Page 4, The Herald, Friday, March 13, 1961

fe ne ve. KITT VI

daiiy herald

Genera! Office - 635-4357 Published by
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Editor — Pete Nadeau

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When alf the financial lingo is removed,

-Monday’s provincancial budget again rammed
.home the one point that most of us tend to forget:
‘governments do not have money, people have
money.
“Ht may be prudent to remember that salient
fact the next time your friendly nelghborhood
-politician says the government will do something
for you, whether it be repairing a street or
-building a monument to Itself on a piler In Van-
couver.

-If governments need money, they will get it
from your pocket. The fact that they may return
some of It in the form of services Is by no means
a great gesture of philantrophy on thelr part.

‘. So, here in 1981, the Soclal Credit government
of B.C. has picked your pocket for a few extra
dollars for almost anything you may need and
the question arises ad to'what do we do now.
Shoutd we turf them out af the polls next time
around? Should we give them’a’ chance to do
wonderful things on our behalf with the added
lucre? Or should we simply carry on and let the
world unfold as It will?

Consider the first alternative. It would appear
that the Socreds, running merrily alang on a
collision course with themselves, may take care
of that aspect by themselves. It has been a long,
time since anything they have sald or done has
not backflred. -

Assuming that the voters choose to supply the
fatal blow on the next election day, what can we
expect? in 1974, we did just that, but then we

‘changed our minds a couple of years Jater and —

government was back to square one.

The potorization of B.C. politics Is such that na
matter which party is in power, the childish and
churlish NDP-Socred dogfights continue. And at
your expense,

The ‘boftom line is that governments of any
kind “give” you nothing; you pay for anything
you get. The first question is whether you’d buy
asix per cent-taxed used car from these people.
The second question is whether you’d make the
same deal with their competitors.

It isn’t much of a choice, Is It?

HEATHCLIFF 23°:

—

om
Mc Meught Dyed. Iie.

VANCOUVER (CP)
— Noone wins a strike,
but the fourweek-long
B.C. Telephone Co.
dispute is creating more
than its share of losers.

The company, its
workers and thousands
of other people, whose
sole contact with B.C,
Tel previously was their
monthly phone bill,
have suffered
economically because of
the hitter, sometimes
vialeat dispute.

Modern, automated
equipment has reduced
the strike’s impact on
the public to aggra-
vating waits for
directory assistance or

-distance operator
and the occasional dead
line. People seeking
phone installation face
indefinite delays in
service.

To the 11,000 Tele-
communications
Workera Union mem-
bers, the strike means
worries about the

_ mortgage, monthly bills
and a change in diet.

The workers have
been out since Feb. 10 to
back wage demands set
out in a federal con-
cillator's report last
September. Among
them is Val Ber-
thraume, a 46-year-old
telephone operator for
‘19 years and single
mother of a 14-year-old
boy.

Her bank has offered

to remortgage her

wit you
Look-A-
$0 SAD??

ry

AISLIN SI

three-bedroomed
Prince George, B.C., .
home to help her make
payments —at a 17-per-
cent-interest rate. ‘

ha | said mo to that,"
she said in an interview
from the central B.C.
city. “They said they
would let me go for
three months.”

Like other strikers —
who receive $50 a week
for picket duty — she
has had to take drastic
steps to make ends
meet, including putting
her son up on the
livingroom couch to

. make room for a,
boarder and working
part-time house

Despite the hardships,
she supports the strike
because a good set-
Hlement is her only hope
for keeping up with in-
flation.

' Cal Gordon, 45, a
telephone lineman in the
southern Interior city of
Kamloops, hasn't been
able to find work and is
finding the financial
pressure building daily.

"I'm making $50 a
‘week and my wife
makes $60 baby-sitting.
Pd like to buy a new car
and my ° 10-year-old
daughter a new bicycle
because her's isil for her™
now, but I just can’t.”

Co-striker Jeannette
_ Hamilton, 26, and her

24-year-old husband

Ron both work for B.C.

Tel as service

representative and
lineman. They were al-
teady ‘struggling to
make their $730 manthly
mortgage payments and
$1,000 municipal taxes
before the strike began.
“It's really, really
depressing. We get by
on hamburger once a
week, along with kraft
dinners and soup and
sandwiches.”
Hamilton says they
will have to take out
loans to meet payments

Sif the strike ‘stretches

into April.

Other strikers, she
said, are still burdened
with payments on loans
they took out during the
last telephone strike,
which ran for eight
weeks in 1978.

One criliciam levelled
at the U.S.-controlled
telephone - company is
that it prompted the
strike because it makes
money running a set-
vice with only su-
pervisory workers, a
charge company
spokesman Kelth Mat-
thews says is baseless.

The 2,700 supervisors
can’t do the work of a
labor force three times
that size. .

No estimates have
been devised, but the
company is losing
revenue on long-
distance tolls and is ~
paying high interest
rates for money. -

. borrowed for its $370-
million expansion and

TEL STRIKE CREATING ‘LOSERS’

upgrading program,
which has been halted
during the strike, he
said.

Previous figures show
B.C. Tel emerged from
the last strike with an
increase in revenues.

The company earned
$25 million in excess of
anti-inflation board
guidelines and was or-
dered by the Canadian
Radiotelevision and
Telecommunications
Commission to return $7
million -!to : telephone
subscribers in 1978. Part
of that profit camefrom
the strike, Matthews
said.

