By MAURICE RUSH

While thousands of woodworkers
in B.C. are jobless and facing one
of the bleakest winters in history,
the huge MacMillan Bloedel em-
pire is exporting hundreds of
millions of dollars abroad to
acquire and establish forest in-
dustries in other countries where it
can realize super profits.

This situation came to light with
recent disclosures that the B.C.-
based forest company has entered
into a joint venture with Brascan
(formerly Brazilian Traction and

Light Co.), to establish an in-

tegrated forest products complex
in Brazil. The project will include
development of an extensive pine
and eucalyptus forest.

The total investment MacMillan
Bloedel will pour into the Brazilian
venture has not been revealed but
it is certain to run into hundreds of
millions of dollars. This operation
is part of the rapid expansion of
MacMillan Bloedel into one of the
world’s major multinational
Corporations in the wood and
packaging industry. It also
recently announced new
acquisitions in Scotland. (See PT
Jan.. 24). MB has also acquired
extensive holdings in France, the
Netherlands and southern U.S.A.

Using the vast profits it has
accumulated from exploition of
B.C.’s_ woodworkers and the
province’s forest resources, most
of them Crown-owned, the timber
giant has extended its investments
abroad to maintain high profit
levels and to be less dependent on
the economic situation in B.C.
Foreign investments, particularly
in low wage areas, enables greater
exploitation of labor by the com-
pany. It has built and acquired
extensive processing plants abroad
while holding down processing in
BiOn. toxaraw:- “and -semi-
manufactured products.

In extending its world-wide

connections, MB has joined with

Some of the world’s largest multi-
National corporations and has
become, along with them, a major
exploiter of less developed coun-
tries and a force promoting
reactionary political regimes
abroad.

Some months ago, before an-

esses ee

Mac Blo exports millions of dollars
while B.C. woodworkers without jobs

nouncement of its Brazilian ven-
ture, MB announced it has joined
with the notoriously reactionary
U.S. United Fruit Company in a
venture in the southern U.S. for
packaging fruit from the US.
company’s extensive holdings in
the banana republics.

MacMillan Bloedel has joined
with other major Canadian cor-
porations in pouring hundreds of
millions of dollars into Brazil to
take advantage of the extremely
backward conditions imposed on
Brazilian workers by the ruling
military dictatorship, and to
acquire maximum profits from
super-exploitation of Brazilian
workers whose wages are one-
twentieth of those of Canadian
workers.

Included among the major
Canadian corporations taking part
in the rape of Brazilian resources
and labor are such well known
companies as Inco, Falconbridge,
Noranda, Alcan, Brascan and
MacMillan Bloedel. So extensive
have Canadian capital investments
become in Latin America that
Canadian-based firms hold the
single largest foreign investment
position in .at least three Latin
American countries. MacMillan
Bloedel is sharing these big
business ventures which the
reactionary military dictatorships
in Latin America have opened up
for foreign investment.

The conditions in Brazil which
are attracting foreign companies
such as MB were recently revealed
in a magazine article published in
Toronto called This Magazine, and
were aired in a recent CBC mor-
ning radio program. This article
points out that because of right-
wing political regimes, Brazil has
maintained one of the lowest wage
scales of any partially in-
dustrialized Third World country.
These are the kind of conditions
MB likes.

Labor costs in Brazil account for
as little as eight per cent of total
production costs, while in North
America the equivalent figure is
between 20 and 40 per cent. ‘In the
past 10 years Says the article, ‘‘the

real wages of the Brazilian-

un

There's more than

coffee in Brazil

-there's super

profits for Mac Blo

workers and peasants have
declined by almost 50 per cent.”

The article also points out that
the military dictatorship ruling
Brazil-has cut back ‘spending on
social services from four per cent
of the budget to one per cent
despite an infant mortality rate
which has risen steadily and is now
in excess of 88 per thousand live
births. Life expectancy averages
only 35 years (about half of
Canada’s), and over half the
population over 20 years of age is
affected by tuberculosis.

In the dash to make Brazil into a
super-profit producing economy
attracting foreign capital, safety
conditions and pollution controls
are unheard of. According to of-
ficial figures, in Sao Paulo alone

Ci i

7,600 workers have been killed and
130,000 injured in the past two
years — and the real figures are
said to be much higher.

It is conditions such as this which
have encouraged large corporate
investment by Canadian com-
panies in Brazil, including Mac-
Millan Bloedel. Canadian govern-
ment policy is aimed at en-
couraging export of Canadian
capital to Brazil, providing
government-operated agencies to
extend credits as well as scientific
surveys of Brazil to Canadian
companies to encourage their
investment in Brazil with ‘its
fascist-type regime.

