Page Five
. By “High Rigger”

\

LUMBER WORKER

F

»

THERE'S A REASON

CRITIC has asked why this
space in the B.C. LUMBER
ORKER is wasted on chit-chat
pert this and that outside the

There was a reason for this
column, It looked" like a good
one.

IWA members have made it
unmistakably clear in recent
months that they regard them-
selves as part éf the national and
international labor movement.

Many of them said that they liked
to read a digest of labor news items,
which do not ordinarily appear in
the daily press.

Byte effort has been made to select
is which touch on the welfare of
_ -tumber owrkers in B.C. Their wel-

fare does not peer solely on what
happens inside the IWA.

If an incident in labor circles
k. jounds amusing, why not pass it
mg. If it gets a laugh that
Ips. Life has been too grim
itely, anyway.

Jf it’s wasted effort, “High
Rigger” and his stooges will be

glad to quit and go back to read-
ing for their own pleasure.

eee ae
THE ITU PICKET LINE

ON the strike front, the honors

go to the ITU members in
Vancouver for persistence and
determination.

Every day, rain or shine, for
$2 months, the pickets have been
on duty at the Vancouver Prov-
ince Building.

A court injunction prohibits
them from stationing more than
two pickets at one of the several
entrances,

They are forbidden to take any
action to discourage aayone from
crossing the picket line.

All they can do is direct the
attention of the public to the fact
that the Vancouver Province is
seab produced.

There are 135,320 men who
carry trade union cards in Bri-
tish Columbia.

If everyone of them, with their
families realized that the ITU
fight is their fight, the ITU would
win the strike.

.The IWA respects the ITU
Reet line. "

ery copy of the Vancouver:
peace is behind that picket
ec.

Remember this simple fact.

I your friends not to cross
that picket line.

oe *

OLD AGE WORRY

PERHAPS we should worry a

bit about our old age.
. We might be in an awful fix
in 1971, It’s all because we’ve
been reading Hansard.

Stanley Knowles, M.P. from
Winnipeg, got the official statis-
ticians to dig up the figures of
old age problems, and produced
them in the House of Commons
on March 3, It’s the number one
national headache,

As matters stand, 41 percent
of our elderly citizens are now
receiving old age pensions, and
it’s pretty slim fare,

‘At the present time, there are
6,676,700 people in Canada be-
tween the ages of twenty and

” this tiumber Jess than 13 |
percent are able make any
_ provision for their old age by
way of insurance, annuities, re-

tirement pensions, or superannu-

When we get around to the year
71, (if somebody doesn't drop a
on us in the meantime,

be 1,523,000 people

‘TYPOS’...

UNEMPLOYMENT MISERY |
AIRED i
cific Coast during the last two |

months has been glossed over by
the authorities,

The consequences of unemploy- |
ment can never be dismissed by |
juggling statistics, or by saying |
that it is merely “seasonal”. Un-
employment does terrible things
to peoples’ lives.

The truth about the situation
was known behind the scenes, but
was glossed over in public.

Angus MacInnis, M.P. in the
Houes of Commons, March 3,
revealed something of the agony
caused many homes when he re-
ported cases verified by the wel-
fare agencies.

Here is one of them:

“This family consists of father,
age forty, mother, aged thirty-four,
and seven children ranging from five
to thirteen.

“In October, 1947, the man was
injured while working as a long-
shoreman, and after a period of hos-
pitalization was pronounced capable
of light employment by the Work-
men's Compensation Board. Com-
pensation was $20 a month.

“Efforts to find him employment
were unsuccessful, apart from a few
days with the Vancouver Post Office
at Christmas time.

“The total family income is $20
compensation and $35 family allow-
ance. Twenty-two dollars is paid for
rent, leaving $33 a month for all
other living expenses.

“Public assistance was refused be-
cause the man was considered em-

ployable.

“The children of this family seem
to be suffering from malnutrition,
and the mother, who is pregnant, is
not getting the food she requires.”

Little wonder ,at 12 cents a day
ber person for food.

Angus MacInnis took the Gov-
ernment roundly to task for be-
ing unconcerned about such cases,
which in recent months have not
been rare by any means.

He said that if they meant
what they said about the Green
Book proposals in 1945, provision
would have been made to pay the
promised unemployment assis-
tance to those who had exhausted
their unemployment insurance
benefits.

That's what IWA President
Alsbury told Hon. Mr. Mayhew
when he met him in Vancouver,
and he had good reason.

eee kee

INDUSTRY’S ABILITY
TO PAY

NDUSTRY will have a hard

time this year trying to prove
poverty, when the next round of
Wage increases are proposed.

Labor Research, CCL monthly
bulletin, has done a first class
job digging the facts out of the
Bank of Canada Statistical Sum-
mary.

