Friday, January 21, 1983

Newsstand
price

40c

<<"

Vol. 45, No. 3

@
v4]
¢

Unions set
to probe
hazardous
materials

Several hundred innocuous
white bags with yellow lettering
lined the roadway along Com-
missioner St. on Vancouver’s
waterfront Monday. They had
been there since Christmas, and
some may still be at press time.

Officials responsible for the
50 kg bags of ammonium nitrate
at the foot of Terminal Dock
claim the material is harmless.
The label seems to support the
claim: fertilizer.

That claim is contradicted by
the evidence of history. On
March 6, 1945 a shipment of
nitrate exploded, rocking Van-
couver’s Pier B and killing,
among others, the father of
longshoreman Peter Bell.
Another explosion on a ship at
anchor in the harbor of Texas Ci-
ty, Texas, killed 600 and injured
4,000 in 1947,

Harbor officials and dock
Manager Alex Bany told the local
press the nitrate pills are
harmless, with the chance of an
explosion minimal. Officials said
much the same concerning
regular shipments of liquified
petroleum gas (LPG) and other
chemicals in response to a report
citing safety hazards by marine
planner Joseph Marston released
two weeks ago.

Workers often tell a different
story to that of company and
government officials. They’re the
people who handle dangerous
cargoes on a day-to-day basis,
and increasingly labor leaders
have been demanding a say in

correcting the abuses they see.

Now a group of transportation
and port unions, set up under the
auspices of the Vancouver and

Their presence emp asizing the

District Labor Council, has set
itself the task of gathering all the
information on the transporta-
tion, storage and manufacture of
dangerous goods.

‘“‘None of the current
regulatory bodies involve us —
they don’t even talk to us,”’ said
Paul Lawrence of Local 701,
United Transportation Union,
whose ‘‘frustrations”’ led to the
formation of the Committee on
the Transportation of Dangerous
Commodities last December.

Lawrence sits on the new
VDLC committee, and also on
the safety and health committee
set up under Labor Canada as an

danger posed by hazardous
chemicals entering the port of Vancouver, bags of ammonium
nitrate await shipment from Terminal Dock.

advisory body to Canadian Na-
tional Railways, Lawrence’s
employer. It’s composed of equal
union and management represen-
tatives, but lacks the ‘‘authoriza-
tion’’ to makeit an effective com-
mittee, said Lawrence.

Lacking authorization, the
committee cannot bring the
weight of federal legislation down
to redress safety violations. And
CN denies the unions any
representation on its ‘‘emergen-
cy’’ planning committees, he
said.

‘Emergency’ — that’s a nice
company word for what we call

See REPORT page 2

Theories
of growth

examined

— page 8 —

protest UIC,
welfare policy

Vancouver’s jobless are being
called out for a major demonstra-
tion for Feb. 7 to protest delays in
handling Unemployment In-
surance claims and to press for
needed changes to UI benefits.

The call to action comes in the
face of the worst unemployment
since the Great Depression, a pro-
blem compounded by inefficiences
in claims processing that has been
worsened by the recent layoff of
several employees of the
Unemployment Insurance Com-
mission.

Last Friday, jobless workers
from four north Vancouver Island
centres gathered outside the
regional human resources office in
Duncan to attack the ministry’s
treatment of GAIN recipients as
“second-class citizens” and to de-
mand a ‘“‘decent standard of
living’’ from the government.

Vancouver’s demonstration,
organized by the Vancouver and
District Labor Council’s
Unemployed Committee, is urging
the city’s jobless to gather at Rob-
son Square at noon, Feb. 7. From
there the group will march to the
UIC regional offices on West
Georgia Street.

The protest will centre around
the demands for an extension of the
benefits period to cover the full
term of unemployment, an end to
layoffs in the commission, and jobs
creation program.

Cutbacks in the UIC budget
have worsened the already dismal
record of the agency in processing
claims, according to Kim Zander,
coordinator of the Unemployed
Action Centre.

“Obviously, there aren’t enough
people to process claims now —
what will it be like in the future?
The layoffs will definitely make the

situation worse,”’ she charged.

In Duncan, Bill Massey of the
Port Alberni Organization of
Unemployed Workers warned that
a ‘new type of person’’ is on
welfare — one that will not tolerate
the abuses in the system that have
been going on for years.

Welfare recipients complained
before, but their voices were
‘drowned out,’’ said Massey. But
now that the recession has hit in full
force, thousands going onto the
welfare rolls will raise their voices in
a demand that the ministry make
some changes, he asserted.

The approximately 50 people
from Duncan, Campbell River,
Nanaimo and Port Alberni carried
placards stating ‘‘Jobs, not
welfare’? and ‘‘Raise welfare
rates’? and carried an effigy of
human resources minister Grace
McCarthy bearing the label,
‘Minister of human misery.””

“If the government can’t pro-
vide us with jobs, at least we’re en-
titled to a decent income so children
and families don’t suffer,”’ said
Massey, listing six demands for
changes to welfare, including:

e@ Substantial increases in the
GAIN rate for single people, to the
recognized poverty line of $600 a
month;

@ Medical and dental cover
age;

e@ An end to “invasions of
privacy’’ by social service workers;

@ Morestaff for MHR offices;

e A full GAIN allowance for
those waiting for UI benefits (the
current plan only provides support
allowance, and no shelter).

““We’ve known of cases where
people have had to wait up to two
months for their UI benefits,”’
Massey told the Tribune later.

Poll highlights opposition to Cruise test

— page Il