This May Day, Chilean
workers will be marching
‘as we did under Allende’

x

n Chile this year, workers are
| going to celebrate May Day, in
the streets, as they did before
President Allende was overthrown
— even though for union leaders
like Manuel Jimenez, it will prob-
ably mean arrest and perhaps tor-
ture at the hands of the junta.

“The movement against the jun-
ta is growing — and this year the
workers want to celebrate May Day
according to their traditions, not as
Pinochet dictates,’’ Jimenez told
the Tribune in an interview last
week.

A long-time leader of the
Leather and Shoe Workers in Chile
and a member of the Central Co-
ordinating Council of Unions

which works in conditions of only .

semi-legality to coordinate union
work, Jimenez was in this country
last week to address a solidarity
conference in Calgary and to
mount support for Chileans who
will be demonstrating en masse
May 1 in defiance of the junta’s
ban. : :

He was to return to Chile April
28 — to take part himself in the
May Day actions, in the face of
what is expected will be massive re-

See will be great repression
on :
» demonstrations but be-
NO ete junta has suffered a de-
feat internationally,” he said.
«That is why we have called for
solidarity around the world, be-
cause We know that the military will
be making new arrests.’”
Jimenez expects that he himself
will bea target of the junta’s attack.
“ey myself will probably be
arrested,” he told ‘the Tribune.
<«We can expect to be arrested and

tortured.

May 1 — not only because of

“But that will not stop the dem-
onstrations on May Day.”’

Already, in an attempt to sup-
press the growing movement, the
junta has begun a new round of ar-
rests. Earlier this month, 17 peas-
ant leaders were seized by police

- and detained and then sent into ex-

ile in other regions of the country.

Despite the repression and the
threat of mass arrests, the Coordin-
ating Council has called workers
into the streets in the major cities —
in the capital, Santiago, in concep-
cion, in Valparaiso.

More important, a mass meeting
will be called where participants
will be called upon to reaffirm a
declaration issued by the National
Command in. Defence of Trade
Union Rights calling for unity of
the people in the struggle against
the junta.

The meeting, like the demon-
strations, will be in open defiance
of the junta’s ban.

The call for May Day demon-
strations and for people’s unity
against the junta signals a new up-
surge in the Chilean union move-
ment, sparked by the growing eco-
nomic repression of the junta —
and, in turn by the increasing com-
bativeness of the unions.

That combativeness, in turn, has
grown from the struggle against the
junta’s new labor legislation which,
as Jimenez noted, “‘has institution-
alized and legalized the exploita-
tion of workers.”’

Chile’s . “‘new’’_ labor edict
which went into effect last July, ac-
tually mirrors legislation which was
in existence 30 years before Allende
was elected, he stressed.

“The junta was forced to make
some changes but the changes are
not real,”’ he said.

Under that legislation, unions
are recognized as legal entities but
are forbidden to negotiate by in-
dustry, instead having to secure
whatever agreements they can on

an individual plant or factory basis. |

Jimenez cited the example of the
bakery workers who were together
in a mass federation during the
Allende years but now must negoti-
ate as many small components.

In addition, he said, workers can
ask to be outside the union — an
echo — or perhaps the original
form — of the right-to-work law.

The right to strikeis also prohibi-
tively restricted ‘‘and workers do
not have the right to picket since it
is forbidden under the ‘law of na-
tional security of the state,’ ’’ he
said.

But although the legislation was
intended to stifle strike action,
workers have struck — at the cop-
per mine at El Teniente, at Chicu-
quimata and elsewhere. And in do-
ing so they have sparked the battle
against the economic repression,
the inflation and unemployment,
which the junta has imposed on the
Chilean people.

Jimenez said that the ‘‘official’’
figures place current unemploy-
mentat 12.7 percent. ‘But it is real-
ly closer to 25 percent,’’ he added.

The inflation rate is quoted at a
similar figure by the junta’s spokes-
men but the price increases belie the
official claims.

“Since .January..of this. year,
sugar has gone up from 26 pesos
per kilogram to 40 pesos,” he said.
The increase amounts to more than
50 percent.

The price levels indicate the pri-
vation of the Chilean people under
the fascist regime. For those with a

é
5

:

MANUEL JIMENEZ... urges solidarity with Chilean unionists on
May Day.

job, the average wage is 3,900 pesos
a month. But beef, even for the
poorest cut is 160 pesos a kilo, and
2A0 pesos a kilo for better quality.
Bread costs 26 pesos a kilo.

For a Canadian worker earning
the average $1,200 monthly wage,
an equivalent price for the lesser
quality beef would be $49 a kilo, or
roughly $22 a pound.

“What kind of food can a
worker buy?”’ Jimenez asked.

Toadd further to the burden, the
junta forces all children to pay for
schooling, from the primary grades
through university. ‘‘And,’’ he ad-
ded, ‘‘there is now a special decree
which allows employers to hire
children at age 12 — without the
permission of their parents.’’

Jimenez emphasized that the
struggles of Chilean unionists in re-
cent months, particularly the strug-
gle waged by the copper miners,
have brought a new consciousness.

‘Workers are conscious that
they have to fight for two object-
ives: to recover their freedom and
the right to elect their own leaders,
and to win back the rights they had
before.

‘Many have died in that
struggle,’’ he said, ‘‘but it is for
those rights that we will be demon-
strating on May Day.

“That is why we call for the sup-
port of people around the world.”’

Canadians, especially unionists
and others celebrating May Day
themselves, will be watching.

