JIM MAYNE..

. popular NFU president is stepping down from post after two years.

Resolutions take back seat
to reports at BC Fed meet

Resolutions demanding a halt to
Proposed cutbacks in Canadian

ational’s express service, calling
for scrapping of the provincial gov-
€mment’s contentious Utilities
Commission and pledging the Fed-
€ration ‘‘to employ every means to
Oppose Skagit River Valley flood-
ing” won unanimous endorsement
from the more than 900 delegates
to the B.C. Federation of Labor
Convention who wound up their
week-long convention Friday.

Delegates from Haney Local
1-467 of the International Wood-
workers of America reaffirmed to
the convention their intention to
Tefuse to log the Skagit River res-
€rvoir to give added impetus to the
labor movement’s campaign
against the proposed raising of the
Ross Dam by Seattle City Light.

The resolution on the CN ex-
Press cutbacks emphasized the im-
Pact that the crown corporation’s
action would have on both the
workers and communities affected
and demanded that the company’s
€xpress trucking service be fully
_ Maintained.

CN announced Nov. 17its plans
to reduce the express service term-
Inals by almost one-half, a pro-
Posal which if implemented would

Ow more than 1,200 employees
Out of work.

_ Bill Apps, regional representa-
ve for the Canadian Brotherhood
of Railway, Transport and General
Workers, told the convention that

Scores of small communities would —

Severely affected if the cuts were

Owed to proceed and urged dele-
Bates: “Don’t let CN get out of the
€xpress service,”’

The action resolutions were
among several adopted by dele-
Sates during the week-long meet-

ing, alth
and th Ough both the numbers

. down considerably from previous
_ Y€ars as the convention, at the bid-
of the Federation leadership,
Instead on committee re-

_ Ports and policy papers. °
At the same time, a riumber of
rontroversial issues — the building

trades dispute, patriation of the

Constitution, and the KuKlux Klan
all Were kept off the floor as were
al’ Of the resolutions dealing with
. International affairs. :
fo noth: key resolution, calling
if € establishment of a govern-

€nt body which would be given a

to regulate plant closures

a layoffs also never came before
delegates even though it had

by Prepared in composite form

; nae ue resolutions

€ scope of resolutions was -

Federation president Jim Kin-
naird told a press conference later
that the administration did not

- want to have contentious debates

on the floor of the convention. He
said he preferred instead ‘‘to mo-
bilize the delegates around Dave
Barrett and Ed Broadbent,’’ both
of whom addressed the conven-
tion.

The Federation president- also
noted that his leadership was moy-
ing more to a system like that in Ca-
nadian Labor Congress conven-
tions in which policy appears in
general outline in committee re-

_ ports, rather than in specific reso-

lutions. The latter has been thestyle
of the B.C. Fed in past years, giving
a sharper edge to his policy.

Delegates did go through nearly
ascore of reports, ranging from oc-
cupational health and safety,
political education, and women’s
rights to human rights.

Several reports were criticized,
however, for failing to articulate a
program and policy or for failing to
take up major issues which were
before the Federation.

In particular, the human rights
report was widely criticized for not

‘ addressing the issue of the resurg-

ence of the KKK in B.C. The ab-
sence of the issue from the report
also left the suggestion that a Fed-
eration pamphlet on the Klan —
called ‘‘the Conspiracy of Hate”’
— which argued against calling for
aban on the Klan had put forward

‘official Federation policy.

Fishermen’s delegate Homer
Stevens drew attention to the pam-
phlet, noting that it had suggested
that the KKK had as much right to
free speech as the labor movement.

“It?s a sad mistake when that
kind of thinking is reflected in this
Federation,”’ he said.

‘‘We should be demanding that
the KKK be banned in British Co-
lumbia,”’ he said to applause.

The Federation officers includ-
ing Kinnaird and secretary-treas-
urer Dave Macintyre were all re-
turned by acclamation to their po-
sitions in Friday’s elections, with
the only contest coming in one of
two new vice-presidents elected this
year.
Fishermen’s Union president
Jack Nichol was defeated 592-332
by Steelworkers representative
Monty Alton in elections for sev-
enth vice-president. Telecommuni-
cations Workers Union president
Bill Clark was acclaimed for eighth
vice-president.

‘No stake in East

West power grab’

Farmers in Canada have no
stake in the “‘power struggle’ bet-

~ ween the federal and provincial

governments or financial interests
in Eastern and Western Canada.

“They are trying to convince us
that this power struggle relates to us
in a regional sense, and obscure the
fact that it affects us in the ex-
ploitative sense,’’ outgoing. presi-
dent of the National Farmers
Union Jim Mayne said Tuesday in
Vancouver. —

“They are struggling over who
will exploit us the most.”

In his keynote address fo the
NFU’s eleventh annual convention
Dec. 1-6in Vancouver, Mayne said
that family farmers from B.C. to
the Maritimes have common pro-
blems, stemming from the growing

grip of multinational agribusiness .

over the agricultural industry in
Canada.

