Friday, September 10, | 1982

40°

ET IS

Vol. 44, No. 35

Fed sets action plan to back BCGEU

pe,

Region-wide
strikes seen

The 210,000-member B.C.
Federation of Labor announced
Wednesday that it had mapped a
program of rotating regional
strikes to back the B.C. Govern-
ment Employees Union and
declared that the program would
“click into action’? swiftly if
premier Bennett did not move im-
mediately to get government
negotiators back to the table to ef-
fect a satisfactory settlement.
~ Federation president Jim Kin-
naird told a press conference
Wednesday that a meeting of of-
ficers had selected 16 ‘‘key strategic
areas of the province,’’ which
could be targets of 24-hour rotating
strikes by federation affiliates.

The plan was subsequently en-
dorsed by a staff conference of of-
ficers of affiliated unions and has
also been fully backed by the B.C.
and Yukon Building Trades Coun-
cil which is not affiliated.
~ He said the program would
begin ‘‘on a limited scale’? —
limited to one regional area — but
warned that the action could
escalate ‘“‘to include the whole pro-
vince’’ if the government failed to
resolve the dispute.

He also indicated that the
Federation could begin to put its

See AN END page 12

to big business

ies

China-bound ship Pine Trust forms a ghostly backdrop i
ly morning light for IWA members as they picket at
Ohnson dock at Burnaby’s Berry Point to protest expo

| Jarvis tax scheme a boon

ee
nthe ear- logs to China and Japan. There has been more than a tenfold in-
Goodwin crease in log exports over the last six months — while B.C. pro-
rt of raw cessing plants lie idle and thousands are jobless. (Story page 12.)

OTE OSE YE SY PO I RNS

__ By DAN KEETON

Riding the crest of a wave of
Tevolt against spiralling property
Taxes, right-wing tax crusader

Oward Jarvis rolled into.

@naimo last month in an at-
tempt to sell his brand of
€aganomics to local residents.

€ co-author of California’s
Proposition 13, the initiative that
8ave windfall profits through tax
Telief to big business and is now
forcing thousands onto the
Unemployment rolls while cutting
Social services, was paying the
latest of a series of visits to
he has made since Pro-

| Position 13 was enacted in 1978.
| _ In his address to a public
| Meeting Aug. 23 Jarvis presented
i" usual image as a crusader for

the rights of the ‘common man”
ee an unfeeling and greedy
bureaucracy, using a pitch his
business sponsors hope will
recruit B.C. property owners fac-
ed with astronomical tax m-
creases.

The main purpose of the
Nanaimo meeting was to get
signatures for a petition deman-
ding the provincial government
institute a referendum process
similar to that through which
Proposition 13 goton the Califor-
nia ballot. It was distributed in the
hall by conference organizer and
ex-businessman Pat Barron, who
heads a group called the Citizens
Action League of Greater
Nanaimo, which sought to use
Jarvis to enhance its chances in

the coming civic election.

The Nanaimo meeting was the
latest visit Jarvis, an advisor to
U.S. president Ronald Reagan,
has paid to this province. Last
October he addressed a West
Vancouver audience in a meeting
sponsored by the North and West
Vancouver chambers of com-
merce in association with 10 West
Vancouver ratepayer groups.

Jarvis gave what could be
termed the crux of his argument
when he told the Nanaimo au-
dience, “‘I am convinced that in-
flation is the most serious pro-
blem now facing this country. I
am equally convinced that this
monumental problem of infla-
tion is caused by excess govern-

ment taxation and spending.”’

Significantly absent: in that
assessment, reminiscent of fre-
quent statements from Canadian
right-wingers, is any mention of
corporate profits. But in the opi-
nion of Jarvis’ critics, that is ex-
actly what Proposition-13 type
legislation is designed to protect
and enhance.

The legislation, adopted by a
65 percent mandate when
California homeowners were fac-
ing foreclosures in the area of
7,000 per year, limits taxes on
residential and business property
to one percent yearly increases.
That saved property owners $4.78

billion by the end of 1981, Jarvis

claimed.
What he didn’t mention is that

Proposition 13 also saved big

business $4 billion a year — about
60 percent of the total savings —
and that the losers are
California’s working and poor
people, and social services.

The resulting decline in tax
revenues was made up in the first
few years by a massive infusion of
funds from the state’s surplus
revenues, according to Taxpayers
for California, a group that
fought hard this year to amend
Proposition 13 to provide some
real relief for California’s
homeowners.

Now that surplus is gone, and
the projected state deficit this year
might be $300 million and $750
million for the next fiscal year,

The effects of the Jarvis-Gann

__See PROPOSITION page 3