Wednesday, April 11, 1984

Newsstand Price 40° Vol. 47, No. 14

}] Gov’t-imposed pact
hanging over unions

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Caravan leader Sigurd Askevold (r) poses with other members of the Peace and Friendship Caravan International 1984 and their Soviet guide
outside Kiev State University as the group continues on the Soviet leg of their 23-country international trek for peace. The group, which
launched the 50,000 km peace caravan from Vancouver Feb. 12, arrived Mar. 7 in Odessa where they met with peace organizations and
Passed on official greetings which they had brought with them from Vancouver city council.

The Social Credit government’s new
legislation for renters introduced last week
Was immediately condemned by the B.C.
Tenants Rights coalition as “a wholesale
attack on tenants.”

Bill 19, which replaces the former Resi-
dential Tenancy Act, abolishes the office
of the Rentalsman and forces all disputes
On rents through the province’s courts.

Non-monetary issues such as evictions
and repairs will cost tenants $30 to dispute
before an “arbitration” officer, effectively
leaving B.C.’s low income tenants —
Seniors and unemployed — at the mercy
of landlords.

_ The coalition sent a delegation to Victo-
tla Monday to voice its demand to Con-
Sumer Affairs Minister Jim Hewitt that
the bill be scrapped. Other groups have
also attacked the new legislation.

“Tt is legislation for those with wealth,
Power and influence,” charged B.C. Fed-
eration of Labor secretary-treasurer Mike

Kramer Apr. 5, the day after the legisla-
tion was announced.

And Robin Blencoe, housing critic for
the New Democrats, has termed the bill “a
landlord’s charter.”

On the surface, Bill 19 does appear to
acknowledge the flood of protests tenants
groups launched last fall against Bill 5, the
proposed Residential Tenancy Act tabled
along with the Socreds’ other draconian
bills at the time of the July, 1983 budget.

Specifically, it removes the highly con-
tentious “eviction without cause” section
of Bill 5, which coalition spokesman
David Lane acknowledged as a minor
concession.

But, Lane told reporters at a press con-
ference at the B.C. Tenants Rights Action
Centre Apr. 5, “every other aspect of this
act is a disaster for tenants.”

Lane, co-ordinator of the action centre
which has spearheaded an organizing
drive among rental units in the Lower

Mainland during the last three months,
pointed out Bill 19 places no ceiling on
rents and allows no appeals or reviews of
rent hikes.

The coalition, which held a noon-hour
demonstration outside the Rentalsman’s
office in Vancouver Apr. 6, has vowed to
wage protests each day the bill is debated
in the legislature, which should begin
soon.

The new bill ratifies the order-in-council
last July abolishing the Rentalsman’s
office, replacing it with a group of
government-appointed arbitrators under
a new Residential Tenancy Branch.

The arbitrators, who are not govern-
ment employees but contractees, will rule
on matters outside rent increses, except
when a rent hike is suspected of being used
to force a tenant to vacate the premises.

A successful suit by a tenant in that case
can only come after a tenant has vacated

see EVICTION page 3

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INHZN3SOW IdNA — OLOHd SSVL

The province’s 13,000 pulp workers faced
a government-imposed contract Monday as
the pulp employers blocked the last hope
for a negotiated agreement by refusing to
make any signficant change to their pre-
lockout offer.

At Tribune press time, labor Minister Bob
McClelland had summoned mediator
Clark Gilmour to Victoria to report on
negotiations and to begin outlining the
terms of the contract that the government
will impose on members of the Pulp, Paper
and Woodworkers of Canada and the Can-
adian Paperworkers Union.

That forced contract, provided for under
the terms of Bill 18, the Pulp and Paper
Collective Bargaining Assistance Act passed
last week, was widely expected to follow the
terms of settlement laid down by the
employers on whose behalf the legislation
was first introduced.

McClelland’s announcement Monday
followed the final negotiating session in
which the pulp unions had unanimously
rejected the Pulp and Paper Industrial Rela-
tion Bureau’s final offer, an offer scarcely
changed from that put forward by the
industry more than eight weeks ago.

CPU vice-president Art Gruntman called
it a “punitive settlement” which, he said,
was fundamentally the same as that put on
the table by the employers before the
lockout.

The employer package called for a three-
year agreement without COLA protection,
no improvements for pensions and only
minor modification to the demand for elim-
ination of one statutory holiday.

Making it worse was MacMillan-
Bloedel’s unilateral cancellation of 69 local
letters of agreement at the Harmac mill near
Nanaimo, an action that is expected to set
the pattern for similar action by other
companies.

Even though there had been lengthy bar-
gaining sessions since the legislation had
been introduced Mar. 30 — and the pulp
workers had voted 62 per cent to go on
strike in defiance of that legislation — the
employers were under no pressure to bar-
gain, knowing that the government would
step in to impose a contract if they could not
themselves bring the unions around to their
terms. ; :

And it is the provision allowing the
government to impose a settlement that has
made Bill 18 a particularly dangerous piece
of legislation.

Section 9 of the legislation states: “The
Lieutenant-Governor in Council (the cab-
inet) may, on the recommendation of the
minister, direct that a collective agreement is
deemed to exist between a trade union and
an employer and may specify any of its
terms and conditions or specify in what
manner any of its terms and conditions may
be determined.”

Further, it provides: “‘A collective agree-
ment deemed to exist under this section
shall be binding On the trade union and the
employer and on the employees affected,

See PULP page 12

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