‘Roly’ cries ‘sellout’
x-labor “leader” R.K. “Roly” Gervin, spokesman for
the B.C. Building Contractors Association, is greatly

“disturbed” by the report and recommendations of Industrial

Inquiry Commissioner W.E. Philpott to end the Carpenters

Union and Association strike-lockout dispute: a settlement
formula which confirms all major union demands,

The Carpenters Union have already voted to accept the
Philpott formula, which includes the 375-hour week, key issue
with the union, while Gervin noisily brands it a “sellout”,

While organized labor doesn’t question Gervin’s extensive
knowledge of the matter of “sellouts”, since it had him on
labor’s payroll for quite a few years after he came from the
ranks of the RCMP, it could reasonably hope that after he
left the ranks of labor to go over to the bosses, his sojurn
in the ranks of labor should have taught him, if not integrity,
at least a sense of reality,

And the reality in this case is that the Carpenters Union
contract demands have not only the approval of a government
Industrial Inquiry Commission (which the union didn’t ask for),
but well over 210 Building Contractor Association members who,
before and since the Commission recommendations, have
already put their “John Henry” to a new wage contract, includ-
ing the 373-hour week,

Thus when Gervin shouts “sellout” he is only shouting for
a hard-core minority in the bosses’ Association he presumes
to speak for. :

Sharp’s bunco game

hen the Steel Company of Canada (Stelco) declared
its intention last week to up steel prices anywhere
from $3 to $5 a ton, Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp expressed
“concern and regret’’, couplied with a “threat” to put the
matter before a Commons-Senate committee on rising prices.

Stelco, Dominion Foundries, and the notorious Dominion
Steel and Coal Co., (Dosco) had all indicated their intention
to up the price of their products because of “rising labor costs’’,

On Stelco the Financial Post (Sept, 3, 1966) reports, ‘In
the first half of 1966 profits increased by 33 percent to
$24,900,000 from $18,700,000 for the same period a year ago”,
So the malarky abdut “increased labor costs” as a reason for
additional price gouges just doesn’t hold water.

But it was a fine show put up by Sharp, Having lowered his
*inflation’? boom on organized labor, the minister gentl),
taps Stelco and company on the wrist, andthey being “gentlemen
all”, readily “concur” to forego another prices gouge at this
time — “in deference to the minister”, andas a “fine example”
for labor to follow.

This slick bunco game should fool no one, and least of all
the wage earner — against whom all the fire of Sharp’s “infla-
tion” arsenal is aimed. :

Tom
Mc EWEN

ooking Backwards. , with
fe apologies to Edward Bel-
lamy, we recall Prime Minister
Pearson’s noisy declaration of
“War on Poverty” in the early
days of 1965, a “war” that didn’t
even reach the proportions of a
minor “skirmish” before itpeter-
ed out.

Just a couple of weeks before
Christmas of 1965, a delegate
conference fairly representative
of all Canada was convened in
Ottawa to plan ‘‘strategy”’ for this
much-heralded “War on Pov-
erty”, ‘

most “promising” federal elec-
tion, but Kent had to return to
Ottawa minus the laurels of vic-
tory. But as a ‘‘special adviser’’
to the PM, he was promptly
elevated to the rank of “Com-
mander-in-Chief” of Pearson’s
“War on Poverty”.

So now back to the Kent con-
ference as the “opening shot”
in this alleged “War on Poverty”
fanfare. There were a lot of
“papers”, thesis, and other wordy
verbiage on the “‘poor’’ presented,
much of it well seasoned with a
bit of Latin, plus a- lot. of very
moth-eaten homilies, There was

~ ‘Jt may be recalled in this con- {no end of “ad hoc-ing’’, ‘per

nection that one Tom Kent, reput-
ed to be “a special adviser to
the Prime Minister”, was ferried
out to Burnaby, B.C., by the
Liberals in a futile effort to
defeat NDP national leader
Tommy Douglas, and of course

to “save” Burnaby — and Canada, -
from “socialism”, That was a

se’-ing”, etc., with some addi-
tions to English vocabulary, such
as “optimum _ scatteration”,
“whirlpoolish” etc., and so forth,
Very ‘‘learned’’ indeed, for which

the “poor” should be duly grate- ©

ful.

One “scholar” from Prince

.

BOMB DAMAGE IN U.S. WORKER BUILDING. Photo shows James Jackson, pub-
lisher of The Worker, standing among debris in one of the offices after the recent
bombing. Heavy losses were inflicted on The Worker's files and equipment. Jack-
son spoke at a public meeting in Vancouver last year under the auspices of the
Pacific Tribune. The bombing is blamed on ultra-right elements who have un-
leashed a wave of violence against civil rights and peace forces in the U.S.

