XVAND

Focusing this year on inflation and wage controls, the Communi
Exhibition has already attracted considerable attention since t
Showmart Building, it features a continuously running sound-slid
Mike O'Neill, one of nearly a hundred volunteers who will be man

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Sec

st Party’s booth in the Pacific National
he fair opened Aug. 21. Situated in the
e show as well as several displays. Above is
ning the booth throughout the PNE.

—Sean Griffin photo

City council votes 8-2
to reject accreditation

The largest employer in the
Greater Vancouver Regional
District, Vancouver city council,
has voted overwhelmingly not to
give up its bargaining powers to
the Greater Vancouver Labor
Relations Association.

Vancouver’s rejection, made
final in an eight-to-two decision
‘Tuesday, has dealt a significant
blow to the group’s bid for ac-
creditation and has cast into
serious doubt its effectiveness even
among those municipalities which
have already given the go-ahead.

The campaign among some
municipal and civic representa-
tives to turn bargaining powers
over to an accredited group —
according to Section 59 of the
Labor Code — had been under way
for several weeks following
Statements by West Vancouver.
alderman and former president of
Forest Industrial Relations, Don
Lanskail, who warned that unless
municipalities united in an em-
ployers’ group, they would be
“picked off one by one as the union
Sets out to divide and conquer.”

Lanskail’s dire warnings found a
response in the West Vancouver
council which voted for ac-
creditation as did Coquitlam
council.

The Canadian Union of Public
Employees, together with the
Vancouver Municipal and
Regional Employees Union,
however, waged an effective

campaign against accreditation,
emphasizing that elected councils
would be giving up their publicly
delegated responsibilities -if they
voted to join the labor relations
association.

The two unions carried that
message to a Vancouver city
council meeting two weeks ago but
a final decision was deferred to
allow the city manager and
Graham Leslie, director of the
GVRD’s labor relations bureau, an
opportunity to counter the union’s
brief.

The submissions from the city
manager and Leslie were heard
Tuesday in camera, although a
vote among council members was
reportedly heavily in favor of
accreditation, with only one
alderman opposed.

That changed, however, when
aldermen returned to the regular
council to debate the issue.

Most councillors opposed ac-
creditation on. the basis. that it
would entail giving up the final
authority of council to what was
termed _by one alderman a
“largely autonomous, bureau-
cratic body.”

Alderman Harry Rankin
stressed the need for council to
“break up log jams’’ which
frequently occur in civic
bargaining while alderman Jack
Volrich warned of the dangers of
being “locked in’ to any ac-

credited body.

In the final vote, only Darlene
Marzari and Fritz Bowers were in
favor of joining the labor relations
association.

Although the abrupt shift in
position’ among some aldermen
was seen as a reflection of an
imminent civic election, it also
underscored the point made by
‘CUPE in its brief, that the issue at
stake was the accountability of a
body to the public and the fact that
elected officials must be re-
sponsible for their actions.

Since Vancouver employs about
half of all public employees in the
GVRD, the decision is expected to
have considerable impact on votes
pending anywhere else in the

regional district and may force a

second look at the issue among
councils which have already voted
in favor of accreditation.

Delta council has already voted
against joining the labor relations
association and decisions are
pending in other municipalities,
including Burnaby.

CUPE spokesman Dave Werlin,
who presented the brief to Van-
couver city council on behalf of his
union, told the Tribune this week
that the council’s action was of
considerable significance for the
rest of the GVRD. ;

“The importance of the Greater
Vancouver Labor Relations
Association will be substantially

diminished by this vote,” he said.

City convention]
centre spurned

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Big business interests in Van-
couver, that is, those whose main
source of profit is the tourist in-
dustry, arehatching up a nice little
scheme which they estimate will
bring them an additional $19
million a year.

The scheme is to have a con-
vention centre built in Vancouver
that will attract international trade
and other conventions. It would be
a huge facility, large enough for
gatherings of 1,500 to 8,000
delegates, with a large exhibit hall,
various meeting and display rooms
and a kitchen that could produce
5,000 meals.
~ The cost of building such a
facility (this is only the base cost,
mind you) is estimated at $25
million with another $6.5 million
for the building site.

It is further estimated that the
operating deficit for the first six
years would be over $3 million
while the annual debt payments
would be another $15 million for the
same period.

Are those business interests who
will profit from such a convention
centre prepared to put up the
money to build and operate it? Not
on your life. They expect city
taxpayers, with provincial and
federal help, to foot the bill. In
other words, the citizens pay for
the project and subsidize its
operating costs out of public
revenues, while all the benefits and
profits go to private business in-
terests.

