PT announcement

The Pacific Tribune did not publish an issue last week because of
the postal strike. However, it has been decided by the editorial board
that despite the unavailability of postal service, the PT will publish a
four page edition each week for the duration of the strike which will be
distributed as widely as possible to bring the news of labor's struggles
to as many people as we can.

We feel that in this way we will be able to render a service both to
the striking postal workers and the labor movement as a whole in the
present period.

Readers can pick up a copy of the PT each week while the strike lasts
from the PT office or from one of our supporters who will receive
bundles for distribution. For further information phone the PT office,

MU 5-5288.
—Editorial Board.

EDITORIAL
For a ‘Just Society’

three-man conciliation board, appointed to ward off

A a national postal strike, is expected to meet its dead-

line to submit a report today.’ So read an Ottawa Canadian

Press (CP) dispatch on July 10, 1968, a bare five days before

the long heralded legal strike of 24,000 postal workers “hit-
the-bricks”’ on July 18 at 2 a.m. in the morning.

That press item probably summed up better than any-
thing else the sum total of government unconcern, either for
the well-being of its postal workers, or ‘‘the public interest,”’
which reaction now hopes to use to break the postal strike.

The Pearson government and now Prime Minister Tru-
deau has had a full three years to remedy a situation, which,
had it done so, this strike would not have happened. Postal
workers like any other group of workers don’t go on strike by
preference, but because no other choice is left them if they
are to win a measure of economic and social progress. ...

What the postal workers are now seeking, even in mini-
mal form, was due on and before August 1, 1967. That the
Pearson government knew from the recommendations of
Commissioner Judge Monpeilte who in the course of his
studies made no less than 256 proposals for improved work-
ing conditions, wages and status of Canada’s postal workers.
Only some 40 of the more minor proposals of the Commis-
sioner have been implemented to date.

Only when the current postal strike became a fait ac-
compli did the government postal authorities come up with
a wage ‘‘offer,’’ 60-cents below the postal workers’ demands,
and correctly regarded by their leaders as ‘‘an insult’’ to
meaningful collective bargaining.

In the 1965 strike of 14,000 postal workers, mainly in
Quebec, Ontario and B.C., aside from a paltry wage in-
crease, the Pearson government was compelled ' to concede
the right of collective bargaining and the right to strike to
its mail service workers. In 1966 the same government just
avoided another ‘‘down tools’ with a 25-cent wage hike,
““squeezed”’ out of the Liberal ‘‘lemon.”’

Thus having granted the-right of collective bargaining,
the Liberal regimes of both Pearson and Trudeau has done
less than nothing to avoid the present showdown, other than
come up with an insulting ‘‘offer’’ which it knew beforehand
would be unacceptable — then rely upon encouraging ‘‘public
pressure” via the monopoly propaganda news media to turn
public anger against its postal workers for their discontinu-
ance of Canada’s mail services.

But this is not 1918 with its ‘“‘yellow-dog contracts’ as
the price of their jobs for postal workers who dared to strike
for ‘‘a just society,’ nor the decades that followed with its
“second class citizenship’? for Canada’s public servants.
This is 1968 where free collective bargaining has been won,
tested and preserved by Canadian labor, and which must
now apply to postal workers as to all other wage workers.

This is now the prime task of all organized and pro-
gressive labor in Canada — to see to it that the full moral
and financial resources of labor stand behind the postal work-
ers until full victory is won — in the pay-envelope — and the
dignity of the citizen in ‘‘a just society.”

IE pre 8

Editor—TOM McEWEN Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,
Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.

Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $2.75 for six months.
North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $6.00 one year.
All other countries, $7.00 one year. Authorized as second class mail by the
Post ep Department, Ottawa, and for payment of postage in coh

AAR Siento:

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clr ribune

West Tics edition, Canadian papune

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AT CITY HALL:

4

ouncil says ‘no thanks’
on regional government

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Municipal Affairs’, minister
Dan Campbell is mad at
Vancouver City Council. ~

We tabled his letter proposing
that the Greater Vancouver
Regional District take over
(from Vancouver and other
municipalities in the Lower
Mainland) such functions. as
water supply, sewage and
garbage, air pollution, health
services, debenture and debt
management.

And while we endorsed a

“ regional approach to housing,

Council also tabled a proposal to
provide 3000 public housing units
in the Lower Mainland at an
estimated cost of $500,000 a year
to Vancouver. (I voted with a
minority of Council for this
proposal, although with serious
reservations about the intent of
the minister of municipal
affairs.)

