B.C, LUMBER WORKER

Welfare First

T IS only natural, that upon the finalization
of the 1958 negotiations, ‘‘post mortem” dis-
cussions should be heard in many quarters
throughout the coast Local Unions of the IWA.

Such discussions are useful if they lead to
consideration of re-doubled membership activity
in the future. Their value is doubtful, if they
merely express ill-natured and ill-informed
criticism of past actions.

It is well to remember that at each stage,
membetship opinion was consulted. Each sig-
nificant move made by the Policy and Negotiat-
ing Committees was made under membership
instructions.

Any analysis of the results should take into
consideration the attitudes taken by the mem-
bership, as recorded. Plans for the future should
therefore include consideration of membership
attitudes together with proposals to strengthen
the bargaining force of the Union when in nego-
tiations.

Whatever may be said for or against the
settlement, it must be agreed that it is substan-
tially better than the emasculated contract pro-
posed by the majority of the Conciliation Board.
If we take our comparisons a step further, the
Sloan formula washed out the original employ-
ers’ proposals, which included such items as a
cut for the fallers and buckers, increased board
rates, and a black-out of seniority rights.

Reference is made here to membership atti-
tudes, because of their increasing importance
during negotiations. Each individual member is
required in an increasing degree to choose be-
twen the economic principles held by the employ-
ers, and those upon which trade union policies
are formed.

It would be idle to pretend that many work-
ers were not led to believe that increased wages
are the sole cause of increased prices. Some
accepted the employers’ interpretation of the
unemployment situation, and were inclined to
accept mass unemployment as an inescapable
calamity about which nothing could be done.
This was accompanied by the paralyzing fear
complex that very naturally and profoundly in-
fluences the wives of workers.

No one can justly level criticism at such a
natural reaction, but the fact remains that too
many accepted the economic theories of the em-
ploying interests, and failed to acquaint them-
selves with the facts made available through the
union, and which provided the basis for effective
action.

If workers accept the ready-made opinions~
so profusely provided by the employers through
the press, and over the radio and TV, they con-

dition themselves to follow the road indicated by
the employers. If they take that road they find
themselves travelling in a direction that leads
away from their desired goal.

That which we believe determines our be-
haviour. If workers believe what the employers
want them to believe they are immediately sus-
ceptible to the employers’ influence to desert the
Union’s policies. If they study their own inter-
ests, and accept the economic convictions upon
which trade union policies rest, they are in less
danger of ‘‘cutting their own throats.”

Workers’ economics which place a higher
value on the workers’ contribution to production
than the desirability of excessive profits provide
a safer basis for the workers’ attitudes.

U.K. Unions Plan
Full Employment

By K. C. RATHBONE
CPA London Correspondent

LONDON (CPA)—The threat of unemployment rather
than forthright wage demands seems to be the main concern
of British trade unions at the moment judging by resolutions
on the preliminary agenda for the annual conference of the
Trades Union Congress, which opened at Bournemouth on

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September 1.

Usually there have been plenty
of strong resolutions for higher
wages and condemning wage
freezes, but this year there are
really only two resolutions of this
nature — one from the Transport
and General Workers’ Union and
the other from the Electrical
Trades Union. Most of the reso-
lutions on this~subject are of a
more moderate tone than usual,
stating the need to “defend liv-
ing standards” or “maintain and
improve salaries in the national-
ized industries.”

Financial Juggling

“The now obvious anti-trade
union policy of the Government,
designed by financial juggling to
create a pool of unemployment
and to encourage employers to
adopt an uncompromisingly nega-
tive attitude to all wage claims,
whether justified or not” is de-
plored by the plumbers.

A demand that the present
trend towards increasing unem-
ployment should be reversed, and
that the Government should do
everything possible to provide
other work for the men who lose
jobs, is made by the Amalgamated
Engineering Union.

Complaints about the way in
which “full employment is being
undermined” also come from the
National Union of Tailors and
Garment Workers, the Amalgam-
ated Society of Woodworkers, the
Foundry Workers, the Technical
Civil Servants, and Metal Mechan-
ics.

Wage Bargaining

Recent attempts by the govern-

ment to interfere with normal
wage bargaining are protested by
the Conference of Health Service
Employees, which attacks the
Minister of Health’s veto of a
three per cent wage increase
granted last year by a Whitley
Council (joint negotiating body),
and the National Union of General
and Municipal Workers.

A T.U.C. fighting fund to fin-
ance “all strikes deliberately pro-
voked by government policy” is
urged by the Chemical Workers’
Union, which believes that the
“economic, social, and industrial
policy of the present Government
has cause, and is calculated to
cause, future serious industrial dis-
content, leading to strike action.”

T.U.C. Secretary

A “considerable extension of
joint consultations in industry”
was -advocated by Mr, Victor
Feather, Assistant Secretary of the
T.U.C,, in a speech to the Liberal
Summer School at Cambridge.

“A very big proportion of the
strikes that take place,” he said,
“have nothing to do with money,
hours or conditions, but are often
started because of lack of informa-
tion about changes in the factory
that no one knows about — ex-
cept management.”

Union members had more stake
in the firms they worked for than
the shareholders because their
lives and their families’ lives were
invested in them, and so they
should be given more information
than the shareholders,

Improve Standards

Trade unions must concern

themselves with national and in-

ternational affairs because the
function of trade unions was to
improve the living standards of
their members.

“We cannot be expected to do ;
this unless we know what is hap-

rT
pening in both national and inter- |
national politics. We must do <5}
something to prepare for events,”
said Mr, Feather. a
Labour Party
More nationalization is advo- |;

cated in “Industry Your Servant”,
the fourth policy discussion pam- 5
phlet of Victory for Socialism, a |”
Left-wing “ginger” group in the
Labor Party. t
It points out that “public con-
trol of private ownership creates
a situation in which the planner
at the centre has one motivation 4
(the national interest) and the
executant at the perimeter has a
different one (profit) . . . Central
planning and control can be freed
from inhibitions only if the large 7
units to be planned and controlled
are publicly owned.”
Social Ownership i,
Planning and control are effect- a
ive and simple to operate only q
when the man on the job is will-
ing to co-operate fully with the
planners because they both have
the same aims, From this it fol-
lows that “central planning and
control of privately owned indus-
try can never be more than a tem-

porary partial substitute for social #)
ownership.”
Public control of private owners e

is only directly effective when it
is negative control, By licensing,
a company can be stopped from
building a new factory on the
Great West Road, but it cannot be L
compelled to build one in Llan

elly or Belfast. 7%

Jobless

a
B L
OTTAWA (CPA)—The fed-
eral Labor department and the
Dominion Bureau of Statistics i

in their monthly joint release
on the employment. situation
report that in July there were
still 286,000 Canadians out of
work, although the totals de-
clined by 34,000 from the prev-
ious month,
Those seeking work, the release
notes, constituted 4.6 per cent of —
the labor force, compared with
2.7 per cent in July 1957.

Classification of 109 labor mar-
ket areas (1957 figures in brack-
ets) according to the department:
In substantial surplus, 5 (1); In
moderate surplus, 56 (29); In bal-
ance, 48 (77); and In shortage —
0 (2).

Registrations at National Em-—
ployment Service offices
412, 362 at July 17 as

526, 648 at Ji 19
at july 18, 957,