gust 30, 1991 - North Shore News meré ug hang” Yj: NEWS VIEWPOINT Deliver us from Canada Post AIL STOPPAGES in Canada are still disruptive, but they are becoming more a nuisance than a serious inconvenience to conducting the nation’s business. Small businesses suffer the most in any postal strike, but some small businesses suffer just as much when Canada Pust is running at full steam: the corporation's current campaign to pirate the delivery of advertising flyers from the marketplace is forcing private business to compete against a Crown corporation behemoth that can use the revenues exacted from taxpayers and first-class mail to subsidize flyer delivery and steal income from community newspapers and communities themselves. Canada Post need not turn a profit on flyer delivery, it need only be seen to gen- erate revenue, leaving taxpayers to pay to put other taxpayers out of work. While interrupted mail delivery is also ‘inconvenient for residents, fax machines and private couriers have increasingly taken the sting out of major mail disrup- tions for businesses. Canada Post and its unionized workers have thereby been in- creasingly left with less of the mail delivery pie; the public, meanwhile, has been left with the debris of Canada Post labor rela- tions: threats of mail cuts, higher mail costs and redaced mail servic::. We have reached the jeixt at which fewer care about a postal strike and fewer have sympathy with either side in the dispute. Canada Post and its union surely deserve each other, but Canadians just as surely do not deserve what Canada Post and its union are now delivering. LETTER OF THE DAY Bannerman missed the obvious solution Dear Editor: With reference to Gary Ban- nerman’s Aug. I1 article on pre- pane, I am amazed that he missed such an obvious solution. It is obvious that he went through this exercise while I was out of town or he would have saved some $325 plus GST and PST. For the benefit of your readers who might otherwise be !ed astray, the simple solution is to drop down to your friendly Ca- Publisher... Managing Editor Associate Editor. . Advertising Director Comntroller . ... Peter Speck Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Linda Stewart .Doug Foot nadian Tire Store where there is a magnificent display of five, 10 and 20-lb. propane tanks for sale. For $30 or less, Gary could have bought a whole new extra tank. Then when his first tank ran empty, he would merely switch tanks. I realize this is likely too simple a solution for most of us, but it does have its advantages. One, you become popular fellow in the most the Display Advertising 980-0511 Real Estate Adverlising 985-6982 Classified Advertising Newsroom 985-2131 Orstnbution Subscriptions 986-6222 Fax Administration neighborhood because you have an extra tank at 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday. Two, you always finish cooking the steak, chicken, lobster, ec. Three, you took like a genius to your wife. Four, your wife gets to spend the extra $300. Five, you don't have to go to Burnaby. David Ingram North Vancouver 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 985-2131 North Shore North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule 111, Paragraph Ill of the Excise Tax Act, is publhshed each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and distripuled to every door on ihe Nerth Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885 Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 per year, Mailing rates available on sequest Submissions are welcome but we cannot accept responsibility for uncedicsted malenal inctuding manuscnots and piciures which should be accompamiad by a stamped, addressed envelope V7M 2H4 north shere 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, 8.C. MEMBER SDA DIVISION 61,582 {average circulation, Wednesday. Friday & Sunday) Entire contents © 1991 North Shore Free Press Ltd. Ali rights reserved. you can read or enjoy walking ARE YOU STILL without your urgently needed pension or other government cheque? Or maybe a small business owner biting your nails about how to coflect month-end bill payments due to you? If so, you may like to pass the time contemplating why your friendly letter carrier keeps disap- pearing for indefinite periods. Canadian Union of Postal Workers boss Jean-Ciaude Parrot reckons his 46,000 cr so boys and girls -- who haven’t had a raise since 1989 — are having a tough time coping on a basic average wage of $14.24 an hour for a 40- hour work week, which is 82 cents higher than the equivalent hourly average of $13.42 for all occupa- tions in Canada. So by August next year CUPW is demanding a four-stage com- pounded increase of 20.15%, rais- ing the posties® average basic hourly rate to $17.11 — about half of it in *tcatch-up”’ hikes for 1989 to 1991. Canada Past’s offer uses a dif- ferent math — maybe because CP boss Don Lander cures about the future price of our postage stamps. A two-stage increase of 12.8% between now and next August. No 1989-91 ‘‘catch-up”’ hikes but a lump sum $3,600 “signing bonus”’ in lieu. To save you wearing out your calculator, what it all comes to in average basic round figures is this. Parrot's plan gives his troops over $4,500 in 1989-91 back pay, com- pared with CP’s $3,600 bonus. By August 1992 they’d be earning about $17.11 an hour as against about $16.06 with the employer’s package. Even $16.06 isn’t too bad com- pared with that national $13.42 average -— which includes many workers with appreciably higher DON LANOGERP... about future rates? concerned JEAN-CLAUDE PARROT... doesn’t give a damn. HITHER AND YON skills than those required of postal employees. But the real point is that neither the union nor the CP basic figures tell the whole story. To each please add, first, the current 17 cents cost-of-living ad- justment — paid out quarterly in a separate pay packet. Then add non-cash fringe benefits on a scale all too few of us enjoy — paid lunch time for letter carriers, full dental, sick leave, night-time premiums, you-name-it. Estimated hourly value: at least $3.50. These goodies make the Parrot package worth nearly $2! an hour, with CP’s about a dollar less. Call it a very comfortable $41,600 to $43,000 a year, provid- ed you can read and/or enjoy walking. And that, dear seader — if the fight over the final figure drags on — is why your phone may be cut off for non-payment or your smail business bankrupted. Not that Jean-Claude Parrot gives a damn. Hope I haven’t spoiled your day! WRAP-UP: They’ve almost run cut of Scout Leader awards for North Va::'3 David (“‘Skip’’) Stephenson who received the fam- ed Baden Powell! statuctte for 50 years of scouting back in 1958. But last week the Honorary Vice-President and former Com- missioner of Vancouver-Coast Region Scouts, now 93, was honored once more — this time for his 75 years as a leader and 83 years in the Scout movement, which he joined at age 10 in Scotland!... North Shore Women's Ceatre at 145 West 15th, North Van, needs Moaday, Wednesday and Friday volunteers —- call 984-6009 if you’re interest- ed in helping with its education and information programs on women’s issues... And welcome today, Aug. 30, to the latest member of the ‘‘Golden 50 Club,’’ 54-year West Van residents Matthew and Majorie Davis — ‘‘blessed with good health and a wonderful family.”’ WRIGHT OR WRONG — from the popular speaker’s handbook: Never forget, the mind can absorb only what the seat can endure.