n er Jack Heinrich, with
the full backing of the Social Credit
cabinet, has decalred war not only on the
Vancouver school board, and especially
its Committee of Progressive Electors
Majority , but on all the citizens of Van-
couver . At stake in this war and its out-
come is not only the quality but the very
survival of public educaiton in this pro-
vince.

Ever since its re-election in May, 1983,
the Social Credit government has set its
sights on destroying public education,
including colleges and universities. It
wants education privatized and the whole
system and all its facilities turned over to
its private corporate friends, and all educa-
tion put on a user-pay basis.

There is no other explanation for the
continuous cuts in education funding and
the firing of thousands of teachers and
support staff. There is no other explana-
tion for the vicious hatred which this
government has continuously displayed
against all educators and the whole public
education system.

It has even gone to the extent of filching
funds from federal grants for post-
secondary education and using them to
make up for some of the billion-dollar tax
concessions it is giving to big corporations.
In these. actions, the Social Credit
government is implementing the advice of
the Fraser Institute and the big corpora-
tions that fund it.

A second casualty in this strike-first war
of the Social Credit government against
the people of Vancouver is democracy and
the whole electoral process. The govern-
ment has taken away our right to elect
school boards of our choosing and the
right of those school boards to run our
educational system in the city.

It has imposed on us a one-man dictator
responsible only to his master — the min-
ister of education. Not without signifi-

cance is the fact that the man who Hein-
rich appointed to run our Vancouver
school system was also employed as a
hatchet man by Bill Vander Zalm when
that teacher-bashing individual was minis-
ter of education.

Heinrich to cover up his attack, tries to
tell us that he had to maintain the “rule of
law” against alleged “unlawful actions”
and “‘illegal actions” by the Vancouver
school board.

That’s a crock of fertilizer. The so-called
“rule of law” was a dictatorial edict
imposed by Heinrich himself. No one
asked him or the cabinet to impose trus-
teeship. They simply abused their powers.
All tin-pot dictators who impose unjust
“laws” claim they’re upholding the “rule
of law.”

The Social Credit government was not
elected on a platform of undermining or
destroying public education. It kept this
conspiracy a secret from the public in the
May, 1983 election campaign. Its subse-
quent actions displayed a complete lack of
political honesty and political morality.

The COPE majority on the Vancouver
school board, on the other hand, was
elected on a program of resisting any
further cuts, of protecting the quality of
education in Vancouver, of halting the
government in its efforts to destroy the
public school system in the province.

Yet these facts didn’t prevent Heinrich
from making the utterly hypocritical and
completely dishonest statement that the

Rankin

Vancouver school board failed to recog-
nize “their obligations to the taxpayers,
parents and children in Vancouver ...”

‘The Non-Partisan Association mem-
bers of the Vancouver school board who
favored more cuts and who wanted more
teachers and staff laid off, welcomed the
trusteeship by the Social Credit govern-
ment, with one of its members claiming
that “this move has brought stability
back.”

All that the Vancouver school board
asked for to keep the education system
going at its present level was another $14
million. This is peanuts compared to the
$700 million over-run on the ALRT sys-
tem or the hundreds of millions being
wasted on Expo 86 and B.C. Place, or the
$1 billion given in special tax breaks to the
corporations. This is further proof that the
cuts in education are not being imposed
because of the need for economy; they are
being imposed to destroy the public school
system.

To prepare an excuse for his plan to
take over the Vancouver school system
and place his own stooge in charge, Hein-
rich sent a three-man “investigative” team
to look at the Vancouver school board’s
books. It was a gigantic farce. The chair-
man of this “investigative” team — Allan
Stables — was the man who Heinrich had
planned all along to install in place as his
personal stooge to take over the Van-
couver system, and the so-called “report”
submitted by this team of paid hatchet

men, the purpose of which was to justify
firing the Vancouver school board, is a ~
hoax to say the least.

Let me give you one example. The
report states that having school trustees in
Vancouver is costing taxpayers $41,666
for each trustee, the inference being that
the trustees get this in salaries. The facts
are that the chairman of the school board
gets $6,000 a year, the vice-chairman gets
$5,000 and each of the other seven get
$4,000 each.

This comes to $55,000 a year for nine
people. The dictator installed to replace
the school board gets $300 a day or a
minimum of $54,400 a year. In other
words, this one man gets as much as the
whole Vancouver school board.

A significant indication of the dictator-
ial approach of Heinrich is the fact that he
never notified the school board members
by letter or by phone that he had twice
extended the deadline “to give the Van-
couver school board time to reconsider its
unlawful actions.” Nor did he call them in
to tell them that he was imposing a trustee-
ship. These announcements were made
only to the press.

We have had far too many indications
in these past two years of the increasing
inclination of this government to ignore
the parliamentary process, to rule by
order-in-council or by edict of a dictatorial
minister.