The magazine article quoted
above -points out that the head of
Brascan in Brazil, with whom MB
has entered into its joint venture, is
an admitted fascist by the name of
Antonio Gallotti. Named Brazil’s
“Man of the Year’ in 1973 by
Brazil’s leading magazine, Gallotti
publicly admitted that he was a
fascist. In an article carried in the
magazine he said he opted for
fascism because of his. hatred of
Communism and the working
class. This is MacMillan Bloedel’s
new partner in Brazil!

B.C. woodworkers should know

these facts about the largest forest
company in the province which has
grown rich from exploiting B.C.
workers and resources. Now it is
using that wealth to export capital
to exploit workers abroad in their
search for super profits. By ex-
porting capital to develop industry
in other countries MB is exporting
jobs which should be’ made
available to B.C. workers by ex-
panding processing and
‘manufacturing in B.C. If we had a
‘government in Ottawa worth its
salt it would put a halt to the out-
pouring of Canadian capital and
force its investment in Canada for
Canadian development. Par-
ticularly since that capital,
although owned by a handful of
capitalists, is the product of the
labor and resources of Canada.

Leading spokesmen for MB in
recent years — such as J. V. Clyne
and Robert Bonner — have made

many speeches and written many~

articles defending the U.S.
takeover of Canadian industry on
the grounds that Canada doesn’t
have enough capital to develop its
own industries. Yet all the time
their company has been exporting
hundreds of millions of dollars
abroad to countries where they
expect to make bigger profits than
their investment would bring in
Canada. That’s capitalism for you.
If anything was néeded to prove
the anti-national character of big
business and its callous disregard
for Canada’s interests, it’s the
hypocritical attitude of the heads
of MB.

One thing is clear as a result of
the recent revelations of MB’s
foreign investments: this company
has become ‘a major exploiter of
foreign workers and one of the
economic pillars of reactionary
profascist regimes such as the
bloody dictatorship in Brazil.

There is a popular song which
says, ‘‘There’s an awful lot of
coffee in Brazil... .’’ There’s also
an awful lot of super-profits to be
made in Brazil, and MB wants to
be in on the kill — and to hell with
B.C.’s woodworkers who need jobs
but who see the wealth created by
their labor funnelled off to other.
countries instead of being used to
create thousands of new jobs in
B.C.’s forest and processing in-
dustries.

HAVE

"RENEWED YOUR
SUB YET?

CANRON WORKER WRITES:

‘Production first, then- safety’
to blame for high accident rate

As a worker at Canron, I would like
to say a couple of things con-
cerning your article ‘‘Canron
Worker Killed” which appeared in
the Pacific Tribune on Friday,
February 7, 1975. What I have to
Say reflects solely my own opinions
and observations.

Your paper was the only one that
I've seen that seriously attempted
to present an aécount of the events
Connected with Tony’s (Anton
Zindarcic) death, but for the sake

of accuracy I believe that more

Information is needed.

You state that ‘‘after a
discussion between the union of-
ficials and the men, a threatened)
Walkout was averted.”’ Tony was
killed at around 3:45 p.m. on
Thursday, January 30. The day
Shift was leaving work when we

first learned about the accident.

What happened with the afternoon
and graveyard shifts I do not know.
On Friday there was a great deal of
discussion on the day shift con-
cerning what action, if any was

that many of the lads

needed. » :
An unofficial and imprompu

meeting was held at lunch to
discuss the possibility of a sym-
pathetic walkout. Several lads
arrived at the meeting already
dressed to go home. We learned
in the
Shipping Dept. had booked off at
Se aeinning of the shift. (We
heard that the entire Dept. had

WRITE TO THE PT

The PT is grateful to the worker
in Canron who took the trouble to
write us the above letter. We are
anxious to carry more letters and
articles from workers on the job
who have many problems to alr.
We are happy to make the columns
of the PT available for that pur-

se.

With the first issue in March will
be adding a sixth page of B.C. news
which will give us more space for
such stories. So please write.

booked off, but I am not certain
that this is correct.)

It was decided at the meeting
that each worker would follow the
dictates of his own conscience as to
what action to take. Several
brothers believed that the day of

the funeral was the proper time to”

book off, but a large percentage (it
is impossible for me to know the
exact number) believed that it was

not right to continue on the job as if

nothing had happened, and they
booked off at noon.

On Friday, February 7, the day
of the funeral, approximately half
of the day shift booked off. The
funeral was also attended by
brothers from the other two shifts.

The “high accident rate at
Canron’” that you speak of is
primarily a result of the com-
pany’s practice of “production
first, then safety”. The workers at
Canron know that to allow the
company to carry on with this
philosophy would be a fatal

‘mistake.

“Jones, you've been changing that tool 20 minutes... Grogan,
that’s your second trip to the men’s room... Berger, who gave
you permission to leave your machine?”

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1975—Page 3