_ i

Ae

Outstanding woman leader

_.Housands of people throughout
© province and in centres across
€ country to whom Vi Bianco

Was one of the outstanding wo-
me leaders in the progressive
por Movement, a vital warm-
farted personality loved for her

ah and devotion, learned,
ou a deep sense of personal loss
1s Week that death had ended

il, brave fight against a lingering
Ness. She died on Sunday this

Week in Vancouver General Hos-
Dital,

jlthough she was only 38 years
oN Mrs. Viola Bianco had made
*ty day of her short years count
le’ €f untiring work for the peo-
a Causes. She was still a girl
. fr teens, and the poverty and
Bee of the depression years
a blighting the hopes of her
ae when she became con-
f that only socialism held
fr Promise of the future. And
_ Ushout her more than 20 years
Ment. Progressive labor move-
Omi Successively in the Young
ist p Unist League, the Commun-
tomy, of Canada and the Labor-
weressive party, she worked.
Oundless enthusiasm and

ergy tow 5
cialis co that goal of a So

ae Viola Hanwell at Brandon,
ciaist 8 she was raised in a so-
anw pony. Her father, Tom
Brothe | was a member of the
a €thood of Locomotive Train-
Pride and she- would recall with
an that his name was on a tele-
conve im the records at Brandon
Tailye 1s the greetings of the
in te Workers to the strikers
Strik, € great Winnipeg General
Uni 1929- :
a ha incapacitated by illness
Wh Months ago, her mother,
Member ives her, was an active
of the 5 of the Vancouver lodge
Union’s women’s auxiliary.
norandon, while she was still
Viola a high school, the young
aN exe anwell joined and became
Derg eave member of the Co-
ove ve Commonwealth Youth
~Ment. But by the time the
Ig Moved to Vancouver in
ingly She found herself increas-
and youtical of the CCF leaders

ir faj
ancy to fight for the

T
dem Knew we had to fight for our

she petS and I wanted to fight,”
jority Cred once. “But the ma-
eq ie the CCF leaders hinder-
Sht by red-baiting and re-
© unite with others around
ands of the unemployed.”
Was when she joined the
Ommunist League in Van-
and later the Communist

leg’, Bianco's: organizati r
ties and mos" organizational abili-

&tshj arked qualities of lead-
= : “arned her election to lead-

Movementons in the Communist

She
the y became B.C. president’ of
When thes Communist League.
© Labor-Progressive party
io €d in 1943 she was a
RN member and in the
ng iege held office in its
xecutive, provincial
She Wan ouver city committees.
Party, S also chairman of the
Mission Provincial women’s com-
At { or a period,
tive . Same time, she was an
tins, Worker in many organiza-
any
flog sens ate thirties she was of-
ary for the International
Pek America and
) . ishermen’s Un-
Wag edit’ the war years she
me the Of The Fisherman and:
x Office er She served again
© Bolen otaty successively for
‘ Tmakerg Union and the

Labor mourns tragic

death of Vi Bianco

Vancouver Civic Employees (Out-
side Workers).

Her many years of work in
PTA’s won recognition in her elec-
tion, in 1951, as recording secre-
tary of the Vancouver Council of
the Parent-Teacher Association.

In, the 1949 provincial election
Vi Bianco contested Vancouver
East constituency as a Labor-Pro-
gressive candidate.

A year later, making her first
bid for civic office, she polled 21,-

467 votes as an independent and)
the only candidate for school
board opposing Non-Partisan in-
cumbents in the 1950 Vancouver
civic election. The following year,
again entering as an independent,
she polled 16,265 votes in the
school board contest.

Vi Bianco is survived by her
husband, Fred, and two sons, Tom-
my, aged 14, and Ronnie, aged
one.

Funeral services will be held
from the AUUC, Hall, 805 East
Pender Street, this Saturday,
April 18, at 9.30 a.m., with inter-
ment following at Ocean View
Cemetery. :

Tribute to Vi Bianco’s work will
be paid by Maurice Rush, with ad-
ditional tributes by Mrs. Minerva
Miller, Charles Stewart and Nigel
Morgan.

