AN ACCEPTABLE

"IT SAYS HERE THAT WE ARE PART OF
LEVEL OF UNEMPLOYMENT!"

25 years ago...

CCL HAILS
GENEVA TALKS

Relaxation of world tensions
in the past year is “proof that war
is not inevitable and that
negotiations are neither useless
nor a sign of weakness” declared
a draft policy statement of the
400,000-member Canadian
Congress of Labor placed before
the delegates attending their
15th annual convention in To-
ronto. The document also calls
for a ban on all A and H-
weapons, the destruction of
atomic bomb stocks and out-

lawing their manufacture.
Guest speaker CIO president
Walter Reuther said that if great
nations and great peoples could
out of common fears mobilize
for war, surely they could make
the same kind of effort fighting
for peace and raising living

standards. :

Tribune,
Oct. 17, 1955

Profiteer of the week:

50 years ago...

NO MORE
SOVIET COAL
The die-hard Bennett gov-
ernment has carried out its
threat against Soviet imports of
coal into Canada. Seven boat-

loads now on the. high seas will

be turned back.

This coal is hard coal. Cana-
dian hard coal production is a
mere fraction of the hard coal
need in industry. Most of Cana-
da’s hard coal comes from the
U.S. and: now the Soviet-hating
Bennett gang springs the lying
yarn that Soviet imports are
threatening U.S. profits and
must be banned.

Why Canadians should be
worried about American profits
is hard to imagine. Canadian
workers must realize that this
“anti-dumping” scare is part of
an intensified anti-Soviet attack
which is now on an economic
footing, but will be soon fought
with rifles and poison gas.

The Worker,

Oct. 18, 1930

nation.

. Ever wonder why paper costs have sky-
rocketed — including paper for the workers’
press? One $62,824,000 reason is the after-tax
profit of Abitibi-Price Inc., for just nine months,
up to Sept. 30. Ali the more reason why the
Trib needs yo

Figures used are from the company's financial statements.

ur subscription, renewal or do-

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Associate Editor — FRED WILSON
Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186

. Subscription Rate: Canada $10 one yr.; $6.00 for six months;
All other countries, $12 one year.

Second class mail registration number 1560

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 24, 1980—Page 4

S £5. MAES ED. oD

~

SIDIWORILAIL
COMIMIEINT

Job creation needed now

The federal and provincial govern-
ments are hot on making capitalism

work, but they don’t care much whether . ©
workers work. While the unemployment *

rate, averaged across Canada, has not
dropped below 7% in more than a year,
all governments appear to accept that as
normal. In fact when the business types
discuss it among themselves they agree
that 5% to 7% unemployment meets
their definition of “full employment”.
Even by official figures that was
757,000 “fully employed” people with-
out jobs in September. With the
“hidden” unemployed the figure is more

‘like a million. While job creation de-

pends on the policies of both Ottawa and
the provinces, it does not follow that be-
cause Alberta has the lowest rate, 3.7%
and Newfoundland the highest, 13.4%,
that these two Tory regimes have dif-
ferent attitudes toward the unemployed.
The uncontrolled profiteering of private
investors is assisted in every way by the
policies of both old-line parties.
Young’ workers and older workers

threat over them of no job prospects. Al
apparent drop in the unemployment
rate in September, to 7.4% from 7.7% in
August resulted mainly from student
having to try to hold onto part time
“summer” jobs while returning [
school; and other young workers who —
can find nothing better than part time
work. The layoffs, shutdowns, and run-
aways, to which add lack of learning and
training programs, are taking their toll.

While many long-time workers are
battling for portable pensions in today §
insecure conditions, and demanding job
creation, not layoffs, and even having
fight for severance pay, many young
workers simply want a steady job, ofte?
their first.

The age gap has been known to creat€
differences, but in the labor movement
unity around job demands can help turn
more heat on governments to come UP
with genuine programs for job creation
for all workers, not profit creation fot
the corporations. —

have something in common, namely, the

War Measures and labor

This month marks the tenth an-
niversary of the imposition by the
Trudeau government of the infamous
War Measures Act, which ushered in
intimidation, arrests and imprisonment
of hundreds of innocent people on the
pretext of their participation in an
“apprehended insurrection”.

That was on October 16, 1970. Across
Canada, the threat bore down on trade
unionists, who saw arbitrary arrests
sweeping Quebec. The threat hung over
strikers, peace activists, labor publica-
tions, public meetings, people distribut-
ing leaflets or posters. All were liable for
jail.

: Tribune contributor Alain Patrie
wrote how police ransacked his home,
and later: “From the police car I could
see my family peering out the window
through the rain-drenched night. How

__ long would the separation be?”

Said the late Charles Brooks, then
president of Auto Local 444, Windsor:
“You can be sure the anti-labor
employers ... will begin to charge every
union organizer with carrying bombs,
being a Bolshevik .. .”

Communist Party leader William
Kashtan denounced the effort to pit
French against English in Canada. “We
are the first ‘political party in Canada,”
he declared, “which reacted so quickly.
Let me tell you, this Act is equally
directed against any voice which calls
for social change in Canada...” —

Only monumental protest turned off
the wave of arrests and intimidation.
But the War Measures Act is still on the
books, waiting, with no guarantee the
federal government, or a federal/pro-
vincial collusion will not unleash it
again.

The day after the promulgation of
this police state act in 1970, the Com-
munist Party, its general secretary, and
most of its central executive, including
the president of the Communist Party
of Quebec, mounted a protest on Parli-

ament Hill. And that historical fact gives
the lie to those right-wing New Democ
rats who, 10 years later, tell us only the
NDP opposed the War Measures Act.
The NDP, in fact, was. divided. But
credit goes to those 16 of the 20 NDP
MPs who voted against it; trade unions

‘who rallied; the Canadian Peace Con-

gress which spoke out.

As the Canadian Army occupied
Quebec, armed soldiers ringed parlia-
ment and hapless viciiins huddled
jails, the War Measures Act contributed
nothing to counteracting the juvenile
terrorist activities of the FLQ (Front de
Libération du Québec), none of whos
35 (!) activists was scooped up in the
wholesale arrests. 4

What was this but a try-out of the
ability of monopoly government to wipé
out civil and human rights at one
swoop? They proved they could do it,
but not sustain it without going all the
way to fascist oppression.

One would think the “Liberal”
government would now weigh its words.
But on this 10-year-old infamy;
Trudeau defends his action, repeating
the “apprehended insurrection” non-
sense.

The recently released Duchaine re-
port, commissioned by Quebec’s justice
department, exposes the fraudulence of
such claims: “The crisis served as 4
pretext for large-scale repression . . .”

The Communist’ Party, as
documented, took an immediate and
unyielding stand against that repres-
sion, stating both its distain for ter-
rorism, and its support of the struggle
of French Canada _ for self-
determination. Ten years the CPC need
not alter a single line of that record.
Facts are facts. :

But, 10 years later, there is a growing
need for increasing labor unity against
the vicious anti-labor attacks of the
ruling monopolies, with the War Mea-
sures Act an ever-present warning. |

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