PAGE 4,WEDNESDAYJULY 8, 1981,WHITBY FREE PRESS wtiitby r Voice of the County Town Michael lan Burgess, Publisher - Managing Editor 'Ie only Whitby newspaper independenty owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. Published every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography [ne. Phone 66x-61i I The Free Press Building, i i Brock StrietNorth, p..(). Box 206. Whitby. Ont. MICHAEL J. KNELL Community Editor MARJORIE A. BURGESS Advertising Manager Mailing Permit No, 480 Member of the Whltby Chamber of Commerce Only the Canadian people are suffering during this postal strike Well, folks, here we go again. It seems as though every time Jean-Claude Parrott, the president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, doesn't get his way with the Government of Canada he shuts down the entire country. Parrott, true to form, has done it again. And over what? Maternity benefits and getting January 2 made a paid holiday for the members of the postal system. Any informed and realistic person, be he a member of either management or labor, knows that these issues are not really worth striking for. However, the major issue at hand here is not the thrust of negotiations between CUPW and the government, but the effect that the strike is having upon other sectors of Canadian society. Because Parrott is flexing his muscle, many un- We had an official of our federal government on the screen the other day telling us that one of the conditions of being a Canadian is that we have agreed to fill out a census form when we're told we must. Funny, I don't remember anyone asking me if I agreed to that. I don't remember anyone asking me if I agreed to the metric system. I don't remember anyone asking me if I wanted to pay a dollar and a half for gas so that Ottawa could put the screws to Alberta and the Arabs could get fat. But I suppose that if I disagree with any of these things I'm free to vote for someone who feels the same way, if I can find a politician who does. But if I lived in Bancroft, and I disagreed with the idea that 4,000 tons of radioactive solid should be dumped on my doorstep, I could vote until I was blue in the face without any effect at all. Bancroft is going to be the unwilling recipient of radioactive dirt from 22 Scar- borough back yards. I don't blame the people of Scar- borough, who discovered their houses have been built on an old nuclear dump site, and demanded that somebody do something about it. But as the people of Bancroft see it, if it's bad for Scarborough, it isn't likely to improve their real estate much. The Bancroft municipal government has no say in the matter, and neither does the Hastings county council. The provincial member says it isn't a provincial problem, and the federal member, who is a Tory, cuts no ice with Marc Lalonde, the minister responsible for the Atomic Energy Control Board, which has the power to make a decision without reference to man, beast or even the Lord above. I'm not saying the AECB is irresponsible. The Scarborough soil is to be dumped with the tailings at the Madawaska uranium mine, which is about four miles out of town. I'm sure that the AECB is confident that the dumping of the Scarborough contaminants poses no health problem to anyone. I'm not anti-nuclear, and neither is Bancroft, which by and large blesses the mine for the jobs it brought. But Bancroft also depends on tourism, and being selected as a radiation dump site is fnot the sort of thing that brings tourists on the run. Worse than that is the fact that none of the four layers of government res- ponsible for Bancroft has a single solitary thing to say about it. That's not news, but that too is reality. told numbers of small businessmen throughout the country will not only suffer severe cash flow problems, but may even go out of business as well. These small businessmen are the nation's largest employers and every time one of them goes under, people are thrown out of work. We have to wonder If CUPW ever thinks about this. Many other people are adversely affected by the postal strike the most notable of which are our senior citizens who are experiencing difficulty in obtaining their well earned and well deserved pension checks. While they will, indeed, receive them they will not be getting them as efficiently as usual, but may even have to go to great, difficult, lengths to receive them. The union is not the only guilty party in this dispute. The Government of Canada should also be taken to task for its action during this latest postal disruption. Primq Minister Pierre Trudeau was quoted last Friday as saying that he will not be introducing legisiation into the House of Commons ordering the postal workers back on the job. As of press time, he still had not changed his mind. This is a terrible shame. During a postal dispute, the government will find alternative methods of circulating its important mail. In this dispute, the government cannot lose because it will not suffer like the rest of us. Small businessmen who rely heavily on the postal system to maintain their operations cannot afford to hire private courier services to circum- vent the postal strike. Therefore, they have to sit and suffer, the longer the strike, the greater the chance of their business failing. It is time that the government seriously con- sidered desIgnating the Canada Post Office as an essential service and withdrawing the right to strike from its employees, a right that their leader- ship has too often abused in the past. Another alternative Is to turn over the owner- ship of the post office lock, stock and barrel, to the union and its members. Let them then operate just like any other business enterprise without government subsidization, and let them suffer the losses themselves created by their own ex- travagant demands. We would suggest that they would either shortly put themselves into bankrup- tcy, or very quickly reduce their demands to try to keep themselves (and their) jobs solvent. In either case the Canadian public would benefit. For many Canadians the post office and its ser- vices are essential, be it for their business or for the maintaining of their lifestyle. We also have to question whether or not the rank and file membership of CUPW are really that concerned with the Issues mentioned earlier. It is suspected that they would probably rather settle these disputes at the bargaining table - where they properly belong - that on the picket Une. Every'time the postal workers go on that picket line far too many people suffer and it is obvious to us that members of both CUPW and the gover- nrment have not taken the time to consider this. As' of press time, this country was literally paralyzed. The Unes of communication for many people and businesses were shut off. It is amazing that both the postal workers and the members of the government who are paid through our tax dollars seem to be ignoring our collective wishes. Let us ail hope that the government sees fit to either legislate these people back to work or signs a contract before too many people havé to suffer more than they already have. q 4 Am 1 1.