The

By GEORGE HEWISON
Labor Secretary, Communist Party
of Canada

“The global attack of capital against the workers’ living
standards goes hand in hand with an ideological campaign

on a national level, the principal protagonists of which
were initially Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but
which has now been taken up by employer circles and
conservative forces in the majority of capitalist coun-

In every single year since 1977, the
wages of Canadian workers have failed
to keep pace with inflation despite
sharp struggles by the working people
to maintain their living standards.

A scientific explanation for this step-
ped up attack is given by Dr. Emil Bjar-
nason, who says, among other things,
that while ‘‘profit has increased, the new
investment of capital used to make that
increased profit has increased much
more — thus the rate of profit falls.’’
Bjarnason argues that state monopoly
capitalism undertakes measures to re-
verse this tendency of the rate of profit
to fall.

As this tendency occurs throughout
the capitalist world, it is not surprising
to see a similar phenomenon of sharp-

..- Main document, 11th World

Trade Union Congress — Sept. 86, Berlin

ening attack on the working class oc-
curring in most, if not all, of the devel-
oped capitalist countries.

Canadian workers have thus lost 9.2
per cent in wages since 1977. With near-

ly a million workers at the bargaining ~

table this year, the vast majority will be
interested in recovering lost ground,
while the corporations will be out to cut
costs even further. (See Table 1.)
Take General Motors for example.
In a 1984 negotiating strategy manual
ostensibly prepared for GM top man-
agement, the world’s largest employer
with 750,000 employees outlined the
concerns of employers everywhere in
most graphic detail — reduce labor costs
per unit of output and increase the qual-
ity of the product. Both objectives go to
the matter of arresting the declining rate

- joint problem so!

of profit and increasing the company’s
competitive edge.

The company proposes to ‘‘contain
costs per hour’, ‘‘reduce hours per
car’’, ‘‘enhance ability to source com-
petitively, both internally (rationaliza-

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statements that the mails will carry on
with strikebreakers or the army, and
the release of Letter Carriers president,
Robert McGarry, from the Board of
Canada Post, all smack of a frontal as-
sault on Canada’s postal unions.

A major weapon in the employers’
arsenal is the growing unemployment
crisis. Despite the so-called recovery,
unemployment rates are still, on the
average, three percentage points be-

TABLE 1. LOSS OF REAL WAGES

Year % increase in wkly. % increase in % loss
wages & salaries consumer price real wages

1978 6.2 8.9 2.7
1979 8.7 9.1 -0.4
1980 10.1 10.2 -0.1
1981 11.8 125 -0.7
1982 10.1 10.8 -0.7
1983 fed. 6 and S program fig not available

nee 3.6 4.4 -0.8

2.8 j

SPARS igs 3 Se as ae. caer ee 98

tion — my emphasis) and externally
(contracting out — again my em-
phasis)’’, ‘‘continue to shift the
union/management relationship to a
Iving process’, and
“enhance individual accountability and
commitment.”’

_ Each of these negotiating objectives
is accompanied by elaborate schemes
to subvert trade unionism to corporate
aims.

The bargaining situation in Canada
has entered a new phase, as it has
everywhere in the capitalist world. The
struggle of the trade unions in Canada is
no longer just to prevent rollbacks and
against concessions, for wage and
benefit increases, but also to prevent
the destruction of the organized trade
union movement.

The Gainers dispute may very well
have been one of the opening salvos,
but, most assuredly, not the last.

The long list of concessionary de-
mands by Canada Post, coupled with

yond the pre-recession rates of mid- _
1981. The current official figure of close
to one and one half million unemployed
hides the discouraged worker (who has
given up the search for work), and the

_ part-time worker; now estimated at one

in six of the regular work force.

The growing desperation of the
unemployed was best demonstrated
recently at the American Motors plant
in Brampton and the spectacle of 65,000
unemployed turning up to apply for
3,000 jobs, standing or waiting in cars
overnight in the pouring rain.

Plant closures and _ rationalization
have had a direct, as well as indirect,
effect of lowering the general wage
level.

Table 2 shows a process which
has been duplicated hundreds of times
in the recent period.

The average length of unemployment
has been increasing as well as the rates.
In 1980, the average length of unem-

e continued on next page

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 29, 1987

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