IIA A

LABOR SCENE

by

BRUCE MAGNUSON

The feeling among workers
generally is that they have been
pushed around and given a raw
deal by big business for far too
long, Their experiences with gov-
ernments is that every timethere
is a showdown they tend to side
with the boss,

The thinking now is that this
is as good a time as any for
workers to straighten up from
their arduous toil to shake some
of the leeches off their backs,
The rapidly growing strike move-
ment in Canada is, therefore, no
great mystery for anyone who
really seeks the truth and exam-
ines the situation honestly
towards that end,

Inhuman speedups and tech-
nological changes have advanced
productivity and cut costs of pro-
duction and services. But working
people have not shared in the
benefits, except for the crumbs
thrown their way after hard bar-
gaining with employers.

Hours Of work have not been
reduced, but even lengthened in
many cases, Excessive overtime
has added to the fatigue of the
workers, The increased produc-
tivity has not reduced prices,
which are unilaterally fixed by
big corporations, With prices,
interest, rent and taxes going up
steadily, the cost of living be-
comes unmanageable for work-
ers’ families, even if all able-
bodied adults work to earn an
income, The greatest gains from
increased productivity and eco-
nomic expansion go to swell cor-
porate profits.

While common sense would
suggest that governments ought
to help correct the imbalance of
power between workers and their
employers, logic stands’ upside
down in our private profit econo-
my. There is hardly a single
strike without court injunctions,
police violence and other forms
of officially condoned strike-
breaking.

The most serious form ofgov-
ernment strike-breaking is com-
pulsory arbitration. By means of
such laws the right to strike is
taken away completely, In pub-
lic services the argument for
such undemocratic laws are that

Available for

kul Lamb
e NEW MOD

WOMEN — From

COME IN TO:

Vancouver 6, B.C.

the First Time

e ;
in Vancouver
@ TRANSISTOR RADICS— Made in Latvia

@ GENUINE SIBERIAN FUR HATS—Russian Squirrel, Kara-
Seal, Fox — From 00
EL SOVIET WRIST - WATCHES for MEN

eee ee $29.95

@SAMOVARS, ACCORDIONS, CHILDREN’S & ADULTS’
BICYCLES, MOTORCYCLES and many more SOVIET
Items available for Fall Delivery.

GLOBAL IMPORTS

2643 East Hastings St.

ORDER YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFTS NOW! -
_ Lay-away Plan Available

the work is essential and that
the “public interest” demands
strikes be outlawed,

In actual fact all work is es-
sential, But the work that seems
perhaps indispensable from the
point of view of society at large
is very often the most poorly
paid work, Todeprive such work-
ers of their right to strike is to
make them second-class citi-
zens, In the case of postal
employees and civil servants the
governments at both provincial
and federal levels have been
forced to remove this status by
granting them the right to bargain
collectively and to strike.

Workers in Canada are be-
coming aware that they have
rights too, and that these rights
are no less important than are
managements rights, But as T,
C, Douglas intimated in the House
of Commons, the statements of
government ministers sound like
press releases issued by the
large corporations,

Labor spokesmen,
Claude Jodoin, president of the
Canadian Labor Congress, have
taken issue with labor minister
Nicholson on the matter of com-
pulsory arbitration. But more
than resolutions and statements
are needed,

To make both federal and pro-
vincial governments listen to what
labor has to say, there is need
for co-ordination and action
through co-ordinated effort by all
crganized labor from coast to
coast in Canada, As matters now
stand there is a grave danger
that the rights of labor could be
infringed upon unless some emer-
gency measures are taken to see
that this shall not happen.

One thing that ought to be
made clear beyond any doubt is
the~ fact that labor’s interests
and the public interest are one
and indivisible. The working
people make up the great
majority of what is often referred
to as John Q, Public. They must
never allow any government to
whittle away their rights, Govern-
ments that ignore the interests
of the working people will only

including -

invoke a death sentence onthem- -

selves,

— from $49.95

Sileciosikt
Knyha}

Phone 253-8642

(ee ae ae

QUEBEC ELECTION

s

TEPUPEPEGERESAE

The second stage of
the ‘quiet revolution’

By SAM WALSH

The Union Nationale delivered
a stunning defeat to the Liberal
Party in Quebec, capturing 55
seats (the barest possible
majority), to the Liberals’ 51,
with two going to independents,
This despite the fact that the
Union Nationale collected only
40.9% of the popular vote com-
pared to 47.4% for the Liberals
(the Rassemblement pour [in-
dependance Nationale — separa-
tists — garnered 5.6% and the
Ralliement National — separa-
tist-creditiste amalgam — 3.2%).

