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CDT

NEWS VIEWPOINT

Raising dander

F THEY. were being awarded points . solely on timing, North Vancouver Ci- ‘ ty Council would have scored less than ‘ zero recently with its vote to increase city

_ aldermanic salaries by 22%.

Council members voted 4-3 Sept. 23 to raise their salaries from $12,482 to | $15,242, ; The raise leaves the city's aldermen still

_ behind the $18,765 paid to North Van- -- gouver District . aldermen, - ahead of the $15,000 paid to West Van-

would begrudge - . lected officials ize vight to more money . for the work they s:, a whole lot of peo- ple will begrudge ti2 size of the raise city - aldermen voted themselves in a single

# — Reader questions bureau’s ethics

couver District aldermen. v Asd while so: one

Dear Editor:

I was interested. to read the feature article about Rid Bestwick -and the Better Business Bureau in

. your Sept. 22 printing.

The implication from the article “was that a high percentage of the 83% of Vancouver businesses that

.. do not belong to the BBB may

have questionable ethics and standards. _ Well, my company has never been a member of the Better Business Bureau because I ques- tion its 2thics and standards.

Most people do not realize that the Better Business Bureau is a franchise operation with a head office in the United States. The local office will claim to be a **non-profit organization’? when a

Peter Speck Timothy Renshaw

_ you consider’ that

“catch up’’ increase.

There will be a lot of begrudging over a 22% raise from members of the federal civil service who are facing a 0% raise this

year; and there will be 2 lot of begruding

from a lot of other regular city working stiffs who already pay more municipal

taxes in North Vancouver City than their

counterparts but slightly

do in Richmond, Burnaby

and Vancouver City.

North Vancouver City Council, which

presides over the smafiest North Shore

prudent to

caller phones in a complaint — but this is a bit misleading when perhaps no profit is made here because it all ends up in the good old U.S.A.

In fact, if 17% of Vancouver businesses are members at about

‘$200 per business, the income of

the Better Business Bureau must be at least $2.04 miilion per year. I for one have difficulty under- standing how no profit could result from such healthy sales.

On top of this, the income of the Better Business Bureau comes from the companies that are members and not from the indi- viduals who are making the com- plaints. This means that the Better Business Bureau is in a position of conflict of interest. It must bite

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municipality with the smallest North Shore population, would have been far more

have raised its aldermanic

salaries by the same 3.7% it allotted coun- cil members last year.

_ the hand that feeds it whenever it acts against a member in response to a complaint from the public. Obviously the interests of the per- son comp!aining would be better served if he or she paid the fee rather than the companies who are merabers.

So when I had to consider mak- ing my company a member back in 2979 I decided against it. I feel that my clients, if they have a complaint against us or want to enquire about our ethics history, are more impartially served by approaching the Ministry of Con- sumer and Corporate Affairs than by calling the Better Business Bureau. - E.A. White North Vancouver

986-1337 986-1337

Nezth Share

Equal pay? How does 2 nurse rate

vs. a pie

THE HILLS gare alive, not wi

chef?

th the sounds of music but

with the sound of chants urgiag equal pay for equal werk. First in the flat lands of Oatsrio and Manitoba, then echoing through the coastal mountains.

This is the result of the prom- ise, first in the speech from the throne and then in its budget presentation, that the government of British Columbia will adopt this form of wage pcticy. But even as the government was dropping, this time borb in the B.C. legislature a tiny study by the On- tario Ministry of Labour provided one piece of convincing evidence why equal pay for work of equal value is a dangeyvous myth.

The stedy was actually a joint effort by an employee from the Ontario Ministry of Labour and the province's Chief Coroner’s of- fice and it focussed on the 84

| Noel Wright

- work-related homicides for al! oc-

cupations in Qntario from 1975 to 1985. The average homicide rate was only 0.17 deaths per 100,000 workers.

However, the study showed that some occupations such as, for ex- ample, gasoline station attendants and taxi drivers, had much higher fatality rates on the jeb, nearly equal to the 6.1 per 100,000 male police officers killed during the 1975 to 1985 period. The same study showed that mei were more than five times more likely to be killed on the job than women.

Now how is this related to equal pay for work of equal value?

Weil ict’s suppose you're given the task of ati equal pay ad- judicator to sort out the wages of police officers, taxi cab drivers and gasoline station attendants. One of the characteristics of the job that of course you would have to rate was the danger of being killed by an armed assailant dur- ing the course of doing your duty. (Hf you took « poll amongst Ca- nadians probably many would say that the danger associated with police work was one of the main reasons police officers should be paid the relatively high wages they receive.)

In the particuiar comparison of taxi drivers and police officers, both spend long hours driving around in cars picking up drunks end both it seems are exposed to the same probability of being

By Richael Watker Contributing Writer

murdered by the people they do pick up. Why should cabbics be paid any less than police officere? Well perhaps ihe point has deen | made. . (And if you think my analogies between police officers and cab drivers are absurd, how ehout the geniuses in Ontario wito se< about comparing the work of narses_ with that of assistant pastry chefs? so wonder Elspeth Jensen, presi- dent of the Registered Nurses

on vacation — | |

Association of Ontario, has said © that it would be better to scrap the process entirely rather than pursue it.)

But there is a further point to be made. That is to remark on the consequences which would ensue if the Equa! Pay For Equal Vatue Board decided that cab drivers should be paid the same as police officers. There would cf course be many fewer jobs for cab drivers and much less demand for the _ services of cats because of the higher cost which would have to _ be passed along to consumers.. -” *

But more importanily it would eliminate a very important source of transitional employment for, - people who are displaced from - work and also for newcomers to the economy who for what ever © reason are unable to find cther employment. The wages paid io _. cab drivers reflect that transitional demand for employment and the ©. fact that of course it doesn’t re- quire either the same education or. commitment to be a cab driver. -

. Equal pay for work of equal vaiuce legislation is a way of substituting bureaucratic jiggery pockery fer the force of the mar- ket and by now we should have™ no doubt about the relative com- petence of that process. J

Dr. Michael Walker is the - director of the Fraser Institute, a right-wing economic think tank © basedin Vancouver, | |.

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' NEWS photo Paul TREVOR BAKER peeks out at the view from the Royal Hudson.

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