mee en sare

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Highways selloff poses threa

The B.C. Government Employees Union
charged Jan. 21 that the Social Credit
government’s plan to break up highways
maintenance into 28 separate private con-
tracts would “‘destroy the highways mainte-
nance system ... provoke labour relations
conflict and cost taxpayers more for poorer
quality services.”

BCGEU president John Shields told
reporters at a news conference that the
government’s move was “a recipe for the
destruction of the safety system of the exist-
ing highways.” He added that the govern-
ment was “wasting resources on a
privatization scheme that no one asked for
or wants.”

Premier Bill Vander Zalm announced
Jan. 21 that the government would divide
up the province into 28 districts for the
purpose of privatizing the highways main-
tenance system. Maintenance for each dis-
trict will be put out to tender separately,
enabling various private contractors to win
government contracts which, until now,
have been done in the public sector with
highways department employees.

Although some contracts are expected to
be won by employee groups, there are no
guarantees that current highways staff will
be maintained since sub-contractors can be
used to carry out the maintenance work.

Expected to go with the contracts for
highways and bridge maintenance work
will be much of the highways department

- equipment which unionists have warned
will probably be sold at bargain prices.

The government giveaway was under-

‘scored in the first of two privatization con-

tracts signed by the government for sale of
the Queen’s Printer and the Soil, Feed and

‘Tissue Laboratory in Kelowna.

* The soil laboratory, which currently does
research work for two provincial ministries,
was sold for $140,000 to an employee
group. But that price is far less that the real
value of the facility, the BCGEU charged.
Shields told reporters that the lab was
sold “for a fire sale price,” noting that one of
the lab’s key pieces of equipment, an Induc-

tively Coupled Plasma Spectrophotometer,

or ICP, was worth $150,000 alone.

“Where is the public benefit in that?” he
demanded.

In addition, the privatization of the two
government facilities resulted in the layoff
of six of the 18 employees — one-third of
the total. Although the government was
quick to find them jobs elsewhere in the
public service, it is obvious that massive job

JOHN SHIELDS ..

losses will be inevitable once privatization
begins moving into major public sector
operations such as highways and B.C.
Hydro.

The breakup of the highways department
into small private contracts has also spiked
any hope of success for the BCGEU bid to
take over the highways maintenance con-
tract for the entire province.

The union had commissioned several
private consultants, including accountant
David Korbin and Jack Carlile,, former
president of B.C. Telephone, to prepare a
bid for the BCGEU to take over the entire
highways operation and “hold it in trust
until a government is elected which will
uphold its public responsibility.” But
Vander Zalm stated Jan. 21 that the bid
would not be accepted because it “would
create a monopoly.”

However, the government’s decision may
help to put some momentum back into the
B.C. Federation of Labour’s campaign
against privatization which has been stalled
ever since the BCGEU announced its initia-
tive at the B.C. Fed convention in
December.

Many unionists are also hoping that the
BCGEU will again fire up its own campaign
which had gained considerable public atten-
tion before the highways department bid
was announced.

Company documents obtained by the
Tribune show that at least one “employee
company” bidding for a highways main-
tenance contract will in fact be set up to
ensure that highways department workers
will always remain in a minority position
on the board of directors.

And in another, a stated aim in the
corporate structure is to an establish an
“employees association”, opening the
door to replacement of the B.C. Govern-
ment Employees Union as the bargaining
agent.

The two company proposals, bidding
for work on Vancouver Island and the
North Vancouver and Gibsons district
respectively, are among a number of pri-
vate contracts being considered by the
government as it moves to privatize high-
ways maintenance in 28 separate districts
around the province.

The government’s propaganda about
the privatization program has focussed
heavily on employee groups who will pur-
portedly increase productivity and effi-
ciency because they will “will have a stake

. ‘public safety being sacrified for a program nobody wants.’

. Public opinion has also shown that there

is also substantial opposition to privatiza-
tion, particularly. on the issue of highways
maintenance. Despite his claims that “pri-
vatization will work”, Vander Zalm has
been dogged by motions from municipal
councils asking that the program be held up
or scrapped.

But if the highways privatization does
proceed in spite of the opposition, the
BCGEU will fight to ensure that highways
workers retain their union rights, Shields
warned.

“Privatization and Bill 19 are the
government’s attempt to deunionize the
province,” he told reporters last week. “But
we will fight to maintain our collective
agreements for all 28 major contractors and
the numerous subcontractors.

“There will be no deunionization of our
members in the highways system or any
other government service which is privat-
ized.”

