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Union urges boycott
of neighborhood pub

Vancouver pub patrons are being
asked to boycott Bimini’s neigh-
borhood pub at 2010 West 4th
Avenue, to support striking
workers seeking a first contract
with the anti-union pub.

The 13 members of the Service
Office and Retail Workers Union of
Canada (SORWUC) set up a picket
line at Bimini’s on Thursday, after
10 months of negotiations with
owner Peter Uram had failed to
resolve any of the major issues.

Bimini’s has refused to agree to
any conditions of work not already
guaranteed by provincial labor
standards, and has refused to offer
any wage increase on the $3 per
hour presently paid to waitresses.
The owner is also demanding the
right to pay certain employees a
higher scale, according to his own
whim. :

“We're counting on public and
union support to win this strike,” a
SORWUC spokesman told the
Tribune this week, “He (Uram) is
already hiring people to replace
us ”

The strike is likely to be long and
bitter. Uram’s tactics are ‘‘delay,
layoffs, firings and general
harassment,’’ SORWUC said. The
employer has been successful in
forcing some union members off
the job leaving enough non-union
employees to keep the pub open.
Bimini’s has enough liquor to last
about two months without further
deliveries, and SORWUC is hopeful

that trade union support. will.

prevent the pub from replenishing
its stock. With just 13 members,
the union will try and keep picket
lines manned from 9:00 to 11:00
p.m., Monday through Saturday.

Rapid transit plan posed

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

We're really being given the run-
around when it comes to rapid
transit..When the Greater Van-
couver Regional District proposed
that a regional transit authority be
established and be given some
provincial financial assistance to
get on with the job of establishing a
good public transit system in the
Lower Mainland, including rapid
transit, the Socred government
countered by stating that it would
instead set up'a provincial transit
commission. But a session of the
legislature has come and gone with
nothing done by the provincial
government. Now it will be another
six or eight months before another
session. Obviously, that was just a
stalling tactic.

The inaction of the provincial
government is galling even if not
surprising. So many of its cabinet
ministers are so deeply involved in
thecar business and so subservient
to the oil industry that they are in
fact hostile to the expansion of
public transit, be it bus service or
rapid transit.

The federal government, too, is
refusing to give any financial
assistance, hiding behind the
B.N.A. Act and claiming that
transit is not its responsibility. But
it did contribute substantially to
rapid transit in Toronto, it did
contribute generously to the
Montreal Expo, so why can’t it
contribute to rapid transit in the
Lower Mainland? The answer is
that it can, but it won’t as long as
we don’t turn on the political heat.

It looks to me as if rapid transit,
light or otherwise, will never come
to Vancouver if we wait for Ottawa
or Victoria. Therefore all that’s left
is for us to take the initiative.

I propose that Vancouver city
council should take action without
delay to establish a Public Rapid
Transit Fund by a two mill in-
crease in taxes. That would bring
in over $8.5 million dollars a year.
On the average home it would
mean a tax increase of ap-
proximately $46.30.

Now, before any taxpayer’s

blood pressure rises to the point
where he may blow a fuse, I would

like him or her to consider the’

following ways by which this in-
crease in taxes can be offset to
their benefit.

City council is at present
spending far too many of our tax
dollars to subsidize private

= PEOPLE AND ISSUES

business interests. The ‘money
spent on the Granville Mall, the
VanDusen Gardens, Gastown,
Blocks 42 and 52 and the Orpheum
Theatre have been directly
responsible for your tax increases
in recent years. Council’s priorities
have been all wrong. Subsidies to
private business should be ended
and public transit given, top
priority.

e If the city now buys up the land
to be used for the rapid transit
route and the stations on the way
(which will logically develop into

residential and shopping centres).

and then resells this land later at
market value, it can more than
compensate taxpayers for the
increase in taxes, as well as make
a good bundle to finance the rapid
transit system.

e Rapid transit will save several
hundred dollars a year for every
person who uses it and leaves his
car at home. Remember that gas,
which is now a dollar or more a
gallon, will sooner than you think
be up to $1.50. The price of cars,
repairs and insurance will continue
to climb. These costs for most

people run into not only hundreds
but thousands of dollars a year,
especially for those. families that
must have two cars. And don’t
forget too, that every year we are
spending more on the upkeep of
roads and the traffic congestion
continues to get worse. There is .
little doubt in my mind that a
public transit system will save
money for all of us in the long run,
even if we have to increase taxes
somewhat in the meantime.

e My last point is short: What
other alternative is there to the
rising cost of maintaining a car-
oriented economy?: The answer is
— none. Public transit including
rapid transit that moves people
quickly, efficiently and at low cost
is the only answer we have.

If we take the initiative and start
building a public transit system,
we will be in a position to force
senior governments to cough up
some money. If we wait for them to
act first, nothing, absolutely
nothing, will be done. It will be
another 10 or 20 years of talk, talk,
talkand study, study, study. Surely

_we’ve had. enough of that!

