VOL. 13 No.

Ure Aad Ras ed CA

Vancouver, British eéhimnbia. January 8, 1954

phi
1 AML AMSA E Dhecesit

HY
f He

dai

= PRICE TEN CENTS

400,000 jobless by March?

Latest official figure released from Ottawa as of November 19
showed a registered 266,000 unemployed in Canada at that time.
Layoffs since then have probably pushed the figure over the 300,000
mark, and it is predicted that there will be 400,000 iobless in this

country by the end of March.

Layoffs swell

lines of jobless

Not since the grim winter of
1949-50 have employment condi
tions been so bad in British Col-
umbia as they are today. Every
day the lines grow longer and
longer at Unemployment Insur-
ance offices in Vancouver and a
score of cities and towns. Mis-
sions and “charity” ceutres are
unable to cope with the hundreds
of hungry men whose unemploy
ment insurance benefits have run
out, or who are ineligible to re-
ceive any.

Layoffs continue to take place
at an alarming rate, making gov-
ernment figures — which always
lag a few weeks behind the cur-
rent situation—completely out of
date. (Official figures for Decem-
ber 10 lister 22,000 jobless in B.C.
compared with 17,000 at that date
in 1952. Cutbacks in December
and this week have probably rais-
ed this figure to 40,000 or more.)

Workers in British Columbia‘s
basic industries—lumbering, min-
ing, construction and transporta-
tion—have been hardest hit. And)
says the National Employment
Service monthly summary of em-

ployment conditions in B.C., “The
general situation holds no prom-
ise for improvement in some
time.”

“About 600 men have been laid
off at Trail smelter in the past
year, and the working force is
down to 3,300,” Mine-Mill region-
al director Harvey Murphy said
this week.

“At Kimberley some 1,200 men
are all working on short time—
losing two days every two weeks.

“In the province 22 small mines
have shut down. The unemploy-
ment crisis and the deteriorating
situation in regard to base metals
will be one of the key subjects
under discussion at our union
district convention in Vancouver
this month.”

“How is the employment situ-
ation in the shipbuilding indus-
try? /It just ain’t!? said Bill
White, president of the Marine
Workers and ,;Boilermakers Un-
ion.

Marine Workers business repre-
sentative Sam Jenkins told the
Pacific Tribune: “Right now we

Continued on back page
See UNEMPLOYMENT

‘$4 BILON
FOR DEFENSE
NOTHING F

B.C, JOBS

The St. Laurent government’s rejection
of the Bennett government’s proposed $286
million economic expansion program for
British Columbia, with federal and provin-
cial governments sharing equally in the cost;

is arousing widespread criticism of federal
policies in the province.

The rejection stands in sharp contrast. to
the report from Ottawa this week that the
federal cabinet i is considering a plan to spend
$4 billion on “‘air defense’’—$1 billion a
year for the next four years it expects to
continue in office. -

Two provincial cabinet members have an-
nounced the government's determination to
proceed with completion of the Pacific
Great Eastern Railway, which accounts for
an estimated $70 miilion of the $286 mil
lion program.

Speaking in Kelowna on Monday this

week, Premier W. A. C. Bennett stated that
his government intended to extend the PGE
to Vancouver ‘‘with or without’ federal
aid. A similar statement was made by At-
torney. General Robert Bonner, speaking in
Vancouver the same day, when he announc-
ed that Social Credit’s “number one aim
for 1954’’ was extension of the PGE into
the Peace River, which he described as
“easily one of the richest areas in North
America, if not in the whole western
world.’’

(Completion of the PGE over the 40-
mile stretch from Squamish to Vancouver
will cost an estimated ‘$12 million and ex-
tension of the railroad from its present
northern terminus at Prince George to Daw-
son Creek in the Peace River will cost an
estimated $48 million. In addition, the gov-

Continued on back page—See PROGRAM

AMULET TLC ikl

-

Real story of. the

TUL

CCC

oukhobors

STORY ON PAGE 9

‘i
if
¢
4