f

iliac iii St a

Plan drive to organize Dofasco

@ Continued from page 5
reasonable possibility of suc-
cess, the USWA’ will commit
$250,000 to launch a major or-
ganizing drive.

This was a long-awaited an-
nouncement in a city where
most of the steel workers are
organized and yet this giant
company has not been chal-
lenged in some: time.

Jim Pow, delegate from Local
504, United Electrical Workers,
in pledging his local’s support
for such a drive said, “There can
be no full or complete unity in
Hamilton unless the Dofasco
workers are organized.” :

The council’s secretary, Nan-
cy McDonald, in speaking to the
press: after the meeting hoped
Hamilton labor would make the
organization of Dofasco a com-
munity project. “Members of
every union in the city have

Last Friday and Saturday,
March 22-23, a spcial joint con-
vention of representatives of
more than one-half million Que-
bec organized workers was held

~in Quebec City. The purpose of

the convention:

1. To map strategy on. re-
opening of contracts to renego-
tiate wages to bring these in
line with rising living costs;

2. To discuss means .of joint
struggle to- defeat the Quebec
Government’s attempt to legis-
late against the right to strike;

3. To put pressure on provin-
cial and federal governments to
roll back and control prices.

Other questions studied by
the meeting were the demand
for a minimum .wage law pro-
viding for $2.50 per hour in
place of the present $1.83, an
increase in old-age pensions to
$200 per month and a cost-of-
living indexing of all social
security benefits.

Common Front

More than 400 representa-
tives and top officials from: the
Confederation of National Trade
Unions (CNTU), Quebec Feder-
ation of Labor (QLF) and the
Teachers Union (CEQ) attended
last week’s conference.

In effect this means a re-emer-
gence of the Common. Front
which two years ago fought the
Quebec Government for a $100

-per week minimum wage in the

‘public service. That led to the
biggest strike in Canadian labor
history when 210,000 public and
para-public employees walked
off their jobs in the spring of
1972.

Following a union news con-
ference last week it was an-
nounced that one possible focal -
point for action may be a demand
that all salaries, both in private
industry and the civil service,
be raised by government decree
to catch up with rising living
costs. Another possibility was
that thousands of individual
labor contracts now in effect in

the province be declared open .

for renegotiation. —

- Louis Laberge, president of
the QFL stated that the labor
fededations may “be _ backing
widespread wildcat strikes if
that is the way the rank and file
responds to the challenge of ris-

BY BRUCE MAGNUSON

friends and relatives working
there and could help persuade
them to join a union,” she said.

For the first time since the
birth of the N.D.P. and its en-
dorsement by the Hamilton
Labor Council, has someone
other than N.D.P. members been
elected to the council’s Political
Action Committee.

Tom Davidson, the United
Electrical Workers national co-
ordinator was elected treasurer
of the committee. Terry Fraser,
I.B.E.W. Local 105 was: also
elected to the committee.

Both Davidson and Fraser
have fought for independent po-
litical action in the labor move-
ment and not just blind endor-
sation of one political party’s
‘policies. There’ had been strong
feelings among the delegates
for some time to break with the
old traditions.

Sam Hammond, an outspoken
delegate who is also associated
with the need for independent
political action ran a close third.

An excellent report was also
made by Nancy McDonald,
about the Solidarity with De-
mocratic Chile conference ‘that
was held in Toronto recently.
The council endorsed the report
which called for the full support
of the restoration of democracy
in Chile. Mrs. McDonald in-
formed the council that a com-
mittee had ben formed in Ham-
ilton and she called on the coun-
cil and its members to partici-
pate. ;

The report had followed a

sharp critical attack on the jun-
ta in Chile by the council’s Hu-
man Rights chairman, Ted
Powell, delegate from. Local 1005
of the United Steel Workers.