Supervisors also
profit during the strike
— an average of $3¢-an-
hour overtime — ‘but
they privately complain
the 60-hour, six-day
weeks have disastrous
effects on their home
lives. ;

The strike has pushed
some telephone
supervisors into joining
the Telecom:
munications Empioyees
Managerial and
Professional
Organization, says
Farrell Hopgood, union
president.

About 700 supervisors
have asked to join, he
said, adding he expecta
the majority will sign by
the time the union seeks
a certification vote later
this spring.

Outside the arena,

. Companies and workers

. Island have little dif-

one-day general strike -

on mid-Vancouver
ficulty pointing to losses
they suffered during a

the B.C. Federation of
Labor held March 6 to
demonstrate sympathy,

Milllons of dollars
were lost as everyone
from dockmen for the
Crown-Owned B.C.
Ferries and unionized
loggers to supermarket
cashiers and postmen
refused joe cross picket

v enother one-day
strike, which the. fed
pays will involve thou-
sands of mining, forest,
and service industry
workers in southeastern

B.C. is planned for
March 20.
The TWU's last

contract expired Dec.
31, 1979. Negotiators for
union and company
have agreed lo a wage
package offering from
38.5-per-cent to 42-per-
cent increases in a
three-year contract to -
expire Dec. 31, 1962,
Buta return to work is
being held up by
disagreement over the
status of 24 union
workers the company
has dismissed for
alleged wrongdoings on
the picket line. The
union wants the workers
reinstated while the
company wants to deal
with them through
Grievance and = ar-
bitration procedures.

Skilled
labor

4

shortage

WINNIPEG (CP) —
Employers and governments .
are the culprits in a shortage .
of skilled labor in Canada, &
labor historian said Thur.
sday.

Wayne Roberts of Mc-
Master University told a
conference on labor and

economy that employers |

don't want workers to have
the broad skills acquired
through a traditional . ap-

prenticeship program.
‘What they want are.par-

tially-trained tradesmen |

who can fit into

er +» at lower pay,” he

bests said federal ‘and
provincial governments
have contributed to thé
problem dy supporting
training programs designed
to supply workers for par-
ticular firms rather than
teaching specific skills.

“Millions of doUars have
been investedin training, but
it's all given to employers
and has not brought us any
closer to filling our needs.
The mountain has labored
and it has brought forth: a
mouse.”’

Roberts says that in some
ways, the skill shortage is
blown out of proportion and
used as a smokescreen for
other complaints.

"A lot af people. are
becoming skilled at grinding
their own axes about the
shortage of skilled Labor.”

However, Reberts ad-
mitted a shortage of skilled
labor does exist. He said 87
per cent of skilled workers in
Canada are over the age of 40
and are
retirement “and they're’ not
being replaced.”

Roberts said unions could
‘play a major role in easing a
shortage of skilled tabor that
is expected to hit 35,000 in
Canada by 1985. He said
traming = ng a top pelority
contract negotiations. .

Political economist Frank
Reid of the University of To-
ronto told the conference
that Canadian workers were
better off under anti-
inflation guidelines than they
have been since controls
were lifted.

He said real wages con-
tinued to rise while the anti-
inflation program was in
effect but that they barely
kept pace with the consunier
Price index in the two years
after the controls were lifted
in October, 1978.

Reid said that after the -
controls were dropped, the
index increased by 10.09 per
cent while hourly earnings
rose 10.05 percent. =.

However, he said,. during -
the three-year anti-inflation
program the index increased
7.88 per cent and bourly
earnings rose by 10.19 Pere
cent.

John Calvert, a researcher
for the Canadian Union of
Public Employees, said the.
anti-inflation program made
employers more aggressive. -

New search for.a fountain of youth

VANCOUVER (CP) — The
search is on for drugs to
defeat senility, in effect fora
fountain of youth, says Pat

omer
mR HANSON, THE GENERAL

STRIKES SHOW THE
WORKERS” INCREASING

WORKERS FEEL CAPITA
EXPLOITS THEM, THE 16
BILLION THE OIL. GI

-McGeer,
_ neurological sciences at

head of

University of 8.C.
McGeer, who is also B.C,

minister of universities,
science. and ¢om-
munications, told the
opening session Thursday of

A conference on the mentally

impaired elderly that
Anowledge of the brain's
function still is primitive.

we OF THE HUNDREDS
_ OF BILLIONS THAT
MULTI-NATIONALS HAVE
OVERCHARGED IS BUT | OVERCHARGED CANADIANS
- A FRACTION,,,

With half the hospital beds
occupied by patients suf-
fering brain disorders,
research on the brain and
ru system is vital, he

Recent experiments with
animals have shown a sub-
stance contained in saliva
can stimulate growth of
nerve cells in the ex:
tremities, While this nerve
growth factor doesn’t occur
in brain cells, research could
turn up profeine which
simulate similar cell growth
in the brain,

Such a finding could turn
into a-medical “fountain of
youth,” McGeer sald,

The brain cells or neurons
are different from other cells
in the body in that they don't
Teproduce and regenerate
during the life of the person.

“It is sald that the Lord

forgives, but not the nervous

approaching —

system," he said of abuse of
the body,

Hecompared the brain wa
television set. “You get the
picture only when all the
parts are functioning,”

“The brain is the zenith of

biological accomplishment .

inthe known world. Although
vast sums of are
spent to oblain knowledge of
the outer universe, our
knowledge of the inner
universe through which It

must be perceived is very
primitive.”

As 4 person grows older,
the dendrites or briinches on
each neuron which connect
to other neurons,
deteriorate. But He sald

process. an,