FUBUNE

October 29, 1986

Sas

Turnout
crucial
in U.S.

mid-term
elections
— page 8 —

B.C. Fed sets action
to back IWA strikers

ting their distinctive white berets, members of the local branch of the national organization, Veterans Against Nuclear
, march around Stanley Park seawall in Vancouver in the second annual Move-a-thon for Peace. The Saturday event,

ored by End the Arms Race, saw some 210 people representing 42 groups — including EAR — march, walk, stroll,
r operate wheelchairs along the 15-km route to raise approximately $20,000 for the cause of peace... ch

— <==

COPE
‘SIGNS UP
FOR RACE

|| Flanked by Committee of Pro-
‘gressive Electors candidates,
including parks board contender
Joe Arnaud (!) and mayoral con-
tender Ald. Harry Rankin, city
‘clerk’s office worker on Friday
prepares list for COPE represen-
‘tatives to formally declare their
candidacy for the Nov. 15 Van-
’ couver civic elections. Weekend
||) was also highlighted by a car
cavaicade of COPE workers and
supporters to open four neigh-
borhood campaign offices.

ae a ey ees ae

Declaring that the union “cannot submit
to vindictiveness,” the International
Woodworkers has called on the B.C. Fed-
eration of Labor to co-ordinate action by
the province’s trade union movement to
assist the [WA in winning its 3%-month-old
strike against contracting-out.

B.C. Fed president Art Kube announced
Tuesday that the federation had set Nov. 4
for a conference of ranking officers repres-
enting local unions throughout the province
to discuss the IWA strike and the continu-
ing refusal of the forest companies to con-
sider job security for 'WA members. The
continuing lockout by the Okanagan Main-
line Municipal Labor Relations Association
against several CUPE locals — in which
contracting-out is also a key issue — will
also be on the agenda, Kube said.

Calling the TWA dispute “a very crucial
strike,” he warned that the employers were
“trying to do to the IWA here what they did
to the union in the States — to render it
impotent.

“If we let them do it without a fight, then
no union can win,” he said.

The federation has already begun co-
ordination with other unions in the wood
industry. Officers this week set up a com-
mittee, made up of the IWA, the Canadian
Paperworkers Union, the Pulp, Paper and
Woodworkers of Canada, the Building
Trades, Canadian Merchant Services Guild,
Seafarers and Steelworkers, which met
Monday to lay plans for a co-ordinated
campaign.

That committee will meet later Friday
with the federation’s executive council

before its plans for action go to the staff
conference next week.

Kube said that various plans were being
considered including a public campaign to
raise the profile of the strike, a series of

support rallies and a new program of finan-
cial assistance.

“We also want to have a back-up plan in
place something like the one for the Tele-
communications Workers,” he said. In
1981, in one of the most effective campaigns
of trade union action, the federation
launched a series of regional rallies and one-
day work stoppages to compel B.C. Tele-
phone to settle with the TWU.

“Certainly the trade union movement
has to do something to heat up this strike,”
he said. “We cannot allow the IWA to lose
this one.”

Much of the direction of the campaign
will be determined following a delegated
conference of IWA locals scheduled for this
Wednesday Oct. 29.

The announcement of stepped-up action
came the same day that mediator Don
Munroe, appointed by Premier Bill Vander
Zalm Oct. 6, “suspended” his role in the

see STRIKE page 12