PROVINCIAL NOTES ius Tage aud — Of ‘icers ‘ Prince Rupert Labor Council criticized Canadian Labor ‘Congress secretary-treasurer Donald Montgomery last week for the CLC officer’s failure to contact the local labor council during his two-day visit to Prince leave Rupert Amalgamated Shoreworkers and Clerks Union (ASCU), which was locked out for seven weeks this summer by the Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co- Op. About 20 percent of the Co- Op members are also members of the Guild. ASCU has also laid charges against the Guild with the B.C. Federation of Labor. ‘Right to work’ KAMLOOPS — The Canadian Union of Public Employees have called for an investigation . into the business connections of the head of tthe Okanagan Mainline. Municipal Labor Relations Association (OM- MLRA) for his alleged ties to the right to work movement. CUPE has charged that Kelowna alderman and OM- MLRA chairman Fred Macklin is associated with the union busting Independent Con- tractors and Businessmen’s Association (ICBA) which has led the campaign for right to elections’’. OMMLRA. CAMPBELL RIVER — A new municipal organization is being organized to contest municipal elections throughout the Strath- cona Regional District on northern Vancouver Island, stretching from Courtenay to Kelsey Bay. Called the Strathcona Committee of Progressive Electors (SCOPE), the new organization is the proposal of the municipal affairs com- mittee of the Campbell River and District Labor Council. The Council endorsed the formation of the organization in principle” and sent out a proposed con- stitution and organizational plan to affiliate unions for consideration. Initial response has been positive but it is not yet known if the new organization X municipality. new organization. municipal councils board. Rupert Council criticizes CLC Montgomery attempted to set up a meeting between the two unions and the Co-Op, but failed when the Co-Op refused to meet with ASCU. He was about to with CLC representatives Ed Johnson and Bill Smalley when a delegation of Labor Council officers met ~ Rupert in an attempt to head off | them at the airport to make the expulsion of the Prince their views known about the Rupert Fishermen’s Guild from _ dispute. the labor movement. The Labor Council is also . The Guild, a directly- angry at Prince Rupert mayor _Chartered CLC affiliate, was Peter Lester over public thrown out of the Prince Rupert statements by the mayor Labor Council last month over calling for the resignation of charges of scabbing against the ASCU business agent Linda . Long. A delegation of Labor Council members attended last week’s city council meeting to demand an explanation from the mayor for his statements. In a letter to city council, the Labor Council said it wanted an explanation “for purposes of determining the suitability of mayor Lester for “gore civic links charged work legislation in B.C. In calling for the vestigation, CUPE national ~ representative Jim Kelly said that Macklin can belong to any association he wants, association with the right to work movement is in conflict with his chairmanship of the in- but his Macklin must represent the labor policies of the city of Kelowna on the OMMLRA, Kelly said, and if direct con- nections to the anti-union ICBA can be shown, Macklin must Civic group to form on Island will be able to run candidates in this year’s round of elections. The organizatichal would call on the Labor Council to sponsor a region wide meeting to found SCOPE and elect a region wide board of directors. The new organization would then hold meetings in both Campbell River and Courtenay to draft policies and nominate candidates in each plan Environmental and com- munity groups in the district will be invited to join with ike At present, labor is without representation on any of the in the district or on the regional yy, The federal cost-cutting that Canadians have witnessed over the last few weeks has been catastrophic enough for working people but when a cabinet minister tries to pawn it off as ‘‘a significant milestone in social policy program- ming”’, it would put even the likes of Richard Nixon to shame. Yet health and welfare minister Monique Begin told the Social Planning Council in Toronto, ‘‘A watershed decision in social policy programming has been taken by a - Liberal government.’’ Worse yet, she insisted that the changes to family allowances ‘‘will provide more money for the poor and middle-income earners who have been struggling to raise children in the face of today’s in- flationary pressures.”’ Begin was talking about her much-vaunted tax credit for lower income families, of course. But, typically, she’s painted over the fine print with Liberal whitewash. In fact, the reductions in the monthly family allowance payments -- from the projected figure for 1979 of $28 to $20 - will in the first year, wipe out $96 of the $200 tax credit which the government has proposed for each child. Another $50 is knocked off by the fact that the former $50 tax credit is replaced by the new $200 credit. So over the year, the most that any family could expect is an extra $54 - a figure that will diminish considerably as each year goes by without cost-of-living increases in family allowance payments. And when you consider that the government has reduced the tax deduction for children aged 16 and 17 - from the present maximum of $814 to $460 - it means that a good many families are going to get less money. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 15, 1978—Page 2 EOPLE AND ISSUES That’s not to mention the fact that the government could, at any time, change the tax credit system - leaving families COPE only reform force after breakup of TEAM By ALD. HARRY RANKIN The raft called TEAM is breaking up in heavy political seas. Whether mayor Jack Volrich jumped off to save his own political life and be rescued by the NPA, or whether he was pushed off to lighten the political load makes little difference. What counts is that the mayor is no longer on the raft and that it is in real trouble. At least two other survivors on the raft are abandoning it. Alderman Don Bellamy is striking out after Volrich and alderman William Gibson has decided to head for a safer port at the university. TEAM is hardly a team any longer; it has become a motley crew of discontents.. It has a program but its elected representatives on council don’t pay any-attention to it. It was inevitable that this would happen sooner or later; I’m sur- prised that it hung together as long as it did. TEAM was made up of an unlikely alliance of ambitious politicians from the political centre to the political right. It portrayed ° itself as a reform party but this was just a gimmick to get elected when by 1968 the NPA had become completely discredited. When the TEAM mayor and aldermen were faced with the problem of implementing their own reforms they backed off. When faced with issues in council that required taking a stand for people or for developers, they invariably ‘stood with the developers. Unity . they did not have; their