Teachers vote support for parents’ fight against cuts —page 3— ‘ning. targets ceva Bigs — _ Wednesday, March 28, 1984 Newsstand Price 40° ELeN NEY soe x Soran erates Vol. 47, No. 12 Occupiers listen while Sgt. K. Higgins lays down do’s and don'ts of occupation while Ald. Bruce Yorke (next to Higgins) looks cn. A four-hour occupation of a Van- couver welfare office Mar. 23 ended suc- cessfully when the Ministry of Human Resources reversed itself and gave an unemployed waiter emergency assistance. Edwin Haddock was awarded food vouchers to tide him over the weekend in ~ an eleventh-hour settlement after mem- bers of Vancouver’s Unemployed Action Centre staged a sit-in to protest the rejec- tion of Haddock’s application for benefits. Although destitute, the former Victoria resident was refused all assistance — including emergency aid — and action ~ centre volunteers warn the refusal pres- ages new policies coming down with the latest round of welfare cutbacks in April. “There'll be thousands of cases like this after Apr. 1 — they’ve done this to prepare the ground for those days,” said action centre co-ordinator Kim Zander during the sit-in at the Anchor Point welfare office. New regulations brought down with the Feb. 20 budget chop up to $80 a month for first-time welfare applica- tions, and allow only emergency for those waiting for Unemployment Insurance. . Office sit-in protest wins welfare benefits The new rules also force applicants to divest themselves of personal belongings — including ‘houses, cars and bank accounts — and use up all available lines of credit before becoming eligible for assistance. Even by those standards, the decision to reject all aid to Haddock was harsh. His case is being appealed, but in the meantime the former waiter, who quit his job after five years of service, is penni- less and has no saleable possessions. He sought the assistance of the centre, sponsored by the Vancouver and District Welfare appeals launched page 2 Labor Council, whose volunteer staff walked into the Anchor Point office at 1 p.m. Mar. 23. With the assistance of Vancouver ald. Bruce Yorke, they demanded office manager John Burgoyne contact the regional manager or Victoria to speed up the appeal process and provide Haddock with immediate assistance. “T’'ll see what I can do,” Burgoyne told Yorke, but later reported he could not reach higher management and asked the - occupiers to leave. They refused. _ left the premises. pare for his appeal. Meanwhile, Yorke headed to MHR regional offices in an attempt to contact regional heads, but returned unsuccessful. Burgoyne refused further entreaties that he contact higher-ups, and again asked Haddock’s supporters to leave. When they refused, the manager sum- moned city police. . When he arrived, Sgt. K. Higgins did not order the office cleared, but urged office staff to again try to reach Victoria in an effort to resolve the crisis. By late afternoon, things were looking no better following a statement from the office of John Noble, deputy to Human Resources Minister Grace McCarthy, that “the normal appeal process can not be deviated from.” But at the last minute — just before closing time, the office received word that weekend benefits would be awarded Haddock. With that word, the occupiers A jubilant Zander said, “We achieved exactly what we wanted — some kind of food and shelter for Edwin while we pre- “It’s given him some peace of mind and, what’s even more important, it gives him a sense of power,” Zander said. Trades vow) new fight as pickets. wiherawn, Faced with massive fines for contempt of court and the possibility of jail sentences for its officers, the B.C. and Yukon Building Trades Council withdrew the picket lines from Pennyfarthing Development Corpo- ration’s Harbor Cove condominium pro- ject Monday, opening the way for anti-union contractor J.C. Kerkhoff and Sons to begin work on the site. But at the same time, the Trades vowed to continue the fight against non-union con- tractors like Kerkhoff and a meeting Mon- day of some 600 unionists laid out a program for continued action. Council president Roy Gautier announced Mar. 23 following a meeting of the trades that the unions would comply with the court order brought down that morning by Supreme Court Justice Allan McEachern and withdraw the pickets. - Justice McEachern had ruled that the Building Trades Council was guilty of crim- inal contempt for not obeying a court order limiting pickets and also ordered an imme- diate halt to further picketing*at the site. A similar charge ‘against the Carpenters Union was dismissed — since it could not Editorial, page 4 Three fronts, page 12 be established “beyond a_ reasonable doubt” that the union approved picketing by members — but it had little bearing on the outcome. Sentencing was put over until Mar. 29 at which time unionists could face heavy fines. The court decision followed an earlier tuling by the Labor Relations Board — subsequently filed in Supreme Court — — which ordered pickets to cease and desist. Union lawyer Harry Rankin charged that the LRB was “infested with union-busting and privatization.” The Carpenters Union last month launched a series of demonstrations against Pennyfarthing when the company, after completing Phase I of the Harbor Cover luxury condominium project and then announced its intention to turn the contract for the subseugent phases over to Kerkhoff. The Building Tradds set up a formal picket line on the site Mar. 5 and within days hundreds of supporters had swelled i its ranks. On Mar. 19, ‘the day the LRB order was filed in Supreme Court, some 1,500 people were massed on the site, attesting to the see PACKED page 11 .