Sellout house
for play seen

_With advance ticket sales in-
dicating a capacity house, a sec-
ond performance of Medal For
Willie, William Branch’s powerful
play against racial discrimination
which will be given its Canadian
premiere this Friday night in
Vancouver’s AUUC Hall, has been
arranged.

Workshop 53, the group organ-
ized from among members of the
city’s Negro community and sev-
eral progressive white organiza-
tions for production of the play,
has announced that a second per-
formance will be given at AUUC
Hall this Friday week, April 24,
at 8.30 p.m.

Tickets for the repeat perform-
ance, priced at 75 cents each, will
be on sale at:

People’s Cooperative Book-
store, 337 West Pender Street;
Marine Workers and Boilermak-
ers Union, 339 West Pender
Street; Vancouver Civic Em-
ployees, Outside Workers, 339
West Pender Street; West Coast
Seamen’s Union, 10 Powell
Street; International Union of
Mine, Mill and Smelter Work-
ers, 111 Dunsmuir Street.

VI BIANCO

adequate financial assistance from
the labor movement.”

To date trade unions across Can-
ada have contributed $6,100 to
the strike committee, but more
help is urgently needed, saidi
Guest. af

Delegates unanimously passed
three motions to have Canadian
Congress of Labor “place the
strike on a national level”; to
eall an emergency meeting of ex-
ecutiyes of all VLC affiliates; and
to make a $50 donation to the un-
ion from council.

(Prime Minister St. Laurent told
House of Commons on Wednesday
that the federal government is
considering seizing the five strike-
bound elevators as “a final resort”
rather than allow the strike to go
on indefinitely.)

Strikers have rejected a federal
conciliator’s proposal that they
should return to work while wages
and other issues go to arbitration.
A union spokesman said this week:

“Members feel arbitration is not
needed as there is plenty of room
for negotiation, but no real com-
promise offer has yet been made.
We wish to stress, however, that

we want to end the strike as soon,

as possible. But first we have to
get together with management to
negotiate.”

Other happenings on the B.C.
trade union front this week in-
cluded these:

@ Firing of 240 members of
Rock and Tunnel Workers Local
168 by Morrison-Knudsen Com:
pany has gone to arbitration,
with president Ken Smith of
Mine-Mill the strikers’ represen-
tative on the arbitration board.
The tunnel workers were fired
at Horetzky Creek, on the Alcan
tunnel job, because the company
reneged on a verbal agreement
over portal-to-portal pay.

@ Carl Winn, international
secretary of International Wood-
workers of America, is heading
the eight-man committee which
openéd wage talks covering
32,000 B.C. woodworkers this
week. Negotiations began Wed-
nesday between the union and
Forest Industrial Relations Ltd.,
representing 160 coast lumber
operators. Present master con-
tract expires midnight June 14.

@ CIO Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union mem;
bers have rejected a. majority
conciliation board award cover-
ing 500 workers at “Mc and Mc”
retail and wholesale stores in
Vancouver, North Vancouver
and New Westminster, and have
applied for a government strike
vote. ‘

@ Referendum balloting for
three top posts in the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union is due to be completed
Friday this week and results
will be made known as soon as
ballots are counted.

@ Vancouver Civic Employ-
ees Union, Outside Workers,
have turned thumbs down on
City Council’s “fringe benefits”
offer. Union business agent Don
Guise said union representatives
are ready to meet city negotiat-
ors again, but if no wage offer
is made the union will probably
ask for a conciliation board.

ie said ail rm

Vancouver Labor Couneil
pledges aid to srain workers
as strike in ninth week

Increased support to 270 striking grain workers in Vancouver and New Westminster was pledged
this week by delegates to Vancouver Labor Council (CCL).
Workers Union, have been pounding picket lines for nine weeks.

Jack Guest, spokesman for the strikers, told VLC delegates that the grain handlers “are guinea
pigs in the bosses’ hold-the-line policy” but promised that “we will smash that policy if we receive

The strikers, members of Local 333, Grain

Native Indians seek
share in sales tax

HAZELTON, B.C.

