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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Community

mail boxes,

post office
cuthacks
opposed

Vancouver city council — al-
though dominated by right-wingers
— joined the list of those opposing
cutbacks and rationalization of ser-
vices in Canada Post Corp. when
council voted unanimously Dec. 9
to disallow the placing of group
mailboxes on city-owned land.

The action — largely symbolic,
since it would affect few locales in
Vancouver —reinforces a council
vote last July opposing the intro-
duction of community boxes in the
city.

The decision followed a request
for support from the Canadian
Labor Congress, which is waging a
campaign to get all muncipalities
in Canda to oppose the latest drac-
onian round of government-ordered
postal cutbacks.

The campaign was launched last
August by the CLC in conjunction
with the major postal unions
including the Letter Carriers Union
of Canada and the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers.

“Municipalities are bearing the
brunt of cutbacks at Canada
Post,”’ the CLC stated in a letter to
council.

“Large communities everywhere
are being refused door-to-door
delivery for new housing develop-
ments even though neighboring
areas receive door-to-door delivery
and even though the cost of this
service is very low,” the CLC letter
stated.

In addition to introducing group
mail boxes in new urban subdivi-
sions, Canada Post has elimianted
post offices in 72 communites and
50 rural routes in the first half of
1986, the letter points out, adding
“there are plans to eliminate many
more rural routes and post offices.

The congress also notes that
postal unions have urged the
implementation of several counter
services at reasonable rates: and
other money-generating ideas to
help reduce the Crown corpora-
tion’s deficit and prevent layoffs
and service cuts.

The CLC is ditributing a boo-
klet entitled, Canada Post Corpo-
ration: It Can Deliver, outlining
the unions’ plans, and has pro-
duced a series of mail-in cards
addressed to the prime minister
and opposition leaders.

Recently the 120,000-member
council of Senior Citizens’ organi-
zation of British Columbia also
condemned postal cutbacks. The
council, comprising 30 member
organizations, said the cutbacks
cause “hardships to seniors, many
of who do not have their own
transportation.

“The Canadian National Rail-
way, Air Canada and VIA pas-
senger service all receive subisdies
... So why not subsidize the post
office?” the letter, under the signa-
ture of publicity chairman Ed
Apps, asks.

Right-wing council sets tone
by dumping fair wage policy |

Vancouver’s newly-elected business-
financed city council wasted no time in
moving policy firmly to the right by reject-
ing the fair wage practice, ignoring com-
munity concerns over a noisy public event,
and rejecting a grant request from a peace
organization.

The Non-Partisan Association domi-
nated council also granted itself, in its first
business meeting on Dec. 9, hefty wage and
expenses hikes far above those recom-
mended by city staff, for which it won some
raspberries from local media.

But it was the dumping of the previous
council’s fair wage practice on alterations to
a police substation that drew the most fire
from the labor movement.

“At the city council’s very first meeting
they have given working people a one-
fingered salute,” charged Bill Zander, presi-
dent of the B.C. Council of Carpenters.

Council voted 9-2 — with aldermen
Libby Davies and Bruce Eriksen of the
Committee of Progressive Electors opposed
— to drop the fair wage consideration on
the $200,000 project, leaving the tendering
process open to low-wage conractors.

Zander called it an “outrage that this new
council has abandoned the fair wage policy
without so much as a moment’s thought or
any opportunity for input.”

“Our charter says very clearly that we
should pay fair wages. And to determine
that, we had public meetings with trade
unions and the private sector participating,”
said Eriksen later.

Council also passed a motion from NPA
Ald. Jonathan Baker that city staff prepare
a report on the fair wage policy, which stipu-
lates that private contractors doing city
work pay the wages and benefits of the city’s
unionized work force, for future debate.

Council set its fair wage policy during the
last term, dominated by four COPE alder-
men and the Civic Independents, stipulating

=] Letters

in a bylaw modeled after one in Toronto
that projects at or above a cost value of
$30,000 pay the fair wage, and etablishing a
permanent fair wage officer. The move fol-
lowed several public hearings.

The council based its policy on a section
of the Vancouver Charter, the city’s consti-
tution, that calls for fair wages in city work.

The bylaw was struck down in a Supreme
Court challenge launched by the anti-union
Independent Canadian Business Associa-
tion last April. But council, following the
letter of the justice’s ruling, simply reverted
to voting on the fair EESSs
wage policy every |
time a relevant pro-
ject came up for
tender.