Namu Native
housing grim

The United Fishermen and

Allied Workers Union last week —

asked the help of northern af-
fairs minister Art Laing to rec-
tify the long-standing problem of
deplorable housing and health
conditions for Native Indians at
Namu,

The union’s request to Laing
was sparked by a letter from
Dr. Roger H,. Page, medical
superintendent of the R.W, Large

Memorial Hospitalat Bella Bella. _

Dr. Page’s letter notes:

‘It is true that B,C, Packers

have made some minor improve-
ments but the major health haz-
ards have not been tackled
effectively and such diseases aS
respiratory infections, skin in-
fections and infestations, infec-
tious hepatitis, diarrhoea and

childhood communicable diseases

‘continue to run rampant.”

Stevens told Laing in hisletter

"that the union has very little
confidence that B.C. Packers will ©

carry outany of the recommenda-
tions of medical health officers
unless compelled to do so by
stringent measures taken by the
department of health,

Johnson enlists anti- Semitism
to silence Vietnam protests

American and world public
opinion has been shocked by re-
cent attempts of U.S. President
Johnson to single out for attack
those critics of the Vietnam war
who are of the Jewish faith,

Johnson has repeatedly told in-
dividual Jewish leaders that he
resents the opposition of Jewish

_ intellectuals to the White House

war policy. He has told them
bluntly that further U.S. assist-
ance to Israel is conditioned on
their support for the Vietnam war,

One U.S, rabbi last. weekasked

‘ whether the Jewish community -

should be singled out any more
than. any other religious group
and whether a price should be

Edward Island, sometimes refer-
red to as the “Potato Republic”,
recited that alleged JFK homily
which sdys, ‘‘ask not what your
country can do for you, but what
you can do for your country”,
All a very fine mixture of plati-
tudes and beatitudes, ranging all
the way from ‘‘Blessed are the
poor ...” to the “something for
nothing” moral evils of the “ wel-
fare state’’.

A news item in the Vancouver
Sun of December 11, 1965 quotes
a reporter’s summing up of this
“learned” confab as saying “...if
a Paul Martin award — the ex-
ternal affairs minister is re-
nowned for his ability to confuse
— were available, it should go
to Tom Kent,”

This cryptic observation is
well underscored by “Comman-
der-in-Chief” Kent’s closing
words to the conference: ‘‘The
next step inthe assault on poverty
will take place, when it takes
place”, There we have all the
clarity of poet Gertrude Stein’s
«,.. a rose is a roseisarose ..,”

All the above constituted the
‘topening shot” (if such it may be
termed) in Pearson’s “War on
Poverty’’, Nothing has been heard
of this “war” since, not even the

exacted from the Jewish com-
munity by political leaders,
“When the President seems to
suggest that American policy to-
ward Israel depends on Jewish
good behavior, that is going too
far,” he said,

Early last week two top offi-
cials of the B’nai B’rith, one of
the largest Jewish organizations

in the U.S., went to the White

House to discuss a statement
Johnson made recently to the
leaders of the Jewish War Vet-
erans that Jewish organizations
have a special obligation to “re-
assess their thinking about
Vietnam,”

faint “plop” of a Liberal pea-
shooter, Thus it may be taken
as a “fait accompli” that as far
as the “War on Poverty” is con-
cerned, it is definitely over —
even if poverty in Canada isn’t.

Nor has anything been heard
of “C-o-C” Tom Kent since that
opening “literary” foray on
poverty ten months ago. It may
be safely assumed however that
the ‘*C-0-C” is glued to the public
treasury in some poverty-free
zone or other. After all “ad-
visers” to Liberal, Tory or
Socred ministers, prime or
otherwise, are always handy to
have around in our ‘‘free so-
ciety” when maximum confusion
is required to obscure issues

2?

“Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor —

% Published weekly at

Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St
Vancouver 4, B.C. : *
“ Phone 685-5288
x : Subscription Rates:

‘Canada, $5.00 one yeat;.$2.75 for six months. North and South America
and Commonwealth countries, $6.Q0 one year. All other countries, $7.00,
one year. Authorized as second class mail by the Post Office Department,
Ottawa; and for payment of postage in cash. — :

- Jews play into the hands of anti-

Semites, part of whose arsenal
is to portray every progressive
position as a “Jewish plot”, That
American Jews are not being

intimidated was shown ina state--

ment by. Dr;.Abraham Heschel,
professor at the Jewish Theo-
logical Seminary of America,
who declared:

“If Abraham had no hesitation

about challenging the judgement of

God over Sodom and Gomorrah,
lest it sweep away the innocent
with the guilty, should not an
American have the right to chal-

lenge the judgment of our Presi- -

dent when horrified by the war
in Vietnam,”

vital to the wellbeing of the
people,

In finance minister Mitchell
Sharp’s scuttling of medicare, of |

student scholarships, of con-
struction “slow-downs”, etc.,
under the pretext of “combatting
inflation”, ‘ together with his

threats of higher taxation and
concerted attacks upon the living —

standards of the people, Pear-
son’s ‘*War on Poverty” has now
become a monopoly-dominated
government war; a war whichcan
only result in the promotion of @
still greater poverty,

A belly-robbing war in which —
the rich get richer — and the
“poor” — poorer — and more .

numerous,

“Tribune

MAURICE RUSH

lt

- September 23, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 2

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