PRAIRIE PROVINCES News shorts Banks squeezing farmers _Crisis takes toll Even with over 45,000 people leaving Alberta since 1983 the economic crisis has forced more people to apply for welfare. In August of this year there was an increase of 6,000 cases bringing the number of families to 56,000 — or around 120,000 people. This is in 1985 which has been reported as a boom year for the oil and gas industry with record levels of exploration. Unequal pay Women in Alberta continue to trail far behind men when it comes to income. A recent report showed that women with less than nine years schooling make an average of $12,553 a year in full-time jobs, compared to $22, 191-for men with the same level of education. For women with a university degree the income level is $25,553 while men with a similar level of education earn $36,825. Sixty-one per cent of women in Alberta work — about 10 per cent more than the Canadian average — but make only 64 cents for every dollar earned by men. : Monthly ‘Shaft Award’ BRANDON — This month’s award for Persistence in Trying to Shaft the Workers goes to the T. Eaton Co. and the manage- ment at its Brandon store. After the Manitoba Food and Commercial Workers was certi- fied for the store’s 88 workers, the company refused to negotiate seriously so the union applied to the Manitoba Labor Board for a first contract which was imposed last summer, giving wage in- creases of 10 to 20 per cent to the low-paid employees. The company appealed and lost and then tried to put the pressure back on the workers by demanding the union revise the so-called “excessive cost items’ in the contract. _This attempt also failed and now management says it’s gia that the MFCW didn’t show ‘a more realistic at- titude.’ —: no word on the next dirty trick which Eaton’s has up its ve. Marching Against Apartheid More than 400 people turned out in Winnipeg for a recent march and rally in support of the struggle of the people of South Africa against apartheid. The event. was organized by the Manitoba | Coalition of Organizations Against Apartheid to mark the end of the first phase of the new coalition’s activities. Other work in- cluded the marking of South African Women’s Day in August and the collection of more than 4,000 signatures on a petition to the Federal Government for Canada to implement sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government. The Coalition is now or- ganizing for intensification of consumer boycott. By FRANK GOLDSPINK WINNIPEG — The 20 centimetres of snow © which fell across Manitoba two weeks ago promp- ted an instant volley of demands and promises by provincial and federal politicians for assistance to farmers unable to finish their harvests because of bad weather. The obvious jockeying for the farmers’ favor shows how sensitive the politicians are to the po- tentially disastrous effects of the volatile farm situa- tion on their own futures, especially in Manitoba with an election in the offing. And, like the snow covering the crops, the politi- cal rhetoric highlighted the weather and hid the real reasons (the ‘scissors’ of falling prices and sharply rising costs, all influenced or controlled by agri- business and the banks) that farmers this year will see a worsening and probably record plague of bailiffs and auctioneers. Manitoba farmers were fortunate to escape the ravages of grasshoppers and drought, in the main, last summer, only to see rain soak the ground in August and September, preventing them from get ting on the fields to complete the harvest. But even perfect conditions would have been little help to many. ‘*People in Saskatchewan and Manitoba are not going bankrupt because of the weather,’ says Jacie Skelton, a National Farmers Union leader who farms near Sinclair in Southwestern Manitoba. ““We don’t need drought for people to go bankrupt.” Before the harvest disaster struck, farm bank-’ ruptcies and foreclosures in Manitoba were al- ready matching the record rate set in the previous two years when a total of 125 farm families de- clared themselves ‘‘out of business’. : The federal Farm Credit Corporation reports that up to August about 200 farms had been re- possessed or were on the verge of failure when the FCC declared its moratorium on foreclosures in August. : Moreover, a 1984 FCC study showed that 17 per cent of Manitoba farms were experiencing ‘‘finan- cial difficulties’. No statistics are issued by the big banks and other private lenders on foreclosures but there was a report last spring that banks are picking up land at a quicker pace. At the same time, dropping land prices have led the banks to encourage farmers who have been successful in recent years to expand. Giant corpo- rate farms also appear to be taking advantage of their neighbors’ difficulties to buy more land. As a result, for example, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said its Manitoba land holdings had dropped by about 20 per cent up to the end of September. ve Federal census figures show a decline in the number of farms in Manitoba from 32,100 in 1976 to 29,440 in 1981. Statistics Canada estimates there are about 25,000 farms left in Manitoba now. Drop in Farm Population This has been accompanied by a matching de- cline in farm population, which the census showed had dropped to under 100,000 in 1981, compared to 114,000 in 1976. In the meantime, land use has increased, with provincial agriculture statistics showing a total of 13.4 million acres of improved land in 1984, compared to 12.8 million in 1979. In the past 10 years, while farm cash receipts have doubled in Manitoba, the cost of farming has Public sector strikes Some public sector employees privatised, at no savings to tax- more than tripled. The result shows in the latest provincial statistics for net income. The projected total net income for 1984 (including an arbitrary value for farm inventories) is $324.4 million, which barely matches the average for the previous 10 best years. Although there is a