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About 250 residents at the annual meeting of the Downtown Residents Association October 6, elected Bruce

Eriksen (top right) president of DERA for 1977-78. Other DERA officers elected were (top.right to top left)
Libby Davies, vice-president; Frances Journet, treasurer; and Jean Swanson, secretary. Elected to DERA’s
Community Resources Advisory Committee were: (bottom left to right) David-Lane, Joe Deschamps, Robert
Neuman, Jerry Lamb, Raymond Goodfriend, Linda Storey, and. Norm Coulter. Alderman. Harry Rankin was
the feature speaker at the meeting which was conducted with simultaneous translation into Chinese.

—Fred Wilson photo

Senior's housing cut

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Socred government has put
an end to the building of any more
subsidized, low-rental housing for
senior citizens. It has done so by
refusing to approve any more

projects under Section 15-1 of the:

National Housing Act.

Under this section a wide variety
of organizations — church, com-
munity, service, ethnic. — have
been able to build senior citizens
housing on very favorable finan-
cial terms. They were able to
obtain grants to cover one third of
the cost of the whole project, with a
loan at 8% to cover the cost of the
remainder. Further grants were
also available. The municipality
would usually bring down the cost
of the land. Another clause
provided that 25% of the units
would be further subsidized so that
rents would never be more than
25% of the persons income.

This was a good thing. The senior
citizens were the main
beneficiaries. There was nothing in
it for developers.

But now that is all changed. The
provincial government will no
longer approve such projects.
Insteadit has brought in two pieces
of legislation, the main purpose of

‘whichis to subsidize landlords and

developers.

One is called-Shelter Aid for
Elderly (SAFER). It’s alleged
purpose is to assist senior citizens
who have to spend an unreasonable
amount of their income on rent.
But as I pointed out in an earlier
article (August 15) it provides very
little help for senior citizens and
gives landlords an opportunity to
raise the rents and pocket even the
miserly provincial ‘‘Shelter Aid.”’

A single person with an income
of $285 a month who pays $125 in
rent received shelter aid of only
$9.17 monthly. A couple with an
income of $390 also receives the
magnificent sum of $9.17 shelter
aid monthly.

The second piece of legislation
was brought in by this government
to scuttle subsidized low rental
housing and to aid developers.

Under this legislation direct
subsidies ($600 per unit the first
year with $120 less each year from
the province; and $1200 per unit the
first year and 10% less each sub-
sequent year from the federal
government) plus interest free
loans, provide developers with a
subsidy of $3000 per suite.

No wonder a local consultant
firm, enthusiastically supporting
the legislation, advised developers
that ‘‘Assisted Rental Program
CeveEets thereby offer ex-

tremely attractive opportunities
for investors having high un-
sheltered income from other
sources.’’ That’s just what it is—a
tax shelter rip-off which will be
used as the excuse for ending rent.
controls and ending the building of
subsidized low. rental — ac-
commodation for senior citizens.

As I have siad before, this
government has all the charitable
instincts of a school of piranah
when it comes to providing ser-
vices for the people who need them
the most.

Parker heads
slate for ACE

Incumbent school board member
Eunice Parker heads_ the
Association of Coquitlam Electors
(ACE) nominations for the
November 19 municipal election.
Parker is finishing her third term
on school board after topping the
poll in the last election. -

Joining Parker on the school-
board slate is woodworker craft-
sman Tom Albanese.

Duane Pritchett is ACE’s
aldermatic candidate for the
second time. Pritchett narrowly
missed election last time around.

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

Overtime i is key

Cont'd from pg. 1
in the first place ‘by some very
foolish moves on behalf of ferry
management.”

A major issue of contention in
negotiations has been the ferries
Corporation demand for changes in
overtime provisions that would
require any employee to work a
total of 1,750 hours’ before
becoming eligible for overtime
payments. The contract. now
provides for overtime to be paid
after the regular 71/2-hour day
with compulsory overtime.

The union wants the present
provisions retained and sees the
management demand for change
as ‘‘an extreme deviation,’’
calculated to provoke a con-
frontation.

Moreover, business agent Gray
pointed out, the change is one that
has been recommended against in
the past by various mediators.

“Ferry management is trying to

implement something that com-

missioners have recommended
against in the past,’’ he said.

Attempts by management to
rationalize operations through
manipulation of overtime
provisions are also a key issue on
the B.C. Railway where members
of the United Transportation Union
have stayed off the job also in
defiance of an order issued by the
LRB. Unlike the LRB’s edict on the
ferries, however, the order against
BCRtrainmen has been referred to
Supreme Court.

Rather than comply fully with an
arbitrator’s award granting
overtime after 40 hours each week,
BCR management has sought to
alter shift schedules and cir-

cumvent: seniority ‘agreements: to‘

avoid paying overtime.
Thecompany wants to substitute
its own overtime program by
which overtime would only be paid
after 100 hours worked in a two-

. week period.

In both disputes, the defiance by
workers has been a measure of the
deeply-felt resentment over the
attempts of the Crown cor-
porations to cut corners at the
expense of employees and by
undermining collective
agreements.

The other major issue of con-
tention in the ferry strike is also a

issue in strike

mangement demand for change —

in this case, to increase the amount
of service which employees must
have before becoming exempt
from layoffs. It is presently two
years but the Ferries Corporation
want it increased to three.

