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Quota system for
Natives exposed

in Rupert hotels

PRINCE RUPERT — Com-—
plaints have been lodged with the
B.C. Human Rights Commission
against Prince Rupert hotels
found discriminating against.
‘Native Indians.

The charges have been laid by
Native organizations in Prince
Rupert and by the annual All
Native Basketball Tournament
after Natives who had come to
Prince Rupert for the basketball
tournament were turned away
from hotels with vacant rooms.

Hundreds of Natives came to
Prince Rupert for the February
13-17 tournament and soon
rumors were circulating among
both Natives and whites that
Natives were being refused ac-
comodation in certain hotels

where whites were being ac-
ceo.

PROVINCIAL NOTES

A group of Natives and whites
decided to check out the stories
and approached a number of
hotels, a Native person applying
first for accomodation. If the
Native -was. refused, a white
would then approach the desk
clerk with the same request. In at
least two hotels, the white person
was given a room after the Native
applicant was turned away.

It was later found that all the
hotels tested had some Native
tenants, leaving the impression
that a form of quota system was in
effect whereby a certain number
of rooms are set aside for Native
Indians.

Alerted to the findings of the
experiment, the organizers of the
basketball tournament immediate-
ly lodged complaints with the
B.C. Human Rights Commission
‘and are currently discussing fur-
ther action.

Native spokesmen have warned

hotel operators that if moral con-
siderations are not sufficient to
prevent discriminatory policies,
economic pressure will be applied.

Organizers point out that the
Native Basketball Tournament
brought $850,000 in business to
Prince Rupert and re-locating
their business will be considered
ase one. response ..to the
discriminatory practices of the
Rupert hotels.

‘Time to fight
back’ Kinnaird
tells Fed rally

PRINCE GEORGE— The
B.C. Federation of Labor’s rally
against Socred anti-labor legisla-
tion drew the largest labor au-
dience in recent. years here,
February 17, as more than 650
unionists and supporters packed
the Prince George Eagles Hall on
George St.

Over 300 people stood around
the sides and at the back of the
crowded hall to hear Federation
president Jim Kinnaird declare,
“It is time working people got

angry and expressed their anger at
the ballot box.”’

The public sector is ‘‘only the
first target of restrictive labor laws
in B.C.,”’ Kinnaird said, “‘Soon
we will all be classified as essential
and the right to strike and bargain
in good faith will be gone.”

“It is time to fight back.”’

New Westminster and District
Labor Council president and pro-
vincial NDP president Gerry
Stoney reemphasized the essential
political message of the rally when
he said, ‘‘It all boils down to
politics. We always elect the boss
to make the laws, and this has to
change.’’ Stoney predicted that if
the Socreds are re-elected “‘the
roof will fall in’? on organized
labor.

Prince George Labor. Council —
president Ed Bodner said that he
was pleased with the turn out to
the rally which was double the tur-
nout for the 1976 protest rally
against wage controls.

Bodner and other speakers
singled out Conservative MP for

was only $10 per month — or

Peace River Frank Oberle for
criticism -over his advocacy of
right to work laws at the federal
level. -

Other speakers at the rally in-
cluded Longsher:men’s '*ader
Don Garcia, CUPL’s Ray Mercer,
Bev Sherman of FSAC, and
Federation secretary-treasurer
Dave MacIntyre.

Welfare rolls
over 137,000

under Socreds

VICTORIA — Socred human
resources minister Grace McCar-
thy revealed this week that there
are now 137,612 GAIN recipients
in B.C. — more than at any time
since the 1930’s.

The Socreds announced modest
increases in GAIN rates earlier
this month, but the increase for
food, transportation, clothing and
other necessities other than rent
30

)

cents per day.

CUPE’S RAY MERCER AT SURREY MEETING ...
pudget cuts.

close to 600 turn out to protest over school board

— Sean Griffin photo

Surrey meeting maps plans
to fight budget cuts, layoffs

A mass meeting of close to 600
people in Surrey’s Queen Elizabeth
School gave a roar of approval as
CUPE Local 728 secretary Pat
Nichol mapped a plan of action
Saturday to protest school board
budget cuts in the district which
could result in layoffs and reduc-
tions in hours for more than 100
clerical and maintenance staff.

The packed meeting, addressed
by several representatives from the
Canadian Union of Public
Employees as well as New
Westminster labor alderman Tom
Baker and Surrey Teachers’
Association president Peter

_ Thompson, was called by Local 728

following the action by the school
board Feb. 8 in slashing $280,000
from two school accounts.

' The cut in one account could
result April 1 in the layoff of four

_ clerical staff workers as well as

substantial reductions in hours for
67 others. The other budget cut
would bring layoffs and reduced |
hours for 45 maintenance staff
workers.

“We are going to demonstrate
our protest at the next school board
meeting and Local 728 will appear
before the board to make its posi-
tion clear,’’ Nichol told the
meeting.

The CUPE local together with
representatives from the Surrey
Teachers’ Association and elected
trustees will also be drawing up a

joint brief on cutbacks which a,

delegation will take to Victoria for
presentation to the provincial
cabinet and to Surrey MLA,
municipal affairs minister Bill
Vanderzalm.

During the two-hour meeting,
several speakers pointed to the
budget cuts as part of a larger cam-
paign by governments at all levels to
slash wages in the public sector and
reduce public services.

CUPE researcher John Calvert

told the unionists that he was confi- .

dent that their action would “‘lead
to some changes in the municipality
of Surrey’” but warned that the
school board’s cutback “‘is part of a
larger attack on public sector
workers and public services.

