_ JOBMART OFFICE ...
answered questions over the phone.

employee turned her back and lowered her voice as she

Job agency targeted

Continued from page 1
_ Inthis province, the company is operating
in a grey area of the law since the Employ-
ment Standards Act, administered by the
ministry of labor, specifically prohibits
charging a fee to someone looking for
employment.

Section 76(1) of the Act states:

“No person shall request, demand,
charge or receive, directly or indirectly, a
payment from a person seeking employment
a) for giving employment to, or procuring
employment for him or; b) for providing in-
formation to him respecting employers seek-
ing employment.’’

Jobmart insists that it is legal, claiming
that it is only selling a ‘‘subscription” to a
list. For that reason, presumably, its
business cards read ‘‘Jobmart
Publications.”’

Whether that argument has any validity
has yet to be tested. Lynn Turner, deputy
director of the employment standards
branch, told the Tribune Tuesday that she
could not confirm whether the company was
under investigation since the branch is re-
quired by statute to keep such investigations
_ confidential.

She referred to other press reports which
indicated that the branch had an “‘open file”’
on Jobmart but added that it did not
necessarily have any significance since any
company seeking a variance on hours of
work or wages would also have an open file.

However, according to Brian Denham, its
executive director, the Vancouver Better
Business Bureau has been asked by the
employment standards branch to refer all in-
quires to the branch. g

Denham said that the BBB is informing
callers that Jobmart ‘‘may be in contraven-
tion of the Employment Standards Act.”’

He noted that 219 inquiries about the
company had so far been received.

The Tribune sought to question Jobmart
management this week about its operations
and job listings but was unsuccessful.
Repeated requests did bring local manager
Glenn Hamilton out of his office but he
declined to answer questions, referring
everything to a public relations officer in
Winnipeg.

But whatever its relationship with the law
or the press, Jobmart prompts only bitter
hostility from trade unionists and from
unemployed organizations which term the
company ‘“‘parasitical.’’

In Toronto, as was reported in the

Tribune last month, the Union of
Unemployed Workers demonstrated out-
side the company’s offices and has called for
government action to close them down.

This week, the Vancouver and District
Labor Council’s unemployed committee
voted to launch a campaign to expose the
company’s operations and to seek to have it
closed down.

The committee is considering various ac-
tions including information pickets around
the company’s Vancouver offices on West
Broadway and appeals to city council to
enact a bylaw prohibiting Jobmart from
operating in the city.

City council has similar action against
rental agencies which charged prospective

tenants $45 or more for a list of vacant apart-

ments — made up almost entirely of
newspaper advertisements.

Hard times dinner draws 200

_, Canada’s jobless face a situation that is
Perhaps a repeat performance”’ of the
Great Depression of the Thirties said Com-
munist Party of Canada leader William
Kashtan to a packed house in Vancouver
Feb. 17,
_ But unlike the Thirties, which were
‘Precipitated by the ‘‘great crash’ of 1929
the working class has seen this depression
coming and is already organized to meet the
challenge, Kashtan told an estimated 200
people in the Ukrainian Hall.

“Workers in mass industry were basically
unorganized then. But Communists
organized unions and showed people that it
wasn’t necessary to be unorganized,” said
the CP general secretary at the last of a series
of “hard times dinners” held around the
province in the last two weeks.

Capitalism ha always followed a pattern:
recession and/or depression, followed by
war and a period of prosperity. The last
depression spawned World War II, and pro-
am “a lesson for working people,” he
said.

_ “There are elements who believe not only
_in saddling workers with the crisis but em-
barking on the path of arms and war,” he

warned, pointing to the current arms build-
up.

That militarism can be seen in a recent
trial balloon floated by the federal govern-
ment, that the nation’s jobless can beaccom-
modated by training programs in the armed
forces.

‘*Why can’t we have civilian training pro-
grams, with jobs at the end?” he asked, to
applause.

Capitalist economists often counterpose
inflation and full employment, suggesting
that either one or the other prevail, ‘‘but
you could have a system that eliminates
both,”’ said Kashtan. '

“Tf you had public ownership of the main
means of production, you’d eliminate
unemployment in Canada. But unfor-
tunately, the working class is not ready for
that big leap.” :

So for now, the Communist Party’s
short-term demands are for full Unemploy-
ment Insurance benefits to cover the full
period of unemployment, earlier retirement
cae shorter hours at the same rates of pay, he
said.

Longer term solutions include public in-
vestment in affordable housing, railway and
secondary industry development to put
Canadians back to work, he added.

UNEMPLOYMENT

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

Labor council ctfee.
of unemployed urges
jobless to organize

When the Vancouver and District
Labor Council’s unemployed committee
opened its action centre last December
“‘we didn’t realize the impact it would
have,’’ according to Kim Zander, the
centre’s co-ordinator.

