ai ES ed

Page Four

B.C. WORKERS’

NEWS

January 22, 19837 _

B.C WorkERS NEWS

Published Weekly by
THE PROLETARIAN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
Room 10, 1683 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C.
Telephone: Trinity 2019
Qne Year Mat Near, ———— = 51-00
Three Months -50 Single Copy ——-—_ .05
Make All Checks Payable to the B.C. WORKERS’ NEWS
Send All Copy and Manuscript to the Chairman of the Edortortal Board.
Send All Monies and Letters Pertaining to Advertising and Circulation to the
: Business Manager.

Vancouver, B.C., Friday, January 22, 1937

A “Critic” Replies
"A WN LL.A. critic signing himself “J. Tungston” has, through
the columns of The Mederationist of January 21, taken ex-
ception to our editorial in last week’s issue of this paper under
the caption: ‘“Unionize the Waterfront.” Untortunately our
critic, in his blind hostility towards all exponents of progressive
militant action, has missed entirely, or has chosen to misrepresent,
the real questions raised in our editorial. This hostility and bias
destroys the value of any contribution that may be made towards
solution of the complex and difficult problems confronting the
TA.

The editorial in question did not adopt “a tone of superior
wisdom’ towards officials of. Local 38-126 who are sincerely
attempting to build the I.L.A. in Vaneouver. Neither did the
editorial “presume” to advise those “aspire union oficials”
who, by their passivity, idle speculation, and resistance to ageres-
sive carrying out of organization policy, have sabotaged the strike
from its inception in Vaneouver. The quick response of our eritie
indicates that the cap fitted one head, even if that head cannot
claim credit for concocting the “‘eriticism:”

Our editorial merely reiterated an undeniable fact known to
every longshoreman - . . on and off the job,— that an insipid policy
of speculative passive waiting for “something to tur up down
below” would not organize the Vancouver waterfront. We are
informed that ‘the members of the I..A. are not engaged in a
strike so much as in a lockout on the part of the Shipping Federa-
tion.” Obviously “J. Tungston” and those who assisting in com-
posing the criticism are not acquainted with the elementary facts
of the case. We would refer them back to the Strike Bulletin ot
Local 38-126. On the tactical line of how to win the men on the
job and the “V.& D.” men for the L.L.A., we are in full agree
ment. Where we disagree is in the failure to carry out this line
with the aggressiveness the situation warrants. The amount of
men on the job who have joined the I-L.A. since the strike began
., . and the amount of men on the job who have not joined the
T.L.A. because of this secretive mualk-and-water organizational
policy is the answer. An effective strike is one that must be felt
by those whom it strikes against. And so far we have failed to
hear the plaintive wail of the Shipping Federation in the port
of Vancouver. :

Nowhere in the editorial of the B.C. Workers News is the
T.L.A. in Vancouver “posed” or inferred as a “fink” organization.
What the editorial did say . . . and repeats, is that: “It has been
stated on good authority that the Shipping Federation have ale
ready indicated to I.L.A. officials their (the S.F.) agreement
¢o concede Local 38-126 the coastwise work, and to reserve for
their (the S.F.) Fink and company union crews all deep-sea
work.” On important points of this nature, our critic does not
hesitate to resort to misrepresentation in a biased attempt to score
a “point.” Fortunately he doesn’t speak for the longshoremen in
the Port of Vancouver. Unfortunately for himself, he didn’t read
the editorial.

“To raise at this time, the issue of re-instatement of the black-
listed men might serve the political machinations of the editor of
the B.C. News and his friends...” The reinstatement of any
number of blacklisted men, whoever and whereyer they may be,
serves the “political machinations” of any section of the labor
movement. It il] becomes an alleged defender of the I.L.A., such
as “Tungston,” to besmirch the “V.& D.” with the Shipping Fed-
eration’s rather stale “red herring.”

The fact that the men themselves agreed to give first prefer-
ence to the men on the job, proves their sincerity im building
the I.L.A. in Vancouver, and shows that they too realize that the
first and foremost issue is the organizing of the waterfront. This
is the essence of the News’ editorial. Would the setting of a dead-
line . . . the issuing of a stirring call to the men on the job . . . the
bringing into the front line of 500 tried and trusted fightine
union men, hurt Local 38-126 or the Shipping Federation most 2
That is the question which our “critic” set out to answer, but
lost himself in a sink-hole of prejudice.