lot of talk about the weather and grasshoppers, farm activists say the blame must be.Jaid on the banks and agribusiness whose policies, promoted by the federal government (and to a lesser extent provincially in the Prairies and elsewhere), are creating tragic economic cCir- cumstances for rural Canada. The freight-rate sellout, the Western Energy Ac- cord, the free-booting of the banks and other pri- vate lenders and the new attacks on farming through the federal Tory budget have all combined to sharpen the cost-price ‘‘scissors’’ and threaten to cut the heart out of Canadian farming. Food — The Important Priority ‘‘Somehow, we have to fight to establish the priority of food production,’’ says Skelton, adding that this will be an important factor in winning Canada’s urban workers to the side of farmers. ‘‘We’re not talking about saving someone’s bus- iness and profits here, we’re talking about food production. . . (including) for people in Canada and in the world who don’t have enough food. This means having a secure food-producing system,” she says. : : At its special Farm Conference in Saskatoon last year, the Communist Party of Canada summed up how the crisis in agriculture permeates society. The appeal approved by the conference says, in part: “*Farmers are being driven off the land, workers in the agricultural implements industry face in- definite and sometimes permanent layoffs. ‘“‘Workers in the food-processing industry are forced into concessions and these same food- processing monopolies are forcing down farm-gate prices.”’ At that time, the Communist Party joined Prairie farm organizations in calling for a moratorium on farm debt and a halt to foreclosures, interest rate controls, free crop insurance and interest-free government loans to protect farmers in difficulty, along with a return to Crow Rate freight levels. In this year’s critical situation, the Communist Party issued a statement in August, demanding disaster relief — adding immediate compensation for crop losses and a scaling down of Canada’s $21-billion farm debt to the list in the Saskatoon Appeal. The Appeal also included the condition that there must be anew and adequate pricing system for Canadian agricultural products and a new market- ing pattern to expand trade with the socialist and developing countries for the benefit of producer and consumer. Increased and stable pricing, a matter almost completely within federal jurisdiction, is the other half of the steps necessary to blunt the Big Busi- ness “‘scissors’’ effect on farm families. First of two parts. /n the next article, Manitoba farm activists welcome the initial steps by the Provincial Government in the face of the onslaught by the banks but say that far-reaching action is needed and would be supported by farmers. offer S put pressure on Devine While the lack of a percentage in- security provisions: training pro- _ have reached new contracts here. payers. _ But 12,000 members of the Sas- : : -katchewan Government Em- _ The cabinet also introduced a ployees Union (SGEU) have ®¢W system of hiring for the pub- _ begun rotating strikes to force the Tory government to negotiate seriously, and on Oct. 16 rejected a final offer from the cabinet. Without a contract since Sept. 30, 1984, the workers are seeking __ betterjob security. The SGEU es- timates that 1,550 union positions have been eliminated over the last two years. Cutbacks have had a particularly painful impact on the quality of health care and social services, according to union studies. And such varied services as court reporting and highway maintenance have been lic service last April. So-called “‘decentralized hiring’ allows each government department to do its own hiring, doing away with the old centralized system. While the old system had its flaws, the union points out, ‘‘decentralized hiring’ vastly increases the scope for patronage and petty politick- ing by individual cabinet ministers. The cabinet has been forced to retreat somewhat from its an- nouncement last spring that all public sector workers would face aone year wage freeze. Its Oct. 16 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 23, 1985 bonus’”’ and three per cent over a two year contract. Finance minis- ter Bob Andrew has gone so far as to claim that provincial em- ployees’ ‘‘average income of $35,000’’ is the reason the government has little money for farm relief. In fact the true aver- age union salary is $24,000. The province’s 11,400 teachers were the first to beat the wage freeze, though not in the way they would have preferred. The teachers settled in early October for a $1,000 1985 ‘‘signing bonus’’, and a 3.9 per cent 1986 increase. Shortly afterward, 4,200 support staff at 79 hospitals, members of CUPE, reached a similar tentative agreement. crease this year will leave them at a lower level from which to begin future negotiations, the settle- ment is seen as a partial setback for the Tories. SGEU, the province’s largest union and a target of successive Liberal, NDP and Tory admin- istrations, faces the toughest bat- tle. Its members voted in August 60 per cent in favor of rotating strikes. These have been carried out at several locations, such as the provincial health laboratory and the energy and mines department in Regina. In addition to asking for 8 and 4'2 per cent over two years, SGEU wants the following job grams for full-time workers whose jobs are abolished; no contracting out to private firms of government work; a guaranteed work period for seasonal em- ployees to allow them to qualify for UIC after layoffs; union input into the introduction of new tech- nology which could affect job se- curity; extension of job security benefits to non-permanent em- ployees, who are being hired for most union positions as the government attempts to cut costs and undermine the union; further discussion on decentralized hiring if the government agrees to follow hiring guidelines set out by the province’s Public Service Act. — K.C.