VANCOUVER —

Vancouver city council split cleanly along class lines May 28 with the adoption of a fair-wage policy that put teeth into a long-standing city charter clause and ensured that a growing number of non- union construction firms will not win bids at the expense of their employees.

By a 6-4 vote, with aldermen from the Committee of Progressive Electors and their electoral allies voting in favor, coun- cil approved a motion that will see non- union construction workers engaged in city contracts paid the same as city- employed tradesmen.

The new bylaw will still see those workers receive almost $4 less per hour than their counterparts belonging to the 17 unions in the B.C. and Yukon Building Trades Council. Nonetheless, it drew viru- lent fire from council right-wingers, con- tractor employee representatives, the city’s realtor and other business interests, and commentators in the local media.

As a result of the months-long battle to establish decent rates of pay for contracted workers, employees of non-union contrac- tors doing city work will now receive wages ranging from $12.06 per hour, the laborer’s rate, to the $15.93 paid carpen- ters and electricians.

By comparison, Building Trades workers receive a laborers’ rate of $17.59 hourly, $19.10 for carpenters and $20.25 for elec- tricians.

But the new city wages are a far cry from the estimated $9 or less per hour many non-union contractors are paying their workers, and the move received the strong backing from the labor movement.

Building Trades Council secretary-trea-

surer Al McMurray said council’s decision

“should serve as an example for the pro- vincial government when it preaches about co-operation.

“The continual attack on the wages and working conditions of working people carried out by the provincial government is in sharp contrast to the progressive and positive steps taken by Vancouver city council ...to ensure that people working on city construction contracts are not exploited by unscrupulous contractors,” he said.

McMurray noted that with an unem- ployment rate among construction workers of more than SO per cent, many are des- perate for work and seek employment with low-pay, non-union contractors.

“The Vancouver city council should be commended by all fair-minded citizens for saying ‘no’ to this exploitation. ..(The motion) does not confer an unfair advan- tage, it removes an unfair disadvantage faced by any contractor who has been paying fair wages, whether union or not,” McMurray asserted.

Dave Long, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 1004, which represents Greater Vancouver’s outside workers, also praised council’s initiative.

Long said the union would have been satisfied if council had agreed with a pay scale based on Building Trades rates, but was content with the decision to pay CUPE trade rates.

“The non-union issue (in the construc- tion field) brought this whole issue to light,” Long observed, adding, “It really should have come to light years ago.”

Council vote backs fair wage policy

LIBBY DAVIES

BRUCE YORKE

Aided by a policy under which the city accepts the lowest bidder, many non- union contractors have been able to come in with bids marginally under those of the lowest unionized competitor, while paying far less in wages.

Some of these companies — notably the notorious Parkview Construction, involved in a recent dispute with the parks board over construction on Hastings Community Centre — have been found to be “double breasted” companies, where- by unionized firms set up a non-union subsidiary in violation of the B.C. Labor Code.

At the initiative of the COPE ecmen council last fall ordered city staff to come up with recommendations on establishing a fair-wage policy. These recommenda- tions were the subject of a long debate during the past two months in council and council’s finance committee.

The effort to pass a fair-wage policy earlier had hit a snag when COPE’s

“unity” partner, Ald. Bill Yee, balked at adopting a full rate of paying, opting instead for the CUPE auxiliary rate — regular hourly rate plus benefits of 14 per cent of the full-time employees’ rate — recommended by city staff and opposed hy the unions. But it was Yee himself who, after hearing in a finance committee meet- ing Toronto’s fair wage officer Cosmo Mannella explain his city’s wage bylaw which ensures Building Trades rates, moved the full CUPE rate in council’s May 28 meeting.

The motion was Steck by council’s right-wing, business backed aldermen, who hit the COPE aldermen, Yee and Mayor Mike Harcourt for their labor ties.

Non-Partisan Association Ald. Gordon Campbell, a realtor, called it “a pretty sad day for Vancouver” and claimed that “‘we have a political debt that is being paid.”

NPA Ald. George Puil, with many an arch glance at CUPE members seated in the gallery, repeated Campbell’s charge while claiming “I’m not beholden to any developer.”

“Your position is very reactionary, very regressive and I think history will bear that out,” retorted COPE Ald. Libby Davies, calling it an “historic day for city council.”

Voting for the motion were Davies, Yorke, Yee, Eriksen, Harcourt and COPE’s Harry Rankin, with Puil, Camp- bell, May Brown and Don Bellamy opposed. The vote went the same for an additional motion from Yorke charging the city manager to come back to council with recommendations on enforcing fair wage provisions.

N-weapon free zone bills backed

Bills before three different legisla- tive assemblies calling for nuclear- weapons free zone declarations re- ceived near-unanimous support from Vancouver city council last week.

Council resolved, in a 9-1 vote with one alderman absent, to send letters of support to the government and opposition of Manitoba, and urge the federal and British Columbia govern- ments to adopt private members’ bills that the province and the country be declared nuclear weapons-free.

Since then, the Manitoba legisla- ture has passed its declaration, with the support of the NDP government and the Conservative opposition, which Vancouver Ald. Libby Davies noted at a peace event Saturday.

“I think that there you saw true unity for peace,” Davies told a rally called the Women’s International Peace Gathering at Peace Arch Park on the Canada-U.S. border.

“The message I want to send is that whether (such declarations) happen at the provincial or the village level, they do make a difference,” said Davies.

