espe ety

‘Around the
Slipways

understanding
ing to our war

A walk through the yards on a cold winter night during
he graveyard shift should help. Nowhere does the wind
low more coldly or the rain strike chillier than around the
lipways. Bulky clothing hampers the men as they move
autiously over the slippery Staging under the pale gleam of
re lights or crouch under improvised tarpaulin shelters,
eating rivets. Down in the holds gangs of rivetters, caulkers,
rillers, and reamers work amid the deafening clamor of their
everberating air driven tools.

Single out a lead from the maze of hose lying on the dock
ide and follow it down the holds through manholes and crawl
hrough the double bottom tanks until you choke and cough
a the fog of the welders’ fumes. Walk around the drydock
nd watch the men high up on the trestle staging working at a
angerous height with no protection from the rain and cold.
Tes, shipyard workers earn their wages.

@ ype of the most familiar figures around the yards on the

north shore is Malcolm McLeod, business agent for the
3oilermakers’ union. Rain or shine, Malcolm is always on the
ob, always ready to listen to any grievance and lend the
ienefit of his many years of experience as a shipbuilder.
faleolm learned his trade on the Clyde and worked as a
ijoilermaker in the North Van Ship Repairs before he toole
m the task of looking after the interests of the 6000. boiler-
aakers working on the north shore. To the many hundreds
rho never attend a union meeting he is the union, the one

tho looks after all of their grievances and lends a sympathetic
ar to all their problems.

Whenever I see Malcolm he always seems to have his little
lack book in his hand stroking out those beefs he has al-
eady attended to and listing a few more for immediate at-
sniion. And that’s the way a union is built.

o

HE health cf war workers is a vital factor in produc-
tion,” said Henry J. Kaiser, whose genius lies mainly

a his ability to see a problem in its entirety and to make due
‘rovision for all contingencies affecting machinery, materials,
nd manpower. “If we could reduce the present absentee
ate due to sickness by only three or five percent it would
fe a tremendous contribution to our productive capacity.”

Kaiser has been the object of attack by the American
edical Association which charged in a recent editorial writ-
en by Dr. Morris Fishbein that Kaiser was more interested
n building an industrial empire than in releasing -doctors
pr the armed forces.

There were only fifteen docters in Vancouver, Washington,
vhere the population jumped from 15,000 to 40,000 and is
sxpected to reach 100,000 as the shipyards expand. Kaiser
astalled a hospital with a staff of 18 salaried doctors; one for
very 2,000 workers covered. Employees paid fifty cents a
veek into a group health plan for themselves and their fam-
lies. We can agree with Kaiser when he says, “Our country
ceeds ships; we are trying to build those ships as fast as pos-
ible. It takes healthy men to build them. Doctors are needed
0 keep our war workers well.”

Right now, when Vancouver war workers are demanding
dequate medical service for injuries, it might be as well to
xtend that demand to some form of medical health insurance
aking in the families of the workers.

Available Woman Power
Not Yet Fully Utilized

By KAY GREGORY

Recognition of the important role women can play in defeating fascism seems to vary in
every country according to the degree of that country’s development toward total war.

In Britain and the Soviet Union, where the whole population is involved in the tremen-

dous task of fighting the enemy, women are indispensable.
for all kinds of work, and accordingly,

and children to perform more essential work.
In the United States women are

involved to a much smaller degree.
It is only just recently that short-
age of manpower gradually brought
home the fact that women will be
“indispensable” in keeping Ameri-
ean industries going while the men
are overseas.

But in Canada, the percentage of
women admitted to what is till too
often considered to be ‘men’s work’
is as yet very small, nor has the
need for women received very much
official recognition. The general
public has not realized the extent
to which the country will depend
upenh women in the difficult days
ahead, the extent to which the very
lifelines of Great Britain and the
Soviet Union are now depending on
women.

That Canadian women have not
yet been allowed to play an even
bigger part is not their fault. So
far discouragement has been their

}lot, particularly in the West.

They have been told that their
job is to provide ‘comforts,’ to co=
operate in campaigns for salvage,
conservation of foods, price con-
trol and many other things.

But for every other aspect of
the war effort, women have not
yet been utilized as they might be.

Equal Work

An expression of this lack of rec-
Ognition of women’s ability was
shown in a recent public statement
by Hon. George S. Pearson, provin-
cial labor minister, indicating that
women would not be able to give
‘equal work for equal pay’ on a
par with fen workers.

“That raises a question as to
whether or not women are going
to attempt to do work that will
ultimately be injurious to them,”
he said, “even though they can
temporarily do it. The desire of
the labor department is to watch
the problem arising out of these
conditions, with the idea of making
changes in our laws and regula-
tions in an endeavor to aviod im-
position of unfair conditions on
women labor.”

