Vy;

Employment (or is it ‘‘Un-

. employment’’) Minister J.S.G.

Cullen has placed before parlia-
ment a bill (Bill C-14) which prop-
Oses to cut unemployment insur-
ance costs by lowering benefits
for all claimants to 60% from
66.6% of their average weekly
eamings. The total amount of
these reduced payments and re-
lated measures to cut costs at the
expense of the unemployed is es-
timated to save the U.I. benefit
fund $1,400-million in two years.

The Bill provides for tougher
eligibility requirements so that
more than a quarter-million
(260,000) claimants will no longer
be able to qualify for benefits.
These measures hit hardest at
part-time and seasonal workers;
women, whose unemployment
“rating is presently 25% higher
than the rate for men; young
people, whose rate of unemploy-
ment is now three times the na-
tional average, and worse in some

regions. (Newfoundland is one ©
_ example; where 75% now sea-

sonally unemployed would not be
able to qualify for benefits).

More weeks of work would be
required for individuals applying
for benefits for a second time ina
year, and for people who recently
joined the labor force for the first
time or after a long absence.

A tax-back formula calls for re-
payment of 30% of benefits re-
ceived in the case of persons with
anet 1979 income above $20,500,
excluding U.I. benefits.

Jobs or an Income —
As a Right

The Social Planning Council of
Metropolitan Toronto has called
for a country-wide commitment
to job creation by all three levels
of government. _

The Council has placed the
total number of jobless in Metro
Toronto at 138,700-as of August
1978. This includes some 33,000
not officially registered but never-
theless unemployed. (A recent

‘'S ER sy

*

. The Sudbury Strike Support News has come out with some chilling
figures showing the death and injury rate among Inco workers and
charged the company was playing games with the health and safety of
its employees. About 6,000 accidents are reported each year and some.
200 are seriously injured.

survey among youths of 15 and up
in Toronto’s Regent Park area re-

vealed 51% withoiit jobs).

The Council says there is no
evidence to support the belief that
unemployment is caused by
unwillingness to work or a too

generous unemployment insur--

ance program. The unemploy-
ment is rooted in a chronic shor-
tage of jobs. It also contends that

-any suggestion that women and

youth abuse the unemployment
insurance program cannot be
substantiated.

Noting that Ottawa’s justi-
fication for cutting benefits is to
finance job creation, the planning
council said there is no guarantee
jobs will be made available. It
said: ‘‘The financing of such a

program through benefit reduc-.
,tion represents a further burden

on the victims of unemploy-
ment.”’

The Real Aim of the Cutbacks

The real aim of the govern-.

ment’s cutback program is the
levelling down the incomes of all
workers to the lowest possible
level. This is being done by man-
ipulation of labor’s share of the
national income and its distri-
bution according to an artificially
fixed average income level. This

so-called average income is then

used as the criteria to justify cut-
backs in both family allowances
and the unemployment insurance
program. The long-term aim is to
eventually abolish all universal
social security programs and to
substitute a welfare system based
on need, which means a means
test, including some form of a so-
called negative income tax.

The real beneficiaries of such a
program will be the multi-national
corporations, the monopolies,
banks and speculators. They will
get all the concessions, tax defer-
rals, exemptions and subsidies.
All that is to be done in the name
of ‘‘job creation’’, while in reality

If you took an average over the
last 10 years, you would find there
was a worker killed at Inco’s
Sudbury operation every 10

- weeks. And, with the present

workforce there are about 6,000
reported accidents a year. One of
every two Inco workers is hurt in
a year, and about 200 workers a
month are hurt seriously.

This stark information was re-
ported as the lead story in the
most recent issue of Strike Sup-
port News, published with the
approval of local 6500 Steelwor-
kers, by Sudbury Citizen’s Strike
Support Committee. The paper is
published every two weeks.

’ The strike Support News said
health and safety was an issue in
negotiations with Inco. Slight im-
provement in contract language
on the subject was agreed to, then
withdrawn by the company in
June and re-introduced in the last
minute bargaining sessions in Au-
gust.

Inco workers resent the com-

any’s practice of playing games
with the health and safety of its

the jobless situation will get
worse.

For the municipalities the cut-
backs spell disaster. Added wel-
fare expenditures will increase
local property taxes, the most
regressive tax of all, a tax paid in
the main by the working people,
small businesses. and profes-
sionals.

While apologists for monopoly
exploitation see “‘justification”
for doing away with the capital
gains tax and the corporate in-
come tax, they want unemploy-
ment benefits tied to combined

household income rather than to

individual incomes as is now the
case. This, then, is the new means
test welfare system proposed for
the working people.

Ottawa’s private sector job
creation program is not working.
The $100-million tax credit pro-
gram announced a year ago to
create 50,000 jobs has brought
only 8,000 jobs. The proposed hir-
ing of some 175 new computer
operators to conduct a witch-hunt
amongst the jobless claimants of
U.I. benefits is not likely to solve
the problem of job creation.

