LABOR

The B.C. Government
Employees Union began taking a
strike vote among its nearly
40,000 members Monday, a pro-
cess that is expected to take close
to a month and cover more than
500 work sites around the pro-
vince.

’ Meetings to conduct the ballot
began on Vancouver Island June
28 and will continue until July 24
as BCGEU organizers take the
ballot boxes to members
throughout the Lower Mainland,
the Interior, the Kootenays and
the North, urging them to give an
overwhelming mandate to the
union’s negotiating committee.

With the strike vote, the union
moves one step closer to the con-
frontation with the provincial
government, posed by premier
Bennett four months ago when he
made his Feb. 18 televised address
announcing public sector wage
controls.

The call for the strike vote,

BCGEU begins strike vote

authorized by the BCGEU ex-
ecutive June 25, was sparked by
demands from the Government
Employee Relations Bureau
(GERB) that the union agree toa
four percent increase in produc-
tivity before GERB would table a
wage offer.

The productivity increase
would be attained by the union
giving up existing rights in its col-
lective agreement and giving
management exclusive right to
determine such things as work
scheduling and time off provi-
sions.

“An ultimatum delivered in
the hard terms of the one we
received is a clear indication that
the employer is not prepared to
negotiate,’> BCGEU general
secretary John Fryer said in a
statement.

The vast network set up by the
BCGEU to conduct the vote is
prompted in part by the demands
of the law whichis unique to
government employees, the

Public Service Labor Relations
Act.

Under Section 17 of that act, a
majority of all the members in the
bargaining unit must vote for a
Strike in order for the vote to pass.
Other unions, covered by the pro-
vincial labor code, need only get a
majority of those actually voting.

Because of that, the union is
touching every corner in the pro-
vince, pressing members to get
out and vote.

‘What the law means,”’ Fryer
said, ‘‘is that a person who abs-
tains or doesn’t vote is actually |
voting ‘no’.

“A vote for no strike is a vote
for no wage’ increase. That is
GERB’s mandate from the
Treasury Board and we need to
send them a message with an
overwhelming mandate from the
membership,”’ he said.

The vote is to be counted by Ju-
ly 26 with the collective agreement
set to expire July 31.

New MacEachen tax boosts
favor upper income brackets

Continued from page 1
real wages of six percent since infla-
tion is currently running at 12 per-
cent,’’ Bjarnason noted.

Because of increases in taxes,
purchasing power will be further
reduced, he said.

The tax increases — imposed by
putting a six percent ceiling on the
indexing of personal exemptions —
have a ‘“‘class bias’’, said Bjar-
nason.

According to the government’s
figures, a single person with an in-
come of $7,500 annually would

face a tax increase of some 10 per- -

cent while a person earning
$100,000 would only face a 1.2 per-
cent increase.

Analyzing the taxes for a mar-
ried wage earner with two
dependents shows the bias even
more graphically. Someone earn-

McDermott vows fight

ing $15,000 annually faces a 204
percent increase in taxes while the
$100,000 earner again will only
have to end up a 1.6 percent in-
crease.

“The budget does well by the
rich but once again squeezes work-
ing people,”’ Bjarnason said.

Asked what measures the
government should have taken,
Bjarnason was succinct in his reply.

“There are two things,’’ he said.
‘First, he should have instituted
exchange controls to give the
goverment the leeway necessary to
bring down interest rates.

‘“‘And more important, he
should have immediately slashed
the military budget.”

The demand for reductions in
the $7 billion military budget
was also voiced by Communist
Party leader Bill Kashtan who

against wage controls

Continued from page 1

Both public and ‘private sector
union spokesmen have blasted the
wage controls contained in finance
minister Allan MacEachen’s
budget, and have promised the
minister ‘‘the fight of his life’’.

“We are going to fight back. We
are not going to roll over and play
dead,’’ CLC president Dennis
McDermott promised Monday.

Some 500,000 employees of the
federal government and Crown
corporations will have their wages
limited to six percent this year and
five percent next year, while infla-
tion has been running at over 11
percent and growing.

Pierre Samson, head of the
180,000-member Public Service:
Alliance of Canada, and Profes-
sional Institute of Public Service of
Canada president Jack Donegani
said the government was making
“scapegoats” of its employees.

Donegani, who is the appointed
spokesman for the publc sector
unions nnited to fight the controls,

has warned that the wage limits on
civil servants is the first step
towards the reinstitution of general
wage controls.

The Liberal government’s wage
controls are to apply to contract
settlements already in force, which
will mean rollbacks of some
scheduled increases for public
employees. Also, 56,000 public sec-
tor workers will be heading into
contract talks between now and the
end of the year.

Private sector union leaders are
also meeting next week to discuss
ways to fight MacEachen’s con-
trols.

Canada’s auto workers are
already under pressure from their
employers to adopt wage conces-
sions similar to those accepted by
auto workers in the United States.
But United Auto Workers Cana-
dian director Robert White said his
union will not change its opposition
to the concessions and will continue
to bargain for cost of living in-
creases, wage increases and other
contract improvements.

termed the budget ‘‘a wholesale
and brutal attack on the living stan-
dards of working people.”’

‘‘MacEachen tells us we are all in
the same boat and should share the
burden, but the poor, the
unemployed, the youth that have
never been able to work — they are
not in same boat as those who own
the banks,’’ he charged.

