LABOR Units of the 25,000-member Hospital Employees Union have begun affiliating to local labor councils throughout the pro- vince, reaffirming a link with labor centrals that was broken in 1970 when the HEU withdrew from the Canadian Union of Pub- lic Employees. HEU communications director Lecia Stewart said that union members are now seated on labor councils in Nelson, the East Kootenays, Victoria, New Westminster, Columbia-Shuswap and the North and South Okanagan. Members of the St. Paul’s unit were accepted July 16 into the provin- ce’s largest council, the Vancouver and Dis- trict Labor Council, and other units are expected to follow suit as affiliation votes are conducted. Among the first to affiliate were HEU members working in various long term care units who had already seen the tangible benefits of union solidarity when local labor council affiliates joined picket lines during their April strike. The re-affiliation was made possible by an historic agreement worked out last year between the HEU and CUPE whereby the HEU would come back into the Canadian The Vancouver and District’ Labor Council will be calling on all countries with pavilions at Expo to follow the lead of the Norwegians and pay a “living wage” to their workers on the site, not the $4. an hour that is apparently the Expo standard. Council delegates decided to take the action July 16 after inquiries by Norwegian commissioner-general Gunnar Jerman re- vealed that the wage guide put out by Expo sets rates at about $4 an hour, the rate currently paid to staff. Jerman stated that the $4 rate was inadequate for people to live Labor Congress as a direct affiliate on a four-year trial basis, pending an agreement with CUPE as the appropriate affiliate. If no agreement is worked out during that four years, the HEU would voluntarily withdraw from the congress in 1988. The union’s re-entry into the CLC has been relatively smooth but the accompany- ing affiliation to the B.C. Federation of Labor has encountered some bureaucratic hurdles because the HEU and the B.C. Fed officers interpret the HEU’s structure dif- ferently on the question of affiliation to the federation. Because of the union’s origins as a local union in Vancouver General Hospital in 1944, all 25,000 members of the HEU are members of Local 180. But the union struc- turally is made up of units, based in hospi- tals and groups of hospitals, which have considerable autonomy in electing officers, delegates to conventions and others func- tions. And it is by unit that members want to affiliate. The B.C. Federation of Labor constitu- tion, however, provides only for affiliation of “local unions, branches and lodges of national and international unions.” $4 is no ‘living wage’ on in Vancouver and said that the Norwe- gian pavilion’s pay scale would be based on the cost of living in Vancouver and would include double time for overtime and week- ends. “The Norwegians said they were gonig to pay a rate sufficient o live on in Vancouver — and that’s what all the coun- tries should be doing,” said council presi- dent Doug Evans, adding that prices at the fair “will be sky-high. “‘There’s no bloody way that $4 an hour is a living wage in Vancouver,” he said. New statistics revealed this week by Labor Canada show that union mem- bership across the country, while up slightly over last year, has declined as a percentage of the work force. According to the survey, there were 3,662,000 union members in Canada in. January, 1985 compared to 3,651,000 in 1984. Unionists constitute 38.9 per cent of the non-agricultural work force, the lowest it has been since 1981. Union membership as a percentage of the work force reached a high of 40 per cent in 1983 and then dropped to 39.6 per cent in 1984, The Canadian Labor Congress is still the main labor central, taking in 57.9 per cent of the unionized workers -across the country. That is also a decline from previous years, primarily as a result of the establishment of the - breakaway Canadian Federation of Labor stats reflect anti-union assault _ the union and go non-union.” Much of that loss has been concen- trated in this province where the Pro- vincial Council of Carpenters’ member- ship dropped by 1,501 members last year, according to council president Bill Zander. All of the Building Trades have suf- fered losses in the current economic crisis, Zander said, although the Labor Canada statistics don’t show it because only the ten largest unions are listed. It is not only the almost total lack of work that has taken its toll of member- ship in construction — the 1984 Labor Code amendments have also been cut- ting away at membership. Under the amended code, compan- ies which have been dormant for two years or more can apply for automatic decertification. “And we’ve been hit with more than 20 of those decertifica- tions since the code amendments were passed,” Zander said. _ Decertifications in general are up considerably, he emphasized, noting