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B.C. RAIL: Communist
leader Maurice Rush
takes issue with the
recommendations of the
McKenzie Royal Com-
mission to abandon B.C.
Rail, and he is also
Critical of NDP leader

Dave Barrett's continen-
talist position on the rail
line, page 3.

faba

é

ARTISTS: A ‘Day of Rec-
koning’ by Vancouver ar-
tists this week protested
the federal government's
cutbacks which have
made a crisis for Cana-
dian culture, page 10.

e
The Tribune interviews ANC

| spokesman Yusuf Saloojee
_on the ‘elections’ in Zim-
| babwe and Namibia, page 6.

'

SOUTHERN AFRICA:

Kinnaird, .who.. called..McGeer’s

€TIONS: With the final!
results in, Fred Wilson
analyzes what happened
to give the NPA a majori-
ty at all levels of Van-
couver civic govern-
ment, page 2.

UNJUST LAWS: Should
workers’ obey unjust
laws? Columnist Bruce
Magnuson asks the
question and contrasts
some different answers,

\ page 8.

The new administration of the
B.C. Federation of Labor could be
faced with its first challenge as
Socred education minister Pat
McGeer said Tuesday that he will
ask the cabinet to impose essential
services legislation to break the
strike of school district employees
in Nelson.

A total of 250 school board em-
ployees are on the picket lines as
employees in Castlegar, Trail and
Grand Forks have been locked out
since early November in response
to the Nelson strike.

But McGeer had no comment
about the lockout and instead
aimed his attack on the workers
charging they are “impairing the
performance of the schools and
therefore they hurt the.
youngsters.”” McGeer said he
would recommend that the
legislature be recalled to designate
schools as essential services and
forbid school employees the right
to strike.

CUPE regional director Ray
Mercer said McGeer’s comments
are “ill timed, improper and not
justified at all.”

Mercer said he found it “‘in-
credible” that the minister of
education would be allowed to
‘interfere in the responsibilities of
the labor ministry. That criticism
was also voiced by new B.C.
Federation of Labor president Jim

statements ‘‘regrettable.”

At issue in CUPE’s dispute with
the Kootenay district boards is the
demand for parity with Okanagan
school districts in wages and
conditions, Without a contract
since June 30, CUPE wants parity
established over a one year period,
but the employers have refused.

The Socreds imposed essential
services legislation in 1977 just
after striking ferry workers
refused to obey a government-
imposed cooling-off period. The
full terms of Bill 92, however, have
yet to be used.

Under the terms of the Act, the
government may intervene in any
strike or lockout if it has been
designated an ‘‘essential service.”
Included in essential services
legislation are such departments
as the B.C. Ferry Corporation,
B.C. Hydro, B.C. Railway,
Emergency Health Services, ICBC
and the Workers’ Compensation

Board.

e)

F
“
Sree.

;

McGeer issues Bill 92 threat

As Jean Claude Parrot and other Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ leaders faced a court in Ottawa
Monday, about 75 demonstrators marched in the rain outside Vancouver's main post office to demand
the dropping of all charges against the union and its leaders. Canadian Paperworkers’ Union president

~ Art Gruntman and United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union president Jack Nichol are seen in the
centre. The court set a trial date of April 2 for Parrot and his colleagues.

—Fred Wilson photo

GVRD accreditation scheme
defeated, Lanskail withdraws

The Greater Vancouver
Regional District’s task force on
labor relations has officially
dropped its plan to organize Lower
Mainland municipal employers
into an accredited employer’s
group. ;

After a decisive eight to one vote
against accreditation by Van-
couver city council last week, task
force chairman Don Lanskail
Monday withdrew the proposal
from the remaining municipalities.
The only other municipalities that
had considered the matter, Surrey
and Burnaby, both unanimously
rejected the scheme.

Kinnaird, Macintyre

The two contenders described
by many commentators as
“moderates” won election to the
two full-time “posts in the B.C.
Federation of Labor Friday —
although the policies that the same
convention endorsed may cause
some changes to the leadership
image.

See LABOR COMMENT pg. 12

Former building trades
president Jim Kinnaird won
election to the new full-time
position of president of the 250,000-
member Federation, over
Telecommunications Workers
Union president Bob Donnelly by a
vote of 626-472. Donnelly had been

’ backed by the administration.
See FED page 12

take Federation posts

JIM KINNAIRD...
president of B.C. Federation of
Labor. :

elected

“it is a major victory both for
taxpayers and for municipal
employees,’’ CUPE spokesman
Len Stair told the Tribune
Tuesday. ‘“‘The councils were not
prepared to sign away their
municipal autonomy to a new,
huge bureaucracy over which they
would have no control.”

CUPE led a vigorous campaign
against accreditiation and ap-
peared before each of the councils
to oppose it. West Vancouver
alderman and big business
spokesman Don Lanskail appeared
on.behalf of the GVRD task force
and appealed to the councils to join
the accredited group in order to
show “‘employer unity”’ against the
bargaining demands of civic
employees in the post AIB period.

“Our. experience is every other
part of the province where such
groups have existed is that they
operate not under the direction of
the municipal councils, but under
the direction of the Employers
Council of B.C.,’’ Stair said, ‘Mr.
Lanskail himself is a leading.
member of this body.’’ Lanskail is
president of Forest Industrial
Relations, the giant forest com-
panies’ bargaining agent, a major
component of the Employers’
Council.

“They are using municipalities
as pawns in a larger game to drive
down wages and conditions in the
public sector so that they can then
be used as a battering ram to also
force down wages and conditions in
the private sector,” said Stair.

Once having formed accredited
employers groups “‘a policy of
confrontation and irresponsible

and reckless use of lockouts”

have shut down municipal services
for as long as five months at a
time, Stair said. “‘This is what we
would have had in the Greater
Vancouver area if the councils had
allowed the GVRD to take over
labor relations. Its stated purpose
of improving labor relations is the
opposite of its real purpose. It was
nothing but a con.”

City defies
ward victory

Vancouver city council appears
intent on defying the majority
decision of Vancouver voters to
introduce a ward system.

Council took advantage of the
absence of Harry Rankin and
Darlene Marzari Tuesday to defer
any action on the ward plebiscite
until the new council takes office in
January.

While voting to defer a motion by
May Brown to take action on the.
ward plebiscite, council also
refused to hear four delegations
that asked to speak to the issue.

“T particularly deplore the ab-
dication of responsibility,’ COPE
president Bruce Yorke said after
~being refused the opportunity to
speak, “‘After all it was this council
that put the matter to the voters,
not the new one.”

COPE had prepared a three
point motion which would have had

See WARD page 2

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