en ee IE ae Grenada: agriculture for the people — By NORMAN FARIA ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — A stone’s throw from the Botanic dens nestles a nondescript building about the size of a Supermarket. _There are no signs on the out- Side walls to indicate the intense activity taking place inside: this is the Ministry of Agriculture’s Pro- duce Laboratory, a project which Ne island’s new People’s Revolu- onary Government (PRG) hopes will lay the basis for a new and Viable agro-industry. Set up soon after the fall of the Tegime, the lab has been Producing and test marketing a Rumber of products made from the local fruits and spices for which the West Indies is famous. ‘The response from the public has been quite favorable. You must understand that these pro- ducts are not entirely new — they are produced from standardized formulations, although I have to say there is a slight difference in flavor from similiar products available from private industry,” Dr. Juliette Newell, the assistant director of operations, said. On loan from the United Na- tions Development Program, Jamaican-born Dr. Newell said that her team is working with a number of locally grown fruits and spices. These include guava, cinnamon, cotten seed, limes, bananas, mango and nutmeg. She said the finished products will take several forms. ‘‘The jams, jellies and sauces will of course be quite popular but we are also marketing banana flakes for use in cereals,’’ she said. Because of her status on the island, Dr. Newell was hesitant to comment on the reaction of the island’s private import firms. From her experience in working in other developing countries, however, she felt it was normal for a government trying to de- velop its own industry and to cut back on imports of certain com- modites. The PRG is awaiting the arrival of fruit processing machinery to install in a plant already set up. The products are expected to come on stream shortly. The Ministry of Agriculture moved to establish the project be- cause of the inability or unwill- ingness of private industry to get involved. We learned later from the Ministry that equipment for producing and marketing the pro- ducts in question was virtually non-existent or very primitive. Indeed, practically all of Grena- da’s foodstuffs, Eastern Carib- bean $7,000,000 worth (one EC dollar equals U.S. $2.60), is im- ported. - The island exports agricultural products such as bananas, cocoa and nutmeg which are grown on small plots and large estates. In 1961, 1% of all ‘‘farmers’’ on these large estates owned 56% of the total acreage while 89%, mostly poor peasants, owned 24% of the acreage. The government is counting on the developing on the agro- industrial front to result in a re- duction in unemployment levels. “‘We are anxious to increase employment, to put more people into meaningful work. We think this will happen if we increase our production. We have evi- dence of this in projects already underway’’, said Norbert Fletcher, the Permanent Secre- tary in the Ministry. Fletcher deplored the fact that in the past many valuable fruits such as mangoes were given to pigs or left to rot on the ground. Jim Tester, a top-rated tradesman, machinist, millwright, and Maintenance mechanic, worked at Falconbridge Nickel Mines for 25 years where he was an active trade unionist. A shop steward for 4 years, Tester carried on a fight for proper apprenticeship training and wrote a number of briefs on trades training to government, educational and union committees. He has been interested in and has studied apprenticeship systems from all over the world and in May, 1979 studied the apprenticeship Set-up in the German Democratic Republic. In second of a series of Articles, Tester describes the GDR system and makes some com- Parisons with what we have here. By JIM TESTER beet two years ago, when I first 3 Seen discussing the importance De, first-hand look at the German ‘Sonia Republic apprentice- P system, the first reaction was the e amused tolerance. On the é reg Canadian labor leaders aS n't see how the GDR : ee be related ito ar ing problems. On the eee GDR trade union and edu- Onal experts were so busy per- a their vocational training 2 €m, they hadn’t thought of it sh 4 world model, never mind Owing it off. Lee hanks to the efforts of the hag for People’s Friendship ae fur Volkerfruendschaft), I ceed to be the first Rive ish-speaking visitor to be Cation 4 complete tour of GDR vo- 10nal training and related waits What I saw in the 32 May fatty knit schedule last be th lly convinces me I won’t . the last: The whole educa- Concept is so well thought » SO rational and thorough, as breath-taking and inspira- onal out tional. In the future, any serious educator in North America will study it and insist on seeing it, first-hand if possible. Of course, no