“ALL YOU HAVE TO Do, MRS, SMITH,

(S COVER BOTH EYES.”

Courtesy, N.Y. Daily World

VOTE AS YOU FIGHT

Council urges tenants
get-on the voter’s list

The Vancouver Tenants
Council this week urged all
tenants to see to it that their
names are on the civic voters’
list... .

They point out in a special
letter to their members that any
tenant who has been a resident
in the city since January 1, 1970,
who is a British subject and is 19
years of age is eligible to get on
the voters list.

The deadline for getting your
name included on the lists is
September 25. Everyone is urged
to make note of that date.

The Civic Voters List office is
situated at the south-east corner
of Yukon and Broadway, and one
can register their name there
before September 25. Or an
official enumeration card will
be sent if you phone the office at
873-7011. This must be filled out
and returned.

The letter states that in 1969
tenants living in apartment
blocks contributed $9,820,529 or
approximately $200 per tenant
to tax coffers.

Tuesday, August 4, is the date
on which representatives from
the Tenants Council will appear
before city council to ask for a
tenant representative on the

Grievance Board; night sessions .

of the Board; advanced public
knowledge of cases before the
Board; published reasons for
decisions; and the correction of
improper and biased infor-
mation coming from the
Grievance Board and its staff.

Tenants are urged to attend
this appearance which is
scheduled for 2 p.m.

A series of public meetings on
tenant matters will be held on
Monday evenings at 7:30 p.m.
The first one is scheduled for
Kits Beach (corner Arbutus and
Cornwall). On August 17,
another meeting is scheduled at
the English Bay bandstand.
Pandora Park will be the scene
of the third meeting on August
24, with Marpole holding one on
the August 31.

Petition grows

Reports this week show more_

than 2,000 signatures gathered
in B.C. for the new ‘“‘OUTNOW”
petition calling on President
Nixon to end U.S. military
aggression against the people of
Indochina, and withdraw all U.S.

BCFL annual

meet in Nov.

The 15th Annual Convention
of the British Columbia
Federation of Labor (BCFL)
will be convened for the week
of November 2 - 6th inclusive
at the Bayshore Hotel,
Vancouver.

Representation from union
locals will be 2-delegates for
the first 100 members, with
one additional delegate for
every 500 or major fraction
thereof. Central labor
councils will be represented
by 3-delegates each, and for
small local unions, these may
pool their memberships and
select 1 delegate.

All resolutions from BCFL
affiliates coming before the
Convention must be in the

hands of BCFL executive
officers on or before October
3rd, 1970.

armed forces
immediately.

In addition to mass endor-
sations by bodies like the
Vancouver District Labor
Council, the Canadian Union of
Public Employees Local Union
1004, and resolutions adopted by
summer picnic gatherings of
various labor, NDP and cultural
organizations — signatures are
being gathered on downtown
streets and house-to-house.

Mrs. Velda Doran, vice presi-
dent of the Westminster-Coquit-
lam Moratorium Committee
last week sent off the first 1,065
signatures gathered. She reports
another 500 have already been
turned in, and reports of
canvassers indicate the 2000
mark has already been passed.

The petition, sponsored by the
‘“‘Canadian OUTNOW Com-
mittee’ of Toronto and circu-
lated by the Vancouver Peace
Action League in B.C. with
support of many other peace,
labor and church groups, is part
of a world-wide campaign to get
so many messages from people
of the world that President
Nixon will be compelled to order
an immediate withdrawal and
end the criminal massacre of
innocent. men, women
children.

and weapons

PACIFIG TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1970—Page 2

€-¢-

Se RS GV LN Tee YAO 8A duh!

+ NUDES :

Rankin seeks commission

to work for youth needs

By HARRY RANKIN

Everybody’s talking about
what’s happening to our young
people, but authorities seem
either unable or unwilling to
come up with any effective
solutions. Personally I don’t
subscribe to the view that our
youth are going to hell fast.
Rather than trying to put the
blame on young people
themselves. for whatever
situation they may be in, we
should try to put ourselves in
their places and try and look at
our world from their standpoint.
What we would then see would
hardly be a compliment to our
corporation-controlled society
that is designed to serve wealth
and property rather than the
needs of people.

Personally I think a lot of the
problems facing young people
could be effectively tackled if
governments would begin to pay
some attention to their needs and
be willing to spend a little
money.

As a start I would propose that
Vancouver establish a Youth
Commission, under the Director
of Social Planning, and get it
going with a $500,000 grant. The
provincial and federal govern-
ments should be asked to make
matching contributions.

The Youth Commission could
immediately do something about
the following:

. Provide more hostels so that
all homeless and unemployed
young people would have a clean
and warm place to sleep.

. Provide meals to all who
need them either free or for a
nominal sum.