— The proposals now before
parliament in the form of Bill
C-14 must be rejected.

— Instead of a cut in ULI.
benefits, these benefits ought to
be increased to at least 90% of
weekly average earnings and
made payable for duration of
unemployment, including abol-
ition of the waiting period.

— Federal and provincial ©

governments must make full
employment their goal and un-
dertake public works projects
to assist in achieving this objec-
tive.

— The private sector must be
made to carry its responsibility
in this regard or face nationali-
zation of enterprises, to be op-
erated under public ownership
and democratic control.

employees. Early this year there
was a great deal of concern in the
Frood Mine by workers there,
over the double slicing technique.
This method involves taking
wider than normal cuts into the
mine face, increasing the amount
of ore that can be removed but
also in the workers’ opinion,
heightening the chances of col-
lapses.

A government inspector, the
Strike News reported, rejected
the Inco workers’ concerns, but
one of the two miners killed this
year at Inco, was the victim. of a
collapse in an area where double
slicing was used.

Local 6500 also cites Inco’s
poor training program as another
problem. Keith Rothney local
health and safety chairman told
the Strike News: ‘‘We still feel the

™™e SUDBURY STRIKE SUPPORT NEWS REPORTS

". One killed every 10 weeks

safety engineer system Inco has
now will not get better. The en-
gineers have no safety training
that they need so we can talk to
them on an equal basis and they’Il
be interested in safety. Their
heart isn’t in safety. They’re no
more than glorified safety
clerks.”

The right to refuse unsafe
work, and tighter controls on the

testing of dangerous chemicals

prior to use in the work-place,
have been the subjects of union
briefs to governments planning

ew occupational health and

safety legislation.

In addition to informing the
community about the issues in the
Inco strike, the Strike Support
News mirrors the support flowing
in for the miners from across
Canada, and on the support ac-
tivities going on in Sudbury itself.

COMMUNIST PARTY MESSAGE

Unite behind miners

A resolution of support and sol-
idarity with Sudbury’s Inco strik-
ers was issued by the Central
Committee of the Communist
Party of Canada Oct. 20-22:

The aim of such corporate
giants as the Inco Metals Com-
pany — a subsidiary of the U.S.-
based multi-national Inter-
national Nickel Company — is to
cut costs and raise profit margins,
all at the expense of its workers
and. of all working people and
their communities.

This is the reason more than
11,000 Inco Metals Company
employees in the Sudbury mining
region have been forced on strike.
Never at any time during five
months of negotiations did Inco
make a reasonable and responsi-
ble offer to the joint negotiating
committee of its employees at
Sudbury and Port Colborne. In-
stead its efforts were directed to
provoke confrontation while issu-
ing propaganda to divide the
union and mis-inform the public
about the real situation. Its aims
were bound up with a determined
effort to use this year’s contract
bargaining to undermine the
power of the union through
unacceptable alterations of the
grievance procedure and the role
of union stewards on the jobs.

The struggle in which these
workers are now engaged is not

and smelterworkers —

‘an easy one.: But the efforts made

‘by this company and those who
did its bidding have not suc-
ceeded in isolating this, heroic
struggle from the community and
from the Canadian labor move-
ment. This is proven by the unity

STEELWORKERS
REJECT CONTRACT
Steelworkers at the Sydney
Steel Corp. plant in Sydney,
N.S., rejected a proposed one-
year contract with the provin-
clally owned company, accord-
Ing to union officials. The vote
by members of Local 1064 of
the United. Steelworkers of
America was 1,011 against the
745 in favor of the proposed

| agreement. The contract would

have provided an across-the-
board hourly wage increase of
40 cents to bring the average
rate in the mill to $6.81.

Aa ea

of the Sudbury community be-
hind the strike and the support
from the rest of the labor move-
ment, a support which is daily be-
coming stronger.

This Central Committee meet-
ing greets the Sudbury miners and
smeltermen, their wives and
families who suffer hardship as a
result of the unavoidable struggle
they have undertaken, but a
struggle which can and will be
won given unbreakable unity and
solidarity towards this end.

Taking due note of this signi-
ficant fact, this Central Com-
mittee of the Communist Party of
Canada pledges, as indeed we

‘have from the very first day of this

strike, to lend whatever support
we can toward the success of this
struggle. :
Moreover, we call upon our
own members’ everywhere

.throughout the country and all

other forces within the working
class and democratic movement
to join hands in the ranks of
organized labor and the commun-
ity at large toward this objective.

We call upon the Inco Metals
Company to enterinto meaningful,
negotiations in good faith for the
purpose of arriving at a settlement
acceptable to Local 6500 of the
USW of A., failing which we de-

‘mand that the Ontario government

take steps to bring resources and
plants under public ownership and
democratic control.

Unite behind the miners and
smelterworkers.

Their victory will be a victory
for the working class!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 24, 1978—Page 5