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Wednesday’Aprit 1,°1992 m@-

THE FAR SIDE

By GARY LARSON

es

'© 1982 Universal Press Syndicate

“Well, here we are, my little chickadee.”

Glen Freeman
| NEWS REPORTER

Members of the Hospital
Employees’ -Union areone
phone call away from a
strike.

Results of an HEU rejec-
tion vote were announced
Friday. and the outcome was
just as local union chair Jean
Weir predicted — no deal.

The HEU voted 78 per
cent against accepting a
Health Labor Relations As-
sociation offer of a five per
cent increase over the next

“Castlegar voted 87.5 per
cent against accepting their
offer,” Weir said. “I think
people in this area are espe-
cially fed up after seeing that
other unions are getting bet-
ter treatment.”

To show their dismay,
workers staged a three-hour
study session at the Castle-
gar hospital yesterday.

“I have pulled a certain

-| HEU ready to
hit the bricks

number of members out,”
Weir said, “but we have left
some working. The last thing

—we want to do is affect pa-_

tient care.”

Weir also added that no
HEU staff were pulled from
the Mountain View Lodge,
because “we wouldn’t want
to upset the residents there.”

However, the HLRA’s

Martin Livingston says it’s |.

too late for that.

“This is the most disrup-
tive job action the HEU
could stage,” Livingston
said,“b ith facili:
ties cannot prepare for this
type of action.”

Livingston added that the
HEU is now demanding a 56
per cent increase in wages
and benefits, down from 63
per cent last week.

Hospital Administrator
Ken Talarico said that ser-
vices would be curtailed
should a strike be called.

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Wednesday, ,April1, 1992,

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CALL THE
NEWS

Glen Freeman
NEWS REPORTER

Castlegar carpenters are as
mad as hell, and they took to
Selkirk College Monday to vent
their frustrations.

About 45 members of the
Kootenay District Council of
Carpenters swarmed the
college’s front entrance Monday
to protest the awarding of jobs
to out-of-town contractors.

“This protest is the end
result of a lot of serious
frustration on the part of
locally unemployed people,”
representative Len Embree
said.

“There are all kinds of

area who are out of work. Why
the hell should the (Selkirk
College) board give work to
out-of-towners.”

Embree added that those
who marched on Selkirk “are
not going to stand by and have
all this work tendered to out-of-
town, out-of-province people
who refuse to put local people
to work.”

The carpenters insist their
action Monday was not only
about jobs.

“This is also a matter of
education,” said Embree, who
also acts as a trustee on the
board of the Carpentry
Apprenticeship and Training
Committee.

“The college board is passing
up an opportunity to train and
educate potential taxpayers,”
Embree said.

College President Leo Perra
says he can’t see what all the
fuss is about.

local employment may be
unfounded.

“It’s my understanding that
most of the sub-contractors and
sub-traders are local people,”
Perra said.

Embree disagrees, though.

“They do have some sub-
trades from the area over
there, but the vast majority of
the workers are from out of
town,” he said.

As for training students in
the field of carpentry, Perra
says his hands are tied.

“We would love to provide
that service, but we just don’t
have the facilities right now,”
he said.

skilled trades people in the Local MLA Ed Conroy said

Carpenters demand work

he was unaware of the protest,
but added that his government
will be addressing contracting
out and labor problems when it
presents its Fair Wages Policy
to the B.C. legislature.

“In the past in B.C., non-
union companies have
underbid unions by one or two
per cent, and then have paid
their workers as much as 25
per cent less than union
workers get paid,” Conroy said.
“We'd like to change that.”

Conroy also added that
employing local workers makes
sense, saying money paid out
will circulate in the local
economy, benefitting Castlegar
inthelongrun.

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‘Tm not too sure why they’re
unhappy,” Perra said. “The
college has been required to go
to the lowest tender on jobs, by
directives of the ministry.”

And Perra added that
Embree’s concerns over non-

News photo by Glen Freeman

About 45 members of the Kootenay District Council of Carpenters
protested at the Selkirk College Monday, and as this sign shows, they
had no trouble expressing themselves.

Lightle’s
killers get
eight years

Ed Mills
NEWS REPORTER
A tiring and torturing process

finally came to an end Friday

for the family of murdered
Castlegar native Mark Lightle.

Almost two years after the
28-year-old Lightle was beaten
te death on a Calgary street, his
killers were sent to prison.

David Ian Olson, 22, and
Timothy Stuart Steer, 28, both
of Calgary, were sentenced to
eight years each Friday by
Court of Queen’s Bench Justice
Waite in Calgary.

A jury found the two men
guilty of manslaughter in
Lightle’ death after a two week
trial ended March 20.

“It’s been horrendous, just
horrendous,” said Mark’s
mother Colleen Lightle.

“It’s been a year and a half
our life’s been on hold, hopefully
we can get back to normal.
Hopefully, now that we’ve seen
some justice done, maybe,
maybe the hurt will end,” she
said.

Mark’s aunt, Chris Mac-
Pherson of Castlegar, said the
Crown prosecutors were
preparing the family for a
sentence of 3-5 years, so they
are pleased with the outcome.

Still, MacPherson said the
Zamily feels cheated by the

“We feel the Fastses system is
too lax and unfair. We feel in
light of the fact that Mark’s life
is taken and is forever gone,
that murder sentences in
Canada should be longerterm,”
MacPherson said

Lasca Creek a step backwards

Jonathan Green
NEWS REPORTER

The Slocan Valley Watershed
Alliance may have won one
battle last week, but the war
rages on.

Last Monday, Environment
Minister John Cashore and
Forests Minister Dan Miller
made a joint announcement
that deferred logging in the
Hasty Creek watershed for 24
months.

The decision was ‘made to
Commission on Resources and
Environment a chance to carry
out.a second-phase of regional
land use p

Alliance director Richard
Allin said the decision was a
step in the right direction.

“We were pleased with the

deferral” he said. “It’s certainly
good for Hasty Creek.”

But at the same time, the two
ministers announced that road
building in the Lasca Creek
area would continue as planned
while a local resource-use
planning process identifies how
the drainage will be managed
on an integrated use basis.

The plan is scheduled to be
completed this year, with
timber harvesting to begin in
the fall of 1993.

stated that in light of the Hasty
Creek decision, the government
has taken a step backwards at
Lasca Creek.

“There’s a contradiction in
the cabinet’s decision. They
have ‘called for a delay in
logging Hasty Creek pending’

improvements to the planning
process, yet they are allowing
the flawed process to continue
in other valley watersheds.”

Allin continued by stating the
importance of. establishing
logging and road-building
standards before any work is
done, not during.

“The Owen commission may
finally address these issues, but
we’re not prepared to let our
watersheds be logged under
Integrated watershed

commission does its work.”

Lee Hutton of the Kootenay
Planned Use Society said the
government’s decision to
proceed with Lasca Creek is like
a slap in the face. He said that
when Premier Mike Harcourt
unveiled the Owen commission

in January, Lasca Creek was
one of three areas considered
contentious for a log around.

The government said a
decision on the three areas
would be announced: by the end
of February to support the
associated regional planning
process.

Now, over a week after Miller
and Cashore’s. announcement,
Hutton says Lasca Creek has
been overlooked.

“We feel a bit betrayed by

ment e they
‘J

said they would support the
planning process and that
included Lasca Creek,” he said.

The Lasca Creek area is
about 10 kilometres north-east
of Nelson.

Miller was unavailable for
comment,