system works flawlessly, especially when it 1s still in the ¢ourse of refinement, with new schools, workshops and hostels being constantly added. What I saw was first-rate. By our standards, some of the buildings were old and outdated. We would have torn them down long ago, but they have a different order in their priorities. Buildings are a poor fourth, behind teachers, cur- riculum and classroom facilities. The costs of GDR education have increased sixfold in the past 20 years. That gives some idea of importance given education nee They believe their main capital is in educated and trained people. Asa leading industrial na- tion in the world, they are con- stantly plowing back their na- tional treasure into their edu- cational system. They have put their emphasis on people, believ- ing that in the long run this ie pay social dividends to their 1 million population beyond re- Cs Left: Jim Tester (centre) with teachers in front of a renovated 100-year old former factory, which is now a polytechnical school. Above: Joe Astgen, financial sec- retary of Local 598 Mine-Mill talks to apprentices training to be min- ers. Right: During their two year course students spend half a day in classrooms rest in field. ckoning. Who’ can argue with that? When the arrangements were being made for my tour of their training and educational facilities, co-operation between the educa-" tional, government, management and trade union officials was achieved, and the road-blocks cleared by the League for People’s Friendship — no small task. My main concentration was on vocational training for mining, machine building and agricultural implement trades. At my request, the itinerary was expanded to in- clude visits to three more mines, a big building site and a service centre where apprentices were being trained. In typical fashion, the first three days in my fact-finding tour were spent with educationists, who outlined the aims, objectives and history of their educational and vocational training system. They were informative and direct, answering all questions during the discussion period, which in- variably followed the lecture series. The first outline was given by the head of the department for vocational training curriculae, Achim Schuberth. A_ pleasant, middle-age man, he is represent- ative of the new GDR working- class intellectual. A mechanic and fitter by trade, he studied by cor- respondence and then evenings, to eventually. graduate form uni- versity as an engineer and educator. In fact, every teacher and department head in the vari- ous vocational schools I visited had come up the same way. They had been all skilled tradesmen to begin with, upgrading their quali- fications to become teachers. They were all knowledgeable, keen and down-to-earth in their approach to the educational pro- cess. That is a reflection — an impor- tant one — of putting the working-class at the helm of GDR social and political life. Where better to place to start than with the school system? Thereby, hangs a tale. (next week: drastic surgery on the .educational system) Seven top unions in CLC A series of mergers and the growth of union organization have combined to strengthen the Canadian labor movement, par- ticularly the Canadian Labor Congress. Of the new top ten labor organizations in the country today, seven are CLC affiliates. The merger of three CLC af- filiates in the food industry this spring, the Canadian Food and Allied Workers, (CFAW), Union of Canadian Retail Employees, and the Retail Clerks Interna- tional Union, (RCIU), has created the sixth largest union in the country and within the CLC. The United Food and Commer- cial Workers Union moved the merged CFAW and RCIU from 17th to 18th place respectively. The affiliation of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, (OPSEU), to the National Union of Provincial Government Em- ployees Union, has pushed NUPGE from fifth to second posi- tion after the 250,000-member Canadian Union of Public Em- ployees. An unofficial tally based on union sources and the Corpora- tions and Labor Unions Returns Act, (CALURA), places the cur- rent top ten and their relative pos- itions in 1977 as follows: Membership 1977 é (OLC) rank 1: Canadian Union of Public Employees (CLC) 250,000 (1) 2. National Union of Provincial Government Employees (CLC) 198,000 (5) 3. United Steel Workers of America (CLC) 195,000 (2) 4. Public Service Alliance of Canada (CLC) 160,000 (3) 5. United Autoworkers (CLC) 135,000 (4) 6. United Food and Commercial Workers (CLC) 115,000 (17 and 18) 7. Teamsters (independent) 93,000 (7) 8. United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (CLC) 85,000 (6) 9. Quebec Teachers Council (CEQ) 75,000 (8) 10. Social Affairs Federation (Confederation of National Trade Unions) 72,000 (12) PACIFIC TRIBUNE— AUGUST 31, 1979—Page 5