Kashtan declared: ‘‘It is not the
working people who caused infla-
tion and the economic crisis but
the wrong economic policies of
governments.’

Those policies have their source
in the capitalistic crisis which is
fuelled by the inflationary
militarization program in the U.S.
and the U.S. domination of the
economy, he said.

He warned that the budget |
measures “‘can only furhter under- ~

mine purchasing power, narrow
the home market and aggrevate the
crisis.”

Kashtan outlined several
measures that the government
should undertake, aimed at expan-
sion of the economy.

“Instead of de-indexing, we
need a policy of increasing pension
payments and family allowances,
he said.

“Instead of policies of high
unemployment, we need policies of
full employment.

“‘We need a real attack on the
housing crisis based on undertak-

- Ing a massive program of construc-

tion of affordable housing. .

*“We need to cut in the military
budget and use the funds for peo-
ple’s needs.

“And we need a curb on the
multinationals through na-
tionalization under democratic
control,’’ he said.

Kashtan also noted the Cana-
dian Labor Congress’ ‘‘inalterable
opposition’’ to wage controls and
reiterated the Communist Party’s
full support to the trade union
movement’s fight against controls.

‘‘The way ahead now is through
unity of the trade union movement
with all working people in the fight
for new economic and _ social
policies which could take Canada
out of the crisis and on the road to
recovery,” he said.

Job safety priority
for the Sandinistas

-The push to establish almost
unheard of work safety stan-
dards in Nicaragua and other
Central American countries
may have received a boost from
the co-operation given to two
visitors here by Canadian union
and government officials.

Nicaraguan occupational
health and safety officer Dr.
Mario Epelman, and Dr. Jaime
Sepulveda of the Confederation
of Central American Univer-
sities based on Costa-Rica have
been touring Canada examining
current work safety regulations,
legislation and practice.

And while they have received
much needed information to
establish standards desparately
needed in Central America, they
have one criticism of the way oc-
cupational safety is applied
here, they told reporters at a
Vancouver press conference
June 24.

“Even though there are lots
of rules;and regulations in
Canada, workers have told us
these are not enforced very:
often,’’ said Epelman through
translator Clara Salamanca.

Sepulveda praised workers
compensation~boards which
pay the victims of industrial ac-
cidents, ‘‘ but we are even more
interested in prevention.”’

Epelman and Sepulveda have
toured industrial centres in On-

_ tario and have conferred with

labor and government represen-
tatives in Saskatchewan under
the auspices of the Latin
American Working Group, the
Toronto Occupational Health
Resource Committee, and the
Jesuit Centre for Faith and
Social Justice. Here they were
sponsored by the Vancouver
Committee on Occupational
Health and Safety.

Both compensation and
prevention of industrial ac-
cidents have been non-existent
in Central American countries,
exploited for decades by inter-
national corporations, the
visitors said.

But in Nicaragua, the San-
dinista government which threw
out the tyrannical U.S.-backed
Somoza regime in 1979 has
made occupational health and
safety a major commitment,
said Epelman. As head of the
ministry of labor’s recently
created department of occupa-
tional health and safety,
Epelman is living proof of that
commitment. |

Occupational health was
simply ‘‘not conceived of’’,
even by the few unions
operating under Somoza’s rule,
he said.

Now his department is work-

ing full tilt at its two main tasks: |
the ongoing inspection of |
worksites, and an extensive |
educational program to “‘make }
workers aware”’ of their rights |

under the new rules.

“Progress is very slow,” said |
Epelman. ‘‘We face much ig- |
norance and a lack of funds. |
But still changes go on. Wehaveé
overcome the most basic pro-

blems.”’

Nicaragua’s trade unions, |
organized into the umbrella Na- |
tional Organization of Unions, ©
each have a member responsible |

for health and safety. And all

new contracts with employers

signed since the revolution have ~
health and safety clauses, said”
Epelman.

Regarding privateemployers, |

who still make up 75 percent 0
Nicaragua’s economy, ‘‘we
must persuade those people that

things have to change,”’ said the

safety director.
If an employer, warned |
about safety violations, con-

tinues to ignore warnings, there —

are several legal measures that
can be taken, according to

Epelman. These include fines”

and jail sentences, or even the

closure of the work place.
Making workers aware ‘of

their rights under a largely unen-

forced labor code is a major |
problem in Costa Rica, accor-

ding to Sepulveda.

‘“*Workers have never had a | .

chance to organize occupational
health and safety committees,’
said the director of the univer-

sities confederation’s health —

sciences program.

Therefore, Costa Rica’s Na-
tional School of Unions has set
up committees in each
workplace to teach their
members  ‘‘using

said.
Both men stressed that the
essential ingredient to ensure

success of their efforts is the cO-
operation they have received

from other organizations. .
Sepulveda cited the aid given

by the Pan American Health
Organization and the Interna-
tional Labor Organization to his

project.

Epelman said several ‘‘inter-

national solidarity groups’’ pro-

vided materials for his depart-

ment’s library. And he praised
the aid given by Canadian

unions and the Saskatchewan ~

ministry of labor, which is co-
ordinated through Oxfam.

The trip has been successful
in establishing the ‘‘permanent
contacts” sought by the Central
American safety leaders, said
Epelman.

the |
Nicaraguan experience,” he

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