Whether or not women can do
men’s jobs on an equal basis re-
quires no new law or regulation to
determine. It has been proved be-
yond doubt in other countries where
women are now fighting in the
front lines.

Mary Anderson, director of the
U.S. department of labor women’s
bureau, declared that “our indus-
trial surveys show that no real dis-
tinction exists in war industries as
to what constitutes a man’s or
woman‘s job.” 7

“Women work alongside men on
the same or comparable jobs. It
is not uncommon for 2 job to
be performed by women on the
day shift with men taking over on
the night shift in a continuous
production schedule. Women also
perform work formerly done sole-
ly by men...”

Day Nurseries

One big problem not yet tackled
in Canada to free women for in-
dustry is the care of their pre-
school children. While the govern-
ment has announced that day nurs-
eries would be established where 75
percent of the mothers were en-
gaged in war work, no widespread
facilities are yet open to women

who wish to enter civilian industry
to free men for war work.

Here again, the tendency has
been to discourage the campaign
for day nurseries on the grounds
that they are “not yet necessary.”

Miss Laura Holland, adviser on
social welfare policy to the provin-
Cial government, recently told a
Vancouver audience that “nothing
but a war emergency justifies
spending money on day nurseries,
and I question very much the sug-
gestion that there is such a labor
shortage in BC to warrant the em-

ployment of women with young
children.”
Stating that “day nurseries

shcould be a peacetime welfare ac-
tivity,” Miss Holland said that
there were only six places outside
Vancouver with over 100 women
employed and that the industries
employing women in the city had
reached their capacity.

Conditions outlined by Miss Hol-
land may be true at the present
time. But if day nurseries should
be “a peacetime welfare activity,”
how much more-important are they
in war time? If this is not a ‘war
emergency’ then precisely what
could be called one?

Rather the fact that more wom-
en are not employed here on the
coast is an indication of the lack
of total war effort, lack of full use
of the manpower and womanpow-
er at our disposal, and lack of any
encouragement to industry to em-
ploy more women so that Canada
can really get down to the business
of solving manpower problems for
total war,

Women Needed

Some hard-hitting facts are given
in an excellent article by Novelist
Margaret Culkin Banning in the
|New York Times. Showing that
, there will soon be 18,000,000 women
working in U.S. industry—five mil-
‘lion more than at the outbreak of
war—she declared that “this means
women will... be truly indispens-
able to the prosecution of the war.

“This fact is already true, not

They are necessary everywhere
provision has been made for them to leave their homes

only in Great Britain but in all
the warring countries in Europe
and Asia,’ she said. ‘The RAF re-
lies heavily on its women auxiliary
force, the WAAF'S, and Says that
its work would be crippled without
the help of the women on the
ground ... But far more important
is the fact that the manufacture
of practically all war material in
Great Britain is dependent on the
performance of the women workers
in the factories. .

“In Germany,” she continued,
“every woman's capacity for labor
is Measured as carefully as is that
of every man, Countries in total
War pit the strength and abilities
of their women against the strength
of the women of their enemies’

“The grayity and significance of
this fact have not yet penetrated
the whole American consciousness,
but ... it will be more and more
apparent every month that this is
& war in which women are neces-
Sary and it cannot be won without
their help.”

Pointing out that women have a
Stake in victory over fascism as
individuals who “have a fair share
in human progress,” Margaret Ban-
ning declared:

“If the United Nations were to
lose this war and be at the mercy
of its enemies the women of this
country would be a subject sex in
@ conquered nation, and there is
no place in society lower than that
...-iIt is a big war and the women
want to get into it to battle the
enemy and help win the victory.”

These sentiments are equally true
of Canadian women. They are ready
to do their share in the battle
against fascism. They have already
realized that the part they can play
is essential to victory, but they have
not yet been given their full oppor-
tunity.

Experience gained in Britain and
the Soviet Union of the valuable
work women can do should be util-
ized without delay in opening up
all Canada’s facilities for total war,
for the offensive, using every avail-
able member of the population for
victory.

Miners Work Extra Day
To Honor 5lst Division

LONDON.—The Daily Worker reports that Lothian
miners have decided to work a special Sunday shift in
honor of the famous 51st (Highland) division, which has
been among the foremost at the battle of EI] Alemein.

To meet the demand for increased production, employ-
ees of the Midland bank are now also doing munition work
in addition to their regular jobs. And following their ex-
ample, Aberdeen bank workers have organized themselves
into mobile squads for week-end factory work.

The Aberdeen scheme conforms to existing agreements
among trade unions, employers and the Ministry of labor.
Squads have been formed from several banks and friendly
inter-bank rivalry encourages team spirit to the benefit of
production, at the same time satisfying the desire of white
collar workers to help on the production front. ;