buses aren't welcome

the Pacific Coachlines terminal.

Pickets halt Greyhound scab

Pickets hastily assembled by the B.C. Federa- tion of Labor Thursday made it plain scab-driven in Vancouver. volunteer pickets from the unemployed action centres affiliated to the Vancouver and District Labor Council and the B.C. Building Trades stopped a non-union Seattle driver from bring- ing an American Greyhound bus into the yard at PCL drivers respected the picket, shutting down operations during the 15-minute operation. The action complemented sit-ins and pickets at stations across the United States to stop the multi- million dollar company’s efforts to break the three-week strike by 12,000 Amalgamated Tran- sit Union members with scab labor. Workers voted 98 per cent to strike against demands for a 25-per cent cut in wages and benefits, and other ‘concessions. Greyhound’s response to the strike was to advertise for scabs, receiving more than 40,000 applications. Besides public transportation, the company is involved in the ’ loans business and owns Dial Soap. Vancouver pickets ran repeatedly between the two en- trances to the terminal, forcing the driver to deposit his passengers — only two, due to pickets in Seattle — elsewhere downtown.

The

Building Trades launch job action at VGH 4

The Building Trades launched a second phase of its campaign against a non-union construction project at Vancouver General Hospital Wednesday as some 100 Building Trades members invoked the reservation clauses in their collective agreements and walked off an adjoining project.

Another 400 unionists, many of them unemployed Building Trades workers, join- ed them as they shut down the job, to stagea noon-hour protest rally and mass picket.

The target of the rally was Kirkwall Con- struction Ltd., a non-union firm in Rich- mond which was recently awarded a $4.5 million dollar contract to construct Phase I of a new research facility at VGH.

The Building Trades set up an informa- tion picket line around the Kirkwall site Nov.

10 but following the company’s application to the Labor Relations Board for a cease- and-desist order, the Building Trades cam- paign was escalated.

B.C. and Yukon Building Trades presi- dent Roy Gautier said that meetings were held among the four trades working on an adjoining VGH building project, currently under construction by union companies, and the trades voted to take job action under their reservation clauses. 2

Building Trades collective agreements reserve the right for unionists to refuse to work alongside non-union or non-affiliated workers. :

By invoking the clauses, the Building Trades is contending that the VGH con- struction work, including the Kirkwall pro- ject, is a “‘common site’’ under the Labor Code, giving the trades the right to refuse to work.

Gautier said that an application would likely be made to the LRB soon for a com- mon site declaration. ‘‘And we'll be looking for an expedited hearing”’, he said.

The four prime contractors on the union site have indicated that they will be pressing the LRB for a... cease<and- desist order to halt Building Trades job ac- tion, thus moving the battleground over to the labor board offices.

And that battle is likely to bea particularly bitter one this time around. The actions of the provincial government and the non- union contractors have put the future of the Building Trades and union conditions in construction on the line.

““We’ve no alternative but to fight,”’ Gautier told the Tribune. ‘‘And we have to sustain that fight or we’ll be left out in the cold.”

The Kirkwall contract gave a new edge to the threat from the non-union sector when it was awarded Sept. 16 since it marked the first time that a VGH construction project had gone to a non-union firm. Building

Trades representatives later learned that the award was the direct result of a provincial government policy directive instructing public bodies to accept the lowest bidder, regardless of factors.

VGH planning director Bill Goodsir told the Trades: ‘‘We take our marching orders from Victoria.”’

Accordingly, Kirkwall was hired for the multi-million dollar project even though it had no expertise in the type of construction required and ‘‘has never built’ anything more than a three-storey frame apartment’, according to the Building Trades.

The provincial government also interven- ed earlier this year to ensure that Wigmar Construction, a right-to-work contractor in

Victoria, was selected to construct a $3.8 million addition to Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital. The hospital’s board of trustees had voted unanimously to reject Wigmar’s bid but the hospital building committee, made up of representatives of the govern- ment, the hospital and the Capital Regionai Planning Commission voted 2-1 to overrule the elected board.

At the VGH site, Kirkwall has hired several anti-union subcontractors, many of which are members of the Independent Con- tractors and Businessmen’s Association, the chief proponent in this province of right-to- work legislation.

Significantly, one of the subcontractors, Viking Electric, was chosen despite the fact

that its bid was $80,000 higher than a bid tendered by a union firm, Ricketts-Sewell.

