New rules are ‘even more

generous to business’— CLC

CLC officials ripped into the
wage controls program again last
week following the September 7

announcement of finance minister

Macdonald of new ‘‘price and
profit controls”’ and the release of
the August consumer price index
which showed another big jump in
the cost of living.

The same day as Macdonald
announced the new regulations
supposedly to govern prices and
profits, CLC vice president Shir-
ley, Carr responded with a charge
that the new rules are ‘““even more

LABOR
SCENE

By BRUCE MAGNUSON

“‘We have been stomping on
people’s expectations. We’re tel-
ling people they can’t charge what
they want, earn what they want
and bargain for what they want.
We're restraining liberty and tel-
ling people all is not rosy. You
can’t be popular like that.”

Who said this? Prime Minister
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, of course.
And why is he doing this? For the
‘*good of all Canadians’’, says he.

Balderdash! The so-called
anti-inflation program is a fraud.
It is for the good: of some Cana-
dians at the expense of the major-
ity of Canadians. It is good for th-
ose with money to invest and who
live by collection of rent, interest
and profit. It is no good for those
who work by hand or brain and
depend upon wages and salaries
for living.

Look at the defiant editorials
that demand more concessions as
a condition for calling off what is
in effect a strike by capital. Com-
pare this to the abuse heaped
upon labor for daring to stand up
for its rights and “interests and,
threatening dire consequences for
workers that dare follow the ad-
vice of their leaders and stay off
work on October 14, the nation-
wide day of protest against wage
control.

Unemployment and Inflation

The motto is that ‘the who
commands property commands
everything.’’ We have a dictator-
ship imposed upon the working
people and democracy for the
monopoly capitalists and their

_ corporate structure. It is the latter

who are in the driver's seat. It is -

the capitalist investor who deter-

mines how much to invest, when
and where. It is they who hold the
power of life or death over work-
ing people in our private profit
system of exploitation of man by
man. It is they who cause un-
employment and inflation.

It is this system that. the
Trudeau government is now go-
ing to defend with $1.2-million
dollar blitz advertising campaign
‘to brainwash those who are still
gullible tnough to believe that
wage restraint is the cure for in-
flation caused by monopoly pro-
fiteering.

' But, then, what after all is a

million dollars? In the end the
working people will pay for it all.

generous to business.’’ She said
that business had forced the new
rules by ‘“‘refusing to invest —
that is, a strike by capital’, and
that the government’s response,
in contrast to the threats against
organized labor for their planned
general strike, is to change its

- policies.

The new regulations show a
complete abandonment of any at-
tempt to control prices directly,
Carr said, leaving only a single
restraint in effect, a so called
‘profit margin rule.’’ Even at

that, 85% profits are to be allowed
with a complete range of devices
for avoiding being ° affected by
even that restriction.

Carr pointed out that the 85%
restriction is a useless one be-
cause companies have the option
to pick from a variety of base
periods to compare profits. If they
wish, profits of the five year
period prior to the controls may
be compared to profits in the five
year period after — meaning in
effect that there are no controls
for another 4 years.

AIB shows the

system in a mess

through direct or indirect taxes,
or by means of intensified exploi-
tation. Moreover, the money goes
to the advertising agencies and
the mass media, owned by the
capitalist monopolies, to defend
their cause and attack labor.
Meanwhile, the leader of the
Tory opposition in Parliament is
over in Europe agitating for in-

‘creased arms spending. The re-

sult of that will be greater profits
for the armament profiteers,

intensified inflation and a threat to.

world peace as well.
Tory Medicine

It is therefore abundantly clear
that the Tories have nothing to
offer but more of the same
medicine that the Liberals are
now prescribing for us as a
‘‘cure’’ for what is a deepening
crisis of the capitalist system.
“We can now see more clearly
every day that the system gets
into more and more of a mess
everywhere in the capitalist
world. The only cure is to aban-
don monopoly policies’ and to
embark upon a serious struggle to
break monopoly domination. Un-

_less this is done, and done now,

the attack on the working class
will intensify along with a
piecemeal dismantling of one
democratic gain after another
won in decades of struggle until
there is nothing left but barefaced
dictatorship by monopoly capital.

The Communist Party has long
advocated. an alliance in this
country between all working class
and democratic forces and di-

rected against the capitalist
monopolies. The leading force in
such an alliance can only be the
working class. Only by fulfilling
its role as leader can the working
class go beyond the narrow limits
of the struggle to improve the
terms on which it sells its labor-
power to the capitalists and rise to
become the leader of-the nation,
leader of society.

Lie Is Spread
The organized workers do not
seek special privileges at the ex-
pense of the unorganized, the
poor and under-privileged. This is
a lie spread by the enemies of the
working people. The working

class, in fact can only free itself.

from monopoly capitalist exploi-
tation by liberating all oppressed
and exploited people and by
building a society free from all
exploitation and oppression.