The purpose of our editorial was not to start an acrimonious
argument with the I.L.A., but to point out to the longshoremen
on the waterfront what has to be done if their interests are to be
satesuarded.

PE)

Pearson and Camp Boys

FPNXHE statement of Pearson, Pattullo’s minister of labor, re

garding the single unemployed in the forestry camps is a
direct challenge to the entire trade union movement and to the
whole working-class. Pearson states that if the boys in the camps
do not meekly accept the rotten conditions and corrupt ad-
ministration by political heeler grafters, and if they do not
aecept the holding back of their wages to build up an unem-
ployment fund—if they do not swallow all this, then he, Pear-
son, will close the camps and deny the boys all relief, that is,
sentence them to starvation and death.

Tt is clear from Pearson’s statement that he is determined
that the right of organization is denied to the camp boys. Eyery-
one active in the organization of the Relief Workers Project
Tnion is branded as an “agitator,” a “troublemaker” and an
enemy of society.

The facts are that the Pattullo government wants the camps
used as a means of isolating the workers from the mass of the
oganized workers. The holding back of earned wages for the
purpose of building up a fund for taking care of the unem-
ployed is a grievance that no bulls of Pearson can eliminate.
The laborer is worthy of his hire. The government must pay
the wages in full, and what is more, they will have to pay them
in full. The cocky Bennett government thought they could get
away with the rotten militarized slave camps. The Pattullo-
Pearson gang think they ean get away with the new slave camps
in which they chisel the wages out of the men by hold-backs
and the speculations of political heelers.

The men in the camps have every right to organize in their
ynion and they have every right to demand full wages. The im-
pudent statement of Pearson with all its Hitlerist threats must
be met head on by the boys who are threatened with starvation.
Tf the Pattullo-Pearson gang want a fight they will get it.
All out in support of the camp boys!

pe)

Release Grange and Molland

OME months ago a capitalist court in Vancouver handed out
two of the most vicious class sentences ever given in
Canada. These were the two two-year sentences given to Grange
and Molland. two leaders in the struggle of the unemployed
to live.

Regardless of the merits of the case from a legal standpoint,
the charge was one of “‘rioting” in a situation provoked by the
police. Conviction on such a charge would ordinarily bring a
sentence of 30 to 60 days, or a suspended sentence. Instead of

ES GF
OU POR sri

Sit-down strikers at Buick plant, Flint, Mich., scan dec-
laration by, President Afred P. Sloan, Jr., that he won't
recognize Automobile Workers of America.

50 Years Of Labor
History In B.C.

By Brew Bexnnerr

In the jubilation and sideshow celebrations, which were or-
ganized and carried through for the most part, by salesmen who
are interested in the first place in getting people with money to
visit our fair city and leaye their money behind, while saddling
the workers and storekeepers with a burden of debt, but little
mention has been made of that section of the people who are
responsible for the miracle of Vaneouyer—the change in the face
of nature whereby a part of the Coast jungle of British Columbia
has been converted into a highly industrialized, imperialist city
with a quarter of a million population in half a century—the worlk-
ing class, without whom there would have been no Vancouver, no
celebration, no jubilee.

If only real estate sharks, timber barons, mine speculators,
fishery pirates, oil brokers, stock gamblers and political heelers
had come to this Last Best West, the firs and hemlocks and cedars
would still spread their cathedral calm over the busy centers of
industry, trade and commerce that lie between Burrard Inlet
and the Fraser River.

They did come, of course, these argonauts, not, however, as
| builders, but as birds of prey scenting the feast from afar, to batten
like leeches on the workers who were gathering to hew down the
forests, to rape the earth of its mineral treasures and to garner
the harvests of the rivers and seas They came to take part in a
game of “put and take,” in which the workers “put” and they
“took.” Yet those argonauts are written of in the annals of
lecturers on the “history” of B.C., as “builders of Empire.”

