By DENISE HARPER

KAMLOOPS — Members of
the United Steelworkers Local 8637
at the Afton copper mine near

Oops are on the picket line this
week to protest health and safety
conditions and arbitrary
disciplinary measures against
miners,

In spite of urging by union of-
ficials to return to work, the miners
say they will not go back on the job
until mercury and sulphur dioxide
pollution at the mine is brought
under control.

The March 20 walkout of the
270 workers at Afton mines was
sparked by a 10 hour suspension
given a union member who had
been engaged in a yelling match
with a supervisor.

A membership meeting March
22 rejected -a call from
Steelworker’s officials to return to
.| work, and instead narrowed 59

grievances to six, mostly health and
safety questions, which must be
settled before they return to work.

Steelworkers’ national represen-
tative Ken Strange said that the
local union had attempted to
| discuss grievances with company

provincial N
Mercury levels
spark walkout
at copper mine

officials at Teck Corporation in
Vancouver, but the response was
too long in coming. :
March 12 the union applied to
have emissions of mercury tested,
but the testing equipment sup-
posedly hadn’t arrived when the

" miners learned through the media

of the unusually high mercury
emissions. Strange said that the
union was never Officially con-
tacted with the information. ““We
were aware there were mercury
emissions,”’ he said, “‘but didn’t
know the limit was being
exceeded.”’

- Published reports of the pollu-
tion claim that 12 to 14 pounds of
mercury and 1.5 tonnes of sulphur
dioxide are being released into the
air every day at the mine.

Reports Monday at the
Kamloops and District Labor
Council indicated the mine has
been operating at two to three times
its designed capacity in order to
cash in on the lucrative metal
market.

Scrubbers in the smoke stack
can’t keep up with emissions,
workers say, and sulphur dioxidein
the mine is often so dense that it im-
pairs vision.

PREC RAPA ED COAT SRR SURE Eee a

Steelworkers delegate Darwin
Robinson told the labor council
that the union was shocked that no
report of the health threat had
reached the union hall. ‘Where are
the pollution control board, the
waste management branch, or the
Local health unit,’’ he asked.

‘““Where is city council,”’
demanded another delegate, poin-
ting out that although Afton mine
is only 4.5 miles from city centre,
the city council ‘‘shows no
‘concern’”’ about the pollution pro-
blem.

Delegates also voiced concern
about emissions from the Gulf
refinery and Weyerhauser pulp
mill, also within Kamloops city
limits, and demanded a full public
investigation into pollution pro-
blems in the area.

Demands for an investigation in-
to pollution from the Afton mine
have also come from residents in
the agricultural community around
the mine who are alarmed over the
reports of mercury contamination.

While company officials refuse
comment on any of the grievances
until the wildcatters return to the
job, union officials are trying to get
third party intervention in the
dispute. ‘‘We want a third party —
any third party, so we can get back
to work,”’ Strange told the labor
council.

Strikers were holding fast to
their positions Tuesday and were
threatening to escalate picketing to
Teck Corporation’s Highmont
mine in the nearby Highland
Valley.

Home and School
lobby gets short
shrift from Smith

VICTORIA — Over 150
parent members of the B.C.
Home and School Federation
(PTA) lobbied education
minister, Brian Smith last Friday,
but received only short-shrift for
their efforts.

B.C. Home and School
Federation president, Mrs. Ona
Mae Roy expressed concern over
the deterioration of the provincial
cost sharing for public education,
and asked the minister for a pro-
vincial grant for the federation.

Smith responded by .reading
from the text of a document
prepared two years ago by former
education minister and current
universities minister Pat McGeer
when the federation had re-
quested funding.

“Government grants are for
children, not parents,’ Smith
declared. He further stunned the
parents by arrogantly suggesting
that they ‘‘tax every child in this
province 10 cents in order to raise
the money they needed.”’

“We listened in utter disbelief,”
said Beth Chobotuck, president
of the Burnaby section of the
federation. ‘‘All of the parents
were terribly upset.”

Participants in the lobby were
told by people working within
the education ministry that the
federation was being ‘‘punished”’
for its vigorous on-going cam-
paign against the government

~

funding of private and indepen-
dent schools.

The announced increases of 20
percent for the budgets of private
and independent schools and the
Mere 6 percent increase alloted
public schools, did little to ‘‘allay
the federation’s fears that this
government will have gradually
worked itself out of the business
of funding public education by
1982, if it continues in this direc-
tion,’’ Chobotuck said.

