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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1974-12-27, Page 12PAGE 2A—GODERICH ,SIGNAL -STAR, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1974 Nr. In I 9 5` we could all be living like tie Wgltons WHAT WILL THE NEW YEAR BRING With all these high prices the world can not manage. Sugar prices are unreal. There might be shortage of flour. In one year well all be living like the Walton's. A farmer cannot make a profit with the price of • feed. He can't afford to feed his cattle. He may sell the cattle for 40 cents a pound and the store can sell it for 90 cents up to $1.40 sometimes more. People are starving in other lands and, when people send their money. to Care Canada 90 percent of the money •goes to the employer that's only 10 per- cent of the money to the poor. The world must make a change or it will come to an end. By Joe Boyle Kingsbridge MY PREDICTIONS FOR' THE NEW YEAR tri the New Year there will. be alot of new faces on the earth. There will be people bet- ween fighting nations. People. willbe happier than they are r'or 1nstarice eaple ivh live in Africa dying of hunger and no one- is there to help them. If we had a better leader than we have now many lives couldbe saved. I hope the New Year is a lot better than it is today. Even our food is as dear as cattle was. Now cattle are down and food is still going up. Our government is getting half the money any way. Someone should do some thing about. People are loosing there jobs too. I'think the New Year will. be. a disaster. St, Joseph's Kingsbridie Brian Drennan Grade 0, I Predict that Trudeau's wife is going to have an other baby Do you know why I think so? Because she had two of them already. Donna VanOsch Grade 6 St. Josephs, Kingsbridge MY PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR I think that winter will come late .because for a few years it has been here early. Spring, summer and fall will also be late. • The prices of food will go down because there will be people who won't be able to af- ford food, The government will ;be better to do this. If it doesn't go down there will be hunger strikes. 1975 will be a happy and suc- cessful year for everyone. Eric Courtney Kingsbridge MY PREDICTION TO 1975 The thing 1 would like to happen most would be' that we could have another interesting operaeta. The one we had last year was worth while and it our school stand out eg: the pa e. I would to mrother .tine made more. like St.' Joseph's Joanne Crawford Grade 6 WHAT I THINK WILL HAPPEN IN 1975 I think the way the -world is going that it will, just keep get- ting worse. With the prices of food going up it will be almost impossible to have company over for a big Christmas feast. The product talked about greatly today is the risirig,price. of sugar. If the manufacturers are worried about not enough sugar why not cut down on the - sugar in candy and make use of it in other ways? I know everyone including myself loves all the candy we can get our hands, on but it cost too much! Gas and oil are another im- portant product wich cannot be found as easily as it use to. This of course means that if your house is heated, by gas your heating bill goes up. Ir, twenty to thirty years if things keep going at this pace we will be back to the old wood stove. This means houses will have to be smaller to heat the 'whole thing or there will have to be more than one stove. The more stoves there are the more amount of wood required. After a period of time there will be a wood shortage. So you -see it looks like we are in for pretty bad times unless something happens quickly. 'Randy Robinson Age 13 Robertson Memorial Public School • Grade 8C MY PREDICTIONS FOR '75 Soon we , *ill ring" -out ,1974 and ring in 1975. Here are some of my expectations for the coming year. I predict that late' next year Israel and the Arab countries will compromise and reach a settlement that will suit both. Again next year inflation will be the major crisis and there will be many conferences about controllingthe rocketing prices of food and petroleum products. In the coming year if immediate, important steps are not taken there will be much famine in the world and many., millions of people will' lose ' their lives. I sincerely hope that have because I feel that we could have made more money if we would have proformed it more times. If we could have another one we could buy many more apparatuses for our school. The thing that I am thingking thought it would be bothersome for Mrs. Stewert because she seems to have so much business already. All I can as I hope for the best. By Robbie Blake Holmesville 'THE NEW YEAR In the new year the Arabs and Jews will stop these riots. And that they will live"side by side. Also the cattle prices will rise. Inflation will go down. Care will get alot of money and send it to the flood stricken areas. In Ireland the people will stop the killing of other people and will live side by side. The high cost of living in England will rise but then drop. More oil and coal will be found and there will be alarge supply of it.- Car accidents will not increase. These are my predictions for the new year. Bob Tigert Kingsbridge WHATv I HOPE WILL.. HAPPEN IN 1975 The situation is grim, war, unemployment, oil shhrtage. , . I hope people will understand that wars don't solve anything, they waste power and money, by having wars. I think Canada, even though they're making money should sell nuclear reactors where they are needed don't go off and sell six to (for instance) Japan when they can. live with °two they could get wise and make atomic bombs and W.W. 3 would start. 4 That's wasting power tor us. They say, "Canada is an oil rich country" and here they are saying there's a shortage. Let's get out there and get it here where we need it. A while back Mr. Trudeau bought an $80,000.00 Cadillac why didn't he use the.money for something more important instead of luxury. If it were his money rI could understand but our money, "(TAX)" it's pathetic. Your g vernmerit's position Let's not use up power wastefully; like leaving the,kit- chen light on if you're not using the kitchen, using an electric mixer if it can be mixed by hand, 'or using a. car for something two blocks away. I hbpe it turns out all right. Mike Vandersteen Age 12 Room 104 8C Robertson Memorial Public School Goderich -3 the Civil Service 1 :iation �f.Ontario. The Government of Ontario has offered the CSAO an average 20% pay increase over one year and is prepared to goto arbitration. CSAO leadership has refused this offer and also refuses to go to arbitration.. We believe, as your government, we have offered a fair and reasonable ts • ract. For almost three months now the•Government of Ontario has been trying to negotiate a new collec- tive agreement with the Civil Service Association of. Ontario covering.some 19;000 