Had all these parasite builders of Empire received their des-
serts they would have landed in Kingston Penitentiary with
Aemilius Jervis who organized the first cannery trust on the
Fraser about the beginning of the century, or alongside of Whit-
taker Wright, owner through the London and Globe Corporation
of the Le Roi Mining properties at Rossland, the most consum-
mate scoundrel of his time, who, when found guilty by an English
jury of the worst and most fraudulent practices known even in
the skingame of company promoting, dropped dead in the dock.
While exploiting the miners of the Boundary Country, while
robbing the small investors of their hard-earned savings, his heart
never missed a beat; but when his crookedness was exposed and he
was dealt with according to the laws of his fellow capitalist thieves,
it stopped entirely.

These two instances could be multiplied, for most of those
who have acquired wealth fortune in the development and growth
of Vancouver and B.C. in the last fifty years, are, in a more or
less degree, of the same type, and they it is who are eredited with
the marvel that has made Vancouver the third city in Canada in
that short period of time.

The Workers Contribution.

The greed of these builders of Empire knew no bounds.
Since 1870, the B.C. miners have donated to their slave-driving
overlords, alien capitalists entirely, the tidy hand-out of one and
a half billion dollars, practically all, with the exception of the
gold from the placer deposits of the Fraser and the Cariboo, in
the period we are now celebrating. In 30 years, from 1901, the
year when the Lumbermen’s and Loggers’ Associations were or-
ganized, the Coast loggers, without the help of Paul Bunyan or the
Big Swede, cut 421, billion feet of logs which the mills and fae-
tories converted into 1348 million dollars worth of forest products.
These are the figures of ihe B.C. Dept. of Mines and the Boss
Loggers. Aladdin’s magic lamp is a plaything compared to the
sturdy backs, the brawny arms and the generous hearts of the
workers of Vancouver and its outlying territories.

(Lo be continued)

workers two years, as marked an example of class vengeance
as Vancouver has ever known.

An appeal against the severity of the sentence is being made,
and it is the duty of all working-class organizations and progres-
sive bodies to send protests to Attorney-General Sloan, demand-
ing the reduction of the sentences and suspending them so that
Grange and Molland will be released.

CS)

Towards Unity in Britain

HE bold advance of Fascism is driving reluctant elements

in the labor movement towards the unity so lone called for
by the Communists. A notable step forward was taken recently
in Great Britain when the Socialist League, headed by Sir Stafford
Cripps, the-Independent Labor Party and the Communist Party
formed a united front of sirugele on the immediate issues of the
fight against reaction and war and against the reactionary Na-
tionalist government.
This is a 200d beginning and will.do much to break down the

resistance to unity so stubbornly maintained by Citrine, Bevan

and other leaders of the trade unions and the Labor Party, and

should serve as an example to those trade unions and C.C.F. lead-

ers in Canada who by their opposition to unity keep the forces

that the Pattullo politician sitting as judge gave the convicted

of progress divided and thus assist the forces of reaction.

The Menace Of
Company Unions

By LT. EWEN.

Company unions, like Heinz’
pickles, comes in “57 varieties,” but
in the jargon of the exponents of
company unionism they are never
referred to as such... The “Plant
Employees’ Association.”” the “Tin
Gan Benevolent Association,” the
“ Works’ Assembly Council,” ete.—
never a company union. Why is
this? How is it that employers who
compel their workers to join com-
pany unions with intimidation, co-
ercion, wheedling, suave promises
or arrogant threats, feel timid about
having their brain-child dubbed a
company union?

Company Unionism Anti-democratic.

Tirst, because the underlying
principle of all company unions, ir-
respective of whatever name they
masquearde under, is imtimidation.
All the employers’ chatter. about
“one happy family,’ “co-operation,”
‘“‘company-is-doing-all-it-can,” is so
much eyewash to cover up this in-
timidation and the ugly form of or-
ganization it breeds, and, more im-
portant, is an aid to staying within
the law. Company unionism in 2
democratic state, where the freedom
of the individual is held inviolable,
is illegal. Company unionism is the
form of organized labor in a cor-
porate state. Company unionism be-
lonzs to those forms of organization
upon which a Fascist state is pre-
dicated. Therefore, the employers
Who force this form of organization
upon their workers vehemently deny
company unionism, and clothe their
malodorous creations with a more
appetizing title.

