By LIZ ROWLEY HAMILTON — Recently, Hamilton regional 80vernment has placed a series of expensive ads in the ‘Ocal newspaper, the Hamilton Spectator, claiming that 107 Amalgamated Transit Union is out to bilk the taxpayers. Union has rejected an offer of 11.65% over two years and It is extremely high wages that has encouraged the aoe system’s high deficit by almost 20% in 1981 over The fact is, however, that while figures don’t lie, liars 0 figure, and that’s exactly what the region has done Ir Own refusal to negotiate in good faith. MCrease of 2% in the first and second years of the agree- Ment with an additional 2% increment for license lesmen. : re was a new proposal before regional council to IMprove the cost of living allowance formula. But this Was removed. The union is prepared to accept exactly What they have in the present agreement. Regional council; however, is demanding that ATU grees to a formula that would reduce the cost of living Protection and which offers no direct wage improvement of any kind. The COLA formula, the union has at the Present, has been in effect since 1975 and was agreed Upon by transit management at that time. Where’s the 11.65%? The government agreed transit workers required such Protection in 1975, can they now justify that such protec- tion should not be extended? Where is the 11.65%? Local 107 has never asked for anything more than the 2% wage increase, in fact in an ort to avoid confrontation the workers placed a re- vised position before regional negotiators on July 14, 1982 in which they reduced their demand to 1% in the first year, 1% in the second, and an additional 1% for licensed tradesmen. he region’s response to the union’s sincere efforts to €nd the strike was to increase its own demands on transit Workers by demanding an even greater reduction in the COLA. Faced with such an attitude by the region, the union a The ‘‘true facts’’ according to the region are that the — While busily spending the taxpayers’ money to justify | t’s take a look at the other so-called five “true | ay presented by the region. What is the union asking | ‘or? _ The pre-strike wage proposal was for a modest wage "Transit workers cannot be scapegoats. had no alternative but to re-instate its previous bargain- ing position. ee Had regional council been seeking a settlement, the transit workers certainly opened the door by reducing the union’s wage proposal by half. Instead of settling the strike, regional council slammed the door and con- demned the whole community to a summer without any kind of mass public transportation. The citizens of Hamilton are well aware of who’s responsible for this strike and why it continues. While council voted to improve their own salaries by 58%, they insist transit workers reduce their COLA protection against higher mortgages and rents, increased food and clothing costs, soaring interest rates and leaping prices on just about everything. Money’s There Transit workers cannot be the scapegoat. The money is there. Transportation is a public utility and as such it Who’s fibbing in the transit strike? should be wholly financed $y the federal and provincial governments, which have the taxing powers necessary to raise the kind of money needed to finance the muni- cipal transit system. _If they use those powers or give them to the muni- cipalities, millions of dollars could be lifted off the pro- perty tax base and off homeowners and tenants. Those taxes should properly be assumed by big business and big industries who benefit the most from rapid and ef- ficient urban transit. In Toronto and other big cities across the country municipal councils have led the fight to get more money from these levels of government and thus reduce the heavy load on civic taxpayers and on transit users. In Hamilton, regional government has led the fight to bleed the taxpayers and has increased the fare box price, not once but the three times in 1981 alone. This is be- cause in Hamilton, municipal council has been replaced by regional government, a new level of government that was never elected but was imposed on Hamilton by the Davis Tory government of Ontario. Since regional government is not elected it is not res- ponsible or accountable to any taxpayer in Hamilton or Wentworth Region. That is why there is no transporta- tion for Hamilton transit users and no settlement for Hamilton transit workers. One fact that the region has never mentioned in any of its ads is that more than one million dollars of traffic fines is sitting in the regional treasury right now — money saved by the region since June 11, 1982, money which should be used to end the strike now. Hamilton’s Suffered Enough The union and all informed Hamiltonians believed that the community has suffered enough at the hands of re- gional council and that the time has come for the region to sit down and negotiate a fair and reasonable settle- ment and end the strike. The union’s very modest de- mands constitute that kind of a settlement — a settle- ment that is fair to transit workers and to the citizens of Hamilton. The region’s ads state that they are ‘‘concerned”’. Show that you're concerned. Phone regional chairman Anne Jones at 526-5200, and phone your alderman at city hall 526-2710. Tell them the true fact is they should settle now for 2% each year and the existing COLA. After a long hot summer that would indeed be refreshing. Shutdown threatens Alberta mining town EDMONTON — Some angry coal From laid off here in June to ‘‘stick around, Miners and their families from Grande hang it out you will be hired back on.”’ ache, a mining town 300 miles north of Edmonton Taylor said: ‘I could have gone back here, marched into the Alberta Legisla- east On my Savings, now three months. ture, Aug. 17 demanding: ‘‘We want . down the road what have I got — noth- Jobs!”’ ’ David ing. I don’t know if we are going to be Their anger stemmed from the fact that Wallis eating or starving to death.” McIntyre Mines Ltd., their employer, ‘as laid off close to half of the miners at Its Grande Cache operations and ex- tended the current closure another Month. On June 2, 220 miners were laid off When McIntyre announced the mine Would be closed for 8 weeks. On Aug. 12, ss than two weeks before the mine was Slated to re-open, management sent Nother 160 workers a letter stating, ‘‘we Must inform you that your status as being On temporary layoff is changed to per- Manent layoff effective Tuesday, August 7, 1982." At the same time the mine Close-down was extended one month. Miners are angry over Mcintyre’s refusal of an offer to sell its 110,000 ton Stockpile to India. Grande Cache is a company town. Coalminer Barry Battle told the Tribune that he had moved into Grande Cache 15 Months ago. He said: ‘‘I came from On- tario last year, I brought my family here. Now they (McIntyre) turn around and lay me off.”’ Battle was buying his own home in Grande Cache but once he was laid off McIntyre gave him and his family just 90 days to get out. All he will get back was the $1000.00 principal he put into the house. He said that once McIntyre takes off two months of payments there will be nothing left of his refund. He, like many of the other miners, is pessimistic about the future of the mine saying: ‘‘I don’t think it’s going to reopen’’. Battle’s young daughter Kim joined the _ march with her sign which read: **‘Get my daddy his job back’. She told the Tribune that her daddy “‘didn’t have any money left.” Underground miner Fred W. Taylor was ina similar situation. ‘‘I came all the way from Nova Scotia last year,’’ he said. ‘‘McIntyre hired me on, they had no layoffs ... so here I am laid off."’ He also asked: ‘‘After you sell everything down east and you move up here with a family, a wife and two children, now what am I going to do?”’. He said that McIntyre Mines told him when he was Another miner said that welfare won’t help. If you have more than $200 worth of assets in your house you must sell them first. *‘But who is going to buy them in Grande Cache?’’ he asked. Fred Taylor said that the laid off min- ers are also being evicted from the houses they are renting from McIntyre, and the houses will remain empty. Joselyn McCaskill, the wife of one of the laid off miners, said: ‘‘They said come up here you will have the world by the tail. Where are we today? We don’t know how we are going to eat tomorrow or how we are going to pay the rent. We don’t even know if we can put the kids in school.’’ Her husband, Dennis, was equally angry. ‘‘First they talk about Sept 20 (to re-open), then they will turn this to Oct. 20, then Nov. 20 and so on. Before this lay off they said it would be the only layoffs, and there would be no more layoffs, then what happened, there was another layoff,”’ he said. The miners are also angry because they say the notice of the additional lay- offs and mine closing came ‘‘second class’’ on the radio. McIntyre wouldn't talk to the union. Local 7621 United Steelworkers is demanding a full inquiry into the opera- tions of McIntyre Mines. Grande Cache was built in 1969. The Alberta government spent millions on constructing a railway to transport the coal. If the mine closes the town will die. Mcintyre is taking advantage of the feelings of uncertainty at Grande Cache. They want the union to re-open nego- tiations and cut the 20% negotiated wage increase due on Oct. 1 down to 6%. This the Steelworkers have refused to do. Grant Notley, Alberta leader of the New Democratic Party called upon the Alberta Government to use the Heritage Trust Fund to buy the 250,000 tons of stockpiled coal from McIntyre Mines to get the mine operating again. : The Alberta Committee of the Com- munist Party, in a leaflet distributed at the rally, called for McIntyre Mines to be nationalized along with the other coal mining corporations so that the produc- tion of coal could be planned to protect jobs. The Communist Party also called for the provincial and federal governments to guarantee either work or wages and for legislation to force McIntyre mines to pay full wages for the duration of the layoff and period of unemployment. “ne PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 3, 1982—Page §