‘t’s being pushed by business in-
terests — to cut the costs for all
public: services, whether they’re
educational services or health and
hospital care,” he said.

He also cited the connections bet-
ween the Employers’ Council and
the Council of Public Sector
Employers and the barrage of
Socred anti-labor legislation as
evidence of the attack.

Calvert countered the charge that
CUPE members were simply pro-
tecting their own jobs, emphasiz-
ing, ‘‘It’s not a question of protec-
ting our own jobs — It’s a question
of protecting the standards of the
education system, of making it de-
cent for our children.”

Earlier, meeting chairman,
regional CUPE representative Ray
Mercer had congratulated the local
for emphasizing its concern ‘‘for
the educational standards in the
municipality.” >

Surrey ‘Teachers’ Association
president Peter Thompson stressed
that the layoffs and staff cutbacks
proposed by the board would in-
deed “threaten educational  ser-
vices.”’

He promised the meeting that
teachers ‘‘aren’t going to do CUPE

work nor are they going to organize’

students to do it,’’ a reference to
suggestions by school board
members that staff shortages could
be made up by see and. teacher
volunteers.

“I’m also pledging aE assistance

of the STA to help you in whatever

way we can,’’Thompson told a
standing ovation.

New Westminster alderman Tom
Baker who spoke for the New
Westminster and District Labor
Council pointed to the
‘dictatorial’? action of Victoria in

imposing the five percent ceiling on _

municipal budget increases and
warned that local governments,
unless challenged, would continue
to follow suit with further reduc-
tions in services.

“The only way we can change
that is to get active in the communi-
ty, for working people to get involv-
ed,”’ he said.

Health cuts spell

loss of 2

While hospitals in B.C. move to
cutback health care services,
members of the Hospital
Employees Union are getting ready
to fight impending layoffs which
will affect 10 percent of hospital
workers in B.C. by April, 1979.

HEU president Jack Gerow
charged Monday that the financial
restrictions placed on hospitals by
the Socred government will mean
the loss of 2,000 hospital jobs in
B.C. — but they will also seriously
jeopardize standards of health care.

The hospitals have faced finan-
cial crisis since Socred minister Bob
McClelland announced in
November that 1979 budgets, effec-
tive April 1, would be frozen at a
five percent increase over the
previous year. The arbitrary five
percent increase is a massive cut-
back, however, for most hospitals
which require much more money to
maintain existing standards and ser-
vices. The Victoria General
Hospital, for example, required a
22 percent increase in its budget to
maintain services in 1979.

Hospital administrators in the
Lower Mainland have not released
information about how much of a
cut is being forced in their budgets,
but a number have already an-
nounced that beds and departments
will be closed down, eliminating
jobs. Hospitals like Grace, Lions
Gate and Maple Ridge have stated
that they cannot cut back to the five
percent limitation and that they will
suffer large deficits instead. Grace
Hospital will go a quarter of a
million dollars in the hole in 1979,
the first deficit in the hospital’s 51
year history. Other hospitals,
though, already have huge deficits
from previous years which will
skyrocket in 1979.

Even though the layoffs will not
take effect until the new budget is
implemented, HEU membership
already declined by three to four
percent since’ November 1978 as

‘hospitals have followed a policy of

reducing staff by attrition. Some
beds have already been closed, at
Maple Ridge and Shaughnessy
hospitals.

In addition to fewer beds, the
cuts will also mean longer waiting
lists for. elective surgery, cuts in
special nursing and restrictions on
occupational — physical therapy.
Daily phsiotherapy, for example,
will be cut back to three times a
week and diagnostic tests will also
be restricted. Twenty-four hour

000 jobs

emergency services to a number of
small hospitals could be shortened,
causing increased risk due to
travelling time to the nearest
hospital. Administrators have also ©
predicted that some expensive
speciality services such as renal-
dialysis and intravenous therapy
will be closed in some hospitals.

Hospital employees are charging
that the cuts can only worsen the
already serious morale problem,
due to the insecurity the mass
layoffs will create.

It is a note of irony the range of
actions open to HEU to fight the
layoffs is restricted because the
Socreds declared hospital
employees an ‘‘essential service”’
last year and removed the right to
strike.

The HEU is placing newspaper
advertisements throughout the pro-
vince reading, ‘‘Hospital budget
cutbacks may cost us our jobs, but
they could cost you your life.”

Socred edict
‘cynical-SAM

The Surrey .Alternative Move-
ment (SAM) have written premier
Bennett terming the five percent
ceiling on municipal budgets “‘con-
tradictory and cynical.”’

In the long term the restrictions
will ‘‘prove more costly to the
homeowner and taxpayer as a con-
sequence of municipalities having
to seek funding for projects and be-
ing required to pay interest on these
funds as opposed to being paid in-
‘terest on banked surpluses,"” SAM
president Kostyn Gidora pointed
out.>

Most municipal budgets have lit-
tle room for paring, the letter said,
and ‘‘any cutback would obviously
require the layoff or dismissal of
employees . . . it will only cause the
acceleration of unemployment and
the céncomitant misery, cost and
alienation that unemployment br-
ings to a community.’

Bennett has ‘‘misread the iad
of the taxpayer,’’ SAM suggested.
“The so-called ‘revolt’ does not
give senior governments the right
mandate to interpret the frustra-
tions of people as support for ill
considered and inhumane policies .

. We appeal to your government to
rescind the limitations placed on the
municipalities.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 2, 1979— Page 3