“Happy Family-”

All company unions do not come
into. being through economic fear
and intimidation. Some even have
little or no company control at all,
and are merely confusion collectives
designed for the purpose of blinding
workers to the need for genuine
unions. Let us look over a few of
these varieties, with the assistance
of the C.1.0. “Union News’’ of Dec.
28th. Here is the ‘‘one big happy
family” type:

CRIMINAL OFFENSES
IN THE SOVIET UNION

“The criminal offense of profit-
making in the Soviet Union in-
cludes two operations which in
every other country are rewarded
not only by wealth but by public
esteem. This couple of crimes are
respectively stigmatized by the
Russians as ‘Speculation’—mean-
ing any buying of commodities
with the intention of selling them
again at a higher price—or ‘ex-
ploitation’—meaning the hiring of
any person (whatever the wage)
for the purpose of selling the
product of that person’s labor for
pecuniary advantage.” — Sidney
Webb (Lord Passfield).

brand: the co-operative-endeavor-
hail - fellow—well-met-work —- together
variety. Of course there was no in-
timidation or coercion; just a well-
placed word and a nod here and
there. The boss simply told his
workers what was wanted by the
belly-robbing milling and baking
trust. Only he didn’t say that; it
wouldn’t be polite and genteel.
Called into the managerial sanctum
in relays, the workers at the 4x
were advised what was wanted in

lanfzuaze well garnished with ‘“co-
operation” and the “spirit of the
idea.’”

A Jegal light is detailed off by the
manager to draft a “constitution.”
And what a constitution! The work-
ers in the steel mills’ of Sydney,
N.S. in the Algoma, in Hamilton,
all have seen- such “constitutions,”
taken them like children’ take castor
oi], and outlived them. The textile
and shoe workers of QOnario and
Quebee have also had their fill of
these “employee associations” before
they finally staked their future and
their well-being in a genuine trade
union.

Amidst the refined setting of a
fitting repast in one of Vancouver's
leading hotels (the 4% foots the
bill), the “‘constitution’’ is fone over

“ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY”
LINE.

“Ve are one big, happy family,”’
is a favorite line of the manage-
ment. “The personnel manager's
door is always open to you. The
interests of the employes and the
company 2re really the same. You
men don’t need a national organi-
zation with Outsiders coming in
here to tell us how to run things-”

The union can ask various ques-
tions. “One happy family,” the
organizer says, ““‘but the president's
office is in New York. And wasn’t
he the one who said your recent
demand for a wage increase could
not be met nOw? What about the
board of directors, who decide on
wage policy and such matters?
Are union organizers anything like
as miuch ‘outsiders’ as these men?
if everything is so open and above-
board, why d0esn’t the company
let you see its books? Why does it
hire spies to report on your meet-
ings?”’

Then there is the “keep your
money at home” brand, which al-
ways appeals to the worker who has
been hornswoggled into a state of
financial alarm by the threadbare
myth that millions of dollars pour
out of the country annually to ine
the pockets of “‘outside” organizers
and “agitators,” which is the main

reason, according to his boss, why
he (the worker) is poor.
“WHY PAY DUES?”

“The employee representation
plan costs little or nothing—why
pay union dues?’’ The Steel
Workers’ Organizing Committee

answered this point very cleverly.
They showed that laborers m steel
mills received $35 Jess a month
than laborers in the unionized coal
mine industry—and that therefore
they were really payine $35 a
month in dues indirectly to the
company union.

The United Electrical and Radio
Workers say: “Of course a nation-
Wide organization needs money for
organizing, for gathering facts, is-
Suing a paper, getting favorable
laws. But the members who sup-
port it also contro] it. Why does
the company spend money on the
employe representation plan? If
a company union can do a few
things, just think how much more
a real union can accomplish’!