The discrepancy between the
popular vote and the seats wonis
explained by the fact that the Lib-
eral government could not com-
plete the redrawing of the elec-
toral constituencies, eliminating
at least 10 more rural seats, as
a result of a clause inthe British
North America Act originally
designed to protect what were then
English-speaking constituencies,
But although Liberal losses were
heavy in the rural areas, they
were also serious in the big cities
like Montreal, Quebec City and
Sherbrooke. :

The vote of both the Socialist
Party and the Communist Party
candidates was very low, as was
to be expected in the circum-
stances, With 211 votes in St.
Louis (incomplete) Sam Walsh
received 1.5% of the vote — high-
est percentage of any of the
Communist or Socialist candi-
dates. (The Communist candi-
dates were Sam Walsh, Lucien-
Jacques Cossette and Charles-
Henri Lutz in Montreal and
Denise Gregoire in Quebec City.)

The Liberals lost many thou-
sands of votes for three main
reasons, among others,

Lesage and his chief colleagues
in the former cabinet showed a

‘marked hostility to the working

class (blue collar, white collar
and even the recently unionized
provincial police) in every strug-
gle that has developed in the last
year and more,

The 300 textile strikers who
booed him and his former Min-
ister of Labor, Carrier Fortin,
in Sherbrooke, during the open-
ing rally of the Liberal Party, of
all things on May Day, was an
omen of what was to come, in-
cluding the defeat of Fortin. To
this was added Lesage’s fury at
the Hydro Quebec professional
engineers who went on a “study-
session” during the election
campaign, and his use of Mc-
Carthyism against the militant
provincial police who won union

_ recognition only three days before

the election.

No soft-soaping could calm
the anger of the aroused farmers
at the announced objectives of
the Liberal Party to reduce their

. 75,000 number to 25,000 (even

though Lesage later spoke of al-
lowing 30,000 to remain on the
farm).

Thirdly, Lesage’s sponsor-
ship of the notorious Fulton-
Favreau formula to amend the
B.N.A, Act, which in effect would
leave Quebec strapped into the
constitutional straightjacket of

_the status quo, lost him the con-
dence Of tiousandeito whom the.

JEAN LESAGE ... he's out

cause of self-determination for
the French-Canadian nation is
sacred,

To this may be added his re-
fusal to speak up againstnuclear
arms on Quebec soil,

On all these major questions
the Union Nationale has offered
a carefully-worked alternative
program, It has not openly be-
trayed hostility to the workers,

even encouraging them, It has.

scourged the Liberals for raising
taxes on the farmers mercilessly

as one means to drive them off

the land.

It has promised to negotiate a

new confederal pact guaranteeing
Quebec the right to self-deter-
mination (aprogram lifted almost
wholesale from the submissions
of the Communist Party) replac-
ing the present B.N.A. Act as
Canada’s constitution.

As a result they took six seats
in Montreal (including the most
heavily working class and trade

DANIEL JOHNSON. .. he’s in

union ones) as well as many
rural seats,

The glaring gap in this elec-

tion campaign was the paralysis
of the trade union movement, both
Quebec Federation of Labor and
and the Confederation of National
Trade Unions, neither of which
participated in the campaign. The
Q.F.L. did criticize both big
-bourgeois parties and declared
for the idea of an independent

‘working class political alterna-

tive in the future, but pointedly
rejected the Socialist Party’s
claim to be the ‘‘Party of the
Working Class of Quebec,”

It should be abundantly clear
to all Communist, Socialist and
other thinking class-conscious
workers that there is no alter-
native but the building ofamass-
based national and democratic
front with organized labor as
the driving force, if the working
people and democratic national-
ists are going to be able to be-

come an effective electoralforce —

in Quebec commensurate with
their growing economic and polit-
ical strength and militancy.

NEWS ITEM: A report on the arms race released in Geneva last week showed
that the world arms bill amounts to $130. billions a year. This is more than the
$125 billion being spent annually in the world on public health and education,
and amounts to $40 for every man, woman and child on the globe. ;

PAQIAIC TRISUNS
<<
LRY .

ie

7

ce — 1 eueeereeeen ay