TV crew attacked at Stacy's

tone,

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Soviet
peace

group

fouring
Canada
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Strike at Stacy's for seven months. Tuesday's incidents
vocations by Stacy's, which has draped its Ric

A BCTV camera crew was beaten up and
Stacy's Furniture in Richmond. BCTV’s Dale |
Owner Arnold Silber attacked him from behind,

for lower prices.” BCTV intends to press charges against Silber.

aielt equipment damaged. Tuesday at strike-bound
Hicks was reporting outside the store when Stacy’s

Private forest companies are
selling their cutting rights on
crown-owned forest lands for huge
profits, charged Communist Party
leader Maurice Rush, Tuesday.

The recent sale by Rayonier
Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of the
giant U.S. multinational corpora-
tion, International Telephone
- : Telegraph, of its cutting rights on

Lee 940,000 acres of crown land to

~ B.C. Forest Products, means a

windfall profit of $284 million for

ITT, and is a “‘scandall,’’ Rush
said.

In a letter to premier Bennett,
Rush said that ‘‘the forest lands
belong to the people of B.C. and it
is a matter of grave public concern
that large companies are granted
the privilege of cutting on public
forest lands and then selling that
privilege to another company for a
huge profit.”

Rush urged the government to
take immediate action to recover
the $284 million from ITT for pro-
vincial revenues, and reiterated the
long-standing demand of the Com-
munist Party that the provincial
Forest Act be amended to require
that forest licences revert to the
Crown when a company sells out or

“wer

NOSH38 WNHSOF—OLOHd

tripod (far left). Teamsters Local 31 has been on changes hands.
are the latest in a series of picket line pro- Earlier this month, Rayonier
hmond store with the inflammatory slogan “striking Canada announced it had sold its

B.C. operations to B.C. Forest
Products and its subsidiaries, for

$420 million.

According to a report released
by Pemberton Securities this week,
that deal included $60 million for
the plant and equipment, $76
million to cover the value of private
timber holdings and $284 million
for Rayonier’s cutting rights to
940,000 acres of crown land, or
$300 an acre.

Using that deal as a model, Rush
noted that MacMillan-Bloedel -
which holds the cutting rights to
B.C.’s largest, and best tracts of
prime Crown forest land (2.2
million acres all told), would stand
to make $600 million if it sold those
rights at Rayonier’s prices.

As the Forest Act legislation
stands now, forest licences are
granted on the pretext that major
forest companies require an
assured timber supply of public
forest lands to maintain produc-
tion.

“But here we have a foreign
company, ITT, profiting to the
tune of $284 million from the
outright sale of those cutting rights
to another company, in this case,
B.C. Forest Products which is
nearly 50 percent owned by U.S.
Meade Corporation and Scott
Paper.”’

Rush urged that this matter
receive the “urgent attention and
disclosure it requires at the coming
session of the legislature.”

More than 950 delegates to the
B.C. Federation of Labor conven-
4on voted resoundingly to demand
that B.C. Telephone be allowed no
icrease in telephone rates and call-

On the provincial government to
Put the company under public
Ownership and operate it as a
Public utility.

The resolution, which cited B.C.

€l’s reputation for “record high
capes and a “‘consistently lower
€vel of service to its subscribers,”
Came at Tuesday’s session of the
Convention after several delegates

Of B.C. Tel as “the kind of fight
Working people are up against.”
Since the collective agreement
With the Telecommunications
Uae expired last year, the
‘S.-owned B.C. Tel has blocked

_J€cting even the conciliation report

Singled out the anti-labor stand:

any settlement of the contract, re-.

Ed Peck. At the same time, it
be an application before the
Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission
seeking rate increases to provide
capital for technological change
which would displace hundreds of

kers.
™TWU delegate Bob Donnelly
told the convention to applause:
“B.C. Tel is the worst corporate
citizen in the province.” _

Consumers in this province are
getting consistently bad service, he
charged, because instead of
upgrading its outside plant, the
company .finds it “‘a lot more
lucrative to buy new equipment
from affiliated companies and then
install it at the expense of workers.

It’s time B.C. Tel got out of the
business — it’s time we had acrown
corporation,”’ he said.

See FED page 12

TRIBUNE PHOTO—SEAN GRIFFIN

TWU'’s BILL CLARK ADDRESSES RALLY . . . 600 unionists turned out to the demonstration at B.C.
Tel called by the B.C. Federation of Labor to protest the company’s labor relations record and to

press home the demand for nationalization of the company.