Here's what they look like.

In 1947, 665 companies earned
a_profit, before taxes, of over
$765 millions. A preliminary sur-
yey for 1948 puts this figure still
higher, using the word “unprece-
dented”,

After taxes, these same com-
panies made a profit of $442 mil-
lions, or only 34 percent higher
than 1946, and 64 percent higher
than in 1945.

The shareholders made a re-
turn on their investment of 12
percent,

The pulp and paper companies
made eae $112 millions in the
same year,

The woods products industry
showed the greatest gain. Their pro-
fits for 1947 were 286 percent higher
than in 1945.

The Financial Post estimates that

for 1948 will be 17, percent

aa figures for R. V.

MURPHY’S UPSET
The Mine, Mill Union conven-

"[HE unemployment on the Pa- | tion in Vancouver last weeks was |

a very different affair from pre-
vious years. The difference was
that regional director Harvey
Murphy did not have it all his
own way.

Harvey, too, led quite the most
abrupt about-face that has been
seen for a long time in any union
convention.

A group of delegates were pro-
testing that the constitution has
been violated by the fact that
chartered accountants have not
been auditing the books. The
auditing has been in the hands
of Trade Union Research Bureau,
a body which has no chartered
accountants on its staff.

The turn-about came after the
constitution committee recom-
mended 7-4 that the constitution
be changed so that the TRUB
could carry on its work.

Then suddenly the “wonder”
worked. When the committee
brought its recommendation to
the floor, Harvey rose and said,
in effect, “I don’t think the time
is suitable for a change in the
constitution. Let’s leave it as is.”

Dutifully and without logic, the
committee chairman, George An-
derson, another Communist, got
up and followed his leader. In
turn, all the opponents recanted
—and the group which wanted
the books audited by chartered
accountants won the day.

A

* *

NO DEFENCE

Early in the convention,
Murphy admitted that a page of
the audit had been withheld pend-
ing settlement of legal matters.

“Legal matters”, you wonder?
There is an IWA ‘suit for $9000
against Murphy and others, for
the return of monies allegedly
illegally transferred by former
officers of Local 1-71 to Mine,
Mill.

And there was also the matter
of another $21,500 which worried
some delegates who read _news-
papers other than the Pacific
Tribune.

Murphy indicated that the rea-
son the page was withheld was
because the matter is sub judice.

We try to keep this column
free of contentious matter, but
let Murphy be informed ‘that
legal authorities have stated
that civil suits, such as the
IWA now has in process, are
never sub judice. They can be
spoken about at any time, any
place.

His excuse for withholding a
pace from the financial report,
therefore, does not hold water.

eae

MOSHER SPEAKS HIS
MIND

A. R. Mosher, CCL president,
wasted no words when he ad-
dressed the delegates to the
Miners’ convention, He listened,
too, to the carefully confused

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|xamblings of people like Thibault,
jfrom Sudbury, and Anderson,
| Copper Mountain, and then told
| them again plainly—

| The CCL holds all jurisdictions
throughout Canada. If the CCL
; thinks a union has failed in an
area, the CCL will step in, to
protect the CCL, and the union.

Mosher must haye had a
good smile to himself, although
he managed to keep his face
straight, when Murphy, his
arch-enemy, introduced him,
Mosher, as one of the outstand-
ing leaders of Canadian labor:
“a man I am proud to know”,
etc. ete. This from Murphy,
who has in the foulest terms,
for which he was suspended for
two years, slandered the offi-
cials of the CCL.

Final blow to Murphy, the very
nearly the last of the (Party)
Mohicans in B.C., came when
one of the interior locals had the
gall to introduce a motion, obvi-
ously aimed at ousting Murphy.

Murphy hurriedly ducked, and
managed to have the resolution
declared unconstitutional.

Better watch out Harvey; you
are no longer the god embedded
in hard rock; more like the
idol with his feet in the rain, out-
side the Shelley Building.

Cee ide}

RESTITUTION

ERNIE Walker, our genial car-

toonist, committed a grave
crime. His new drawing at the
top left hand corner of this page
is by way of making amends.

Some time ago he was asked to
draw his impressions of a high
rigger surveying the world
around him.

Pension Worries... JOBLESS
\ Harvey's Choice... ABOUT-FACE... Mosher's Voice

He had never seen a high rig-
ger in action so he did his best,
with grave misgivings.

Bros. Bill Gray of the Safety
Council and Dave Donahue of
Local 1-71 immediately went on
the war path.

It seems Ernie’s high rigger
was discovered breaking recog-
nized safety regulations, and was
out of line on several other
counts.

We re-publish the original draw-
ing on this page and invite our
readers to find ont if they are as
keen-sighted as Bros. Gray aud Don-
abue, in spotting the unintentional
errors.

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