Sta Left Turn! A Column For WAR VETERANS "== by Jack Phillips SAw quite a few old faces at the LPP Jobs and Homes rally on Cambie Street Grounds last Sunday. As an old friend put it told me, “This is something like the old days — only we're all dressed up and can still afford to put a few cents into the collec- tion”. Spoke to a pal just returned from overseas. “To look at me’, he said, “you’d never think I was unemployed. Just imagine: this suit costy me sixty, the coat thirty, and the hat ten. All in all I’ve spent two hundred dollars. The -hundred dollar clothing al- lowance we got when I was dis- charged never went very far. *Tisn’t enough”. “What are you doing now?” T asked. “Are you working ?”. “No, I’m living on my deferred pay. When that’s gone, and if I haven’t got a job, I'll have to bite into my gratuities.’ “Do -you think it was worth while” I asked, “serving four years and getting a bullet in the leg that will bother you for the rest of your life”. “Certainly. We had to liek old Hitler and the Japanese — but now we’ve got to pitch in and lick the guys at home who are responsible for this reconversion mess”. This ex-serviceman ressed the sentiments of the hundreds . of ex-servicemen in civies and in uniform who attended the rally. “We've got to pitch in and lick the guys at home who are re- sponsible for this reconversion mess.” QNE of the planks of the LPP program endorsed by the meeting called for a 50 percent increase in unemployment insur- ance benefits. The rate of benefit for a single person ranges from $4.08 per wek to $12.24 for a person with a dependent, from $4.80 to $14.40. An unemployed war veteran® ean draw out-of-work benefits for a period up to twelve months in the first eighteen months after discharge. Such benefits, author- ized by the Post-discharge Re- establishment Order, provide $50.00 a month for a single man, $70.00 a month for a married man, plus the same allowance for a married man as paid to de- pendent children of servicemen. Thus, a. vet with a wife and two kiddies .would receive $94.00 a month, irrespective of previous earnings. Now, it has been pro- posed by the House of Commons Committee on Veterans Affairs te raise out of work benefits by $10.00 a month. Organized labor must support the $10.00 increase for veterans. and organized veterans must sup- port the demand of organized labor for a 50 percent increase in unemployment insurance bene- fits. Don’t forget, buddy, you may be drawing the higher, out- of-work benefit today,- but omce the 18 months qualifying period has passed, you’ll get the same as the rest if you become unemploy- ed. So provide for your own fu- ture. Support the 50 percent in- crease! CHARLES WATSON LPP Five-Point Job Prog Endorsed At City Mass Vancouver's first open air mass rally on unemployment in the postwar per the first of its kind since the summer of 1938, brought 1500 workers and ex-se to Cambie Street Grounds last Sunday afternoon to unanimously demand federal, cial and civic action on the jobless crisis and to endorse the Lubor- Progressive five-point jobs program. The city’s last open-air dem- onstration against unemploy- ment followed “Bloody Sunday” of June 19, 1988, when RCMP launched an attack on the single unemployed occupying the post- office and art museum. The afternoon of that day, an estim- ated 30,000 Vancouver citizens poured into the streets protest- ing the savage attack and de- the Winnipeg Grenadiers, A six-point program, based on the needs of the returned vet- erans in the Province of Mani- toba, includes: @ Establishment of a Veter- ans’ Affairs Department! in the Province of Manitoba. @ Canadian Legion and Labor Union representation on all gov- ernment committees on rehabili- tation. @ Provincial Department of Labor supervisions of ‘Voca- tional training on the job” place- ments to guarantee a fair deal from employers by the payment of wages.in line with progress. @ Provincial subsidies to in- crease living allowances to vet- erans engaged in university or technical training. Preference for veterans in survey and de velopment projects sponsored by the Provincial] Government. @ The Provincial Government to provide the best crown lands free of charge under Veterans’ Land Act prov’sions. Department of Agriculture to offer free short courses in all phases of agricul- ture to all veterans desiring to work on the land. of much-needed public develop- ment projects under Provincial- Dominion government sponsor- ship, providing full employment a decent wage and under decent conditions. Public construction NOW—not held back and re- leased as a means of relieving Me Me 6 Me Me PAcific 0135 (SM NE ME RE Be OS PACIFIC ADVOCATE — PAGE 2 @ Immediate commencement. Greetings and Best Wishes for Christmas and New Year ~ Hunrer-Henverson PAINT COMPANY LIMITED Hong-Kong Veteran Nominated In Manitoba The coming elections in the province of Manitoba will see the entry into the field of Charles Watson, veteran of Hong Kong and four years prisoner in Japanese prison camps. Watson, a Labor-Progressive Party member and veteran of enters the. campaign with