Council’s motion, from Committee of Progressive electors’ aldermen Davies and Bruce Yorke, noted Van- couver’s nuclear-weapons free status, B.C. MLA Alex MacDonald’s Bill M203 before the B.C. legislature, and MP Les Benjamin’s Bill C-218 intro- duced into Parliament.

“Tf this action is followed by more and more jurisdictions its effective- ness will be greatly enhanced,” the motion’s preamble stated.

B.C. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Garde Gardom said May 30 that the Socred government cabinet would “seriously consider” city coun- cil’s recommendation.

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 1985

Canadian dollars back S.A. firms

Recently Vancouver city council debated, and will debate again this summer, disinvest- ing whatever assets the city has in banks and companies dealing with the racist regime in South Africa. In this article writer Ivan Bulic reveals some of the corporate connections between Canada and South Africa.

By IVAN BULIC Every sip of Carling Extra Old Stock and every puff of Rothmans king-size is money in the pocket of Anton Rupert, head of the Rupert Group, South Africa’s biggest mul- tinational corporation.

Rothmans of Pall Mall Canada Ltd., and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Carling ‘O’Keefe, are owned by Rupert’s London- based Rothmans Group. These companies all appear on a UN blacklist of companies that deal with the racist regime in South Africa.

The UN list also names the Bank of Montreal, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Hudson’s Bay Co., Maclean-Hunter Ltd., and a number of insurance and financial corporations.

Corporations are reluctant to divulge information about inter-corporate owner- ship. Carling O’Keefe and Rothmans are particularly reluctant to do so.

They cannot deny, however, that Roth- mans of Pall Mall, London, acquired con- trol of Canadian Breweries (later renamed Carling O’Keefe) from the Argus Corpora- tion in 1969.

The British tobacco giant, Rothmans, is directly controlled by the 68 year old Afri- kaner, Rupert.

Notoriously secretive and sensitive to international criticism of apartheid, Rupert takes great care in protecting the Rupert Group’s $8 billion in worldwide sales. As well as owning 64 cigarette factories in 24 countries, Rupert is one of the world’s major liquor distillers and is expanding into mining and banking.

Rupert is trying to sterilize his corporate image by registering the company in Lux- emburg, but his roots are Afrikaner and his focus is still centred in his homeland.

His business career started in 1948 when, as a chemist at Pretoria University, he was granted a manufacturing franchise by Rothmans. He was among the early group of middle-class Afrikaners who broke from the traditions of civil service and farming to enter business. Rupert’s business success grew alongside Afrikaner nationalism and he was strongly encouraged and assisted by post-war South Africa’s Afrikaner regimes.

From his corporate headquarters in Stel- lenbosch, a university town near Cape Town, Rupert cultivates the image of a con- cerned philanthropist. He is particularly fearful of anti-apartheid boycotts which pose a threat to his consumer-oriented pro- ducts.

To disarm opposition he spends money on conservation of wildlife and amateur sports, and supports a medical shuttle ser- vice to the poverty-stricken “black home- land” of Lesotho. All of these ventures, however, haven’t prevented Rupert from acquiring the finest art collection in Africa.

Rothmans of Canada and Carling O’Keefe are also careful about portraying good corporate images. Carling is particu- larly adept at being a “corporate regular- guy” in order to protect its almost $1 billion

in annual sales and $54 million in profits, a”

21 per cent increase over last year.

Ownership of the Quebec Nordiques hockey team and Toronto Argonauts foot- ball clubs as well as sponsorship of events such as the Nanaimo-Vancouver Bathtub Race are integral to Carling’s marketing program.

Ottawa has long been concerned about the foreign ownership of Rothmans and Carling O’Keefe. The 1977 Royal Commis- sion on corporate concentration found that Rupert Group management “failed to suc- cessfully deploy Carling O’Keefe cash in

Canada. Almost half of the $130 million on —

hand in 1969-70 disappeared in the futile efforts to turning the U.S. brewing subsi- diary around, thus losing to Canada poten- tial employment and expenditures of goods and services.”

Carling executives officially deny that corporate decisions are made elsewhere, but Carling’s B.C. vice-president. Kevin Shaughnessy admits that, ““We report to

Toronto which gets direction from head —

office in Rothmans of Pall Mall.”

Vancouver city council’s latest attempt to force business ‘fo sever ties with South Africa is only:the latest skirmish in the pro- tracted battle against government sancti-° oned racism in South Africa.

South African Action Coalition Spo- kesman, Zayed Gamiet, says various attempts have been made to publicize Carling O’Keefe’s South African nature.

“Student groups at the University of Alberta have boycotted Rothmans and

- Carling products,” he said. “At the 1977

B.C. Federation of Labor convention we had material about the issue, but the brew- ery workers complained about the call fora boycott. We were asked to take a softer stance, which we did.”

Gamiet is sympathetic to the concerns of Carling brewery workers who fear the effects a boycott could have on their jobs. The siruggle against apartheid has never been easy says Gamiet.

“It’s not easy to do anything that helps other people without some effort,”’s Harry Rankin said at the May 6 council meeting. “For us, it’s a matter of inconcvenience, for them (workers of South Africa) it’s a matter of life or death.”

Carling O’Keefe markets Black Label, Carlsberg, O’Keefe Extra Old Stock, Kro- — nenbrau, Old Vienna, Pilsener, Toby, Tri- — light Extra Light, Miller High Life and Hei- delberg beers as well as Jordan and Ste. Michelle wines and Grower’s Cider. «

Rothmnan’s sells brands such as Roth- — mans, Dunhill, Cravan ‘A”’and Peter Stuy- vesant.