EDITORIAL

Parliament postponed |
_butissues won'tgo away

All sorts of press speculation met Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney’s decision to postpone resumption
of Parliament until October, but without doubt he’s
putting his “image problem” ahead of the country’s
concerns. And that’s why, along with the dismal
Tory record over the past two years, poll after poll
shows the Tories slipping badly and Mulroney as a
leader few trust.

How could it be otherwise?

His election promises were hollow. The agenda ~

which promised fairness, jobs, a new deal, is in
shambles. It’s been 24 months of scandals, of cor-
porate giveaways, of labor-bashing, of demeaning
sellouts to court U.S. favors.

Assault after assault has been launched against
social gains and it has only been the united outcry,
as exemplified by the fight to save the pension
program, that has prevented a wholesale dismant-
ling of such programs.

Corporate Canada, the large overstuffed hogs at
the public trough, have never had it better. Accord-
ing to a Canadian Union of Public Employees pub-
lication, the Tories have been giving as much as $40
billion a year to their corporate pals, much of it in
“no strings attached” handouts which have had
little if any job-creating results. In direct grants and
tax breaks, companies such as Hyundai Motors,
General Motors and Domtar are raking in funds
at a breathtaking pace, while ‘‘jobs, jobs,
jobs,” remains a cruel hoax for over 1.5-million

How could Mulroney expect popularity with
such a pathetic record? The public may have fallen
for his line in 1984, but this is 1986 and winter is
coming.

Free trade is viewed with mounting suspicion
that: 1) It isn’t free; 2) It will cost Canadian jobs; 3)
It will cost another chunk of our already eroded
sovereignty. Only Mulroney remains undaunted by
blow after blow delivered to Canada’s economy by

the U.S., and urges us to trust in Reagan. Most
Canadians know better.

One area where the Tories did fulfill their election
promise was to tighten the military stranglehold by
the Pentagon on our country. We’ve tested the
cruise. We’ve locked our north into NORAD.
We’ve spent billions on weapons and kowtowed to
Reagan on practically every issue. Canada’s foreign
policy has continued to follow our economy south-
ward under this government.

No Dalton Camp or Ontario Big Blue Machine
can pretty up the picture of a prime minister and
Tory party which is deservedly discredited. People
just don’t trust them to do anything but more of the
same.

There is no “new image” or “new agenda.” It’s
the same anti-people, pro-corporate, pro-Wash-
ington agenda. And Mulroney has no qualms at all
about hijacking Parliament for another month
while he gets his political face-lift. That by itself,

_ could show the “new” Tory image for what it really

is.

Communists have long argued for the building of
a people’s majority outside parliament to counter
the Tory majority inside. All around this country
the ingredients can be seen —labor fighting hard,
farmers organizing in the face of crisis, people work-
ing against free trade, and thousands marching and
acting for peace.

The political landscape shows citizens’ groups of
all sizes springing up and taking direct action on
issues of the day. Full employment, job creation, an
independent foreign policy of peace, an independ-
ent culture, increased social benefits for all Canadi-

_ans, equality for women, a better deal for youth, are

among the many key demands with which people
are answering the Tory corporate agenda.

Mulroney may have postponed Parliament to get
his political act together, but the issues, like the
truth, will not go away.

NPV: :
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By VICTOR PERLO
. Because President Reagan, the TV
actor, has had considerable propaganda
success with sections of the U.S. people, it
is necessary to deal with the concrete ideo-
logical issues he uses. An important Rea-

Commentary

eh RN NE DNS 8 RT ES

- The myth of job creation under Reagan

cent; Nixon-Ford, 1.97 per cent, Cart
3.30 per cent; Reagan 1.56 per cent. St
that the greatest growth rate was U?
Carter — not that he deserves any S
credit for it — but Reagan capitalized
the cyclical crisis in Carter’s last yeat

gan trick, aimed at workers especially, is

the boast that he has created a record:

number of new jobs. As we shall see, that’s
an outright lie.

