CUPE vows
defiance of
lockout bid

KAMLOOPS — Municipal em-
ployees, members of CUPE Local
900, voted last week to “chain
themselves to their desks’’ if the
city joins with other municipalities
in the district in attempt to lock
them out.

The resolution vowing not to
leave their jobs was adopted by a
CUPE membership meeting in
Kamloops after Seido Tzogoeff,
“ezar” of the Okanagan Mainline
Municipal Labor Relations
Association, threatened to lock out
all municipal employees in the
district because of a strike of
municipal employees in
Revelstoke.

The OMMLRA is the accredited
employers’ association
representing municipalities in the
district. The Association is anxious
to provoke a region wide dispute to
give credence to its demand,
presently before the Labor
Relations Board, that CUPE locals
in the Okanagan district be forced
into a joint council by the LRB to
bargain jointly with the OMMLRA.

Kamloops mayor Mike Latta has
been outspoken in his demand for a
forced council of unions, especially
after Local 900 successfully
negotiated a contract-last month
which included a no-layoff clause
for workers with five or more
years of seniority. Latta called for
a get tough position against CUPE
from all Okanagan municipalities
to prevent the union from: making
further gains.

CUPE won’t be provoked into the
OMMLRA’s trap, Local 900
business agent Bill Ferguson told
the Tribune this week. ‘‘The
dispute in Revelstoke involves 23
or 24 employees on local issues that
can and should be settled locally,”
he said. ‘Municipal employees in
Kamloops are not involved in any
way. For the OMMLRA to try to
bring pressure on Revelstoke
municipal employees by
threatening to lock out all em-
ployees in the whole district, is
highly irresponsible. And for
Kamloops city council to go along
with it, is equally irresponsible.

“Our members decided in
meeting that their jobs do not
belong to the OMMLRA to do with
as it pleases. They are hired by the
citizens of Kamloops to serve the
citizens, and serve them they will
— even if it means chaining
themselves to their desks.”

PHA

cc

Bruce Eriksen and the Downtown Eastside Residents Association
kicked off their daily job searches at the UIC office at Hastings and
Commercial in Vancouver. Next week DERA will bring the job search
to the Royal Bank, the Vancouver Sun and B.C. Hydro to focus

attention on the unemployment crisis.

253-8325.

To get involved, phone

DERA’s annual grant
battle set to resume

The Downtown
Residents’ Association last week
passed the first stage in its annual
battle for funding from Vancouver
city council, but it appears that
massive pressure will be required
to win the necessary two thirds
vote from council.

Last week council’s community
services and finance committee
voted four to three to recommend
continued funding. As expected
NPA’ers Bernice Gerard and

‘George Puil voted against DERA,
but they were joined by TEAM .

alderman Don Bellamy, who last
year voted for the grant.

It is unlikely that DERA will get
the eight votes it needs when the
matter goes to council March 14. A
refusal will require another
massive mobilization of com-
munity groups to back DERA’s
appeal, which last year forced
council to ehange its mind.

Eastside ©

Meanwhile, DERA is continuing
its campaign to clear up skid row
housing and has asked to appear
before council to speak to the issue.

DERA’s Jean Swanson told the
Tribune this week that they want
city council to adopt a “‘one chance
is enough” policy towards the
enforcement of city bylaws in slum
rooming houses. In particular, she
said, health department bylaws
about sanitation standards should
be strictly enforced and rooms
closed after one warning. City
workmen should be sent to fix
other bylaw infractions after a
warning failed to produce action,
she added. Another point in
DERA’s program calls on the city
to begin closing rooms that have
inadequate light and ventilation.

“They are really modest
requests,’ Swanson said, ‘‘But
they would goa long way towards a
serious solution to the problem.”

= PEOPLE AND ISSUES:

Hydro and Bonner

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Ever since the Social Credit
government took over in
December of 1975 and appointed
Robert Bonner, the former So@red
attorney-general and MacMillan
Bloedel executive, as head-of B.C.
Hydro, we’ve been getting elec-
tricity and natural gas increases
each year. The annual rate in-
creases for electricity for

residential users have been as high

as 24 percent with the average
elsewhere between 10 percent and
14 percent.

It’s worth noting that these in-
creases are substantially greater
than those permitted wage earners
under the Anti-Inflation Board. But

as everyone knows there is no

justice or fairness in a society
where big corporations dominate
both the economy and the govern-
ment — there is one law for the rich
and another for the rest of society.

The large industrial users,
however, the oil refineries, mines,
pulp and paper mills, big sawmills,
cement plants, etc. — did not get
any rate increase in 1977. Some will
get an increase this year while
others will not get an increase until

1979. It is significant that when

B.C. Hydro issued press releases in
January, 1977, and January, 1978,
listing the electricity and gas rate
increases, it did not mention that
bulk users pay only about half as
much for electricity. as do
residential users. What this menas
is that residential and other con-
sumers are subsidizing the big bulk
users, which is another way of
saying that homeowners, most of
whom are working people, are
subsidizing the big corporations.

In his press release of January,
27, 1978, announcing the increased
electric and gas rates to take effect
March 1, Bonner said that one of
the reasons for the increased rates
was to “‘encourage conservation’.
That, of course, is a lot of crap. The
reason for the increases was to
boost B.C. Hydro revenues at a
time when it is planning a huge ten
year expansion program that calls
for a capital expenditure of $3.2
million in the first five year period
1978-1982,

The interest that B.C. Hydro
pays on its current debts amounted
to just under $230 million last year.
Think what the interest alone will

— due for a review

be when another $3.2 billion is
added to the debt.