Wl:EShs\ aq Reactivate Common Front
for showdown on inflation

ing prices and profits while
wages lag far -behind.
The Big Lie

CNTU president Marcel Pepin

said the time has come for the

labor movement to rise up
against inflation which is caused

by monopolies, profiteering mid- :

dlemen, and politicians out to
line their pockets and to ‘fill

up their electoral slush funds. .

“While all this is going on these
people are blaming the labor
movement because workers are
asking for higher salaries to
keep up with all these price in-
creases. But that’s all a big lie.”

Yvon. Charbonneau, president
of the Quebec Teachers Corpor-
ation, said of the measures pro-
posed to fight inflation and ris-
ing prices that “some might call
it anarchy.” But, said Mr. Char-
bonneau, “Whether this is legal
or illegal isn’t what counts.
What matters is that it’s legiti-
mate.”

High Prices Are Legal Theft!

The working paper of the con-
ference points out: “What's go-
ing on now is nothing less than

legalized theft on an organized |

level. It’s something that’s been
inflicted On us
disease against which we can’t
_do a thing. That’s what’s called
free enterprise. It’s freedom to
keep people in chains through
the price structure. It’s the free-
dom to deprive the workers of
whatever salary increases they
manage to negotiate.” -

Common Class Interest
Dictates Unity

The present joint campaign
against rising prices, profits, and-
its consequences for labor,
means putting aside serious dif-
ferences on many organizational
questions, such as the rivalry of
QFL and CNTU in the. construc-
tion industry. It means keeping
the eyes on the main problem

facing labor, and notto be div-

erted by provocations or tempt-.

ations of any kind. ees
Last year food prices rose by

22% in USA and 17% in Can-

‘ada. This year food prices in
the U.S. could advance by as,

much as 30%, twice as much as
‘projected by Nixon’s advisors.
Where would that leave Canada?

The Globe and Mail of March

23, points to a possible two per |

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1974—PAGE 10

like a fatal -

cent, or more decline in the U.S.
real national income (GNP) this
years. In the face of this, can
Canada hope to escape consequ-
ences here? - 3

The capitalist world’s auto
producers — U.S:, Japan, FRG,
France, Italy and Britain — have
all priced themselves out of the
market for automobiles. As a
result of this fact, plus the oil
crisis, they all face a drop in de-
mand. ‘1974 will probably be
one of the worst years for un-
employment since World War
II,” Leonard Woodcock, UAW
president told a U.S. State Sen-
ate Committee on ‘March 5, in
Washington. He saw as many as
one million new jobless. workers.
It’s nonsensical to expect that
Canada’s auto industry will es-
cape large layoffs. Indeed the
U.S. owners of the industry al-

‘ready keeping 95% of all new

investments in the USA. At that
rate Canada’s auto industry will
soon dry up.

Public and National Interest

The -Trudeau government’s
way of handling unemployment
and inflation was to cut corpor-
ate taxes by 9% in 1972. Stan-
field and his Tories supported
this .move. The only result of
this has been a scandalous cor-

porate rip-off in profits. The

CPR and its investment arm, the
CPI, nearly doubled their profits
last year. But if wheat is to be
moved, the government has to

supply the box-cars and’ subsi-

dize the operation. The Minister
of Transport talks about nation-
alizing the CPR, but will he do
it? It ought to have been done
long ago.

Finance Minister John Turner
new pleads with big business to

come -out fighting against.

charges of profiteering. and to
save his political neck from
charges of collusion with mono-
poly. Trade Minister Alastair
Gillespie admitted on March 7
that Ottawa has abandoned ‘at-

-tempts to formulate an overall

industrial strategy. This is clear
capitulation to monopoly.

The time has come for all
union labor to follow Quebec’s
example. In fact, it is a must in
both the public and national
interest. 4

Sn

“Some confusion apparently
prevails about the government’s
policy of providing humanitarian
assistance to various indigenous
groups in Africa .. .”, begins a
statement by Mitchell Sharp.
For some weeks a flurry of de-
‘bate over supposed Canadian
policy to assist African libera-
tion movements in their strug-
gles for independence went on.
Sharp, in his statement, quickly
set the record \straight:, “The
Government of Canada does not
support the use of violence to
solve current conflicts in South-
ern Africa’. . .”

