————

Delaying tactics out

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 1968

VOL. 29, NO. 27

IWA FORWARDS DISASTER
WARNING TO OPERATORS

; “ 22
“As 1 understand it, 89’ per cent of the bombing pe baat ah
ber cent of the 7/13ths of the area, with about 9 per cen

Sccuring in 16% of...

i i tl” i | ”
sek Nar Ee in “International Herald Tribune”.

Keep our own resources
and jobs’ says Benyon

“In the three Provincial
yelections on July 15th voters
Will have another opportunity to
register their opposition to the
Tesource giveaways, and the anti-
democratic labor and
€ducational policies of the
ennett administration’’, Nigel
Organ, Provincial leader of the
Ommunist Party declared at a
Nominating meeting in North
Vancouver last Wednesday.

“The Communist Party will
Concentrate its effort in this
found in North Vancouver-
apilano where Jim Beynon,
young Native shipyard worker
4S been invited to carry the
arty banner’’, Morgan said.

“I'm going to fight for the
€stablishment of crown
Corporations to stimulate the
Processing of our mineral,
lumber, and petroleum
Tesources in B.C.” Beynon
declared. ‘‘Regaining of public
Control of our natural resources,
€nding the senseless bleeding of
ur economy by export of raw
Materials, and a new economic
Policy for the development of

C. industry could contribute
Much to the security and well-

ing of our young people’ he

continued.

“As a shipyard worker I know
how badly we need to develop a
steel industry on the Pacific
coast in conjunction . with
expansion of shipbuilding the
creation of a Canadian merchant
marine. If this were done instead
of shipping out our rich ore and
coal deposits, it would mean
thousands of new jobs for British
Columbians.”

‘“*‘And the Bennett
government’s sellout of natural
resources is closely linked to the
enactment of anti-labor
legislation to hamstring the
trade union movement, and
policies which undermine
educational standards and block
necessary expenditures for
schools, health facilities and |
welfare to make this province a
low-tax haven for foreign
capital,’’ he charged.

And naturally, I?m
particularly concerned about the
government neglect and
humiliation of my own Native
people, and the help needed to
gain equality in education,
employment and _ living
standards with their fellow
Canadians,’’ Beynon said.

The long dragout in the wage negotiation ‘strate
(FIR) with the International Woodworkers of Ame
for a new 1968 wage contract, w

designed to hold wage levels

IWA wired Coast operators, warni

throughout negotiations ‘‘invites the disaster of an industr

In its wire to all Coast
operators the IWA declared that
“a totally unnecessary deadlock
at the bargaining table compels
this committee to advise all
coast operators that unless your
representatives make a genuine
effort to bridge the gap between
the IWA and Management,
serious consequences are
inevitable.”’

Sealed down from its original
50-cent an hour increase
demand, the IWA negotiating
had proposed a wage increase of
23-cents an hour effective June
15 and another 23-cents effective
June 15, 1969, an additional paid
statutory holiday, extended
vacation time based on length of
service and other fringe benefits.

FIR’s representatives for the
coast operators, following
innumerable sessions which
began with their initial “offer”
of 6-cents, finally managed a 30-
cent hourly increase offer,
spread over a two-year contract
period with some fringe benefits
included in the package. The
IWA negotiating committee
rejected FIR’s contract
Proposals as totally.
unacceptable to their 26,000
coast membership.

gy’ of Forest Industrial Relations
rica (IWA) coast lumberworkers
ould appear to follow an over-all monopoly stratagem,

! down — but keep lumber prices and profits soaring.
This delaying tactic became sharply evident Wednesday of this week when the

This slow-down method of
collective bargaining by the big
tycoons in lumber, steel, pulp
and other industries falls a good
deal short of what is known as
“bargaining in good faith’, and
reflects many aspects of a pre-
arranged policy aimed at
creating frustration, anger, and
in some _ instances provoking
precipitate strike action among
Sections of the 26,000 coast,
lumber workers whose future
Pay-envelopes, fringe benefits
and working conditions are being
determined.

Last week some 500 Weldwood
(plywood) workers in Vancouver
walked off the job, primarily
because of sheer frustration at
the studied delays by FIR’s
representatives at the
negotiating table. Delaying
actions which the forest industry
now feel they can safely indulge
in with the MacMillan-Bloedel J.
V. Clyne-Socred Bill 33 in their
hip pocket, to threaten
compulsory arbitration upon the
IWA (or any other trade union in

wage negotiations) which
doesn’t accept monopoly’s
cheese-paring wage “‘offers’’,

reluctantly extracted from their
vast pyramid of excess profits.
Same Pattern

Commentator, official organ of
Local 480, United Steelworkers
in the COMINCO Trail empire
where wage negotiations have
been bogged down for some
considerable time, and which
according to Union spokesmen
have produced nothing, or as the
Union paper puts it, “despite the
lengthy herculean labour,
produced only a mouse of an
offer.’’

According to union spokesman
Lynn Williams of Trail, ‘‘the
niggling type of negotiations
indulged in by the company,
which started with a ‘nothing,
nothing’ offer in a two-year
agreement, and in response to
the union’s counter-proposals,
progressed to an unacceptable
choice of a 15-cent package over
two years or a 22-cents in 3
years.”’

Despite these efforts by the
union to meet Cominco halfway
and facilitate serious bargaining, :
it would seem to be “ no dice’.
The union journal deplores ‘“‘this
type of irresponsible
negotiations and warns that this
hazardous brinkmanship is
encouraged by the anti-labour

(Continued on Page 8 )

In the current edition of The

SEEMS THESE VIETNAMESE DEFENDERS have finally convinced LBJ and the Pentagon that the big U.S. Army

base at Khe Sanh is not a ‘healthy

Dienbienfu. (Last week the U.S. announced its evacuation from Khe Sa