About 400 delegates and
observers were in attendance at the
week long convention to address
the major issues facing farmers, in-
cluding the movement of grain and
the Crow rate, plant breeders pa-
tent rights, the need for a national
meat marketing authority, and
federal government energy, land
and transportation policy.

But.a primary focus of this con-
vention is necessarily internal.
NFU vice president Bill Dascovich
told delegates bluntly in the report
from the National Board of Direc-
tors that the past year ‘‘has been
very trying. Despite efforts to make
membership recruitment a priority,
membership ‘continued to
decline.’’

NFU membership now stands at
about 8,000 ‘‘family units’’, based
primarily on the prairies, Ontario
and the Maritimes. The farm union
has a small membership in the B.C.
Peace River district.

Part of the NFU’s difficulties are
rooted in the shrinking family farm
population. But as several speakers
pointed out in discussion and in
committee reports, the NFU com-
mands considerable prestige in far-
ming communities across the coun-
try and as the economic squeeze af-
fects more and more farming
families, there are good conditions
for expanding the union’s
membership base.

If the railways are successful in
scrapping the Crow rate for haul-
ing grain, it will cost prairie farmers
$400 million in the first year, and
drain $1.5 billion from the prairi
economy, Mayne warned.

The railways argue they need
higher rates in order to provide ser-
vice, but they already have reteived
a 65-82 percent increase in rates
between 1975 and 1980, ‘‘but there
is still a general lack of rolling
stock.” 2

Mayne charged that the attack

. on the Crow rate is aimed at shif-

ting the tax burden to producers to
satisfy the railway’s demand for
higher profits, and is also a part of
the federal government’s ‘‘cheap
food policy.”

Removal of the Crow rate will
mean a further decline in farm gate
prices for feed grains, he said. ‘‘No
family farmer has anything to gain
from a cheap food policy. The last
thing an Ontario farmer wants is
prairie grains on sale at-30-40 per-
cent below their established
prices.”

There is a long established teel-
ing about the East in Western
Canada, he added, continuing the
theme of the constitutional crisis,
but that feeling should be directed
to the industrial power base in On-
tario, not to the worker or farmer.

“If you pay too much for a
Massey Ferguson combine, does it
matter if you are buying it in On-
tario or B.C. Aren’t you both pay-
ing too much? Aren’t you both
forced.to. sell. on. the, open market
with no control.over prices? Won’t
if be same for both when energy
prices double?’’

The NFU president went on to
warn against “‘falling prey to the
popular movement to decentraliza-
tion’”’ terming it ‘‘the old rule of
divide and conquer.”

Resolutions before the farm
union convention called for na-
tionalization of the energy industry
in Canada, a federal government
land banking program, support for
the right of farm workers to
organize into trade unions, and for
a once in a lifetime exemption from
capital gain tax for farmers who sell
their land after working the land
for a minimum of ten years.

Continued from page 1
only to India. He added that se-
cond trimester abortions are six
to eight times as dangerous, as the
relatively safe first trimester abor-
tion.

Morgantaler said that he had
been outraged at the recent
hospital board elections in Surrey
and Victoria in which pro-lifers
won majorities and warned that
“even the limited provisions for
abortion won in 1969 are in dan-
ger of being taken away unless we
co warning was also voiced
by Dorothy Young Sale, a co-

inator
pierce of Women, who
emphasized that the resurgence of
right wing organizations such as
the ‘‘Moral Majority’’ were seek-
ing to strip women of their legal
right to abortion, a-right which
was recently upheld by the

upreme Court.

: She emphasized. that recent
polls in the U.S. showed that
those favoring a pro-choice stand

for the U.S. National ©

- Abortion laws ‘unjust, d

on abortions outnumbered the
pro-lifers two to one, but warned
that women would have to mount
a major campaign to defend and
extend their rights “because the
right wing has pots of money to
advance its position.”

Dr. Silvia Glen, one of the doc-

tors at Surrey Memorial Hospital
who recently forced the board to
reinstate the therapeutic abortion
committee, also addressed the
‘rally along with NDP MP
Margaret Mitchell, YWCA
representative Jan Lancaster,
Astrid Davidson, women’s direc-
tor for the B.C. Federation of
Labor and Vancouver mayor-
elect Mike Harcourt.

Harcourt voiced his support
for the rally and the pro-choice
stand on abortion, adding that
the old city council had become
“too involved in making moral
decisions for the city of Van-
couver.

“That is going too change,”’ he
said, to applause.

by

RALLY CROWD.

Astrid Davidson told the rally
that the B.C. Fed had earlier reaf-
firmed its stand upholding the
right of women to choose

" whether or not she wants an abor-

tion.

angerous'

. . NDP MP Pauline Jewett among more than
700 who turned out to demand women’s right to choose.

‘\

4

That position, endorsed in a
resolution passed at the conven-
tion two days earlier, had also in-
structed the Federation ‘‘to en-
dorse and support actively the
fight to ensure that women retain

the right to choose.”’ J

_« PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DEC. 5, 1980—Page 3