Thursday, June 10, 1993

PREMIER'S STATEMENT:  What Ontario premier Bob Rae said in the Legislature
yesterday was that he'll introduce legislation on Monday to "achieve 
$2 billion in savings" from public-sector payrolls.

Employers and employee groups are being "encouraged to return to
sector-by-sector negotiations" for how the savings can be made.  "Local
parties", apparently including individual universities, "will also be
permitted" to have such negotiations.  The deadline in both cases is
August 1.  If agreements aren't reached by then, "a fail-safe provision"
will come into effect.  Rae didn't say what that means, except that it
"will ensure that fiscal targets are met".

Rae said the legislation "will enable implementation of the key elements
of the framework agreement" offered by the government near the end of the
social contract talks that collapsed last week.  Those elements include
a "job security fund" as well as "compensation savings" through a pay
freeze and other measures, with a "low-income cut-off" to protect people
earning less than $30,000 a year.

Meanwhile, reductions in government grants to universities, hospitals,
cities and other agencies will start on July 1.

The government has replaced its chief negotiator in the social contract
talks, Michael Decter, with Peter Warrian, until recently a union leader.
Warrian is a Waterloo graduate (BA sociology 1969, MA 1971, PhD history
1986) who became president of the Canadian Union of Students and later
taught at Wilfrid Laurier University.

GONE FOR GOOD:  The department of computing services has disconnected one
of UW's oldest and most rickety pieces of computer equipment, the CC-80,
which provided some network connections for the IBM mainframe computers.
It had been scheduled for removal in July, but broke down again on the
weekend and was put out of its misery.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs
credmond@watserv1    ext. 3004