London police drag off picket outside Grunwick film

wall

~

processing plant in London on July 11. About 4,000

policemen attacked 11,000 unionists demonstrating support of 173 plant workers who are in the eleventh

month of the strike. The action was taken to stop scabbing and has aroused the British labor movement like:

no other issue in recent years.

The B.C. Federation of Labor
has called for an immediate end to
wage controls following the
disclosure last week by Statistics
Canada that another sharp rise in
food prices in June has pushed the
cost of living index up to 7.8 per
cent, the highest inflation rate
since June, 1976.

Food prices in June rose by 1.1
per cent and accounted for 40 per
cent of the over-all rise in the cost
of living. It was the sixth month in
a row in which escalating food
prices pushed up the cost of living
index. Statistics Canada said there
is no indication there will be any
letup in rising food prices in July or
August.

Hitting hardest at working
people, who must spend a major
part of their income on food, June

saw a sharp rise in the price of
pork, coffee, tea, dairy products,
bread, soft drinks and fresh fruit.
Along with rising food prices, it
also cost more in June for housing
and household operations such as
phone and fuels.

Statistics Canada said that the
purchasing power of a dollar has
dropped to 62 cents in June and is
stil going down. The federal
government’s anti-inflation
program called for holding the rate
of inflation to a six per cent rise in
1977. It is already up to 7.8 per cent
and, according to BCFL secretary-
treasurer Len Guy, may rise by 11
or 12 per cent by the end of the
year.

The Anti-Inflation Board fixed
the allowable wage increases in
1977 to six per cent on the basis of

Probe urged to oppose
tankers in B.C. waters

Cont'd from pg. 1

limit, the boycott of the major U.S.
oil companies of the Inquiry, and
the actions of the National Energy
Board in reviewing the Cherry
Point proposal before Thompson
concludes his investigation, all
serves to weaken the credibility of
the Inquiry.

“We want the job done right
from the beginning,’’ Nichol
asserted in asking Thompson to
demand the full_participation of the
oil companies in the hearings, and
that the NEB not proceed with

applications before the conclusion,

of the West Coast Inquiry.

With the odds already weighted
in the favor of the oil companies,
the opposition received another
blow this week by the splitting
proposal of former Liberal leader
David Anderson. Anderson,
council for the B.C. Wildlife
Federation, a funded intervenor
which was previously opposed to
the oil port plans, did an about face
and threw support to the Port
Angeles proposal, adding to it the
idea of Canadian participation to
use the U.S. port to meet B.C.
energy needs.

The UFAWU responded to An-
derson’s plan calling it ‘‘abhorrent
in the extreme” and “‘totally
unacceptable.” ‘‘There are plenty
of other U.S. locations,” the union

said, ‘‘not contiguous’ with
Canadian waters. These southern
U.S. locations are the only ones
which will guarantee the protec-
tion of Canadian interests.”’

B.C. Communist Party leader
Nigel Morgan added the Com-
munist Party to the opposition with
a statement released at the
hearings. ‘‘We are opposed to and
see no need to build an oil port

anywhere on the west coast,’’ the

Statement read. “What we need.

instead is a new comprehensive
energy policy.

“Tf we took over our oil and
natural gas reserves, stopped the
giveaway of coal and export of our
energy resources, and adopted new
rate structures for B.C. Hydro,
there would be no need for years to
be examining the new oil ports and
pipelines now being proposed.”’

Without an energy policy, the CP
said, the oil port inquiry is likely to
be used to further integrate B.C.
into a continental energy deal. ‘“‘We
intend to see that this Inquiry is
confronted with the Canadian
interest,’ Morgan said, indicating
the intention of the Party to make
special presentations in phases two
and six of the Inquiry.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 22, 1977—Page 8

the government’s declared ob-
jective to hold the inflationary rate
to six per cent. Union settlements
imposed on labor have in most

cases been at the six per cent — or:

below — level. Obviously Canada’s
working people are falling far
behind in 1977 as inflation escalates
while their wages are frozen to no
more than a six per cent increase.

Lashing out at the federal
government’s policy, Guy said, ‘‘it
is unconscionable for Trudeau and
the Liberal government to limit
wage increases of the millions of
working people in this country to
six per cent while prices continue
to skyrocket daily.”

Charging that ‘“‘the so-called
anti-inflation program has been a
farce,’ Guy said Trudeau is telling
Canadians they must accept wage
controls to fight inflation, but in-
flation has not gone away. In fact,
he charged, inflation is once more
approaching record levels, unem-
ployment is increasing at a
staggering rate, workers’ pur-
chasing power is diminishing
daily, while food prices are jum-
ping as much as 24 per cent in some
items.