What, it turns out, the Cana-
dian government will do is allot
the paultry sum of $302,000 to
be funnelled through the United
Nations to provide scholarships
designed to assist the victims
of racist and colonialist policies.
The statement is typically
Mitchell Sharp — filled with
high-sounding phrases about
liberation while unequivocally
assuring the colonialist rulers
that this country does not con-
done the liberation movements
and will not aid them.

This stance is all the more un-
becoming when it is compared to
Canada’s continuing partnership

-in NATO alongside such a bru-

tal dictatorship as Portugal
which has for years been suppres-
sing the liberation movements in
Angola and Mozambique. Cana-
dian weapons directly, through

Judgement

@ Continued from page 5

By that time the man, six feet
tall, weighed only 103 pounds.
He looked like a skeleton and
could not walk on his own.

“On February 8, he. was Visit-
ed by his wife and mother. The’
meeting took place in the pre-
sence of General Arellano Straca,
one of the junta leaders, known
for his special cruelty. To en-
courage her elder son, whom she
tenderly called by his diminutive
name, Pepe, she asked: ‘Pepe,
what are you going to do after
you are discharged from the
hospital? Almost speechless,
Jose Toha whispered: ‘What are

‘-you talking about? We are cri-

minals in the eyes of the junta.’
Junta’s Version

“Before he died, Jose Toha
said to one of the men on the
hospital staff, who still had some
human decency: ‘Take me out
of here; they are killing me’.

“An infamous version was
soon spread that Jose Toha had
committed suicide, that he had
hanged himself in the prison cell.
This version was fantastically
absurd: a man, six feet tall
could not hang himself in‘a cell.
Moreover, Jose Toha could
move only by a wheelchair push-
ed by someone else. Then the
junta -hastily fabricated another
version: of his alleged suicide,
no less absurd than the first one.
The truth is, however, that one
of the former comrades-in-arms

of Salvador Allende was killed

in cold blood.”
* * x é

Another is told by José Nob
rega Araujo: :

“?m a Brazilian by national-
ity and had been invited to work
in Chile as a technical special-
ist for rendering assistance in
designing a corn-harvesting ma-
chine. On September 20.1 .was

the African — peopl
b

-planted several rifles

NATO agreements, hyp
country’s colonialist Ags
in a real way.

The Canadian BOVG
self-confessed distaste

ence would better be
~to the white regimes i,

ern Africa who practice -
as policy — through ag
exploitation and genocidy f

longer possible for Ci,
assume such a position 4
lined by the Exte e
minister without, beiny
dited in the eyes of
throughout the world. ~

at Helsiy

arrested. Before this F
prise had not worker
and fascist provocaia

4
rs

premises. My friends a,
arrested under a pretey’
rorism. We were broug\*
National Stadium, wi”
were subjected: to pants
ings: One night I and ty
comrades, two worken”™
them, were put into aN
bus and brought to a
the-way place far froma
Later on, I found out ©
place is called Cajon a

‘Four Killed —

“The ‘five of us_werey
to our knees under the ”
glare of headlights; twa J
front of.ws were a line
bineers. SA
“I was in the mi j
group to bé executed
firing squad. Instinct,
jumped and seized the |i
the submachine-gun Ay
carabineer. My friends
too and then, not waitin {
soldiers to fire, I plungy
stony bottom of a
deep ravine. My ren
down, were also throw
“I felt that I was wa.
my leg, but I manageata
the motor road. Buses
run because it was nig”
I ‘walked 15 miles and
arrived in Santiago. Da\
me how I got to Helsi
who gave mé shelter
me to flee ftom Chile ¥
to fulfil their sacred a’

at the moment of
standing beside me
friend and  colleagu
Carlos Ruz, a Chilean.
ated from the Lumumi
ship University in Mo
spoke enthuSiasticall
Soviet Union even i
of our hard imprison