But first, Reagan deserves no credit for
whatever increase did take place. Many of
his policies — slashing federal jobs, wel-
fare, social service, public housing
programs — have reduced employment.
Employment in the United States tends to
grow even in very bad economic condi-
tions simply because the population is
growing, especially the number of work-
ing people. :

Consider the worst economic decade in
US. history, the terrible Thirties. At the
end of the decade there were more
employees of non-agricultural establish-
ments than at the beginning.

At any time, there are plenty of capital-
ists with plenty of capital who will hire
workers if they can hire them for a low
enough wage to guarantee a very high rate
of profit. In January 1981, just before
Reagan took office, the minimum wage
was set at $3.35 per hour, much lower in
relation to the general level of wages than
it had been for some decades. It is still
$3.35 per hour, which means that it is 20
per cent lower in real terms, allowing for

-

the offically admitted rise in living costs.
According to figures cited by William
Serrin in the New York Times June 8,
there are 14 million U.S. workers toiling at
or near the minimum wage. If we go up to
$4.50, the real equivalent of the minimum

-wage when Reagan entered the White

House, we would be talking about 20-25
million workers, one out four on payrolls.

Capitalists use the reduced minimum
wage and increased numbers of workers
forced to toil at these wages as a lever to
force down the wages of industrial
workers all along the line. While slashing
wages and benefits, capitalists have
reduced employment in manufacturing,
especially in basic industry where workers
had won decent conditions through
decades of struggle. Meanwhile, they
increased employment in low-wage “ser-
vice” industries, from which a higher rate
of profit could be returned. Often it would
be the same conglomerate, shutting down
a heavy industry plant, while buying up a
chain of retail stores and pushing consu-
mer credit lines at usurious interest rates.
Their “bottom line” gains. The working
class, especially those sections who are
most doomed to substandard wages, loses.

At the same time, however, Serrin

repeats ‘the propaganda of a “sharp”
increase in the number of jobs, and an
“improved” economy under Reagan, even
resorting to such a trick as comparing the
increase in the number of jobs in 6/2 years
under Carter and Reagan with the increase
in an earlier four-year period.

The fact is that the increase in jobs
under Reagan — jobs of any quality —
has been much slower than the post-war
average rate of growth.

Between 1980, the last year before Rea-
gan, and 1985, payroll employment
increased 7.3 million. the numerical
increase was much more in each of the
preceding three five-year periods. The
important thing is the rate of increase.
Under Reagan it was 1.56 per cent per
year, slower than the rate of increase in the
number of people needing jobs. During
the previous 35 years, from 1945 to 1980,
the increase was 2.33 per cent per year, one
and one-half times as fast as under Rea-
gan. Moreover, Reagan’s record is far
worse than that of any other postwar pres-
ident except Eisenhower. Annual job
growth rates for different administrations
were as follows:

Truman, 2.74 per cent; Eisenhower,
1.32 per cent; Kennedy-Johnson, 2.73 per

beat him in 1980.

Working people need to redouble
rate of increase in employment and me
than redouble it for a period by gettin®
of the Reaganites in 1986 and finally
1988; winning the job-creating prog
of the trade unions and the Ha
Conyers bill; achieving a shorter ye
week with no cut in pay; winning a @
million government job program prov
ing education, health care, tt |
rebuilding the rotting infrastructure, ¥,
viding mass public housing, revé
environmental decay; doubling the yf
imum wage and reversing the wav® ff
wage cuts and takeaways; reviving
strengthening the Wagner Act, the D?
Bacon Act, and establishing far-rea®
affirmative action programs; rev!
basic industry by prohibiting plant sh
downs and the export of jobs, OP® i
wide the doors of trade with socialist 9
tries; using part of the military bud8 4
finance the supply of equipment *.<
materials to help developing cou?”
build their own economic base; ane
verting military industries to civilia? Pea
duction. is

Victor Perlo is the chair of the Econol™!
Commission of the U.S. Communist P#

4 © PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 10, 1986