By GARY LARSON ‘is we x HAMS COV ¢ Ready to Eat 3.92 kg -Wing or ) T-BONE STEAK Frozen e Cut from Canada Grade A Beef ¢ 7.68 kg. Glen Freeman NEWS REPORTER Talks between the Hospital Employees’ Union and the Health Labor Relations Asso- ciation have broken down... again. “Things aren’t looking too good right now,” said the HLRA’s Martin Livingston. “The union has not made any major modifications in their demands.” Livingston said that the to- tal cost of the HEU’s current demands would cost B.C. tax- payers more than $233 mil- lion. “That figure represents 41, +1, ro ht more thar three times what United States for treatment, and that is not good for the B.C. health system,” Singh said, suggesting that the move may have been devised to make the HEU look bad. “Perhaps there are some political games being played in the negotiations, but I’m not sure who’s playing them.” The BCMA represents the provinces doctors, who are currently upset at the NDP government for imposing salary caps, but Singh said that fact has nothing to do with his statements. “This is neither an attack on B.C. politicians or a de- fense of the HEU,” said Singh. the nurses’ union settled for.” Livingston also claims that recent job action taken by the HEU amounts to “trying to press the point for monetary gains on the backs of pa- tients.” But B.C. Medical Associa- tion President Dr. Gur Singh questions that statement. “The government is consid- ering sending over 100 hospi- tal patients to Alberta and the “We only have the patients best interests in mind.” Today the HEU has pulled it’s members from the payroll, processing and development, purchasing, maintenance and housekeeping departments. Yesterday Premier Mike Harcourt announced that he wanted to see Labor Minister Moe Sihota sit down with both sides to bring an end to the ongoing conflict. yada Introducing . . - | Beverley &, Zaytsoff HAIR ANNEX 365-3744 SPECIAL SENIORS APPRECIATION DAYS APRIL 29 & 30 50% OFF PERMS & COLOR TREATMENTS | ENQUIRE ABOUT EVENING _ APPOINTMENTS. . . 365-3744 at the TI. California Grown #1 HEAD LETTUCE 1.08 kg. California Grown JUMBO YAMS 42 kg. 19 CLAMATO || CRANBERRY JUICE Foremost _ HOMO MILK Or2%e 21. 49 1° California Grown 1 BROCCOLI 1.08 kg. Ocean Spray SAUCE POTATO CHIPS 200 g. 2 * SURPLUS DAVE’S Located in Castlegar Foods Our latest shipment of goods has arrived! We invite you to come in and see our large selection of general merchandise, priced right at SURPLUS DAVE’S COKE OR SPRITE We reserve the right to limit quantities - Assorted Varieties ° 21. |] Reg. or Ext. Spicy ¢ 1.36. Whole uy 3 398 ml. ea. ig No Name Regular Or Diet Northern Country ORANGE JUICE Unsweetened ¢ 341 mi. 21. 3 69 Plus Deposit ea. a Wishing you a safe and Happy Easter Holiday from David & Frances Lloyd and their staff at Castlegar Foods CLOSED EASTER SUNDAY . Se ae eee SecondFRONT Ain Tin a AO St IA Siti Br essere @ Wednesday, April 15, 1992 CALL THE Scott David Harrison EDITOR Castlegar’s unemployed sawmill workers are on the edge. Out of work since Westar shutdown . operations in November, the 280 IWA-Canada workers may become victims to a threatened pulp and paper workers strike. “It’s not a rosy picture,” IWA- Canada spokesperson Tony Ferreira said Tuesday. “We’re just hoping like hell that we won't have to shutdown.” Sawmill workers scheduled to reopen April 27, but that could be short-lived as Celgar’s 330 workers are currently taking a strike vote which could see them hit the bricks by May 1. Should a Pulp and Paper Workers of Canada strike happen, Pope and Talbot announced that it would close the local sawmill because it would have no buyer for its hog fuel and wood chips. Ferreira said any further closure of the Castlegar mill would be devastating. “We can’t do nothing about it “We're just hoping that common sense will prevail. Negotiations are a two-way street.” Ferreira knows about give and take. The spokesperson for the sawmill union is currently putting the finishing touches on a three-year pact between Pope and Talbot and the TWA. That deal, which has been approved by unions on the West Coast, Southern Interior and Northern British Columbia with nothing larger than a 64 per cent majority, sees IWA workers receive next-to-no increases. receive no increases in the first year, 75 cents per hour per person incr in the pensi in the second year and 85 cent raises in the third year. The deal will be voted on by Castlegar’s independent mill within two weeks. Pulp workers, meanwhile, are seeking $2 across-the-board raises, pension increases and tighter contract language. Management