Witnesses blow the whistle on Job Mart

— page 12

Friday, June 3, 1983
Newsstand OCERESEND 48

South Africa: || Toxic waste B.C. Fed calling

ANC resists |\horrors ignored| ro 3s @
“| all unions to

| State terror ||by gov't, media

| —page 8 — page 10 — strategy meet

,

= Responding to calls from labor councils

: and its own public sector committee, the
B.C. Federation of Labor has called an
emergency special conference of unions
throughout the province to work out a
response to employer and government at-
tacks on the labor movement.

And for the first time in many years, the
210,000-member federation will be calling
representatives of non-affiliated unions to
the conference.

No specific date has been set for the
meeting but it will be held this month.

B.C. Fed second vice-president Don Gar-
cia, the chairman at the officers’ meeting last
Wednesday, said that the meeting had been
called in response to ‘‘what looks likea con-
certed attack on the labor movement.

‘We want to hear from all affiliates to see
the problems they’re having, attacks they’re
facing and see what the employers are
doing,”’ he said.

He said that the conference was called in
response to demands for such a meeting by
labor councils and by the public sector com-
mittee which has urged some form of coali-
tion of public sector unions to fight impen-
ding attacks on bargaining and jobs.

The Vancouver and District Labor Coun-

‘ cil, the Campbell River, Courtenay and
District Labor Council and the Nanaimo,
Duncan and District Labor Council, citing
“a well-oiled and co-ordinated drive”’ by the
province’s employers to hold the line on
wages, had urged the federation to call a
special conference to discuss a co-ordinated
bargaining strategy and a response to
threatened changes in the labor code. The
Vancouver council had also called on the
federation to adopt ‘“‘a labor fightback
strategy approach to struggles facing work-
ing people in 1983.””

Asked whether the federation would be
nee a eee ee bargaining and im-

ir - ae ing labor code es, Garcia said th

Supporters of the struggle for a Palestinian homeland joined members of Vancouver's Palestinian com- paar the eer Had wich a =a:

Munity Wednesday in a noon-hour demonstration outside the regional manpower and immigration offices to but would be in a future meeting.

Protest the visit to Canada of former Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon. The protest, held in support of a Also not yet specified is what non-

Massive demonstration in Montreal by a coalition of 30 organizations — including the Quebec Teachers Federa- affiliates will be invited although Garcia

tion — featured speakers George Hewison of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, and Ed Lavalle, stated, ‘‘we agreed in principle that
labor studies teacher and co-ordinator of the aid project for Palestinian refugees. Sharon was dismissed from everybody would be invited.”

Prime minister Menachem Begin’s cabinet for his involvement in the massacre last summer of 2,000 women, When the Building Trades were expelled

Children and men in Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Hewison said he was “shocked and outraged from the Canadian Labor Congress in 1981,

that the Canadian government should let a known war criminal into this country.” Sharon is in the country at- the number of unionists outside the federa-
tempti ¥ L. tion grew considerably although the late
Pting to raise funds for Israe See SOCRED page 12

Somerville — push on for ‘no Ist-use’ vote

— page 3

rooaittroestatoee

aial panes

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