A legitimate cause for concern is
the advisability of such a huge
expansion.

First of all a lot of this electricity
is to be exported to the U.S. Why”
should we pay for U.S. needs?

Secondly, B.C. Hydro is going on
the assumption that the level of
economic activity and population
increase in B.C. will be the same
for the next ten years as it was in
the last decade. In view of
economic and population trends in
the country today this assumption
is highly questionable. B.C. Hydro
under Bonner’s leadership is
gambling with billions of dollars
that we will eventually have to pay-

A public inquiry into B.C.
Hydro’s rate structure and
projected expansion program as

‘ well as Bonner’s leadership of this

crown corporation is already
overdue.

AREA votes
for 13 wards

Representatives of Vancouver
community groups at last Mon-
day’s conference of the Area
Representation Electors’ Alliance
voted to opt for a proposal for 18
wards in a reformed electoral
system for Vancouver.

The proposal for 13 wards is
based on socially homogeneous
city neighbourhoods which roughly
follow the pattern set by the
Vancouver Resource Board areas.

The meeting did not agree,
however, on a proposal for 4
residency requirement that would
force candidates to be resident in
the ward. The AREA conference
agreed to have further discussion —
about a residency requirement and
to make a decision at a further
conference on April 10.

The April 10 conference will
adopt a strategy for winning 4
ward system for Vancouver. |

Community groups or interested —
individuals who would like more —
information about AREA’S

campaign for a ward system call
contact Jonnie Rankin at 872-2128:

W e’ve said it many times before — that hundreds of people
who qualify for unemployment insurance benefits are
being disentitled — but now we have it from a man
who really knows about these things — Bill Vander Zalm.

Although the minister in questionis primarily concerned

that his department — which has done more than its share’

of cutting people off benefits — is being compelled to
provide welfare for people who are entitled to UIC benefits,
his statments point clearly to the fact that jobless men and
women are being denied unemployment insurance benefits
for weeks and even months after they have qualified.

“We are faced with an intolerable situation where people
who qualify for and should be getting UIC are forced to
come to welfare because of inefficiency and ineptness on
the part of UIC offices,” said an indignant Vander Zalm ina
statement issued by his department last week.

He added: “‘. .. when people meet all of the criteria and
still have to wait three months to have an application
processed, I think it should be obvious that the system is not
working.”

The minister also made reference to the “inconsistent
way applications are considered.” We’d use rather more
pointed words but the facts are roughly the same: If you’ve
got someone with influence who will go to bat for you, you
can often expedite an unemployment insurance claim; if
you don’t, you frequently become the victim of a
bureaucratic system and an equally bureaucratic govern-
ment, neither of which is concerned with anything but
making the unemployed pay for their own misfortune.
Vander Zalm put it this way:

PACIFIC. TRIBUNE-MARCH 10,.1978—Page.2

“If someone goes to their federal minister of parliament
and asks them to intercede, it seems the application can be
processed rather quickly. Another person who doesn’t know
the system gets left out in thecold...

“People who should be receiving benefits for which they
have contributed are being denied.”’

But as we said, Vancer Zalm is a man who knows about
these things. Just as Bud Cullen has finished spending his $1
million dollars maligning the unemployed with his ad-
vertising campaign on “‘UIC cheaters”, we learn that
Vander Zalm is spending nearly $400,000 a year in salaries
alone to finance his welfare “fraud squad”. But not a penny

for jobs — from either government.
*x* * *

| t escaped our notice at the time but UFAWU business
agent George Hewison tells us that the growing
employer clamor for “right-to-work”’ legislation found an
echo in Parliament last fall when Prince George-Peace
River Tory MP Frank Oberle introduced his own private
right-to-work law.

Listed as Bill C-354, the bill died, as do most private
member’s bills, but its provisions serve as a warning of the
dimensions that the employers’ campaign is assuming.

Apart from wanting the compulsory checkoff — won after
years of struggle — removed from all contracts, Oberle
wanted declared null and void all clauses in collective
agreements apecifying that employees are to be discharged
for failing to join the union or undertaking to join the union;
or for continuing to be a member of, or engaging in ac-
tivities on behalf of, a union other than the one specified in

the agreement. In short, he wanted the open shop — and

open season on raiding.
* eK

W e were saddened to hear from Mike Freylinger that Tom
Downs, an active supporter of the Tribune and a long time
member of the Communist Party, passed away in Ab-
botsford February 19. He was 75. aoc

Born Orson Downs in Fort William, Ontario in 1903, Tom
grew up in the Fraser Valley and for many years was a
racehorse trainer, travelling throughout this country and
the United States, both racing and training. During the
years of the Second World War, he was among the
thousands to assist the war effort in Vancouver’s. then
booming shipyards.

He took out membership in the Communist Party during
the war years and was a member of the Mission Club at the
time of his death. :

Tom is survived by his wife, Thelma. No services were
held at the request of the family.

RiSUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9 Phone 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada, $8.00 one year; $4.50 for six months;
All other countries, $10,00 one year
Second class mail registration number 1560