round the Slipways | By Charles Saunders \Y DAY this year will once again see the workers demonstrating on the streets of Vancouver—marching id their banners, bearing aloft their slogans. The his- bof the struggle of the workers, from the fight for the hour day, can be read in the slogans carried by the ers in their parades on May days. This year, the parade bignify the unity of all labor, of labor with the armed §s, of all freedom-loving peoples behind the all-out of- # re to smash the Axis powers. have taken part in many May Day celebrations, and al- ® feel the same inspiration and thrill as I march shoulder ; pulder with my fellow workers, but there are two May = which stand out. ne was in Spain, Spain where the first shots in this global jwere fired. May Day 1938, after the fascists, aided by janized reinforcements from Italy, high to the Mediterranean, cutting Catalonia and the fon from the rest of Loyalist Spain. 'e were manning trenches in defense positions alongside ibro near Moira de Nueva, and the password of the day Primero de la Maio and the countersign Venceremos— hall win. We had our May Day banners ready the day fe, and as the signs of daylight appeared our machine- bers opened up a heavy barrage whilst we floated the hers down the river. the promises we made that day still live in our hearts. §= of them were carried into life three months later, when ‘rossed the river again to carry the fight right to the oaches of Gandesa. But we lacked the planes, artillery tanks to storm the heights. The non-intervention policy sealed the fate of Spain, and condemned the world to war. (i EN May Day 1939. Once again in Vancouver the Mac- kenzie-Papineau battalion celebrated May Day, march- in parade with red-headed George Ross in the lead. I smber as we marched in that parade, carrying our slogans sg united action to prevent the coming war, thinking of spanish people, already crushed beneath the fascist heel, idy being murdered, thrown into concentration camps, lemned to years of starvation and suffering by the non- -yentionists. The Munichites, the appeasers, the man _the umbrella—were they to betray countless millions similar fate? his is history now, and we know how each succeeding ’ Day has added to the millions of peoples brought under ruthless domination of the Nazis. 3ut this May Day comes with a new aspect. Hope is ing once again in the hearts of the oppressed peoples. ist slavery in the course of their winter offensive. The ed forces have swept clean through North Africa. Once n the way is open, the opportunity is here, to completely }and smash the Axis forces. We must not listen to faint- rts nor yet to those whose policy springs directly from the -Interventionists, the Munichites, those who condemned whole world to an unprecedented bloodbath because 7 feared labor more than they feared fascism. “Invade ope Now”... . “Everything for the Offensive” .. . “Back Attack!” These are the slogans of labor this May Day. : ; e ‘ND the Mackenzie-Papineau veterans will march again. Not all, for many are once again in the armed forces, in ‘th Africa, on the high seas, fighting again, whilst others hem have only memories—memories of gallant comrades ) gave their all on the battlefields of Spain. But they will ‘ch with us too—and the thousands who have lost their S on other battlefields. Yes! and the hundreds of thou- ds in concentration camps, the guerrilla fighters of oc- ied Hurope—they will all be with us as we march this y Day, marching to pledge our all, marching to demand on now—the all-out Allied offensive promised at Casa- nea. drove a corridor. Soviet Union has released millions of its citizens from. Continued There was no doubt about it. Even the bosses could see that Copper Mountain had gone union. @ ND somebody else saw it too— Blaylock, boss of Trail, the town towards which manage- ment and labor alike looked for leadership. Blaylock saw Copper Mountain, where workers had been trying for some time to form an independent union and now stood solidly behind the IUMMSW, as a test of union strength. He saw growing signs of discontent in his own “happy family.” He recognized the pas- sage of the ICA Act as a defeat for his policies, and he sat in Trail, waiting fearfully. He didn’t have long to wait. The union came to Trail, teo, despite phony votes of the now defunct Workmen’s Gooperative Gommittee. Consolidated is still trying to pull strings, but unions have sprung up in both Trail and Kimberley. Trail is alive with meetings, union meetings and mass meet- ings. Workers are speaking up for the first time in 25 years. In all departments men proudly sport buttons as big as American dollars, on which are printed the magic words, “Shop Steward.” Others have managed to get CIO buttons, and transfer them from work clothes to “Sundaybest.” One union man reports that the kids in his neighborhood have a new game, a reversal of the old “Cops and jRobbers” — with the virtue transferred to the other side, which they call “Cops and CIO.” In every restaurant and beer parlor union buttons are worn, and the whole town seems to hum with discussion. “To be in a town that’s going union is’ to be in a real democ- racy,” stated Harvey Murphy. ‘Votes run by the company through its various setups, an- nounced every day, have failed to divert men and women from their own union. “There is a growing trek to the new centre of the community, the union office at the corner of EI- dorado and Bay, where union members drop in on their way to and from work almost every day. Trail is going union in a big way.” e HE same story is repeated at Kimberley, where at 1:30 on the afternoon of April 22, the company union met and formally voted itself out of existence. Organization began on April 4, with a big meeting called in the theater by the company union, with a sign on the door reading “Miners Only.” But the first mo- tion passed by the men inside was that the union organizers should be invited in to address the audience. And they were. The discussion lasted over four hours, Some of the men skipping