WLLL For trade Union democracy list Were six sate was the ideology of German Fascism. Its vic- yMentratio illion Jews and democrats from Europe slaughtered ®TWo. Thi n camps. Thirty million lives snuffed out in World : The, fetking historical lesson is burned into the conscious- bo ae Pit iComenvention of the Canadian Labor Congress stripped Cy ration of ae clauses from its constitution, as did the Quebec tomes ee before it. The Vancouver and Toronto Labor ne t are m ed suit this spring and Labor Councils across the end ree rine their constitutions into line with the he hi stitution. atter ae Parliaments of Canadian Labor have spoken on this “int letter of avin International Union to act contrary to the spirit Mis ‘an is decision, under terms decided upon in another ii ayrent and affront to the autonomy of the Canadian labor ‘9 NY isets, Not in keeping with the fighting traditions of the are ; “erent unjete-unionists of different political stripes, and from Case Ee many of us had never met Jim Bridgewood before wae of me known. We are neither the defenders nor the j i ridgey communism. What unites us is our determination that mocracy and issued an appeal for support to Jim Bridgewood in his fight in the UAW. Their appeal is as follows: € are s must be restored to full rights in his union. In “7 Otatic ri cting in concern of our unions and on behalf of the Inthe nanehts of all Canadians. : to t, in the € of all that. is precious to the Canadian labor move- } int’ a Beene of all those who fought, against whatever odds, | Stter tom tatic traditions which inspire Canadians today towards * Support 330% we appeal to you: : Union.” im Bridgewood’s fight for his democratic rights in Ptign 5 ee ttibute to his defense fund. ivbrief . . . i e jnt@SS workers—more freight Bas = in the Canadian National Railway decreased by _pProductiyats 1967 and 1968. 9] aay increase was shown in a decrease of freight miles €nt while the gross ton miles was up by 1.3 percent. ue a u 2 Mente We care"—youre fired! yeused ea Pacific Tea Company (A&P Stores) have been wy, iG e Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Work- ~lon’s van of “blatant intimidation of employees. during the Hye’ femate« drive to organize the company’s stores.” J ee "i that ae off as full time employees with the understanding Vant® Wome, Continue to work on a part time basis. : Cation Ee will lose $50 a week, pension rights, welfare and nate Scaling seniority rights and job security. ae exible says this is part of its policy which will give it oS easier : ity with its employees. They state that women workers tet? Union Manipulate. cn 88 5 N angrily reminds the company “that these are human E: "Siderin’ are talking about manipulating, not machines”. It is : 8 legal action against the food-chain. Z, Underground exposed oS argeq oovakian Communist Party newspaper, Rude Pravo, ihe ANti-sogj pot some journalists failed to report that thousands Gey lat ae ist pamphlets calling for armed uprisings are being «tlany Czechoslovakia. One of the pamphlets sent from West Sua) oe ceed villages urged Czechoslovakians to conduct : age.” y qth aaPhlets call for liquidation of Communism, strikes and » yehed | y from the Warsaw pact and the socialist camp. One, eed Ace. Secret Committee for the Defense of the Fatherland,” ak Pee “disarm the People’s Militia and use arms against tigetion aM factory managers who are Communists, give admin- th Crag: - factories to the Defense of the Fatherland Committee, f ot enh nal party secretaries, use arms in case of resistance, ‘pute new ers of the State Security forces.” b¢e h SPaper said that the press in the period when Alexander Pierced the party raised a storm about alleged “illegal ley an d Published by the forces working for a return to nor- Nan e ees but failed to expose the anti-socialist literature. "S me di Orial, the paper also charged that “the majority of the ion j e for a number of months in 1968 deformed the real a the country, hid Nsions in our relations with the other socialist countries.” fg € employees with seniority ranging from 11 to 26 years ~ Conglomerates ruthless to workers in Canada The conglomerate phenomena of recent years is a somewhat new twist of the holding com- pany types of corporation own- ership. Starting in the mid- nineteen-sixties in the U-S.. 2 wave of acquisition and merg- ers has continued unabated with hundreds of companies scramb- ling to take over firms that have not even the most remote pro- duct identity with the original company. Some of the conglomerates have been assembled by long established well known Corpo- rations. Many others arise of small relatively unknown com-. panies taking over giants many times their size through share- price manipulation and out of financial deceit. The type of manipulation used is perhaps best described in an article in Business Week, November 30, 1968. This article reports that: “Conglomerates have been called ‘figments of Wall Street’s imagination,’ because their fore- most tool is the price-earnings multiple. The higher a conglo- merate’s stock price relative to its earnings per share, the less it spends to buy another com- pany... «| Consider this example, in which everybody makes money when a conglomerator uses a high p/e to buy a low p/e. A conglomerate whose stock sells at $45 a share and is earning $1 a share makes a deal to acquire a company that has the same number of shares outstanding, and a stock selling at $10 and also earning $1. The conglomerate offers one of its shares for every three of the other company’s—an irresist- ible 50 percent premium to the other’s shareholders. When the merger is complete, the conglo- merate (which has issued a third as many new shares as it already had outstanding) can combine the earnings and re- state them for the diluted equi- ty. Now, where three shares of the parent’s stock used to earn $3, four shares earn $6, for a per share profit of $1.50. Its stock, based on the p/e of 45, rises to $67.50.” The conglomerating compa- nies are more interested in driv- ing up stock prices than obtain- ing profit through development of products of acquired