1983 era of new
policies for city

One of the major highlights
of 1982 in the city of Vancouver
was undoubtedly the Nov. 20
civic election which resulted in a
loss for the NPA, a gain for
COPE and the election of a
labor-backed majority to city
council. An example of the
benefits to be derived from this
labor-backed majority was the
decision at the first meeting of
the new city council not to in-
stitute any layoffs in civic staff
or to reduce services to citizens.

A second important feature
of that election was the huge
majority — 80 percent — which

Harry

Rankin

voted ‘‘Yes’’ in the disarma-
ment referendum. The people
of Vancouver want peace and
disarmament, not a Reagan-
inspired arms race that
generates inflation and
threatens mankind with
obliteration. They also showed
that very clearly last Apr. 24
when 35,000 Vancouver citizens
marched for peace.

The other highlights of 1982
were not so positive.

The provincial government
imposed wage controls on
public employees forcing them
to take a big cut in their living
standards. It imposed cutbacks
in health and education that
resulted in the closing of
schools, the layoffs of teachers
and staff, the closing of hun-
dreds of hospital beds and the
layoff of thousands of hospital
workers, :

The year 1982 saw the com-
pletion of the 60,000 seat
stadium at a cost of
$111,000,000, all of it out of the
provincial public purse. That’s
why we had the cuts in educa-
tion and health — to pay for the
stadium. It was a good example
of the priorities of this govern-
ment — build sports stadiums
free of charge for its millionaire
sports promoter friends, while
cutting services to people.

The same thing applies to
B.C, Place — another provin-
cial government mega project
that we don’t need, being built
with public funds to help out the
government’s developer friends
and backers.

We finally got the trade and
convention centre off our backs
when the federal government
stepped in and rescued the pro-
vincial government from
another embarrassing failure.
An NPA majority in city coun-
cil had the gall to vote that this
multi-million dollar centre
should be exempt for all time
from municipal taxes — even
though the city would have had
to spend millions of dollars
every year servicing it with
police and fire protection, water
and sewers, lights and so on.

The provincial government
also went ahead with an elevated
light rapid transit line that the ci-
ty and the GVRD didn’t want
and that will cost several hun-
dreds of millions of dollars
more than a conventional line.
The government’s policy of

and let the Act drop. But that

school boards. Municipal coun-
cils are next on the list.

can’t help but come to the con-
clusion that the biggest single
problem facing the citizens of
Vancouver is the provincial
government with its programs
directed to cutting services to
people, eroding municipal
government, and subsidizing
the big corporations with public
funds.

than 1981. But 1983 will be
much worse. There is no light at
the end of the economic tunnel.

wasn’t applied to light rapid

sence sion Modest wage hikes granted B.C.

SS ana a Teachers by the arbitration board,
e : fi ;

Eee eee ome tos trom three to 6-5 percent,

are threatened by recent statements

taken all powers of zoning, from education minister Bill

rezoning and planning from Vander Zalm and the Compensa-
municipal councils and made | tion Stabilization Program as the
them into just rubber stamps of | saga of education cutbacks and at-
the minister of municipal af- | tacks on teachers continues into the
fairs. The public protest was so new year.

great that the government had

In astatement the CSP, th
no pull in its horns on this one meee

set up to roll back wages in line with
the Social Credit’s wage and spen-
ding restraints legislation, said Dec.
30 that the maximum teachers in
any of the 64 out of 75 school
districts that went to arbitration
will receive is a three percent hike in
1983.

And Vander Zalm has continued
with his style of public brow-
beating, making inflamatory
Statements promising ‘‘massive
layoffs” if teachers are awarded
anything above a zero percent wage
increase.

So far teachers response to the
ministers’ threats has been low-
key, mainly because large-scale
layoffs have failed to materialize,
according to B.C. Teachers
Federation president Larry Kuehn.

Kuehn said the salary hikes
awarded so far average about four
percent. But when one deducts 2.5
percent due to the shortening of the
school year by five days under Bill
89, the School Services (Interim)
Act, coupled with the rollbacks an-
ticipated under CSP commissioner
Ed Peck, teachers will wind up with
about 1.5 percent, according to
BCTF estimates.

Kuehn said the uncertainty of

doesn’t mean that it won’t try
again in the next session. It has
already eroded the powers of

'

When you add it all up you

Last year was grim, worse

More people will be laid off, the
unemployment lines will grow.

At the same time prices will con- t
tinue to soar because of price- wage settlements, along with a pro-
fixing by the big corporations. vincial election this spring during

The big issues facing us in which the Socreds may grant more
1983 will be to get governments money to education as an appeaser
moving to provide jobs, to build to an angry public, and which the
affordable housing, to base tax- | Socreds might lose, have con-

tributed to the BCTF’s ‘“‘wait and
see’’ attitude. But in other
statements the teachers president
has said teachers may yet chose
strike action if the threat of layoffs
continues,

Teachers may need to decide
quickly on that option if there is
any truth in an internal education

ation on ability to pay and to
make the big corporations pay
more taxes. The whole economy
of B.C. needs to be changed
from resource export to
manufacturing, to processing
more of our resources right here
at home before export. :

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Teachers’ wages, rights
again under Socreds’ axe -

ministry report that came to light
Dec. 30. The latest in a seemingly
endless series of ‘‘news by leaked
documents’’ the report envisions
up to 3,197 layoffs next September
even if teachers receive absolutely
no wage increases.

Playing a kind of Mutt-and-Jeff
routine with his own ministry’s
document, Vander Zalm has said
layoffs can be avoided if teachers
forget any wage increase and pro-
grams are chopped and ad-
ministrative costs are trimmed to
meet budget shortfalls.