When Vancouver citizens dared to elect
a majority to the school board who
refused to go along with the reactionary
education policies of this government, it
simply abolished the school board. What
will they abolish next: Vancouver city
council? Will that be accompanied by
banning the trade union movement?

No wonder a cabinet minister was
reported to have said in the legislature last
year that Social Credit wants to make B.C.
the Chile of the north.

Don’t wait for election — mobilize now

British Columbia labor has been trying to re-orient
itself in the aftermath of the massive solidarity struggle of
two years ago. The Social Credit “restraint” has proven
to be the disaster which everyone predicted it would be.
Despite draconian cutbacks of public services and public
sector workers, the economy languishes as one of the
worst in Canada with unemployment at 15 per cent and
climbing. One out of five British Columbia families now
subsists on UIC or welfare. Each day produces new
announcements of lay-offs. ; j

Social Credit job creation is about as effective as their
‘‘funny money” policies of the thirties.

British Columbia is as combative as ever. Clearly the
Socreds are on the defensive as their policies run British
Columbia aground. They trail the New Democratic Party
by 11 per cent in the polls, and would go crashing to
defeat if an election were held tomorrow. The major
issue in the past period of time has been the issue of
education funding. The gutting of the education system
has linked thousands of parents, teachers, school boards
and students, including many Socred supporters fighting
to preserve the public education system in the province.

Despite the fact that the Socreds are clearly on the
ropes, largely as a result of the spadework done by labor,
the trade union movement is having some difficulty mov-
ing in for the coup de grace. To be sure, labor is not alone.
The NDP, under new leader Bob Skelly, is trying hard to
snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by pursuing the
same formula for disaster as his predecessor, Dave Bar-
rett, i.e., lie low and hope for the Socreds to self-destruct.

But labor has a lot to lose by pursuing a wait-and-see
approach. First of all the economy is not going to turn
around of its own accord. Policies are required which
will put British Columbia back to work. Secondly, the
attack on labor which had reached fever piteh, with new
Proposals by the government to establish economic
development zones (union-free), and outright attempts
to break unions suchas the Retail Wholesale at Slade and

Labor in action

jtewart where the big transnational company locked out
its workers after demanding outrageous concessions
and then proceeded to hire scabs. That strike dragging
into its first year (at a long established unionized work-
site) is but a sign of things to come unless labor moves
from defence to offence. The largest industrial union in
the province has seen its membership dwindle from close
to 50,000 to less than 30,000 as a result of tech change,
plant and operations closures, and contracting out.
There was a generalized belief that with the election of
new leadership to the B.C. Federation of Labor last
December, things would begin to look up for labor in the

province, that the policies adopted by convention would

be implemented. Instead, there’s a growing feeling that
little has changed.
To be sure, the lingering sniping from International

‘Woodworkers of America President Jack Munro has not
helped the cause of unity. Its also true that the problems

plaguing the labor movement have become infinitely
more complex. But what is not emerging is the promised
leadership which signals to the workers that a fightback
is being prepared against the employer-government on-
slaught.

Clearly, the concept of the March For Jobs adopted
by the CLC and re-affirmed by the leadership of the

-federation at the last convention has been lost in the

aftermath of the federal government’s decision to dis-
continue funding for the Unemployment Action Centres.

The pre-occupation of the federation of labor has been
on the campaign to raise one dollar per month per union
member to continue the activities of the centre. That
action should be welcomed, for the Action Centres have
done yeomen service not only for the unemployed, but
also in defence of the trade union movement.

However, the key question for labor is not to relegate
the issue of jobs and employment to the Unemployment
Action Centres, but how labor can bring its own policies
for economic recovery to the average British Colum-
bian, to make labor’s solutions the dominant economic
theory in the province, replacing the neo-conservative
restraint theories of the Fraser Institute. Waiting pas-
sively for the election of an NDP government, even
should it come to pass, will not necessarily mean an end
to restraint.

So far new NDP leader Bob Skelly has not offered an
alternative to restraint. Such a passive approach will
almost guarantee no effective fightback, a stepped-up
attack on labor and possibly the defeat of the NDP in the
next election.

The trade union movement must be concerned.

Mass unemployment must also be a major concern of
the trade union movement of British Columbia. Of 136
concessionary agreements signed in Canada in 1984,
over half of them were in Alberta and British Columbia,
two provinces with mass unemployment. Therefore the
question cannot be reduced to planning strategies for the
next election, or waiting for an economic up-turn or even
just limiting ourselves to maintaining our Action >
Centres, as important as they are.

Labor needs to dust off its own economic program (the
one adopted by convention), popularize it with its mem-
bers, then take it to the community and ultimately build
the kind of movement that will roll the employers back
and guarantee the defeat of the Socreds at the next
election.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 15, 1985¢5