The National Day of Protest.

organized by the Canadian Labor
Congress and its affiliated unions
and democratic allies is a wel-
come development. True, it is but
a small step in the advance of the
struggle by the working class of
this country for a greater say in
determining the direction this
country is to take to build a demo-
cratic and prosperous future. But
it can become a most important
step, given all-out support by
anti- monopoly forces:

That is why the steps taken by
the New Democratic Party (be-
lated and timid as they may be) to
support the trade unions in their
campaign against wage control
and for restoration of full and ex-
panded collective bargaining, are
to be welcomed.

It is to be noted that the class
enemy has lost no time in attack-
ing this development and doing its
best to foster division in labor’s

* ranks. The employers and the

Bruce Magnuson, labor se¢ret-
ary of the Communist Party.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 24, 1976—Page 8

government seek to foster the

_ mistaken notion of separation be-

tween the economic and political
struggle, and between the politi-
cal forces of the left.

But the road to the future lies
through a healing of the split in the
working-class movement and for
effective action to unify the
economic and political struggle,
beaming it, toward the class
enemy in both the parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary arenas.

‘* And in one final move to reas-
sure the business community that
they will not “be hurt. by the anti-
inflation program he has stipu-
lated that none of the rules will
apply unless the firm is earning
more than 8% on ‘capital in-
vested,’’ she continued, ‘‘and in
contrast to this generous treat-
ment for business the Finance
Minister has again reminded
Canadian workers that their
allowable wage increases will go
down by a further 2% on October
14.”

Donald Montgomery, secret-
ary treasurer of the CLC, joined
Carr’s attack on the government
and AJB two days later after Tru-
deau announced a million dollar
public relations campaign to try
and buy public opinion for the
wage control program. Trudeau
had contended in his public
statements that the August cost of
living index indicated that the
controls were effective in check-
ing inflation. Montgomery coun-
tered that the government was
misusing the consumer price. in-
dex and that an objective account
of the index revealed what the
CLC had-been saying all along
‘“‘that the controls do not work
except in keeping peopie’s in-
comes down while prices con-
tinue to rise.”

When food prices were re-
moved from the index, the CLC
secretary analyzed, ‘‘the monthly
rise... was .8%, similar to that of
August 1974 and August 1975. In
other words it seems clear that the
controls have had no real effect
on prices.’ Changes in food
prices are misleading to the index,
he explained, because food, along
with energy and housing are
exempt from price or profit con-
trol anyway.

‘‘Meanwhile government

concluded

“Business has forced
the new rules by refusing

to invest,” said CLC vice

president Shirley Cart,
“and the government's re-

sponse, in contrast to the

threats against organized
labor for their planned
general strike, is to
change its policies...”

spokesmen go around the country —

using consumer price index
figures in an attempt to make it

appear that their program is work-

ing and carefully avoiding the fact
that most of the cost of living
changes,

ected by the controls.”
Montgomery, ‘*And now accord-
ing to recent reports the govern-
ment-intends to go even further in
its deception by using more thana
million dollars collected from the
taxpayer in a futile advertising
campaign intended to convince
that same. taxpayer that his
money is being wisely used on the
900 bureaucrats on the Anti-In-
flation Board.””

“There is no justice,” Cart
in her statement,
‘‘when a government responds to
the withdrawal of investment by
changing its policiés,
sponds to the withdrawal of labor
by trying to intimidate workers
with fines and jail sentences.”

‘*The government should with-
draw the program,’’ Montgomery
added, ‘‘before it does any more
harm to the average consumer.”

Controls not working

NDP leader tells crowd

“By MARION TAGGART

Several thousand men and
women trade unionists marched
in Hamilton on Labor Day and
gathered at Gage Park to hear
New Democratic Party leader Ed
Broadbent. attack the: anti-in-
flation program in his Labor Day
address.

Wage controls, Broadbent
said, are demanding extra-
ordinary sacrifices from working
people while doing nothing to
curb the exorbitant profits of big
business. He pointed out that in
the first six months of the year
profits had risen 19% over the
same period last year. Broadbent
said that he would make wage
controls the central issue in a two
week national campaign against
the AIB.

“Industries, sectors and indi-
viduals’? would be named, he
said, to prove the anti-inflation
program a sham. The campaign
will be called the ‘‘anti-illusion
board,’’ the NDP leader said,
‘Because it’s designed to shatter
the illusion that the controls are
working.”

The welcome news of a cam-
paign against the AIB from the
NDP went well with the Hamilton
Labor Day audience. Many,

_though, were disappointed in

Broadbent’s failure to express

support for the Day of Protest on

October 14.

Broadbent’s equivocal ap-
proach to the Day of Protest stood
in contrast to the Labor Day
Parade that carried a host of ban-
ners and placards supporting the

protest. The size of the parade)

together with the biggest partici-
pation in.several years from Local
879 of the Teamsters indicated
the widespread support for the

~ Day of Protest.
Local 4166, United Steel-|

workers, presently on_ strike,
against Robertson Building Sys-
tems won the Labor Day Award
for the largest percentage of union
members taking part in the march
and United Electrical Workers
Local 504 won the award for the
best union float. The UE float de-

-picted the government, AIB and

employers as bowling pins about!
to be sent flying vy. the CLC bowl-
ing ball.

both upward and-
downward, occur in sectors una
said

but re-