To take such a path teachers
would be contributing to the ero-
sion of what bargaining rights they
possess under current legislation,
and would be tacitly accepting a
budget shortfall situation created
by the Socreds themselves, when
the Bennett government chopped
school board budgets twice last
year under increasingly austere
restraint measures. The result has
been an effective budget cut of
three percent for 1983, according to
the boards’ umbrella group, the
B.C. School Trustees Association.

Those actions followed an initial
move-early last year when the pro-
vincial government stripped boards
of their industry and commercial
tax base, transferring that power to
Victoria, and effectively eroding
the autonomy of many districts for
which that tax base constituted a
large porition of the budget.

Such actions prompted
numerous complaints and expres-
sions of outrage from the normally
conservative BCSTA, and made
trustees and teachers natural allies
in the groundswell opposition to
education cuts.

In this the BCSTA has always
been weaker partner, accepting the
notion of restraint but complaining
of its excessive application to
education. Most recently the
organization has, in the face of at-
tacks by Vander Zalm, reiterated
its support for the collective
bargaining process and employee
consultation on decisions affecting
jobs. But it has also asked teachers
and non-professional school

employees to ‘‘cooperate’’ in ing.
plementing cuts to the system.

That notion was contained in
‘statement of principles ang
priorities”’ recently released by
BCSTA executive,

BCSTA president Gary Begj,
acknowledged that the truster¢
association could be accused q,
“selling out,’’ but claimed the pog;;
tion ‘“‘does not mean that w,
now endorse the unjust difficulti.
which school boards and tha;
employees will face as a result 4
1982laws. . . wecannot afford y,
dwell on personal or party interes,
and, above all, we cannot affo
theluxury of continuing to fight
battles of 1982.”

Such blandishments will still ng
likely appease Vander Zalm, wh;
in recent outbursts has talked q
removing teachers’ bargaini
rights, and has criticized arbitr,
tion awards even while the proce,
is underway. He has continued
make such statements even afty
the arbitration board complaing
about his interference.

Vander Zalm will undoubted
continue to express his redneck se
timents until he is countered by -
united challenge on the part q;
trustees, teachers and the laba
movement.

New number at
action centre

Vancouver’s new unemploy-
ment action centre, which open-
ed at the United Fishermen and
Allied Workers Union hall Dec.
13, now has two new. phone
numbers: 688-9001 and
688-9083. ;

The centre, one of several —
operating across the province
under the auspices of the B.C,
Federation of Labor and the
unemployed committees of
local labor councils, is open
from 9 a.m. to 4,p.m., Monday
to Friday. .

In New Westminster, the
unemployment action centre is —
located at 1111 6th Ave. Phone
525-9628. 1

[restraint and economy certainly 3

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

ne ewspapers don’t generally have a moral to them. But anyone
reading the business pages over the past few months would have
found them to be like a Victorian homily — with the same lesson being
one business figure after another. Everyone, from Employers Council
president Bill Hamilton to Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, has been
telling us that Canadian workers must moderate their wage demands
— and moderate has come increasingly to mean freezing — or they will
price Canadian industry out of world markets.

We’ve said before that the lesson is a crock — but now there is an
authoritative report from the business world itself to back our conten-
tion.

A study conducted between 1970 and 1982 by Citibank of New York
and detailed in the current issue of Canadian Industrial Relations and
Personnel Developments concluded: ‘‘Canadian industry is com-
petitive and over the past ten years the work force has shown restraint.

“It (the Citibank study) states that excepting the United States there
is no industrial economy where wages have been less or where growth in
hourly manufacturing costs has been less.”’

The study examined 11 major industrial economies including
Belgium, Britain, France, West Germany, Denmark, Japan, the
Netherlands, Sweden and Italy as well as the U.S. and Canada.

It found that over the 11 years of the study, the unit cost of labor rose
the least in the U.S. (92 percent) and Canada (102 percent). Ironically,
Japan, which is always touted by the business world as the example,
registered among the highest increase in unit labor costs, which rose 195
percent from 1970 to 1982, third only behind Britain (334 percent) and
Italy (196 percent).

The wage levels — converted to U.S. dollars for purposes of com-
parison — are even more dramatically revealing. In 1970, according to

Citibank, ‘“Canadian industry paid the highest wages outside the U.S.
with Sweden close behind and most other countries far behind.”

But by 1982, that relative position had almost completely reversed —
itself. This year, wages in Japan and Belgium are the highest in the in-
dustrialized world and those in Canada and the U.S. are among the ©
lowest. At an average of U.S. $9.36 per hour, Canadian wages are —
lower than thosein the U.S., Japan, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands
and West Germany.

The Citibank survey underscores the total inequity of the wage con-
trol program — a program to which the study itself referred.

“‘Citibank’s findings indicated no lack of competitiveness in ~
Canada’s industry and no particular need to deal with the situation by —
options such as the current restraint program introduced by the federal
program.”’

The study also suggested ‘‘the commonly held view that Canadian _
workers’ demands are excessive falls short of reality.’’

We couldn’t have said it better.

* * *

R eaders who saw the advertisement here a year ago for Hal Griffin’s _
new book, Soviet Frontiers of Tomorrow but have yet to see a
copy of the book, may have wondered whether the shipment got hi-
jacked somewhere along the way.

Now they can stop wondering. International mails and Soviet
publishing schedules (print runs in the millions are not uncommon) be- —
ing what they are, the delay was much longer than expected but the
book is now in Vancouver. Autographed copies are availableintheCo-
op Bookstore which is handling distribution here. And onethinghasn’t
changed despite the passage of more than a year: the price. It’s still
$4.95.

We hope to review the book in our next issue.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 7, 1983—Page 2