“We raised hell about the low biddet policy in meeting, with (Labor Minister) M& Clelland,’’ Gautier said, ‘“‘but the goverl ment is totally hypocritical. They say they’ concerned about the state of the unionize sector of the construction industry but it® | those same people who make the decisions!@ promote the non-union sector.”’ :

The B.C. Federation of Labor, the Val couver and District Labor Council and thé Hospital Employees Union, had earliet pledged their support to the Building Trade: in their campaign against the non-uniol contractors. :

Jobless meet targets

B.C.’s unemployed — more than 200,000 of them — were, in a sense, buried within the avalanche of opposition brought down by the Socred government’s budgetary bills.

That’s partly because there was within the Solidarity Coalition and Operation

- Solidarity too much emphasis on accepting

government-imposed ‘‘restraint’’ and its attendant unemployment, said George Hewison, head of the Vancouver and District Labor Council’s unemployment action committee, to some 60 delegates at the second annual unemployment con- ference in Vancouver last weekend.

Taking up that theme, representatives of the VDLC committee and its active wing, the Vancouver unemployed action centre, joined with delegates from. centres and committees in other B.C. communities and as far away as Saskatchewan in hammering out a series of resolutions that charted and enhanced a more independent role for unemployed organizations within the trade union movement.

The representatives of the jobless, gathered at the Ukrainian and UFAWU halls Nov. 18-19, also adopted a nine-point program detailing an economic alternative to the cutback policies of the Socreds and several other provincial, as well as the federal, governments.

The end result was a conference in which ‘the level of understanding about the role of the unemployed was raised from that of last year’s conference,’’ said Vancovuer action centre co-ordinator Kim Zander in an interview.

“‘A year ago people were just getting around to talking about organizing the unemployed. This year, we could assess our experiences from activities over the

year and talk about ways to expand the unemployed movement,”’ she said.

Delegates ‘were presented with a key paper outlining the Vancouver centre and committee’s past actions, including jobless demonstrations, briefs to city council, the park board and federal commissions and largely successful advocacy work on behalf of the area’s Unemployment Insurance and welfare recipients. The paper also urg- ed consideration of an expanded network of unemployed groups, and suggested several actions jobless advocates should consider for the immediate and longer terms.

Motions hammered out in three concur- rent workshops Saturday morning, most of which were adopted in the subsequent plenary session, reflected the key theme that the independence of the unemployed’ movement is enhanced by strong connec- tions — including formal affiliation — with organized labor.

Among the motions were those urging:

@ Unions to allow laid off or fired members to retain union membership, and for those affected, delegate status in larger bodies such as local labour councils;

@ The election or representatives of unemployed groups — by committees and action centres set up by labor councils, and unemployed workers groups working with labor councils — as delegates to local labor councils, with full speaking and voting privileges;

@ Labor’s support for a cross-Canada communications network among unemployed organizations;

@ Labor and jobless groups to consider a province-wide conference of unemployed workers organizations.

This latter point was underscored by

restraint’ —

B.C. Federation ot Labor president Art Kube, a guest speaker at the conference, who noted that the co-ordinators of the 31 labor-sponsored action centres in B.C. would be attending the upcoming B.C.” Fed. annual convention.

Kube, who also told of an upcoming “training session”’ for centre co-ordinators sponsored by the federation, received the strongest applause when he envisioned the possibility of a union of the unemploy! affiliated to the B.C. Fed.

The conference also produced action proposals, including campaigns around the long-standing demand for extension 0 UI benefits to cover the full period of unemployment, at rates established at 90 per cent of the recipient’s working wage, and raising welfare rates significantly above the poverty level.

Another resolution urged unions t0 develop unemployed committees for theif own members.

Delegates also approved a motion of support for “‘strong actions’ to battle unemployment, up to and including poss ble job actions.

And the stamp of approval — with some additions and changes — went to the nine point alternative economic program unemployed activists and trade unionists laid before a prehearing of the MacDonald Commission on the Economic Union at! Development Prospects for Canada 4 Simon Fraser University last spring. é

Delegates added a shorter work week at the same rates of pay to the program, — which included nationalization of banks, increased taxation of corporations, an €n to social service cutbacks, and cuts #7 defence spending. _