Shields called the Jan. 21 announcement
by the premier “an attack on all working
people’’, warning that the erosion of work-
ing conditions and wages for privatized
employees would threaten all workers.

He also called on Vander Zalm to “stop
sacrificing working people, small business
and local communities for a program that
no one asked for.”

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

t Critics hit

Couvelier
in debate

By ERNIE KNOTT

VICTORIA — Members of Victoria’s
three-month old Coalition for a Demo-
cratic Process and Camosun College stu-
dents packed the college auditorium Jan. 19
to hear a debate between Social Credit
Finance Minister Mel Couvelier and
Nanaimo NDP MLA Dale Lovick on pri-
vatization.

Couvelier was hard put to build a credi-
ble case for privatization because of a lack
of substantive evidence and research sup-
porting it as a policy. He cited the expe-
rience under British Prime Minister Mar-
garet Thatcher, where in fact the numbers
of working poor have doubled and Scottish
unemployment has risen to 36 per cent.

The usually articulate minister was also
at a loss for words when former school
board chair, Carol Pickup, now a Saanich
councillor, told him that the council in Saa-
nich, in Couvelier’s own riding, had voted
the previous night to ask the government to
hold up on its plans to privatize the high-
ways department.

Lovick, who had the majority of the
audience on his side, charged that the pri-
vatization scheme was “dumb politics and
dumb economics” and a case of “right wing
ideology masquerading as economics.”

A former economics professor, Lovick
backed his case by pointing out that large
public sector services, including B.C. Hydro
gas and highways maintenance which the
Socreds now want to sell off to the private
sector, had been publicly developed pre-
cisely because private entrepreneurs had
failed to provide these services efficiently
and in the public interest.

The NDP MLA emphasized that the
Socreds had no election mandate for the
privatization scheme. And because the
government’s program will not be the sub-
ject of legislative debate and decision, the
“disregard and contempt for due process” is
very much an issue, he said.

Formed last October by United Church
activist Jara Smith in response to Premier
Bill Vander Zalm’s privatization announce-
ment, the Coalition for Democratic Process
has grown to include various church repre-
sentatives as well as trade unionists and
community groups. It was scheduled to
hold a planning meeting Jan. 27 at Fairfield
United Church.

ers in ‘employee’ bids

in their jobs.” But in most cases, the com-
panies have been initiated by manage-
ment, with line workers relegated to
subordinate positions where they are at
risk of losing their union and even their
jobs in what are expected to be inevitable
staff reductions.

Many employees have also been pres-
sured into endorsing employee company
bids and putting up their savings as capital
when they have been confronted with
documents similar to the one drawn up by
the Gibsons and North Van Road and
Bridge Company which was circulated in
North Vancouver and Gibsons yards.

Called an “expression of interest”, it
explains plans to establish an employee
company and bid on the highways con-
tract and states: “If this proposal is pro-
ceeded with, it is my intention to
participate as a shareholder and employee
of the new company. I further authorize
that the above-mentioned group (a man-
agement group) to include my name in
any presentations made to the ministry in

their efforts to obtain a contract for high-
ways maintenance for North Vancouver
and Gibsons.

“T acknowledge that signing this expres-
sion of interest is not an enforceable com-
mitment on either my part or on the part
of the company,” it states. “If the project
does proceed, I propose to acquire
shares at $10.”

Most workers have signed the docu-
ment, fearing that if they do not, they will
be risking layoff if the company is success-
ful in winning the contract.

A Jan. 8 meeting of the company out-
lined the corporate philosophy which
included the formation of an employee
association.

The company structure provides that
the three founding shareholders will
receive 10,000 shares at a nominal price
and will be entitled as group to purchase a
minimum of 15,000 shares for $150,000.
Employees will also be entitled to buy
shares but they will be limited to a maxi-
mum of 1,500 shares.

The three founding shareholders will
also constitute the board of directors for
the first year and they will be éntitled to
appoint six additional directors. \

That same management domination
will be built into the corporate structure of
the Vancouver Island Road and Bridge
Maintenance Inc. which was established
on the basis of “A” and “B” shares.
Ownership of “A” shares is limited to
management personnel and only “A”
shareholders may vote at general meet-
ings.

A corporate document also states the
company’s intention to supplement exist-
ing management with “some of the best
business/financial managers the company
can recruit from the private sector.” At
least two of the company officers are from
outside the highways department.

At the same time, the company has
stated only that it will “transfer the maxi-
mum number of affected employees into
the private sector,” indicating that privati-
zation will result in layoffs.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 27, 1988 e 3