Meeting sought
on Ocean Falls

OCEAN FALLS — Canadian
Paperworkers Union president
Art Gruntman said Tuesday
that the union was pressing for a
meeting with premier Bennett in
its campaign to compel the
government and B.C. Cellulose
to give Ocean Falls workers first
chance at jobs in the town’s pro-
jected wood chip mill

Some 410 workers face
unemployment next month when
B.C. Cellulose Corporation shuts
down the pulp mill. A new wood
chip and lumber mill is slated for
fall operation but the CPU has
had no indication that the 100
jobs it will provide will be
available to CPU members.

The union was attempting to
set up the meeting with Bennett
following an earlier meeting with
B.C. Cellulose president Ray
Williston who refused to make
any commitment that-the jobs in
the new mill would go to Ocean
Falls workers, who will otherwise
be forced to leave. J

MEETING ON MORTGAGE RATES...
federal mortgage money available.

TRIBUNE PHOTO—SEAN GRIFFIN

ACMR campaign to demand
a freeze on mortgage rates

Continued from page 1
said calling on the audience to join
together to put pressure on the
Trudeau government.

“We need an organization to

pressure MPs, to write letters to

newspapers — to do everything we
can to compel the federal govern-
ment to enact legislation now.”’

The meeting unanimously en-
dorsed a proposal demanding that
Ottawa move immediately to im-
pose an 18-month freeze on interest
rates for all existing mortgages and
also make mortgage money
available through CMHC at rates
no higher than 10 percent.

“The government claims that
the inflation rate is less than 10 per-
cent — so let them prove it by mak-

ing mortgage money available at
that rate,”” one carpenter told the

meeting,

Another proposal demanded
that legislation be passed placing a
moratorium on all mortgage

~forclosures. Thousands already

face the loss of their homes as a
result of having to renegotiate their
mortgages at rates 50 percent
higher than they were when the
mortgage was first purchased.

In contrast to the foreclosure
situation, the profits of the five
Canadian chartered banks rose to a
total of $277,714,000 for the first
three months of 1980.

“That’s what this meeting is all
about — you people have made it
clear that the government should
put people’s homes before bank

profits,’’ Yorke said to applause.
Yorke heads the 12-member ex-
ecutive committee established by

“ACMR after Wednesday’s

meeting. The committee im-
mediately wired public works
minister Cosgrove, who is respon-
sible for CMHC, asking that he

- come to a publicrally in Vancouver

Apr. 13, the day before the opening
of parliament.

ACMR has also urged people to
raise the association’s demands in
various organizations and to joinin
delegations to local members of
parliament.

Temporary offices have been set
up at 2245 Commercial Drive in
Vancouver. The telephone number
is 251-2147.

a
om :

Hold line on

prices, urges CP.

The Communist Party has
demanded a freeze on the price of

natural gas for residential con-'

sumers.

CP provincial leader Maurice
Rush placed the demand in a letter
to premier Bennett Tuesday, in
response to reports that prices for
natural gas could rise by 30 percent
this year.

Current prices for natural gas
are $2.20 per thousand cubic feet
for B.C. residential users and $5.20
per thousand cubic feet for export
markets. ‘

Reports this week revealed that
socred energy minister Bob

government urged to freeze rates on existing mortgages, make McLelland has a proposal for in-

creased prices before cabinet to
meet the demands of the Canadian
Petroleum Association, represen-
tative of the oil firms which control
production in the B.C. northeast.
The companies are demanding
more money for gas used in B.C.,
and they want a share of the in-
creased export price as well. (The
B.C. Petroleum Corporation buys
gas from the producersat a flat rate
and most of the increased price for
exports goes into provincial cof-
fers.)

Any increase in the price of
natural gas would be ‘“‘totally un-
necessary and a further burden on
the people who are already reeling
from recent price increases on
hydro, transit, interest rates, food
and housing costs,’’ Rush said.

Rush took issue with the projec-
tion of Socred energy minister
McLelland that ‘‘the price of
energy commodities must continue
to be adjusted to reflect long term
replacement costs and the value of
the resource.”’ Everything possible
should be done to encourage the

use of natural gas, the energy
source B.C. has in the greatest
abundance, he said, and the pro-
vince’s natural gas reserves should
_ be used to help relieve the pressure
of constantly rising inflation.

The oil corporations which con-
trol production of natural gas are
attempting to blackmail the
government, just as they did to the
Barrett government previously
with threats that they will stop pro-
duction if price don’t rise to their
satisfaction, the CP leader stressed.

Rush urged ‘‘no surrender’’ to
the oil companies and called on the
government to take over the “‘en-
tire natural gas industry from its
source to the consumers.’’ The
takeover should include explora-
tion and production and Westcoast
Transmission and should place it
all under the jurisdiction of a public
agency responsible to the people,
he said.

MAURICE RUSH ... calls for
takeover of natural gas industry.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 28, 1980—Page 3

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