Dan Campbell claims his
regional government schemes
will bring many benefits to
taxpayers in efficiency and
economy. He denies that he’s
trying to shift additional
financial responsibilities from
the provincial government to

-these regional bodies and the

taxpayers.

But the facts belie Campbell’s
claims. We now have a regional
hospital board, but instead of
hospital facilities expanding to
meet the needs, hospital
expansion has been frozen at $12
million a year for the next four
years. That is Campbell’s way of
saving money for the provincial
government which pays 60
percent of the cost.

It’s quite true that pollution
can’t be satisfactorily dealt with
by any one municipality alone.
It needs to be tackled on a
provincial scale by provincial
laws with teeth in them. Yet this
is precisely what the minister of
municipal affairs refuses to do.
He doesn’t want to compel the
installation of pollution control
devices by the big industries
responsible for our pollution
today. So his plan is to pass the
buck to regional forms of
government where he knows it
won't be done either.

Or take the question of public
housing. Suppose the regional
board undertakes a big project in
one .of the municipalities.
Ottawa and Victoria will pay the
cost of construction and 87%
percent of the rent subsidies. But
who will pay the additional costs
for health services, police and
fire protection, roads, recreation
and, most important of all,
additional school costs? The
provincial government should
pay these, but it wants to sluff
these costs off on the taxpayers
via a_ regional form of
government.

The minister of municipal
affairs refuses to give us any
guarantees in writing that
regional government won't
increase our taxes. He can’t
because that’s exactly what

_ they’re intended to do. Victoria

wants municipal taxpayers to
foot more of the bill for services
so that provincial surpluses can
be used for hydro dams and other

‘pet projects of the provincial:

government.

If Dan Campbell gets away
with his proposals we will have a
fourth level of government far
removed from public control,

Regional planning is necessary
and can be a very good thing, but
not the kind that municipal
affairs minister Dan Campbell is
trying to shove down our throats.

If the minister continues to
insist that we are wrong and he
is right, I suggest he call a
meeting of lower mainland
municipalities and tell us exactly
where he stands on the basic

and over whose actions the question of the costs and
provincial government responsibilities of regional
maintains a tight vote. government.

‘Hope THEY Can Read’

Hiroshima Day rally
set for Peace Arch

The program for the giant
Hiroshima Day commemoration

rally being organized by the

Canadian-American Rally to
Stop the War in Vietnam at
Peace Arch Park, Blaine on
Sunday, August 4 was released
this week. Exerpts from the
program follow:

This year the effects of the
continuation and intensification

-of the war in Vietnam are being

felt by the people of the United

‘States at home. Money urgently

needed to raise living standards,
build homes, schools, hospitals,
is used to rain death and
destruction on the people of
Vietnam. Pressure to end the
war mounts every day, both in
Canada and the United States.
This pressure must be increased.

Therefore, together with the
Hiroshima Day Committee in the
State: of Washington, we are
again planning to hold a Rally
and Memorial Meeting at Peace
Arch Park, Blaine on Sunday,
August 4.

Program will commence at 1
p.m. with Mrs. Betsy
MacDonald, past chairman of
Vancouver School Board in the
chair. Speakers, who have -

: already pase to’ participate are

Rear-Admiral Arnold True, one
of the seven top retired military
leaders featured recently in
Esquire magazine as *‘Big Brass
Lambs’’ and an outspoken
opponent of the Vietnam war and
Dr. David Suzuki of the
University of B.C. Efforts are
being made to secure a speaker
from the Poor Peoples Campaign
in the United States.

It is hoped you will join the ©

Cavalcade of Cars that is being
organized, so that we can carry
out message to communities on
the way to the Peace Arch. Bus
transportation will also be
arranged. Cavalcade will leave
Vancouver City Hall 11:30 a.m.
Further details to be announced.

In the meantime, we earnestly
request your assistance to make
this an effective and meaningful
demonstration against the
Vietnam. war, and to raise a
substantial amount of money for
medical aid to its victims.

If you can help, please send
your name and address to:
Canadian-American Rally To
Stop the War in Vietnam, c/o
Peace Action League, 6026
Carnarvon Street, Yapeouyer 13,

\B. C; Rhone: 263-9363.”

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