Right-wing oppon-
ents of the policy
— including several
of those currently
on council — have
claimed that the fair
wage is determined
not by the union
rate, but by the low
wages paid by the
increasing number
of non-union firms
operating in the
construction indus-
t

Ty.
Zander charged
that council “in total
contempt for the
democratic process BRUCE ERIKSEN
and the incomes of workers . . . (has) opted
for a return to the practice of allowing con-
tractors and developers to line their pockets
with fat profits from the taxpayers at the
expense of workers’ incomes.”
He said the carpenters are seeking an
immediate meeting with Mayor Gordon
Campbell and plan to send an “angry dele-

COPE’s future task

John Church, former Vancouver school
trustee, writes: As a social democrat, but
also an avid reader of your newspaper, I
believe that the parallel Rankin-Quail
columns (Dec. 3, page 2) carry a strong
message. The two authors do not comment,
but if the popular front — a “coalition” of
left-wing to centre parties in both Spain and
France in the late 30s — had really coa-
lesced as coalition, might it not have been
possible that World War II, including its
gruesome savagery and grim genocide,
would have been avoided?

The popular front approach of the left to
the centre must be flexible enough to ensure
that those who are presently at the political

centre are able and are willing to embrace
the Committee of Progressive Electors’
comprehensive policy statement. One
important message to remember is that
COPE members are engaged in an educa-

. tional process of expanding the political and

social awareness of those who come from
what we in COPE would define as a centrist
position. That is COPE’s area of potential
growth.

Let COPE not underestimate the magni-
tude of the task outlined by Jim Quail,
because as reaffirmed on Nov. 15, nearly
every time a critical choice confronts a
“bleeding heart” liberal, that individual
moves right, not left.

Season’s Greetings from COPE

= working to make Vancouver
a better place for working people

2066 Parker Street, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 2L5

[OPE

:

gation” to council at the first opportunity.

Eriksen said the Dec. 9 meeting — which
was moved a week ahead from the sche-
duled Dec. 16 meeting to accommodate the
vacation plans of independent Ald. Carole :
Taylor — showed that council wasin“one
hell of a hurry” to reverse the precedents set
by the former progressive council.

Council gave the green light to Molson’s
Brewery’s proposed Indianapolis 500 style
race around B.C. Place Stadium, without
consulting the neighborhoods affected. A
nursing home has already complained
about the noise the race would bring.

It rejected a request for a $2,000 grant
from Beyond War, a group which supports
the Contadora peace program for Central
America. The group presented awards via a
telecast hookup to world leaders involved in
the peace process.

The aldermen and mayor also granted
themselves — with Davies, Eriksen, Taylor
and Philip Owen opposed — salary hikes
for aldermen of 27.3 per cent and 12.8 per
cent for the mayor. Council last year had
voted that the future councillors receive an
average three per cent raise.

Eriksen said the two issues — the fair
wage vote and the salary vote — were
almost “back to back” on the agenda.
“They were in favor of raising their own
salaries but not in favor of a fair wage for
working people,” he said.

Connie Kerr
dead at 97

Long time Communist Party member
and Tribune supporter, Connie Kerr, died
in her 97th year at Victoria on Dec. 2. She is
survived by her husband, Bob, a pioneer
Vancouver Island Communist Party mem-
ber, trade union organizer and veteran of
the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

Connie was an early associate of long
time B.C. Communist Party leader Nigel
Morgan in Victoria and a very close friend
and supporter of Darshan Singh Canadian.
At one point in her career she was private ©
secretary to Anna Louise Strong, the Amer-
ican socialist author who wrote widely
about the Soviet Union and China. She is
remembered particularly for her solidarity
work during the Thirties in organizing and
gathering material aid for the Chinese peo--
ple who were suffering severely under Japa-
nese aggression, especially in the Shanghal
area.

She was also the first secretary of the
Kyuquot Trollers Co-op and later in 1950-
52 became the first president of the big
Westcoast Savings Credit Union.

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= Season’s Greetings :

Best Wishes
for the
“New Year
~ to all our friends
~_ and supporters

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Residents’ Associatior
9 East Hastings St.
Vancouver. V6A 1M9. 682-0931 -

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