Then comes the ace-in-the-hole

argument of the “peace in industry’’
employer for a company union; often
an effective argument, with facts
twisted and distorted to suit the
occasion he occasion being to
keep the worker from utilizing his
right of organization and collective
bargaining through
unions. A night-mare of strikes:

*‘Wnionism means strikes,” says
the management. Many wage-
earners believe this. They picture
a walk-out as bringing disorder
and as an altogether disagreeable
affair: A union explains: “A strike
is only a last resort. But it is a
very powerful weapon; and the
fact that a union has a treasury
and can strike brings gains with-
out a walkout far out of reach of
the empl@ye representation plan-”

“A strike,” continues the organi-
zer, “is carried on peacefully. “The
disorder you have heard about is
often falsely reported in the pa-
pers and is caused by violent meth-
ods of the employers. A walk-out
is a time-honored tactic. Moses led
one Of the earliest ones against
the Beyptians—and remember the
Boston Tea Party! Unions are
very respectable. Leading radio
and movie performers, such as
Bing Crosby, are active unionists.”

The boss in alarm cries, “The
union is just 2 racket.’ But this
argument too falls flat in the light
of the union’s record.

“Home Preserves-”
The 4 Canadian Bakeries in

Vancouver have produced another

bona-fide

and finally submitted to a “meeting”
called by the boss for approval. The
meeting -goes over with a bang—in
the words of the representative of
Canadian Bakeries, Ltd, “practically
unanimous,” and another abortion
eomes into being with monopoly
Capital in the role of mid-wife.
The Robertson Scare.

Why this “upsurge” of company
unionism in the Wancouver bakine=
industry at this time? The organ-—
ized milling and baking combine saw
their colleague, the Purity Bread,
taught a lesson on the right of col-
lective bargaining and union agree-
ment in the Robertson Bakery
Strike. The one cent increase per
loaf that the baking combine gouged
from the Vancouver housewives did
not suffice to compensate for the
smarting defeat of Robertsons.

The bread trust saw the bona-fide
unions of the A.FLof i. press union
agreements in other shops: they
weren’t prepared for another action
like Robertson’s, nor were they
willing that union agreements
should become too mnumérous, so
what can serve the situation better
than a company union. Where to
drive the wedge and who to. drive
it? The 48° with less than 50 per
cent organization “inside,” and even
less “outside.’” (Inside are the bak-
ers—outside the drivers). Who to
drive this wedge? The boss of the
4, an upright christian man, pos-
Sessing the ‘confidence’ of his em-
ployees, and well equipped in the
art of “turning aside wrath.” You
men of the 4X, you are entitled to
think what. you like, do what you
like, so lone as it doesn’t interfere
With the dividends of the Canadian
Bakeries. Could a “reasonable’’
worker ask for more?

A Real Menace.

The appearance of a company
union in the 4X is a threat and a
challenge to the whole of orzan-=
ized Jabor in Vancouver Unless a
concerted struggle is instituted im-
mediately by all trade unions in
support of the bakery and against
company unionism, the menace will
Spread like a plague. The Tampa
convention of the A.F.ofL. called
for mass action for the outlawing
of company unionism. Let the T.&
L.C€, of Vancouver initiate such a
move here. It need have no fear of
lack of support.

New Films

)

How the New Film Alliance sizes
them up:

GOD'S COUNTRY AND THE
WOMAN: Nice color photography.
Subject matter a hash of a hash of
an idea that was bad in 1916.

COUNTERFIT LADY: Jean
Perry puts in as credible a perform-
ance as is humanly possible with a

: jewel thief.

foolish role of country girl as clever
Ralph Bellamy is a
mean hand at sleuthing—but that’s
all.

ALONG CAME LOVE: Chief
handicaps are story, dialogue logic,
sense, lack of humor—vwell, you get
the idea.

SMART BLONDE: Reporting,
gunning, singing and doing high
Society form the basis for an out-
worn plot that ts not helped out by
poor characters.

BEWARE OF LADIES: No high-
light names, but a pleasing story of
a mud-slinging campaign between
two candidates for district attorney.

PROGRESSIVES HAVE 39

OLYMPIA, Wash. Jan. 21.—At
least 39 votes, out of a possible 99,
appeared to be certainties for the
progressive bloc in Washington
State on every ballot, according to
estimates based on results in the
race for the House of Representa-

By
OL’ BILL

Tf our radio fund is no&
Out of growing as rapidly as it
the Air. should, it is at least be—

ing discussed in the meht
place, among the workers whom it
will ultimately serve.