Calling Trudeau’s failure to
remove wage controls’ as
“criminal irresponsibility,’ Guy
said the masses of working people
are being forced to bear the entire
brunt of the Liberal government’s
failure to solve Canada’s economic

problems.
Meanwhile, CLC president Joe
Morris, lashed out against

proposed federal government
legislation which is aimed at
preventing unions from regaining
wage increases lost under wage
controls when they are lifted.

Morris charged that the
legislation, which would prohibit
workers from recovering any
portions of their wages rolled back
by the Anti-Inflation Board, ‘‘is
further proof that the ‘government
is much more concerned with
keeping down wages than con-
trolling prices in its lopsided anti-
inflation program.

“Wage and salary earners have
lost millions of dollars as a result of
rollbacks of wages they had
negotiated with their employers,
without the slightest evidence that
the money they and their families
had been deprived of has not been
added to their employers’ profits
rather than lowering the prices of
the goods and services they
produced.”

There is only about three weeks
to convince the federal govern-
ment that a moratorium on all
northern pipeline development is
needed, author and pipeline expert
Hugh McCullum told a Vancouver
audience on Wednesday evening.

McCullum said. ‘‘the next two or
three weeks are crucial’ to show
the Liberal government that public
opinion will not accept the ‘‘front-
runner” Alcan pipeline anymore
thanit would the Mackenzie Valley
pipeline that was rejected by the
Berger Commission and the
National Energy Board.

About 22 coalitions across
Canada are lobbying MP’s as they
return to their constituencies for
the summer break, McCullum
said. The Lysyk Commission on the
Alcan pipeline route will report to
the government on August 3 and
MPs will be called back to Ottawa
within a week of that date for a
special debate in the House on the
pipeline question. Following that
debate, which is to be unrestricted
by Party lines, Trudeau will make
his decision on which route, if any,
the government will approve.

McCullum, author of
Moratorium and director of the
Inter-church ‘‘Project North,” told
about 200 people at a_ public
meeting sponsored by the B.C.
Working Group for Moratorium
that the Liberals will likely choose
Aleanas a “compromise” but with
conditions attached to it that make
almost all studies, including
Lysyk’s, irrelevant. “This com-
promise pipeline,’ he said, ‘‘in
many ways will be worse than the
one that has been killed off.”

The compromise expected is that
of the National Energy Board to
allow a pipeline along the Alaska
Highway route, but with a diver-
sion to Dawson City and an
eventual link to the Mackenzie
Delta. Approval of the line is
contingent on an application for the
link — known as the ‘‘Dempster
Spur’? — being made by 1979.
There are no known studies of the
proposed ‘‘Dempster Spur,’’ nor
has the largest section of the
pipeline, the over 500 miles through
northern B.C. ever been put to a
study for environmental or social
impact.

“It will place the NEB in the
confusing situation of having to
conduct an investigation into a
pipeline it has already recom-
mended,”’ McCullum said.

A pipeline through the Yukon at
this time would almost destroy any
chance of a successful land-claim

settlement by the Council of Yuko?
Indians, he said, who have not y
arrived at an agreement of pri

ciple with the federal government
The CYI is based on 12 mail
communities, 10 of which are

located along the proposed pipelilé
route. The CYI has told the Lys
Commission ‘‘unfailingly amy
consistently” that it will require a
least 10 years to settle the 1
claim, he said.” |

rs eo
HEARINGS
COMBINES

INVESTIGATION
AcT

ADJOURNE DS
INDE FINITEL

UFAWU secretary Jack Nichol
looking at sign announcing

- adjournment of Combines hearing

last November.

‘Probe fish
monopolies —
not UFAWU

The Combines department i?
Ottawa should probe the
monopolies to find out why com |

}

j

sumers are paying exorbitanl

prices for fish and not the unions;
UFAWU secretary Jack Nichd!
told delegates to the Vancouvel
Labor Council Tuesday night.

Reporting that seven membel$
of the union are being charged
under Section 41 of the Combine
Act, and that a hearing has bee!
set for July 29, Nichol said he kne#
of no one who had yet been issu
with a writ.

Pointing to a recent announc®
ment that the Combines Branch #
Ottawa intends to probe the fishiné
industry, Nichol said as far as he
knew there was no investigation of
the fishing companies “who are thé
real monopoly in the fishing 1
dustry.”’

—.

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