Wednesday, June 27, 1984

Newsstand Price 40° Vol. 47, No. 25

of U.S. intervention

— page 8

Socreds
_ provoke
new crisis

_ The charge voiced earlier this year by
the Building Trades that the Socred

Teaching an agreement covering Expo
onstruction was borne out again last
Week as the Expo board of directors
Tefused to endorse a tentative pact with
the Building Trades Council.
_ As a result, the Ironworkers staged
Job action Monday, pulling its members
Off the site in what is expected to be a
Series of possibly rotating walkouts.
Oard members — drawn from
@mong Social Credit backers and key
©orporation executives — objected to
Virtually all the substantive parts of the
agreement, including the provision
Which made union rates applicable to
Suppliers to the site and the provision
Which made all future union-negotiated
Wage increases applicable to non-union
Workers,

Above all, the board balked at mak-
‘ng the agreement binding on J.C.
Kerkhoff and Sons Construction — the
4nti-union contractor whose insistence
©n Expo contracts, together with Pre-
Mier Bennett’s edict that the project
Would be an open site, created the crisis
©ver Expo construction in the first place.

N announcing the decision, chair-
Man Jim Pattison stated that the board
ould not accept the agreement being
applied to the Kerkhoff contract since it

ad been awarded prior to the tentative
@greement on construction being
Teached.
Building Trades Council president
Roy Gautier declared following the
ard’s rejection that the decision
leaves little basis for an agreement.”
€ warned later that Premier Ben-
Rett was “in fairyland” if he thought
XPo could be built without an agree-
Ment with the Building Trades.
B Pattison said that he hoped “that the
Uilding Trades will reconsider their
Position” — a bid for even more con-
“essions from the Trades.
e Trades had made unprece-
dented compromises in initialling the

&

| \ see BOARD page 12 3

Action demanded
at Operation

Solidarity meet
— page 3 —

80Vernment never had any intention of -

Jim Matkin’s call for compulsory military service as an answer to Canada’s staggering youth unemployment was rejected outright by
some 50 demonstrators outside the Vancouver offices of the B.C. Employers Council, of which Matkin is president, June 20.
Demonstration, consisting of local unemployed youth, jobless activists and trade union supporters, was organized by the Committee of
Concerned Youth, members of which later hand-delivered an open letter to Matkin’s office upstairs.