I have received a letter from a
worker in Burnaby, explaining 2
difficulty he has in being whole-
heartedly in agreement with the
idea of using the radio, as he can-
not see how a capitalist controlled
radio will help the workers to over—
throw the system. He asks, “When
political demagosués make use of
the radio what chance have we to
answer them and what use has the
radio been to the workers of Ger-—
many and Italy?”

This attitude is adopted by this
worker in the face of the opposition
of ten of his workmates who are
united in their opinion that the radio
will play a biz part in -helping us
to change the system, one of whom
suggested he should ask my advice-
I don’t know if my advice is
worth much, but many years of ex-
perience in the labor movement
compels me to disagree with the be-
lief of this worker, that the radio
under capitalist control is of no use
to the workers in their strugeles.

= % = *

If we accept the idea
Hard Won of capitalist controt
“Rights.” making the radio use—
less to us we must
extend it to the printing press ané
the ownership of halls and meet—
ing places and theatres.

Yet we publish newspapers, Wwe
hold public meetings in halls and we
stage plays with a revolutionary
messaze, in each case reaching num-
bers of people who would otherwise
be left to the mercy of reactionaries
and supporters of, the existing sys—
tem.

The use of these institutions is.
undoubtedly hampered by individual
and goyernment restrictions and
eensorships that limit their useful-
ness to us. But .the “‘democratic”
forms obtaining in capitalist society,
today, which are the result of lone
hard-fought struggles on the part
of the workers, guarantee a certain
amount of ‘right,’ of freedom of
speech, press and assembly. ay
Even such a reactionary body of
human derelicts as the United
States Supreme €ourt, is compelled
to admit this in a recent decision-
(“Lhe right of peaceable assembly
is a right cognate to those of free
speech and free press and is equal-

ly fundamental.’—In a writer
judgement by Chief Justice Hughes-
bod * = *

= a The use of these
Democratic ‘rights’ are inter-
Freedoms.” fered with by the

capitalist state ap-
paratus when it turns peaceable
meetings into ‘riots’ by sending

police and soldiery into them to club
and gas the assembled people; by ac-
cusing and jailine our speakers for
‘Inciting to riot’ and our press for
‘fomentine”’ something or other. In-
dividual] owners also exercise a cen-
sorship, either for political motives
or out of fear of reprisals from their
fellow capitalists. The Moose Temple
owners will not rent their Hall to
the Communist Party and George
Drayton had a large chunk cut out
of one of his radio speeches last
year because the owner of the sta-
tion was afraid the B.C. Collectric
would sue him for libel although he
admitted the item cut out was true.
A year ago, too, our intellectual
chief man-catcher tried to prevent
“Waiting for Lefty” being shown.
Do the workers quit because these
limitations are placed on their ac-
tivities? No! They make every in-
terference the focal point for new
struggles to maintain and extend
these “rights,” each new struggle
reacting and further organizine and
consolidating the forces of the revo-

lutionary movement. This is how
our movement grows.
* *x * =

Everything already

Build Our said of free speech,
press and assembly

Radio Fund :
applies to the use

of radio addresses, for this is only
an extension of speaking from 2
platform in a privately-owned hall.
The fact that the German and
Italian workers have received a2
temporary set-back at the hands of
fascism is no reason why we should
adopt a defeatist attitude and re-
linquish all or any means of propa-
ganda. The workers 6f these coun-
tries were not defeated because
they depended on the radio but be-
cause they followed the leadership
of treacherous agents of imperialism
who deluded them, prevented them
from organizing in militant unions
and from forgin= a revolutionary
party.

if we controlled the radio as the
werkers of the Soviet Union do, it
would be a much more useful weap-
on for us, just as useful in fact, as
it is against us while it is in the
bands of the bosses; but the demo-
eratic “‘rights’’ already referred to
make it of great value to us as it
is, for it enables us to reach listen-
ers who do not came to our meet-
ings or read our papers. We live
under capitalism and while we do
We must make use of every avail-
able weapon no matter what its
limitations,

I don’t think the worker who
wrote the letter is so sure of his
opinion as he enclosed a dollar for

tives speakership.

the radio fund.

SNS

shoes py

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