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_the first effective buyers’ strike to date which has gripped

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Open wage negotiations now

RADLED in the struggle of American labor against
S the harsh exploitation of industrial feudalism, May
Day has become the day of the international work-

ing class ...a day for assessing the victories and defeats

.of the past year, and planning the struggles of the future.

It is a day of working class unity and solidarity ...a day
of the international fraternity of all labor, marching to-
wards a new world.

This May Day, Canadian labor is faced with many new
tasks. Prime among these is the need to win an over-all
wage increase to meet rising living costs. Under the pres-
sure of Big Business the federal government’s policy of
price ‘decontrol’ has already stripped Canadian labor of its
hard-won’ wage gains of 1946. With profits and prices
soaring, wage indexes have rapidly moved from the ‘pros-
perity’ to, the subsistence level.

Labor leaders have warned the King government re-
peatedly on where its reckless abandonment of price con-
trols would lead, but the warnings have gone unheeded.
Big Business has scored all down the line. While wartime
legislation holding the ‘price line’ is abandoned to allow
profits to skyrocket, restrictive labor legislation is clamped
on to cripple the efforts of labor in winning wage increases.

May Day must mark the beginning of a nation-wide
resolve on the part of labor to open wage negotiations .. .
to present labor’s demands for a greater share in the tre-
mendous wealth produced. To bring labor’s purchasing
power into line with its capacity to produce. In British
Columbia big unions like the International Woodworkers of
America, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter

. Workers and other unions, have already submitted demands

for wage increases. Others must follow the lead given by

' the IWA and the IUMMSW.. Delay in the presentation of

wage demands can only serve to strengthen the hope of
reactionary employers and governments alike, that labor is
hesitant in challenging the prices plundering of the nation,
and the legislative limitations upon its rights to fight back.
Labor must explode that fond hope and swing into action
on the wages front now, drawing new strength, inspiration
and solidarity from the great fighting traditions of May Day.

Youngsters show the way

HE eight-cent candy bar boycott which started last

week in the little town of Chemainus is sweeping
B.C’s main centres like a prairie fire. It is perhaps

the consciousness of the older people and given them a
very practical lesson in how to deal with the price rac-
keteers. .

When the price ceiling went off candy bars the price
Was promptly upped two cents, and a commodity held to
be ‘in short supply’ became plentiful overnight—at the eight
cent price. While adults swear and grumble at the price
manipulators, the youngsters acted. The price boycott was

- on, expressed in growing picket lines around candy stores,
, in succinct slogans, in petitions and chain-letters in schools.
- Junior hasn’t only signed a petition not to eat eight-cent
_ candy’ bars, but is living up to it, and bringing his school
_ into the battlefront.

The candy ‘strike’ is spreading to every school in B.C.
cities and towns, and the National Federation of Labor

_ Youth in supporting the candy boycott, has announced

that the plan may be adopted on a national scale. We are
going to hear squeals pretty soon, but they won’t be coming

from young Jack Canuck!

The moral of the candy-bar strike has many valuable
lessons for adults in the development of a general buyers’
strike against steadily rising prices. As an official of the
Esquimalt Parent-Teachers Association stated, “the chil=
dren are leading the way .. . if and when butter becomes
plentiful at an increased price, if the housewives could band
together as well as the children have on the chocolate bar

situation, it would be very effective in controlling prices.”

The young people have banded themselves together for
their common cause of a nickel candy bar. In doing so they
have given adults a simple and practical lesson on how to
beat the price hogs. We can learn from the youngsters as
we help them get their candy back.

FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1947

¥
%

labor

: unholy

{CU ececeerTT

May Day 1947 —
The fraternal teamwork and ri 1
idarity of labor and the pe? a
will surmount all obser an
win the peace so urgen
sired and so dearly bourke,
‘Workers of the World Unite

NTT me

As we see it

OR By Tom McEwen

FFICIAL AFL opposition to
communism as a_ political
faith is one thing. Official AFL
encouragement and support to
CMA-government inspired anti-
communist redbaiting and

‘purges’ is quite another. With-
in the structure of a democratic

trade union ‘all working-class po-
litical creeds must be accorded
the right of expression. This
right does not necessarily mean

-. approval or endorsation.

The practice of judging poli-
cies and ideas on the basis of
‘who raises them’ rather than
upon their merits has had dis-
astrous results for organized la-
bor. It is not accidental that
during the last fifty years we
have seen’ individuais, local
unions, and even whole federa-
tions ‘expelled’ from the AFL
for advocating policies of indus-
trial unionism and struggle
policies which have often been
catalogued by AFL leadership
under the broad generalization
of ‘communism.’