civil servants in the Operational Services Category. With less than two weeks' negotiating time left before the current contract expires and the CSAO threatening an illegal strike on January 1•st if it doesn't -have a new agreement by then, we thought it was time to let you, the taxpayers of Ontario, know directly how and where things stand. After all, it .is your tax dollars that will be used to pay. for any wage settlement we make with. these employees. And it is your services that will be threatened with disruption if the CSAO carries out its threat of an illegal.walkout. . The government has tried to negotiate in good faith. The CSAO first served its demands on the govern- ment on September 27th. The Association told us then it wanted a 611/2 per cent wage increase in a one-year contract for 1975. That didn't seem to government negotiators to be a serious or realistic demand on which to, base negotiations and we began a series of meetings with , CS O representatives to try and discover where the real bargaining area lay. We met twice in October and again for two days early in November. r �' During those meetings we set forth our counter- proposals. First, we suggested a two-year contract with wage increases of 10 to 16 per cent in the first yearand 8 per cent in the second. ship, on December 3rd our representatives put their -full mandate on the bargaining table. The government has made a fair and .._reasonable wage offer. The offer laded by government negotiators on, , December. 3rd represented a considerable move from our initial.°, position. in n recognition of the uncertainties caused by Canada's current infla- tionary climate, we proposed a one-year contract which would allow both sides, to return to the bargaining table •in 12 months when we could review -the economic situation at that time. For the 12 months of. 1975', we proposed wage increases averaging 20 per cent , for the 19,000 employees involved. The increases actually ranged from 15 to 23 per cent, depending on the employee . group involved,but more than .80 per cent, of the civil servants would receive 20 per cent or more. The cost ' to the taxpayers of these increases would be $32.7 million in 1975. The government made this proposal in. a sincere attempt to be fair and reasonable .with its employ- ees, while, at the same time, recognizing its wider responsibilities to the taxpayers and economy of our province. Our research, based on 'surveys of more than 120 employers in Ontario, indicated that our wage levels would be competitive with those paid elsewhere in the province' for compara- ble work. In fact, the 20 per cent increase for one year compared with an average annual increase of 14.5 per cent in contracts signed in recent months by private employers in Ontario. The government is moving to improve the collective bargaining system. Concurrently, but separate from the actual wage. - negotiations, government representatives have been discussing with' the CSAO and -other em- ployee organizations possible changes in the Crown Employees Collective . Bargaining Act which governs collective bargaining for public servants. On December 5th the Hon. Eric Winkler, Chair- man of the Management Board, introduced the government's proposed;amendments in the Legis- lature. The Bill recommends a number of changes in the Act, including three highly significant ones: Despite written assurance' that this was a negotia- ble offer, the CSAO leadership insisted on taking it to its membership and, on that basis, on getting a mandate for an illegal' strike if there, was Ito agree- ment by January 1st. the CSAO membership vote took two weeks and it wasn't until December 2nd and 3rd that' we were able to sit down again with Association rep- res;entatives. At these meetings, as thery had from the outset, CSAO negotiators refused to move 1 from their initial demand for a 611/ per cent wage increase—an increase that would cost you, the taxpayers of Ontario, almost $100 million in additional wage bills in 1975. Given this situation, government negotiators decided a major move was necessary. Since the CSAO had been insisting that the government make an offer it could take back to its member - A' .y' (1) It proposes a revision in the method of ap- pointing arbitration boards (the ultimate 'recourse under the law to settle differences) to ensure that the makeup of these boards does not appear to favor either. side. Under the proposed change, the employee agent and the employer each would name one member to the board and they, in turn, would agree on the choice of a neutral third person s chairman. This amendment responds- directly to one of'the major demands made by the CSAO in its campaign against the *Act: " (2) Similar changes would be made to ensure full and equal employee representation on the Public Service Grievance Board and the Ontario Public Service `'Labor Relations Tribunal„ the other two major bodies established under the Act. (3) if' these amendments .are accepted by the Legislature, employees henceforth would be able to bargain on such matters' as promotions, de - Motions, transfers, layoffs and the, ,classification and job evaluation system. Under the present law, -all of these' are considered management's prerog- ative. The proposed amendments also provide an opportunity, Short of actual bargaining,. for em- ployee representatives to discuss and review with the employer the governing principles of the merit system, training and development, appraisal and super annuation. The government wants a settlement — but it must be prepared for an illegal' strike. 4\ During recent days, there has been one new devel- opment. On December 13th the CSAO, for -the first time, formally dropped its demand for a 611/2 per cent wage increase and said, instead, it wanted a 41 percent hike for 1975. At the time this state- ment was, prepared the government had replied that it could not in all responsibility accept a demand of that magnitude. • The government, for its part, remains ready to negotiate seriously and in good 'faith within the framework of its December 3rd proposal. We have already offered to submit the issue tb an arbitra- tion board to be setup on the basis of the proposed amendments to the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. In the meantime, since January 1st isn't far away, the government has had to formulate contingency plans in the event'the CSAO leadership persists in calling an illegal strike. We hope that doesn't happen. We expect that our employees won't break the law. But if they do, we are determined to meet our responsibility to maintain those services you rightfully expect to receive from your govern- ment. We believe we have been fair anti reasonable with our employees and responsible to your as taxpayers and to the economy of our province. Ontario Government of Ontario Management Board () ✓' • 4