“They’re trying to take away .

items that we have already,’”’ Gray
said.

The Ferry Workers business
agent was also critical of the
provincial government for im-
posing the cooling-off period,
noting that it was enacted by the
cabinet “before anything hap-
pened.’’

“That has to be seen for what it
is,” he added, ‘‘a direct attack on
collective bargaining.”

SEAN GRIFFIN... named

editor

Griffin named
as new editor

|

The editorial: board. announced’

this week that assistant editor Sean
Griffin has been appointed editor
of the Tribune.

Maurice Rush, who had been
editor since 1970 and associate
editor for ten years before that,
was elected October 1 as provincial
leader of the Communist Party in
British Columbia,

Griffin, 31, joined the staff of the
paper in 1972 after several years in
the local steel industry where he
was amember and plant chairman
in. the Marine-workers and
Boilermakers Union. He is also a
graduate of the University of
British Columbia.

or those looking for a quick — if nutritionally

questionable — meal, the proliferation of McDonald’s
hamburger outlets in recent years may have seemed like a
ready answer to a need. Certainly from the point of view of
the corporate owners of the fast food chain, consumers in
this province have been most obliging. Apparently, we’ve
woofed down more hamburgers and fries than anybody else
in Canada. Last year it brought in more than $200 million in
gross sales for McDonald’s western Canadian operations, a
statistic duly noted by press commentators all over the
province. But what none bothered to note is the chief
method by which McDonald’s turns those sales millions into
big profits — with wages that are even less substantial than
its hamburger patties.

Readers may remember a couple of years ago when the
Young Communist League, in its campaign to have
minimum wage laws applied to youth, charged that Mc-
Donald’s was deliberately keeping the majority of its work
force under 18 in order to evade the minimum wage. But in
the U.S., where the multinational corporation is based, the
management of McDonald’s has developed an entire
strategy aimed at keeping its work force young, unions out
and wage levels down.

“Tt’s 150,000 kids busting their tails out there that makes
us tick,’’ the personanel director at Hamburger Central,
McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, admits. Of course
there are no wage benefits to go with the hard work — just
praise where it’s useful and the ever-ready threat that
someone else is waiting for your job. Where that hasn’t
worked McDonald’s has been known to use lie detector tests
on employees, usually to elicit views on unions.

McDonald’s profits — in this country as well as the U.S. —
are a clear indication that the tactics have been successful.
And Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s has_ boasted:

“Unions haven’t been able to touch us with a ten-foot pole.”’

Kroc has not been one to leave anything to chance,
however. In 1971 he donated $250,000 to the U.S. Committee
to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) for which the recipient,
Richard Nixon, repaid him by pressing for a ‘‘youth dif-
ferential” on the minimum wage bill. Although the bill —
dubbed, appropriately enough, the “‘McDonald’s bill’? —
was ultimately defeated in the Senate, a new proposal has
been advanced by one of the old bill’s supporters,
Representative John Erlenborn of Illinois. Not sur-
prisingly, McDonald’s hamburger Central is smack in the
middle of Erlenborn’s district.

Sadly enough, there is no need for such legislation in this
province — a sub-minimum already exists. Workers under
18 have no protection under minimum wage laws and
McDonald's, with its dependence on part-time student and
teenage workers, is a prime beneficiary. Judging by its
swift reaction to the YCL’s campaign, it wants to keep
things that way.

It’s time the law was changed. If there is a company

which doesn’t “deserve a break today’’.— it’s McDonald’s.
* * a

W: have a note from labor journalist Ben Swankey who

recently returned from Geneva where he was a delegate
last month to one of the most extraordinary conferences to
take place in many years. Held under the auspices of the
Non-Governmental. Organizations of the UN, the Con-
ference on Discrimination against the Indigenous Peoples
of the Americas brought together some 50 delegates,
representing 60 indigenous peoples and nations. Swankey,
who gas gained considerable recognition for his research
work on Native rights, was the only non-Native delegate
from this country, attending on behalf of the Canadian
Peace Congress and the World Peace Council.

More than 1,000 pages of documentation were presented
at the conference to demonstrate that the indigenous
peoples throughout the Americas are systematically being
subjected to various crimes and ultimately to genocide. The
final document of the conference made its indictment of
“the multi-national corporations .and the governments
which collaborate with them.”

Swankey notes that he’ll be glad to address any interested
organization which would like to hear about the conference.
He can be reached at 433-8323.

* * *

mong the many letters and envelopes coming across the

Tribune counter.last week was one postmarked Bentley,
Alberta. Inside, accompanied by the briefest of handwritten
notes, was a cheque for $600 — one hundred to Canadian Aid
for Vietnam Civilians and $500 to-the Tribune. But if the
postmark was unfamiliar, the donor’s name was not Joe
Maister has made a number of substantial contributions to
the paper over the years and they always seem to come
when our need is more pressing than usual. For that, our
many thanks.

“TRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — FRED WILSON
Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver,B.C. VSL 3X9. Phone 251-1186
Subscription Rate: Canada, $8.00 one year; $4.50 for six months,

All other countries, $10.00 one year
Second class mail registration number 1560

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 14, 1977—Page 2

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