Some employers—still a small
minority, who recognize the
right of labor to organize and
bargain collectively, never. pre-
sume to designate what ‘kind’ of
union their employees must
choose. 4

Those employers who hate all
unions—and they are still a ma-
jority, but who must unwilling-
ly accept .ithe inevitability of
organization, give
erence’ to the AFL, because they

hope that such ‘preference’ will
ultimately kill all effective union

organization, or at the very least
transform it into a company-
dominated setup.

Hitler made a cult out of red-
baiting — of seeking to solve
every problem by screaming
‘communism.’ With this tech-
nique he _ destroyed
one of the most powerful sec-
tions of the pre-war world trade
union movement. New reaction-
ary elements are arising who

seek to emulate -Hitler
crusade against , com-
munism’ as a method of de-

in an

 stroying labor. The tragedy of
it is that after all that work-~

‘pref- _

overnight .

ing men and women have ex-

perienced in the course of the
last two decades, they can still
find people in the leadership
of the labor movement ready
to join them in the raucous
chorus.

e ’

ACK in the ‘hungry thirties’
the political apolgists of big
business had a stock reply to

every plea for the alleviation
of distress—‘where’s the money

- coming from?’ Every worker or

farmer, seeking work or relief,
every smal] business man seek-

ing some minor local improve-

ment, every worthy organization
demanding ac-
tion to’ allay
suffering — all
got the same
query, dished
out with a look ;
of owlish stup- |
idity, ‘where’s |:
the money com-
ing from?’ It,
was a handy
answer for
evading a _ per-
plexing prob-™
lem, and didn’t Tom McEwen
tax the mentality of the politi-
cal morons. 4

A few years.ago, when we re-
quired all the human and ma-
terial resources of Canada to
build tanks, ships, planes, guns,
roads—anything and everything
to blast Hitler into kingdom
come, there was no question

about ‘where’s the money com-

ing from?’ It came out of the
sinew, sweat, and resources of
our nation. En passan, as a
Frenchman would say, it is well

‘tc remember that the ‘patriotic’

‘where’s-the-money-coming-from ?’
boys staged the first shameful
wartime’ strike against Canada,
by turning down the govern-
ment’s five percent profits ceiling
on war contracts . . demanded

10 percent and promptly got it,
with a ‘cost-plus’ system which
hatched a whole new flock of
millionaires, to say nothing of
the smaller fry who managed to
amass fortunes just under the
million mark.

(

Faced with the problem ot
building the peace, and hell
bent on holding onto their jet
propelled profits, the

at it again hammer and tong’
The lack of public health facilr
ties, housing, roads, bridge
schools, parks, hospitals, recT®
ation centres ... everything the
people need, but don’t get, #
explained away with a ‘where
the-money-coming-from?’ yelP-

Ironical as it may seem,
answer to their stock alibi +°
doing nothing can be found 1?
any current issue of the Final
cial Post (organ of Big Bust
ness), and for special referenc®
to the issue of April 12, 1947.
‘Sixty Canadian companies’ S2Y*
the Post, ‘shows 1946 earnings
almost 30 percent higher th@?
for 1945. Here are a few wh?
top the 30 percent several times:
In 1946 Sicks Breweries’ net PO
fits were 216 percent above 1945,
amounting to the trifling sum
of $1,741,322. That sum would
build quite a few low cost
homes, or provide a good few
quarts of milk to children whos®
parents cannot now keep UP
with jet-propelled prices.

The Ottawa Electric Company:
of which the
Thomas Franklin Ahern is pres”
ident . . the ‘philanthropist
who provided Igor Gouzenk°
with a monthly stipend of $100
for ‘his services to Canada
scored a net profit of 242 per
cent above 1945, amounting
some $427,286.

above 1945, while the Textile
trust, who battled for months
against giving the Valleyfield,

Quebec strikers a miserable in: ®

crease to their low wages, ran

up a score of 50 to 73.6 percent

‘where’ S~
: fo
the-money-coming-from?’ lads ar

open-shopP©? .

National Drug —
Co. hit the ball at 63 percent

profits. above 1945. And so non

all down the line. ’
eee

Workers should have no dif —

ficulties answering the lads wh?

have reverted to the ‘where's _

the-money-coming-from?’ alibi £0
political bankruptcy. It stands
out like a sore thumb on every
monopolist balance-sheet,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 4

‘ NE,