ttawa to blame for postal strike

SEE STORY BELOW

pms

Meet just de

ON STRIKE FOR A DECENT WAGE. Women pickets shown in front of
Vancouver’s main post office this week as thousands of men and
women postal workers took up picket duty at post offices across

Canada.

— Jack Phillips photos

Logs go to Japan
so 300 lose jobs

Three hundred sawmill workers at the Hillcrest Lumber Co. Ltd.,
on Vancouver Island will lose their jobs in mid-September when the
mill closes down for lack of logs — while nearby huge quantities of

logs are being cut for export to Japan.

The announcement of the closure of the mill came this week. The
company has been logging on Canadian Pacific Company land which
was the former E&N land grant. The mill is located at Mesachie

Lake.

CPR plans to sell the logs on the open market rather by lease. In
this way the CPR is able to dispose at the highest price of large
quantities of logs for export. The PT has often demanded in its

columns that Ottawa intervene to stop the massive export of logs to

Japan| ‘ies Imposing ea 7

‘

FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1968

Iriaune

VOL. 29, NO. 29

of postal unions:

EES 50

10¢

A demand that the Federal government instruct the Treasury Board to meet
the modest demands of Canada’s postal unions, bringing the strike to an end and
restoring postal services, was made this week in a wire to Acting Prime Minister Paul

Martin by the Central Executive of the Communist Party.

The wire charged that the
“stubborn refusal of the
Treasury Board to enter into
serious negotiations is cause for
grave concern that’ the
‘government’s intention is to lay
a public basis for enactment of
legislation forbidding strikes in
government services.’ The wire
calls on the government to allay
this concern of labor by
instructing the Board to meet
the unions’ just demands.

The nation-wide postal strike
involving some 24,000 postal

- workers and mail carriers is

moving into its second week,
with no indication at press time
of any early settlement.

Negotiations are continuing on
a round-the-clock schedule
between representatives of the
government Treasury Board and
the Council of Postal Unions,
with mediator Judge Rene Lippe
sitting in. Aside however from
the government’s ‘‘offer’’ of 15-
cents, described earlier as
“insulting”? by postal union
spokesmen in relation to the
unions’ wage demands of a 75-
cent wage increase, the gap is as
wide as ever.

Meantime, statements
emanating from Council of
Postal Union spokesmen in

Ottawa and from mail strike .

headquarters across Canada are
crisp and to the point, indicating
that everything ‘‘is solid coast to
coast, strikers morale very high,
and postal workers united in
their struggle as never before.”

In Vancouver spokesmen for
the postal workers have stated
that should Prime Minister
Trudeau call a special session of
Parliament to do nothing more
than order the postal workers
back to work under the pretext of
protecting ‘‘the public interest”’,

then the situation in Canada’s
mail service ‘‘will be worse than
ever.”

‘The long-standing grievances
of the postal workers can not be
solved by evading it, or relying
upon 18th century methods of
compulsory arbitration and a
second class citizen status. We
want equality with all other
Canadians in the determination
of our remuneration and
conditions of work. No more —
and no less,’’ they say.

On of the prime concerns of
the Canada postal workers, aside
from the need of bringing their
wage package into line with
other basic sections of Canadian
labor, is that of guaranteed union
security and drastic
superannuation adjustments.

Meantime, a close watch is
being kept on certain areas of big
business which are organizing
their own private mail deliveries
to circumvent the effects of the
postal strike.

See POSTAL, pg. 4

co UNCIL
POSTAL
UNIONS

Pickets such as these at Postal Station E in the 2100 block W. 41st Ave.,
in Vancouver se ia the determination of postal workers to win a

decent agreement.