And surely it should not be beyond
our capabilities to mobilize a na-

NPA majority

Vancouver city council’s NPA
majority proclaimed themselves the
champions of equal opportunity
Tuesday and then voted to disman-
tle the city’s equal opportunities
program

As in other decisions to reverse
progressive decisions made by the
previous council, the seven to four
vote to close down equal oppor-
tunities officer Sheila Day’s office
was a straight NPA vote. Aldermen
Harry Rankin, Darlene Marzari,
Mike Harcourt and Marguerite
Ford voted against Doug Little’s
motion to assign the matter of equal

kills program

opportunities to the regular person-
nel department.

The NPA members denied endor-
sing racist or discriminatory hiring
policies, but they had considerable
trouble convincing the other
aldermen and the packed galleries
in the council chambers of their in-
tentions.

Discrimination is a fact in Van-
couver, Rankin contended, and it
was a fact in the city’s hiring policy
throughout the years when. Little,
former city clerk, was in charge of
the city’s hiring.

See CITY page 2

‘. CUPW

tional campaign of financial sup-
port to support a ‘strategic’ strike
by any group of workers who have
been forced to strike against their
‘employer.”’

See CUPW page 8

@ CHINA: The Tribune
interviews Communist |
Party leader William |
Kashtan on the develop-
ment of Chinese foreign
policy as reflected in the
visit to the U.S. and the |
actions over Vietnam, |
pages 4, 5.

1979. International
Yearof the Child |

@ IYC: For the children of
Brazil, International Year

t of the Child will mean
; virtually nothing so long
as the social policies of
i the fascist regime go un-
i challenged, page 6.

resem

@® LABOR: The latest
figures on the trade
union movement
underline the. changes
that have taken place
and the problems of uni-
ty and action that stil!

Aen BE =

confront it, page 8.

’ SR

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