Jol

Lf

teton Chileans and supporters staged

‘tian trations in Vancouver, other Can-

io “ities and around the world as a

i al strike launched last week rocked

eth the broadest demonstration

Minoo against the regime of Augusto
T et.

Ga “B8Portation — including the cru-
Bourg ment of intercity trucking —

to a halt July 2 and 3, bringing
Nai, “Cterprise in the South American

Iny.0 2 standstill.
Motested et? some 100 demonstrators
eneral Outside the Chilean consulate-
‘no On West Pender Street July 3, in
Tt of the action launched in Chile.

Supporters of Chilean national strike demonstrate outside Chilean

consula

Demonstrations also took place in
Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and
Toronto, where the Coalition to Support
the Chilean National Strike protested in
front of the Chilean consulate.

In Vancouver, Gundher Ortiz, spokes-
man for the Support Committee for the
National Strike in Chile, said that as of
that day more than 85 per cent of the
country’s transport workers, including the
powerful Confederation of Truck Owners,
had stopped most transportation. Addi-
tionally, most small businesses in three
major centres — the capital, Santiago,
and Concepcion and Valparaiso — had
closed their doors.

r offices in Vancouver July 3.

While the initial shutdown was to cover
a 48-hour period beginning July 2, there
were plans to continue the strike indefi-
nitely, said Ortiz.

Ortiz said three people — including a
13-year old girl — were killed in the first
day of the protest. The three people — the
number has since risen to six killed — were
residents of Santiago’s shantytowns,
which Ortiz said were the centre of the
activities against the Pinochet regime.

Newspaper reports say the three killed
were gunned down from unidentified
“utility” vans.

see PINOCHET page 7

July 9, 1986
40°

GEU action
depends on
Socreds’
new leader

Faced with an ultimatum from Premier
Bill Bennett to accept the government’s
concession demands or face back-to-work
legislation and possible abolition of the
union’s right to strike, the master bargain-
ing committee of the B.C. Government
Employees Union moved Friday to sus-
pend the union’s escalating strike action
and to put off further bargaining until after
the Social Credit leadership convention
July 28-30. :

BCGEU president John Shields told a
news conference at BCGEU headquarters
Friday: “The premier gave me an ultima-
tum to either call off the strike and accept

Editorial, page 3

the government’s concessions or stay on
strike and be legislated back to work with
the implied threat that our right to strike
‘would be taken away from us. If the union
did not respond by 8 a.m., the premier said
he would reconvene the legislature to order
us back to work.”

Shields said that the union’s master bar-
gaining committee, which met Thursday
following Shields meeting with Bennett,
rejected both options and decided instead to
suspend the strike and further bargaining
until after a special bargaining conference
July 30, the same day a new Socred

see B.C. FED page 8

- tne aie

Conference
of labor
and Native
groups set
for fall

— page 8 —

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