that the ployers “are using the eco- nomic conditions to coerce their employees into getting the hell out of "That is also borne out by the annual Relations HEU-Fed deal comes slowly Inevitably tied up with affiliation — although it’s a secondary point with the HEU — is the question of delegate repres- entation at B.C. Fed conventions. Cur- rently, local unions are entitled to two delegates for the first 250 members in the local and one delegate for every 250 members thereafter. Under that formula, the HEU, based on per capita payments for 21,300 full-time and part-time members, would be entitled to some 85 delegates on the floor of the B.C. Fed convention. In contrast, CUPE, which pays per capita - on almost exactly the same number of members, is able to seat 240 delegates. The difference is only that CUPE has a large number of locals. In fact, for CUPE as well as another public sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the difference between unit structure and local structure is in name only — although in the federation conven- tion, that difference is significant in delegate representation. CUPE has 102 locals throughout the province while PSAC, with some 10,000 members, has 73 locals. - HEU members want to maintain the integrity of their unit structure in going back into the federation. And affiliating as one large local, because it doesn’t recognize the unit structure and because of the problems of delegate répresentation it entails, would make it more difficult to convince members of the importance of re-joining the house of labor, Stewart said. At the same time because the union has recognized that affiliating by unit would give the HEU a disproportionately large number of convention delegates, union secretary-business manager Jack Gerow proposed an averaging formula that would have made HEU delegate entitlement roughly equal to that of CUPE. But the federation officers rejected that proposal, maintaining that it was outside the federation’s constitution. Because of the constitutional question involved, the issue will be part of the pro- ceedings of the special committee on consti- tution and structure set up by the B.C. Fed officers earlier this year following the |WA’s action in withholding per capita payments. Committee hearings are set for July 29 and 30 in the federation offices. But there won’t be any simple solutions there because the IWA has its own agenda for constitutional change. The regional leadership of the union has demanded that the IWA representation at conventions by increased to match the total per capita paid to the federaion. Conversely, the IWA wants to cut the representation of those unions which have a number of small locals, claiming that they pay little per capita but exert an influence on federation policy. For the HEU, however, the issue of dele- gate entitlement is really separate and apart from the immediate issue of bringing the union back into the federation. There is the important point to be made about the unity of the labor movement and the need to bring the HEU into the central labor bodies and, at the same time, to rec- ognize and maintain the integrity of its structure. HEU members also point out that the CLC went outside its constitution last year . to allow the HEU into the Congress as a direct affiliate on a four-year trial basis. — OSes oy PO ee Postal: Code sedick sae ok -lamenclosing 1 yr.$140) 2yrs.$250) 6mo. $80 ata 1 yr. $200 Bill me later = Donation$........ READ THE PAPER THAT FIGHTS FOR LABOR | Centre cites attack on Ul Continued from page 1 __ out Carpenters at Entex Doors in Coq- uitlam were doing the picket duty full- time. As a result, the six were called in for interviews with UIC investigators. None of them, in fact, was doing anything more than occasional picket duty. And in any event, they were covered by a section of the UIC regula- tions which allows unemployed workers who were members of a union with a hiring hall to be exempt from UIC job search procedures for a stipulated period of time. But what one unionist, Bill Cribs, found most disturbing was that the commission never checked with its own files to determine that information for itself. The Entex picket. line incident also revealed something else, although it came as no real surprise: that ex-police officers, particularly members of the RCMP, are among those hired as inves- tigators. _ “The whole process is part of an intimidation tactic on the part of the UIC,” Zander charged. ‘@ The Labor Market Survey initiated by the UIC which, the government has revealed, will be used by the Task Force set up by Employment Minister Flora MacDonald to study changes to unem- ployment insurance. UI claimants who receive the survey are randomly chosen, but the question- naire does contain the recipient’ s name, Zander noted. Onn It also contains what she called “trick questions,” such as: “What month of the year were you not looking for work?” The action centre is advis-