compa- nies. That does not mean that they are indifferent about the profitability of companies ac- - quired. The fact is that they are even more ruthless in treatment of employees of companies that have been take over. To main- tain the paper value of the con- glomerate empire, workers are laid off, fired and even plants closed completely when the pro- fitability of an addition threat- ens to tarnish the lustre of the conglomerate. The Business Week article, referred to above, contains this definition of con- glomerates: “A conglomerate is a kind of business that services indus- try the way Bonnie and Clyde serviced banks.” This ruthlessness towards workers has been displayed in Canada in recent times. Just last week, it was an- nounced that members of the IUE, who had been on a 10 month strike against the Proc- the sources of the real danger, and tor Silex Company at Picton, Ontario, voted to terminate the strike. Proctor Silex is part of a conglomerate that includes SCM, Singer and Friden Corpo- ration. The SCM _ company smashed a UE strike at its To- ronto plant in 1967 and it is re- ported that other members of the group have smashed strikes at U.S. plants in the last year or SOx eg 5 Earlier this month Fairbanks Morse Canada Ltd. in King- ston announced that they were closing their plant. The an- nouncement came two weeks after the workers there had hit the bricks to improve their economic conditions. Fairbanks Morse is a member of the Colt Industries conglomerate in the U.S. Another group of Can- adian workers were axed early this year when Kelvinator an- nounced the closing of its Lon- don plant. This company had recently been acquired by the U.S. conglomerate, White Con- solidated Industries, who decid- ed the Canadian operation wasn’t worth keeping open. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about conglomerates is the diversity of the product lines involved. In the past, cor- porate mergers or take-overs were usually limited to firms in the same industry or suppliers. of materials used or marketing Little's outlets. This shows quite plain- ly that corporations are in busi- ness to make one thing—money. In Canada, in recent years, we have seen Slater Steel acquiring Salada Foods which has now just been acquired by Kellogs; Molsons taking over Anthes Imperial, a fair sized conglome- rate in itself; Rothmans, Can- adians Brewers; Brazilian Light — Labatt’s; Great West Sad- dlery—Great Western Life etc. Among the giant conglome- rates of the U.S. are corpora- tions such as Litton Industries, Warthington Corp., LTV, TRW, Textron and ITT. This latter cor- poration, originally in the com- munications industry, now con- trols hotel chains, car rental systems, finance and insurance companies, parking lots and manufacturing firms in a wide variety of industries. Aside from ruthless wheeling and dealing and disregard for the welfare of workers and even communities, the conglomerates are also a menace in the fur- thering of concentration of mo- nopoly. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, “If the current merger pace con- tinues, 75 percent of all the cor- porate assets in the U.S. will be in the hands of only 200 com- panies by 1975.” report affront to workers “Judge Little’s report on the organization of collective bar- gaining in the Ontario govern- ment is in effect another effort to deprive all civil servants of the fundamental civil liberty of bargaining collectively through a union of their own choice,” ac- cording to David Archer, presi- dent, Ontario Federation of Labor. “Little says, I cannot accept the proposition that anyone who joins the public service has the - right in conjunction with others, to withdraw his services with the sole objective of compelling duly-elected governments to meet their demands, no matter how meritorious these may be. Now, to me this contains at least two false assumptions, one, that every government empleyee is an essential service employee whose decision to withdraw his services would affect the health and welfare of the community. Obviously there are plenty of government employees who are less essential, certainly no more essential, than employees in private industry who retain the right to strike without question. Secondly the idea that no matter how meritorious the grievance, redress is repugnant to anyone who supports civil liberties. It smacks of a master and slave relationship,” Archer continued. “It is perfectly obvious to me that hundreds of thousands of government employees are not going to be relegated to second class citizenship in the field of collective bargaining where the sovereignty of the government decides their bargaining agent, — and organized disagreement is equated with some sort of dis- loyalty. Civil servants who de- mand free collective bargaiping should be entitled to it. It 1s an affront to their dignity to offer them anything less,” he added. Threat of troops in Quebec strike Over 6,000 construction work- ers on strike since May 12 in Quebec City and region are menaced by Quebec Security police and by threats that troops may be called in. The workers, members of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, are striking for recognition of their right to have all construction hiring done through union hir- ing halls. The Quebec government last week sent 50 Security police to a construction site near St. Val- lier de Bellechasse, where 300 striking workers had gathered to make certain that construc- tion work had stopped. At Cha- teau- Richer, the mayor has threatened to call in not only Quebec Security police but also troops. The construction workers’ struggle for security of employ- ment is solid. In the Quebec City region, it has stopped construc- tion on new projects estimated at $500 million. CNTU President Marcel Pepin - has called for the resignation of Quebec Labor Minister, Maurice Bellemarre of the governing Union Nationale party, stating that during its twenty years in power, “‘the Union Nationale has had as its only aim, the destruc- tion of workers and their uni- ons.” "i PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 30, 1969—Page 5