members on council voted every which way and more often than not with the NPA. But while TEAM was disin- tegrating (aided by the defection of aldermen Harcourt and Mazari who some time ago realized that TEAM’s future was behind it), another process was taking place at council. This was the formation of a NPA-TEAM coalition, a right wing coalition united by a common outlook with the developers and the corporate elite of this city. Ihave no doubt that the NPA will gleefully endorse Volrich for mayor. Volrich calls himself a “conservative’’, but a lot of people would say he’s describing himself too kindly. They would rather call him an out and out reactionary and quite an inept one at that. In announcing his ‘“‘push-jump”’ _with nothing but reduced family allowances. eke from TEAM, Volrich called for the election of a ‘‘conservative council” and for a “cutback in public spending’. To emphasize what he meant by cutback he singled out city council’s decision to spend some money to renovate the old Carnegie library building at the corner of Hastings and Main for the benefit of the residents of the downtown eastside, many of them old, very poor and living in rooms unfit for human habitation. Volrich’s call for ‘“‘cutbacks”’ and “fiscal responsibility” is just so much phoney window dressing to catch the taxpayers’ votes. What he is really after, and what the NPA and its friends in TEAM are after, is cuts in social programs; spending money for services that help people is not one of their priorities. Don’t forget that Volrich and NPA and TEAM aldermen voted to exempt Burrard Amusements and Jack Diamond’s racing business at the PNE from paying business tax to the city, a tax that all other businesses must pay. This saved these two PNE businesses $250,000 a year. That’s fiscal irrespon- sibility. Furthermore Volrich and the NPA and TEAM aldermen are pushing for the $163.5 . million complex at the PNE and for a $25 million convention centre. Both these projects wiil be heavily subsidized by the city. Aside from any direct subsidies that will un- - doubtedly be offered, there are the expenses of big street changes, traffic control, fire protection, police protection and a dozen other expenses that the city will be ex- pected to cover. These will run into millions of dollars. Volrich’s “fiscal responsibility” is really nothing more than a program of cutting social programs and social services for people to provide more funds for private developers, a program of . redistributing the wealth in favour -of the rich. Citizens of Vancouver who want genuine reforms have only one place to go now and that is to the Committee of Progressive electors (COPE). In the past two years COPE has broadened its base. It has a plat- form clearly designed to benefit the majority of the citizens. It is _ lining up a strong slate of can- didates. COPE is unique in the fact that every candidate must pledge in advance to abide by COPES program, the whole program. In this way they will be accountable not only to COPE but to the elec- torate who put them there to carry out the COPE platform. ? Things at city-hall will go better with COPE! BCA school policy set The Burnaby Citizen Association. (BCA) has called for the im- mediate implementation of the — McMath Report which recom- — mended that the provincial government pay 75 percent of all school costs, withthe remaining 25 percent paid by local taxpayers to be phased out, eventually eliminating the property tax for school purposes. A new school tax formula emerged as the main plank of the BCA’s school board platform in this year’s municipal election at a policy conference ‘held. .last weekend. All three BCA school board incumbents are up for election in a new expanded school board. There is no election for city council in Burnaby this year. Other BCA campaign | planks include a call for a community college in Burnaby and for using declining enrolment to improve the ‘ quality of education. Associate editor appointed The Tribune editorial board announced the appointment this .week of Fred Wilson to the position of associate editor. Wilson, 26, joined the staff of the paper in December, 1972, and has been with the Tribune since that time except for one year when he was general secretary of the Young Communist League, posted in Toronto. He undertook full-time editorial work on his return to Vancouver in January, 1977. Prior to his assuming the position of YCL secretary, he had been business and circulation manager. In a memorial statement paying tribute to Tom, the central executive committee of the Communist Party said, “Tom will long be remembered as a tireless champion of world peace, human progress, working class unity democracy and socialism.” ke For a generation born since the Second World War, the militant struggles of the Thirties are history. But for an earlier generation, the names of Tim Buck, Matthew Popovich, Tom McEwen, Tom Hill and the others of the Kingston Eight were household words as their names exploded into the headlines following their arrest and imprisonment under infamous Section 98. This week we learned that one of the few living links with that history was broken with the death in Thunder Bay of Amos Thomas [Tom] Hill, who passed away September 1 at the age of 82. Like many of his fellow Finnish immigrants in the lumber _ and mining industry in Ontario, Tom joined the Communist . Party in the early 1920’s and in 1931, his work had earned him the hatred of prime minister R.B. Bennett who jailed him along with seven other at Kingston. Tom was also a leading member of the Finnish Organization of Canada and for more than two decades was one of its leading spokesmen, travelling across the country on speaking tours and promoting the progressive Finnish- language newspaper, Vapaus. Among a later generation, he is remembered for his lectures in the “socialist Sunday School’ in New Finland near the Ontario-Manitoba border. Just a little less than a year ago when the Tribune staff got together with the mailing crew and supporters to hand out the awards for the 1977 circulation drive, there was one person whose record - 17 new subscriptions sold - made him stand out. His name is Elias Stavrides and last Saturday,- several friends again gathered together - this time to wish — him will on his return to Greece, the country which he left to -come to Canada in 1975. Needless to say, we’ll miss him. Scarcely a week went by. that he didn’t introduce a new reader to the paper and if a good many people, both in the Greek community and elsewhere,are no longer strangers to the Tribune, much of that credit must go to Elias. But then he has left much more than a host of friends- and new Trib subscribers - to remember his stay in this country. Just weeks before he left, he completed the task he had: set himself last year, that of translating the Communist Party program, the Road to-Socialism in Canada into Greek. And when publication is completed - and that is expected soon - Greek people across the country will be able to read this vital document in their own language.