“It’s become an eye for the labor
movement on the unemployment situa-
tion,’’ she told an audience of more than
100 jobless workers at an action meeting
Feb. 17.

The gathering at the Swedish Hall was
only the latest activity of the Vancouver
unemployed committee, one of several
struck by district labor councils affiliated
to the B.C. Federation of Labor. So far
they’ve collectively set up 25 action cen-
tres around the province.

And there are more to come, promises
the first edition of the B.C. Fed’s
‘‘Unemployment Action Update’’
bulletin in listing the centres, phone
numbers and co-ordinators of the current
centres.

Last year at this time there were only a
handful of unemployed committees, in
the most hard-hit centres of B.C. The
Campbell River and Courtenay labor
council’s Committee of the Unemployed
and the Port Alberni council’s Organiza-
tion of Unemployed Workers were set-
ting the tone with soup kitchens and
demonstrations at the legislature and out-
side local UI and welfare offices.

Committees and centres mushroomed

as the jobless situation worsened ~

dramatically in 1983, when the number of
jobless workers increased from 130,000
to more than 200,000, by official
statistics. That figure doesn’t include the
estimated 100,000 people who have simp-
ly given up looking for jobs that don’t ex-
ist, jobless advocates have charged.

The growing army of the unemployed
presented organized labor with a clear
challenge. In the time-honored tradition,
both public and private sector employers
were using the situation to pressure trade
unions into reopening contracts and ac-
cepting wage and benefits roll backs or to
accept zero wage increases during
negotiations.

The point was stressed at the B.C. Fed
convention in November: labor must
organize the unemployed, or they’ll be
organized against labor.

The action centres were created to
answer part of the problem. They run
anything from food banks to counselling
service for those forced with benefits
hassles from the Unemployment In-
surance Commission or the ministry of
human resources.

The labor council committees
themselves face the task of organizing
jobles workers around longer-term
demands. In addition to the meeting
Thursday, the Vancouver committee led
a march of more than 300 jobless on the
UIC regional offices two weeks ago.

They presented the commission with
demands that have become central to the
unemployed movement: UI benefits to
cover the full term of unemployment,
and at 90 percent of wages.

Another demand called for an end to

the layoffs of commission staff in the

region, and with the others passed
unanimously in a resolution at
Thursday’s meeting.

“The UIC is finding any way they can
to save money — they’ll do anything to
protect ‘their money,’ not realizing that
it’s our money they’re talking about,’’
Zander charged.

Such has been the conclusion
volunteers at the Vancouver centre have
reached in dealing with claims cutoffs
and denials on the part of the agency. The

questions asked by UI agents make
jobless workers feel that it’s their fault
they are unemployed, but the worst
afronts to personal dignity come from the
welfare office, she said.

“Single women are told to ‘go find a
man’ to support them,’’ Zander
reported. In one case, she said, a woman
was given $20 by an MHR officer and
“told to go hook on the streets.””

In other cases, welfare recipients are
being sent to the food banks run by some
action centres or various church-based
agencies, said Zander.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

Unemployment activist Phil Evert was
one of several jobless to address
meeting Feb. 17.

The centre’s successes in dealing with
complaints has drawn dozens of
volunteers from a variety of occupations
to help others with benefits problems.
And that has helped the volunteers
themselves understand more about the
unemployment situation.

“I was bitter before, but now I know
what I’m bitter against,’’ said Geraldine
Fitch, an unemployed bank worker and
volunteer at the centre.

“The unemployed didn’t have a voice
until this outfit came along,”’ said VDLC
unemployed committee chairman
George Hewison, who is also secretary-
treasurer of the United Fisherman and
Allied Workers Union.

Hewison said there has been a depres-
sion ‘‘every 10 years’? with government
policies ‘‘that take money out of jobs and
put it into the northeast coal deal, so we
can sell it to Japan to make cars that we
buy — how goddamn ludicrous.”

Hewison stressed that unlike previous
economic crises, workers now are already
organized. But a key task of trade unions
is to keep their unemployed members
within the ranks, and the UFAWU has
charged its constitution to allow this, he
said.

The theme of organization was stress- -
ed by several of the speakers from the
floor. Unemployed construction worker
Marilyn Lanz urged a fight for ‘‘total
unionization’’ to counter government ef-
forts at dividing workers, such as the
Socreds’ threatened ‘‘right-to-work’’
legislation.

Unemployed laborer Richard
Saunders received sustained applause
when he warned that labor is being
treated as a “‘scapegoat’’ for the jobless
situation, and urged those in attendance
“to stick together and keep on fighting
for our jobs.”’

Centre volunteer Bernie Chapman
called for a big turnout to a planned
march from Campbell River to Victoria
Apr. 8, ‘‘where we’ll demonstrate for
benefits with dignity, for jobs with digni-
ty.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 25, 1983—Page 3