the solid backing of a committee of veterans the overflowing unemployment queues. - In election material, Watson pledges himself to keep the int- erests of the fighting men to the fore, and urges unity between veterans and unionists in the fight to win the peace. Watson, prior -to _ enlistment was active in the Packinghouse Workers Federal Union, TLC, as business agent. ‘moucpolists who, grown manding jobs for Briish Colum- bia’s young men. DELIBERATELY CREATED -Sunday’s meeting: was with- out ‘that kind of incident. But de- spite one of the coldest days of the winter, the big crowd stood solidly and attentively before the speakers’ stand for over an hour as LPP spokesmen Austin Delany, Maurice Rush and Jack Phillips, all World War II vet- erans, and Wilf Robson of the Shipyard General Workers’: Fed- eration, attacked the unemployed crisis as being “deliberately created” by the sitdown strike of big business. Austin Delany, LPP city org- anizer, struck the keynote with his charge that unemployment was being engineered by. “these richer from wartime profits, now want to drive down wage and living standards so as to reap greater profits in the years of peace.” There was an answering roar from the crowd as Delany prom- ised that unless quick govern- ment action on the crisis was forthcoming “there will be more and bigger demonstrations such as this until Ottawa and Vic- ‘toria and even the City Hall have to listen to us.’ Speaking as a veteran, and for the thousands of veterans who feel likewise, we don’t in- tend to let fascism-minded big business drive Canada into re- action after we’ve just helped Youth Urge Action Program For Jobs, Homes And Peace Decision to take part in the forthcoming labor youth trek to Ottawa and to make full employment and means of creating it the central issues in the trek featured the first meeting of the National Federation of Labor Youths’ Bc. Provincial Committee in Ukrainian Hall, *held last week. Representatives of the Canad- jan Seamen’s Union, Dock and Shipyard Workers Union, Ging- er Goodwin LPP Youth Club, Club 14, King Edward High School Forum, Canadian Yugo- slavian Youth Club, and Russian- Canadian Youth Club of New Westminster attended the meet- ing, where after a stimulating discussion a tentative program was drawn up as B.C.s share in the brief which the trekkers from coast to coast will present to Prime Minister King, Cabinet Ministers, and MP’s in Ottawa when Parliament reconvenes in 1946. 1 HS Se OS Sh 555 Granville St. Re OM Oe Re OS Chief proposa!s for creation of employment were: @ A large-scale housing pro- gram, -federally planned, creat- ing jobs in lumbering, building, electrical, and many other in- dustries: @ Establishment of a_ steel mill and large manufacturing in- custries in B.C.; ® Slum clearance and _ con-. struction of community centres; @ Expansion of foreign trade and-of Canadian resources; @ Expansion of B.C. building; . @ Repair of our aide: @ Introduction. of universal 40-hour week, with three shifts where possible. The Committee also favored a $25 weekly minimum wage; com- pulsory collective bargaining; equal rights to youth and na-* tional minorities for jobs, wages, and voting privileges, and plan- ned vocational training. Resolutions were passed in support of the Ford strikers’ de- mand for union security, the In- donesian struggle for independ- ence, and urging labor unity and labor-veteran unity in the fight | for decent postwar living stand- ship- ards. -| organizer, to defeat fascism in 3 the LPP city leader ¢, Maurice, Rush, LPP; sharply Major-General B. M, Aer, self termed leade jobless veterans wi splitting the ex-servie from the labor move “The veterans ha their guard agains claim to lead the fi: but actually bring f posals which divi among themselves asserted. Pointing out tha |no shortage of mo and recalling how — tanks worth $40,000 junk in a few sé Phillips. ridiculed. ment’s theory that : on reconversion must ¢_ big business. : “If the governm spend 18 billion de they can spend on ‘build new homes for © and former war wor i declared: : Unanimous approval - en by the meeting to: four point resolution “The government =: action, ” the resolutior ; “against big business ' from wartime profits, — conspired to create t.! crisis, aiming at eve | profits in the. peace.” — Toure Pro. Twenty-three entrie_ Second Annual “Brit | bia at Work” comp: exhibition, recently — by B.C. Trade Union: 3 ducted by the Labor — in the “Vancouver AU for three weeks closi } ber 2, have been § § the Federation of Cat | ists to tour the Prov auspices of the Ext | partment, University Columbia. The abridged Beas travel. a four mont. commencing in Januar @ be shown at the follow @ Kamloops, Vernon, _ Nelson, Penticton, cre ley, Greston, Alberni | Forks. ae Artists whose W & -been chosen for this j A. W. Allen, Arnold } -Angliss, Bruce D. Bo: legaro, H. G. Crump K. Ewan, James Dalze | W. Kenneth Hoff, & Hone, W. J. B. Newe™ ley W. Parker, Cliff Lieut. J. L. Shadbolt Thom, ~Gordon & Fraser. Wilson, Margé eed, Dorothy Willis Major, the last three two selected works FRIDAY, DECEMB