meals to sit in on it. Finally the whole audience, with the exception of five men, endorsed the action of the Trail workers on joining a union. The meeting filed out of the hall, and Organizer Murphy was swamped with applications for membership. Men were signed up on street corners. For a table the organizers used the fenders of cars, and the obliga- tion was taken in a doorway of a nearby store. A second meeting was called in the high school grounds. A car was driven up, its lights turned on the school steps, from which Murphy and Fred Henne, Trail president, spoke. Seventy men were signed up, forming a new Tocal. The enthusiastic workers elect- ed as their full time business agent Duke Hyssop, former trainer of the Kimberley Dyna- miters, Allen Cup winners and world champions, who beat a German team on German soil Most of the team now working at Kimberley joined the union in a body. President of the thriving new local is Danny Martin, a Glasgow Scot who has worked in the Sullivan mine for i7 years. HEN workers have been held down for so long by a setup such as Blaylock’s, nothing can stop them when they start or- ganizing. There is a new feel in the air, say workers, who for the Now We Can Speak first time can back a union, a real union, of their own choos- ing. In fact, the only unhappy man in the empire is Blaylock the ever-generous who, out of the goodness of his heart, deplores the fact that his “happy family” must be deprived of his financial support as far as their organiza- tion’ is concerned. “Main problem now,” says Har- vey Murphy, “is to win formal recognition of the union, so that big grievances can be settled without the usual buck-passing: that you invariably find in anti- union plans. Absenteeism is ab- normally high, and the union is going to attack all causes of ab- senteeism. Social life in the com- munity must be organized. The men must feel that they are more than company property.” The latest plan at Copper Mountain, following out this line, is to ask the company for land on which to build a union office so that, to quote one miner, “strangers will know by the sign on the building that there is one piece of real estate in Copper Mountain that Granby Consoli- dated can never own.” RAIL, Copper Mountain and Kimberley are now the be- ginning of a new democracy of the interior. The workers have something now that all the mil- lions of Blaylock and his gang cannot buy—a union of their own choice, won by their own struggle. Robert Carlin, Board Member from the East, who has been tackling a similar problem at Inco at Sudbury, and Board Mem- ber Chase J. Powers, who has ad- dressed miners’ meetings in Trail, are coordinating the campaign and backing it up with the sup- port of the International union. But the men and women in the mines and smelters aren’t kidding themselves; they know the fight isn’t over yet. But there is one thing they do know: that they are solidly behind their union, and now that they have that union, theyll defend it against any weapon the boss miners want to introduce. |_etters From Our Readers Fuel ‘Problem STANLEY ANDERSON, presi- dent of Northwest Cooperative Society, writes: We, the members of the Dan- ish Credit Union have set up a cooperative society with the aim of solving the fuel problem. A committee set up several months ago made investigations regard- ing fuel, housing and health in- surance, and in order to legally handle such matters we decided to set up a cooperative society, incorporated April 17, 1943, with offices for the time being situat- ed at 451 W. 8th Ave, Van- couver. The possibilities as to what we can accomplish depends on the support we are able to obtain financially, and the moral sup- port of citizens of Vancouver. Our findings are that we can put somewhere around 25,000 or 30,000 cords of wood into Van- couver during the summer and early fall. Regarding coal, ne- gotiations are proceeding for two different coal properties, which in six montths’ time from the start of operations will be producing 500 tons per day. Other fuel such as peat and sawdust are being investigated. All these things need financing. We are not millionaires. We be- long “to a credit union, and also to our respective trade unions, and are represented in practically all trades in Vancouver war in- dustries. This is an earnest en- deavor by labor to solve this fuel question, and open to investiga- tion by any individual or organ- ization. Our cooperative has been set up following true Rochdale principles. No proxy voting is permitted, no buying up of shares by any ome individual, and no discount or commission is paid any person selling shares. Membership in the cooperative is by approval of a member in good standing, and the initiation fee is one dollar. Shares are ten dollars each. A dividend not ex- ceeding six percent will be paid on each share, profits to be di- vided as purchaser rebates in ac- cordance with cooperative prin- ciples. Our aim is to get at least 5,000 members. The main issue today is fuel, so let’s get together and solve this fuel problem, Once the fuel problem is solved we plan to investigate possibilities for a cooperative housing plan, and a health insurance scheme. Hard Work Ss. TODD, writes: ‘ I would like to draw to the attention of the unions and shop stewards in the shipyards to the very serious acts of what amounts to sabotage taking place in the yards every day, namely, the em- ployment of lads 15 or 18 or 20 years of age in the capacity of holders on and riveters. This amounts to nothing more than sabotaging our young manpower. For these are two of the heavi- est jobs in the shipyards. No man, no matter how strong, can stand the grind of these jobs for any length of time. They soon develop bad arms and shoulders and knees, to say nothing of their eyes, so what must be the con- sequences from such work among young men who have not fully attained the strength of man- hood. I venture to say, in my capac- ity as a first aid man, that not less than nine out of ten will be erippled within a year, shipyard worker,