A demand that the provincial government give British Columbia
Native Indians a share of the sales tax for development of reservations
will be considered by some 300 delegates expected to attend the Native
Brotherhood convention here on April 25.

Another resolution to be placed
before the convention asks that
Native Indians be exempted from
paying income tax on the ground
that under the terms of British
Columbia’s entry into Confedera-
tion, Native Indians were to be
treated as “liberally” by the Can-
adian government as they had
been under direct British rule,
which exempted them from taxa-
tion. ©

The provincial government will
be asked to give Native Indians
the same liquor rights as whites.

BCElectriec

gets more
from less

B.C. Power Corporation Ltd.,
parent company of BCElectric, is
really raking in the dough these
days. President A. E. Grauer dis-
closed in his annual report releas-
ed Wednesday this week that the
corporation’s gross earnings for
1952 totalled $52,689,810, up 12.4
percent from 1951.

Net income was $5,819,740 for
1952, up $1,230,184 from the prev-
ious year. Earnings were equiva-
lent to $2.68 on the Class A;
shares compared with $2.19 in
1951. They equalled 68 cents on
the B. shares as against 19 cents.

Higher electric, gas and trans-
portation rates, plus a reduced,
income tax rate granted “certain”
public utilities on their gas and
electric operations in 1952, ac-
count for the corporation’s soaring

| profits.

Despite a drop of 7,507,942 in
number of passengers carried
in 1952, revenue from passenger
transportation was $15,190,935,
up $976,141 or 6.9 percent from
1951, due to last April’s fare
hike from a dime to 13 cents a
ride.

The BCElectric subsidiary sold
1.6 billion kilowatt hours of en-
ergy, 3.6 billion cubic feet of gas
and carried 123.9 million passeng-
ers in 1952.

* At December 31, 1952, custom-
ers for electricity totalled 242.977,
a gain of 3.5 percent. Gas custom-
ers increased 2.1 percent to a total
of 62,808.

Rapid expansion of BCE is il-
lustrated by a chart which shows
that the company has skyrocketted
to two and a half times its former
size in the seven years since 1945.
In this period 65 percent of the
property now in service was add-

More than half the boost in
earnings resulted from reduced
rates of taxes on income from elec-
trical and gas operations.

e k e

“If workers want to know any-
thing about economics, or poli-
tics either,’ William (Ol’ Bill)
Bennett, the great pioneer labor
journalist, once wrote in reply to
an alleged treatise on modern
economics published by a Van-
couver daily, “they should not
seek such knowledge from the
hack editorial writers of the capi-
talistic press. The work for
which these monkeys-on-a-stick’
are paid, sometimes thirty pieces
of silver, is not to make economic
problems clear to the workers,
but to confuse them. That is why
we need our own press; that is
why papers like the Pacific Trib-
une are absolutely necessary.”

In raising money for the press
and in signing up-new readers,
OY Bill Bennett was tops. Among
our press workers today are num-
bered many of the men and wo-
men who worked with and learn-
ed from him. This week the sub
total reached the figure of

56 |

Here’s the breakdown: North
Vancouver, 7 subs; Grandview,
5; Trail, 4; Nanaimo, 3; Port Al-
berni, 2; Campbell River, 2;
Capitol Hill, 2; Dry Dock, 2;
Norquay, 2; Fairview, 2; Port
Kells, 2.

When picking up new subs or
renewals, don’t forget to ask for
a donation to the financial drive!

Tom Uphill
renominated

FERNIE, B.C.

Labor MLA Tom Uphill, who
has sat in the legislature for 33
years, was unanimously endorsed
as labor’s nominee in Fernie con-
stituency at a meeting here of
delegates from Michel, Natal, Fer-
nie and other centres in the riding.

First elected in 1920, Uphill,
78-year-old mayor of Fernie, has
been returned eight consecutive
times with the backing of coal
miners and other workers in this
industrial constituency.

On several occasions strong con-
tenders have challenged Uphill
for the seat, but political experts
have learned over the years not to
bet against Tom.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 17, 1953 — PAGE 7