Staff changes announced

The Tribune masthead adds a
new name this week, with the
appointment by the editorial board
of Pat O’Connor to the position of
business and circulation manager.

Fred Wilson, who has been
manager since 1972 except for a
year when he was general
secretary of the Young Communist
League, will work full time on the
editorial end of the paper, a
position with which he is. already
more than familiar, having carried
out numerous writing assignments
for the paper.

O’Connor, 25, came to this
province from Toronto in 1974 and
has been working for the city of
Vancouver as an outside worker
since that time. An active member
of Local 1004 of the Canadian Union
of Public Employees, he has been a
shop steward for the local for the

last two years. Heis also a leading .

member of the Young Communist
League.

Any correspondence relating to
business or circulation should now
be directed to Pat.

PAT O'CONNOR

FRED WILSON

We had only a brief glimpse when the television news
screened excerpts, but those controversial ads drawn up
by the Unemployment Insurance Commission and sub-
sequently censored by the CBC as being ‘‘too political’’
could not have been more ironically appropriate.

The excerpts showed a boxer, already the victim of a
pretty thorough thumping, being assisted by his trainer
before being shoved back into the bloody fray. As the film
runs past, a voice suggests that the UIC will help the
unemployed worker get back on his feet again but it expects
that he will go out and fight to get a job.

The UIC clearly didn’t have to go very far to find a model
for the adseries — certainly anyone who has gone through
the battle of applying for unemployed insurance when he’s
out of work could scarcely fell less battered had he gone
half a dozen rounds with Mohammed Ali. ,

But for sheer twisted irony, the UIC’s ads, like its
policies, are prize winners. While purporting to show people
that the UIC helps the unemployed “get back on their feet,”’
the ads come only weeks after some 50,000 people were cut
off the insurance rolls under new legislation. And the
government used the same twisted logic to justify that
legislation as this letter, sent to the Vancouver Labor
Council by the department of manpower and immigration a
few months ago, indicates:

“Our studies of the operation of the Unemployment In-
surance Program indicate that a change in the eligibility
requirement is in order. The present eight-week
requirement has not been successful in furthering one of the
Program’s main aims: that is to ensure’ as many workers
as possible maintain a constant attachment to the labor
force. Claimants with minimal insured weeks tend to have
repetitive claim patterns. The high degree of subsidization
of this group is no longer considered consistent with the
insurance principles which are fundamental to the
Program. :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER, 21, 1977;-Page, 2

“We have concluded that there is a better way to assist
persons who are only able to get the minimal insured weeks
of work. For example, funds which have in the past been
used to pay short-term benefits will only be channelled into
job creation, training and work-sharing programs which
are better able to meet the needs of those members of the
labor force.

“In recognition of current economic conditions and
disparities, we are now proposing a variable entrance
requirement, ranging from 10 to 14 insured weeks, instead
of the “12 weeks that was originally proposed. The
requirement will vary in accordance with the rate of
unemployment in each particular economic region. This
proposal is in keeping with one of the objectives of the
Program which is to respond to regional differences
reflected in the economy. At the same time, the main aim of
our original 12-week proposal — to promote stable work
patterns and increase the incentive to work — would be
retained in the variable requirement.”

Should you ask what happened to the job creation
programs that it spoke about in the letter, the department
would probably answer with the same glibness for which it
and the UIC have become notorious: it spent all its money
on advertising.

* * *

ne of those who took a moment to let the Tribune of his
visit to this part of the world was Jim Cameron, a

- familiar name to many of his contemporaries but no doubt

unfamiliar to many of a younger generation because of
Cameron’s enforced absence from Canada since the end of
the Spanish war. A veteran of the Mackenzie-Papineau
Battalion who volunteered in 1937, Cameron was one of the
last prisoners tobereleased from Franco’s jails, along with

a Yugoslav and a Soviet. Having lost his passport and
unable to establish his Canadian identity, he was compell
to remain in Britain where he has lived with his wife, Dinah,
who is with him on the visit to Vancouver. Although he is
retired now, Cameron was for many years a seamal,
closely following a trade he followed earlier when he was 2
member and organizer of the old Salmon Purse Seiners
Union, a forerunner of the United Fishermen and Alli
Workers’ Union.

* * *

A long time activist in the working class movement and 2 —
Stalwart of the Tribune mailing team, Fred Hanson was
paid tribute to by about 75 friends last weekend on the oc-
casion of his 80th birthday.

While others made toasts in his honor, Fred simply said
that he was happy that his Communist Party club could us€
his birthday to make some money. It was a characteristi¢
response for Fred, who modestly admitted that he was 4
founding member 34 years ago of the Grandview club of the
Communist Party which today goes by the name Vancouve!
East club which sponsored the birthday celebration.

TRIBUNE

Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

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