The scheme is outlined in a
report prepared for the B.C.
Department of Travel Industry

HARRY RANKIN
convention centre scheme anot
developer steal.

called ‘‘A Feasibility Study f0
Vancouver Convention Cen
Exhibit Hall Complex,”’ which W
recently considered by © '
council’s standing committee Be
finance and administration. |

The last time the city undert0?
a huge project on_ behalf a
developers — the Block 42-52 st@|
— it cost taxpayers millions a)
millions of dollars. Now we #
being asked to do a repeat P
formance. a

If I am any judge of pul
sentiment this convention cenlh”
steal will be rejected outright
the citizens of Vancouver.

If those who profit from th
tourist industry want a convention
centre, let them build one the f
selves and operate it with _ /

funds. ‘
In the meantime, Jet them keé
their sticky fingers out of #™
public purse. Fe,
ann

YCL demands policies)
to curb unemployment

_ A campaign to focus attention on
the growing problem of youth
unemployment has been stepped

up by the Young Communist’

League as reports which indicate
that nearly 250,000 students were
unable to find jobs this past
summer have become available.

In a new brochure issued jointly
by the YCL and the Communist
Party of Canada, the YCL and CP
charged that the federal govern-
ment’s reaction to the growing
crisis has been one of indifference,
and in fact the federal government
responded to ‘‘the worst unem-
ployment crisis in 40 years by
providing fewer jobs this summer
than last.’ In 1975 the federal
government created 50,000 sum-
mer jobs for students, but for 1976
only 13,000 summer jobs were

made ‘available by the govell) y
ment. 4

The leaflet called upon youlle
people without jobs to take up the
demand of fullemployment, a 80 |
which could be achieved by i) j,
plementing the Communist fiv
point program which calls for a a
crash summer: jobs policy oe
nected with public works progra™
at union wages, the institution of #
program for the building of 400,
units of low-cost housing an
a reduction in the work week fro
40 to 30 hours, the nationalizatio?
and deyelopment of Canada®
resource industries, and the & |
tension of Unemployment 1® |
surance benefits to 90 per cent 9
earnings for the full duration ©

je are going to have a general work stoppage in mid-
Woaae in protest against the rigged controls of the
Trudeau government. This is the decision of the 2.3-
million strong Canadian Labor Congress.

This will be an historic event in the sense that it will be
the first time in its history that the CLC has gone to bat
over sucha vital issue and because, by its very nature, it
will be a political strike against the government.

The prices squeeze of capitalism’s inflation mill-is not
just that ‘Topsy just growed up;”’ it was hatched there in
the first place as part of the maximum profit system, to
make sure that come what may, prices and profits would
always romp hand in hand with some semblance of
blessed harmony. Thus if anyone had to take a beating, it
was always the lad known as the wage earner who had

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 27; 1976—Page 2

nothing to rely on but his wages — and damned often, too
little of them. So it is still “all hail to Jean-Luc Pepin’ who
“toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his
glory’ could not spin prices yarns as he does.

It might have helped a lot in the early stages of inflation
had the working class ‘said to the boss-class: “Just so far
and no farther. If you’re going to rig the prices, you will do
it without benefit from us.”’ But a lot of working people fell
for the rigged prices and wages deal, a typical boss-class
deal if ever there was one. Now we're stuck with it,
temporarily at least. | :

In fact, this strike against the AIB and the whole kit and
caboodle of the controls ripoff should register all the
protest that labor can muster. It calls for a statement that
wage controls and all the skullduggery that goes with
them be scrapped forthwith, commodity prices rolled
back to reasonable levels and the price-fixers be relegated
to new, and less dangerous forms of activity.

Itisnot accidental or merely corporate good luck that in
the past decade, huge food cartels, combinations and
powerful monopolies have sprouted in the food industries
like noxious weeds, each taking their lion’s share from the
public table. Nor have so-called wage and price controls

. to wages is a sure road to industrial slavery — the ro@

i

unemployment.
done anything whatever to slow up the process. Instead ‘is
the opposite has happened, bringing us ever higher pri¢ 8

levels. The AIB of Messrs. Trudeau and Company we
just another of many ruses to assist the profit grab,

‘get it’’ while the government had arranged to make th® |

getting good.

Price and wage controls, with all the “‘control”’ applied |

d

which the government is now traversing. It’s time to e?!
it.

~ IRIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

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