Miners faced police terror in Corbin strike

Continued from page 12
quiet and exhaustive inquiry,”’ was
to allow the company to re-open
the ‘Big Showing’’ with any
outstanding demands to be submit-
ted to a federal conciliator. Worse,
Bell, suggested that the two
underground mines would pro-
bably remain closed, thus confirm-
ing the earlier fears of the miners.

The Corbin Miners Association,
convinced that Bell’s proposal
would allow the company to cut
back its underground operations
and blacklist its members, rejected
it. The B.C. Workers’ News gave
substance to their fears of govern-
ment complicity with the
company’s objectives, noting in its

~ May 17 edition that, as the con-
_ciliator in the Bridge River gold

miners’ strike, Bell ‘thad offered
the same terms as the mine
owners.”

As a parting note in his report,
Bell quoted from the constitution
of the Workers’ Unity League add-
ing that he didn’t intend to cast ‘“‘re-
flection or taint upon all the resi-
dents of Corbin, because I honestly
believe many of them to be unfor-
tunate and unwitting victims of in-
fluence whose true import is not
understood.”

In contrast, the justice of the
miners’ cause was echoed wherever
the independent commission —
now called the Labor Investigation

- Committee — held meetings — in

Vancouver, New Westminster,
Duncan, Ladysmith, Cumberland

Speaking before a Vancouver
audience, one of the commission
members told indigantly of the
miners’ housing:

“Hardly one of the shacks was
fit for human habitation. In one
case, a worker, his wife and six
children lived in a single room, nine

by 12 feet in size, with cracks in the

walls and ceiling through which
rain and snow entered.”’

But although the reports arous-
ed a wave of indignation
throughout the province’s labor
movement, both the government
and Corbin Collieries were unmoy-

ed.

On May 1, Sherwood Lett, a
director of the company and its
legal counsel, wrote Bell stating,
se”, . we have decided that the best
course to pursue is to discontinue
operations, which we are pro-
ceeding to do forthwith.” —

Eleven days later, the courts
took up the club wielded by the
police on Apr. 17. Eight Corbin
miners were given vindictive
sentences, ranging from fines to six
months in prison, with additional
prison terms in the event of default
on the fines.

The strike pushed on into
September but now the govern-
ment added further injury, de¢lar-
ing that miners and their families

would be denied relief unless they

moved from the town. Despite the .

blackmail, a representative from
Corbin told the MWUC conven-
tion, ‘“‘The determination of the
miners and their wives is still un-
shaken.”

Accordingly, Pattullo tightened
the screws. In October, Robert
Elliot, the town’s only doctor, was
stripped of his Justice of the Peace
and Coroner’s certificates and
within two months he would also
lose the $100 monthly grant given
him as the health officer, thus fore-
ing him to leave. The week after the
police attack, he had written the
government, in his capacity of
Liberal Association secretary,
charging that the police seemed
bent on ‘‘beating women and men
up instead of using common
sense.”’ :

That Corbin Collieries May 7
statement to close operations was
initially intended as only a threat
was revealed in October when the
company’s secretary-treasurer ar-
rived in Corbin to supervise repair
work on mine machinery. But as
the months wore on, the fact of
permanent closure became increas-
ingly evident.

The labor movement, especially

' the Workers Unity League which in

1935 had gained 1,000 new
members, continued to rally for the
Corbin strikers. In Blairmore, the
miners each contributed $2 per

month for strike relief, a contribu-
tion that was maintained well into
1936. And people throughout the
province responded regularly to
appeals from Florence Apponen,
secretary of the women’s auxiliary
of the Corbin Miners Association
for clothing for the children of the
town.

Throughout the spring of 1936,
the Canadian .Labor Defence
League, by now almost under seige
as a result of the arrests and convic-
tions of longshore, relief camp and
mine strikers, strove to win the
release of the six Corbin strikers
held in the jail at Nelson. The
defence effort had cost $4,000, a
huge sum for the time, but the state
was immovable. ;

In March, one of the jailed
strikers, David Lockhart, died in
prison, although an inquest,
predictably, exonerated the prison
authorities. But as the B.C.
Lumber Worker reported, Inspec-
tor John MacDonald, who had led
the attack on the pickets and now
was in charge of the prison, could
not answer when he was asked why
two of the other strikers were still
held in close confinement’ even
though they “‘have earned and are
entitled to a remission of their
sentences.”’

Labor organizations throughout
the country demanded the release
of the miners as did 32 members of

the B.C. legislature — without suc-

cess.

Finally, the CPR sealed the fate
of the town as it tore up the tracks
that had carried out the coal to fuel
the profits of a U.S. corporation.
And the last of miners was com-
pelled to leave with them.

Faced with a blacklist in most of
the other mines in the Crows Next
Pass, they went farther afield,
some even to farm in the Peace
River area of Alberta. And Corbin
was abandoned, a gutted monu-
ment to Corbin Colleries refusal to
recognize the Mine Workers Union
and the rights of its members to de-
cent working and living conditions.

But if Corbin was deserted, the
struggle that had been waged there
burned like a flame for generations
to come. Under the leadership of
the Mine Workers Union of
Canada, the 300 miners and their
wives had first launched their

audacious strike and then held it

despite government-employer ter-
ror arrayed against them. Though
they couldn’t win, their strike was
part of the larger struggle which
ultimately brought down Section
98. And when the miners of Corbin
later voted solidly to adopt the
WUL call for unity and take their.
organization into the United Mine
Workers, they took with them a
militant tradition that remained
long after the town was gone.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 2, 1980—Page 13

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