has offered no raises. The results of the pulp and The local sawmill is and that is frustrating,” he said. The package sees workers paper vote will be released April SUPER GOOD JOB scot nt tie ONS it TES i 0 @General Inquiries 365-7266 The News is located at 197 Columbia Ave. Our office hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed on weekends and statutory holidays. SUB RATES The News is published by Castle News Ltd. for Canwest Publishers Ltd. Mail subscription rate to The News is $40 per year ($44 in communities where the post office has letter carrier service). The price on newsstands is 75¢ for each edition. The price delivered by newspaper carrier for both editions is only 90¢ a week Castlegar. News any by Ed Mills The sign says it all about the quality of the work Interior Advertising’s Roger Brideau is doing at Super-Valu in Accident claims local man NEWS STAFF A 28-year-old Castlegar man is dead following a weekend car ac- cident: Preliminary investigations indi- cate that Darcy Dean Prokop died from injuries sustained when he was thrown from his vehicle Sun- day. Prokop’s vehicle was travel- ling along the old railway bed west of the Hugh Keenleyside Dam when it caught the shoulder and rolled into the ditch. Darrin Berg, 23, of Raspberry remains in hospital with undeter- mined injuries, while 23-year-old Darren Bankert of Castlegar was | treated and released fromrhost A 22-year-old female passenger, Jagi Alexander, managed to es- cape injury. RCMP and the coroners office are investigating the incident. American softwood tariff losing steam? U.S. companies turning noses up against Canadian lumber import tax Jonathan Green NEWS REPORTER An American tariff on Canadian softwood lumber entering the U.S. is slowly losing sup- porters in its country of origin. On March 6, the U.S. Department of Com- merce slapped a 14.48 per cent countervailing duty on softwood lumber entering the United States from Canada effective March 12. On April 6, four U.S. congressmen intro- duced a proposal that would see the tariff dropped if Canada agreed to three conditions, such as modifying the free-trade agreement to allow bi-lateral trade of raw logs between Canada and the U.S. and the selling of Cana- dian timber through an open and competitive market system. But response from both the federal and B.C. x 'y}- GST extra. Second class mail registration number 0019. gover ts was anything but receptive, and this has slowly spread to the U.S. “We're working extremely hard at gettting the message into the U.S,” Forests Minister Dan Miller said Monday, adding that the hard work is paying off. “We're starting to see some encouraging signs from people in the United States, particularly the Pacific Northwest. “Tt seems to me it is spreading across the country and that people are jumping off the train.” Miller said some of that support has come in _from people like Henry Jets of Morton, Illinois about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. The president of Morton Buildings, a construction company with offices in some 30 U.S. cities, dis- likes the tariff. “Each of our offices wrote letters to the edi- tor of their local papers opposing the tariff,” Jets said. As well, he said that some 1,500 employ- ees signed letters to various politicians in Washington, D.C., including U.S. President George Bush, opposing the tariff. : Closer to home, Miller said that Premier Mike Harcourt held a joint press conference with two politicians from Idaho in Oregon last Thursday denouncing the congressmens’ plan. “American politicians are saying ‘Get the log export issue off the coulntervail table, it’s got no- business being there,” he said. Miller said that although American support for the tariff seems to be fading, there is one ex- ception. He said the Atlanta-based Georgia Pacific Corp. is pushing hard to keep the tariff in place. “They stand to gain a windfall from all of- their landholdings as the price of lumber in- creases,” he said. But John Ragosta says Miller shouldn’t be singling out Georgia Pacific. “The myth that this is a Georgia Pacific ef- fort is just that,” said the Washington, D.C.- based lawyer for the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. Ragosta said he doesn’t know where the American support is that Miller spoke of. “That’s what he’d like you to believe,” he said. “That’s what he wants you to hear. “I haven’t heard anyone in the States ex- press anything but support for the countervail issue.” . The Department of Commerce is expected to make a final decision on the 14.48 per cent tar- iff May 19.