By MAURICE RUSH

The big question being asked

y the public this week in face of
4shocking rise in food costs all
across Canadais: Where is the
recently appointed Prices Re-
view Board? What has it done
about the startling increase?

On Tuesday Statistics Canada
told Canadians the bad news.
a. consumer price index for
Sho month from May to June
: Owed a spectacular jump of

‘WO percent in the cost of food.

It is the largest increase in
month-by-month food prices in
years and means that since June
last year the cost of food has shot
up 16.7 percent.

What is even worse is that if
you select the items which are
most essential to maintaining
health, such as meat, poultry,
fresh vegetables and fruit, the
price of these has actually gone
up by 20 percent since last June.

Economists are now pointing
out that the sharpriseinprices

AS FOOD COSTS SKYROCKET
Where is Prices Review Board? |

in June puts Canada well on the
way of recording 1973 as the
worst year since the early 1950s.
Recent increases in B.C. of
bread and other necessities indi-
cate that the rising trend has not
abated but is continuing in the
month of June-July.

While the rise in prices of food,
housing, clothes and other neces-
sities of life are breaking all-
time records, the supermarkets
and major monopolies continue
to show a phenomenal increase

in profits.

In face of this situation the
silence of the government's
Prices Review Board speaks
louder than words. It is obvious
that the present board has
neither the powers, the per-
sonnel or the inclination to do
anything about rising prices. It
is completely toothless be-
cause the Liberal government
wants it that way.

The Trudeau government,
whichis looking to big business

for support ina future re-elec-
tion bid (as was shown in the tax
concession pushed through the
Houserecently), doesnot want
to impose any curbs on the
profits of the big corporations.

The public should demand
Ottawa act to stop price in-
creases and roll them back. They
should demand a Prices Re-
view Board with authority to
curb profiteering and power to
protect the public from profit-
hungry corporations.

ee

This
fisherm
Nadig

au the scene in canneries along the B.C. coast las
Nand tendermen walked off the job at noon an

BSHOREWORRERS

FRIDAY, JULY 13, 1973

t Friday as UFAWU shore workers as well as salmon
d began setting up picket lines. Photo above is at the

—Sean Griffin photo

Tribune

Vol. 34, No. 28

anker decision

a! — 50 Cc
; — : | 5

ooming in U.S.

The big debate opened in the
U.S. Congress this week on
whether to approve the building
of the Alaska pipeline which will
bring huge tankers down the B.C.
coast to the Atlantic-Richfield
Co., refinery at Cherry Point,
Washington.

Last weekend full page ad-
vertisements appeared in Wash-
ington and New York news-
papers calling for Congress to
decide to give the go-ahead on
the Alaska project to build a
pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to
Valdez on the Pacific Coast,
from which giant tankers will
haul oil to the big refinery south
of Vancouver.

The demand for immediate

0" Fishing Co. plant in Vancouver.

Salmon industry shut down tight

T

ermot sands of salmon fish-
Worker endermen and shore-

. S streamed out of boats
noo are. plants last Friday
Wide st sinning an industry-
fain. rike aimed at getting a
ing Bin for workers of fish-
fits Panies’ fabulous pro-

In
Com, tte Canadian Fishing.

bund? vy Plant in Vancouver,

ached g. men and women

; “own the dock in the
fro ane Strike signs out
Soo ioe Umbrellas and were
nen ag Ned by salmon fisher-
lisheg. Picket lines were estab-

Mpan
e

ions
rep NS of the industry in

, Pudiz

attemprs of company

tract Ofte at Whitewash con-
final » TS as “‘generous”” and
Sho

Te

last off Workers voted on their

and fevuly3 through July 5
Spite company propa-

ganda intended to divide men
and womeninthe plants, regis-
tered a 92%, vote in favor of rejec-
tion.

Tendermen— who cast their
ballots Sunday — voted 92.3% to
reject the companies’ offer
stating that it still gave inade-
quate monthly leave in a section
of the industry where long hours
are the rule and did not givea
realistic across the board wage
increase.

At Tribune presstime, salmon
fishermen had just rejected the
latest offer tabled by the Fish-
eries Association late Sunday
evening. The offer called
for one or two cents a pound
minimum price increase for
some salmon species with
minor adjustments in compen-
sation coverage and the joint
UFAWU-Native Brotherhood
negotiating committee had
unanimously recommended
rejection.

The companies called the offer

final and hoped by that to panic
fishermen into settlement in
the face of arelatively prolific
salmon run. While trying to
create the impression that they
would forego a season rather
than pay a fair price to fisher-
men, the companies have be-
trayed their anti-union tactics
by paying Pacific Trollers Asso-
ciation fishermen double the
prices the UFAWU is demand-
ing.
On Tuesday, the UFAWU
repudiated statements by the
PTA which indicated sympathy
for the position of the shore-
workers and called the state-
ments ‘‘a smokescreen to ob-
scure the PTA’s strikebreaking
fishing operations that will
resul
landed in U.S. ports and insome
cases delivered to the same com-
panies against whom _ shore-
workers are on strike in Bice
PTA fishermen have been try-
ing to call mectings to organize

t in troll salmon being

scabbing but with little success
as unorganized trollers have
ignored the call. The UFAWU
Native Brotherhood committee
has declared that any salmon
vessel that goes fishing is guilty
of strikebreaking and all such
production has been declared
hot.

The PTA attempts to organize
scabbing—the PTA was, infact,
formed of strikebreakers during
the fishermen’s strike in 1959—
go hand in glove with the com-
pany campaign to break the
united demands of UFAWU
fishermen and the prices paid to
PTA trollers indicates the
wealth that fish companies have
garnered from the fishing
grounds. :

While the Fisheries Asso-
ciation has refused to accede to
the union’sscaled-downdemand
for 70¢ a pound in 1973 and 84¢ in
1974 for red spring salmon 12
pounds and over and 65¢ and 84¢

See SALMON STRIKE pg. 8

action is being made by Wash-

ington State senator Henry Jack-

son. Heis backed by a powerful
consortium of oil companies
who are behind the Alaska pipe-
line project.

They are backed by U.S. presi-
dent Richard Nixon who has
sent a message to Congress call-
ing for the building of the pipe-
line without delay.

The Alaska pipeline is being
opposed by an another consor-
tium of oil companies whose
main interests lie in eastern
and central U.S. markets. They
are pushing for the U.S. govern-
ment to step up the pressure on
Canada for the building of the
Mackenzie Valley line to the
UA.

According to preliminary
reports from. Washington, D.C.
no consideration at all is being
given to the threat the huge
tankers will pose to the B.C.
coast as tankers come through

See OIL TANKER, pg. 8

Drug Mart chain

seeks injunction

Shopper’s Drug Mart and
Cunningham Drugs Ltd.,
filed notice this week of
appeal against a Supreme
Court decision last week by
Judge H.E. Hutcheon deny-
ing the drug chainaninjunc-
tion against a ‘‘hot goods’’
declaration by the B.C.
Federation of Labor.

The chain is seeking to
reverse the decision and
have an injunction issued
against the BCFL, and two
local unions. Employees at
10 of the stores have beenon
strike since Feb. 23.

(See article on page 7.)

sa