- Work out a deal with the
school board and senior govern-
ments to enable young people to
continue with their education.
This will, in many cases, require
providing them with room and

board, tuition fees and allow-

ances for necessities.

. Provide a number of jobs in
the city and surrounding areas
where young people can get a
few months work — on park
improvements such as
completing the seawall in
Stanley Park and extension of
beaches, building nature trails
and hiking trails in the moun-
tains north of the city, etc.

. Provide more recreation and
entertainment facilities for
young people. Encourage and aid
youth groups to develop their
own entertainment and artistic
talents.

I realize that the above
proposals are no basic solution to
the lack of opportunity facing
young people. Government

“Here is a sermon on the benefits of
and Private enterprise with a layoff notice
‘on the other sidel” j

figures place the number of
unemployed in B.C. at 10 per
cent. The actual figure, if
students and others are included,
is much higher. A high propor-
tion of those without work are
young people. This is no fault of
their own— there just aren’t any
jobs around.

To overcome this problem
would require strong action by
senior governments, including a

policy of processing some of Out
rich resources here in B.C. and
providing jobs for our ow?
people, instead of exportiné
these resources with little
benefit to the people of B.C.

However, the urgent and
desperate problem of a place
eat and sleep can’t wait for such _
basic solutions. A Youth Com
mission could at least tackle
this. '

" CETReTS bargaining as the procedure is known, applied

to labor-industrial relations in our _ so-called
democratic way-of-life, has taken many long years, and many
hard struggles on the part of labor to perfect. It is still a very
long way from ‘perfection’ yet; :

The procedure presumes that industrial management (OF
its chosen representatives) and the leadership of trade unions
will get together and negotiate in mutual good faith, the whole
gamut of wage rates, conditions of work, extent of working
hours, health and safety of working force, etc., etc. in a given
industry. The prime aim is to mutually work out an agreement
which will apply to that industry for a given length of time; to
reduce possible labor-management frictions to a minimum. An
additional assumption of collective bargaining is that
negotiations should be determined well in advance of the
expiry of any previous union-management contract so as to
avoid the hazards of industrial strife, strikes, lockouts, etc. But
that, together with many other features of today’s collective
bargaining process, is now largely a Pollyannish presumption.

_ In the good old days a limited collective bargaining in
Canadian labor circles gave rise to the phoney idea among
certain labor leaders that the class struggle no longer existed;
that industry and labor were all part of one “happy family”
and whatever differences there were, were akin to family
misunderstandings, all of which could be easily ‘“‘ironed out”
at the bargaining table?

Today however things are vastly different, more complex
and divisive, and the bargaining table is rapidly dispelling all
such illusions.

Two new powerful factors have injected their influence
(and interference) in labor-management relations at the
bargaining table; government interference plus a mass news
media (press and TV), each justifying its interference on the
pretext that it is ‘‘serving the public interest’? The bulk of
legislative coercion (against labor), plus its slap-stick
prejudicial propaganda is based on its alleged concern for the
“public interest’’, completely ignoring the reality that fifty —
thousand or fifty million wage earners and their families are
also a vital part of that ‘‘public’’ they inundate with crockodile
tears. Quite naturally, class relations being as they really are,
management and industry, or if you like, powerful corporate
monopoly become the prime gainers of government-news
media interference in the collective bargaining procedure. In
the main monopoly becomes the ‘‘good guys’’ while labor at the
negotiating table, the picket line, or simply locked out from
their jobs and livelihood, are labelled the ‘‘bad guys’’. Clearly
the ‘‘one happy family”’ idea is now all shot to hell, which in
this scribe’s opinion, is all to the good.

Writing in the Toronto Star of July 20th on the current
protracted negotiations inthe Canada postal workers dispute,
the well-known labor commentator, Ed Finn says:—

“Genuine bargaining presupposed several conditions, of
which the two most important are a mutual willingness to
bargain and the ability to bargain. Both have been absent in the
great mail inbroglio.

“The result is a travesty of negotiations. It could more
appropriately be termed ‘collective bludgeoning’’.

..Finn points out that not only have the government’s

» arbitrary wage ceiling made this much more difficult, but that

the government’s wWage-_negotiators have ‘‘no real power to
bargain’’. Any concessions they may agree to consider have to
be shunted up the bureaucratic labyrinth for approval by
innumerable levels of civil service mandarins. As one union
official complained, “‘it’s like trying to negotiate with a king

_ through his court jesters’’. Mr. Finnadds another important

point to his summation of the issue, which is too often
overlooked; ‘‘a mediator can only be effective in a genuine
collective bargaining situation’’.

Collective bargaining as we knew it in the early days, and
as it is now, requires some drastic overhauling — if it is to
serve the purpose for which it was designed. Otherwise. . .?.

"3