Canada

Alberta
socialist
meet hears
Tony Benn

EDMONTON — One of the world’s
most famous socialist couples met with like-
minded counterparts last weekend in an
unusual gathering for this Tory heartland.

Tony and Caroline Benn were among the
featured speakers at an innovative confer-
ence entitled “The Road Ahead — Strat-
egies for Democratic Socialism.”

As a British Labour Party MP, Benn isa
maverick in social democratic circles but
immensely popular. He has held his Ches-
terfield seat since 1950 and has been a
cabinet minister in every Labour govern-
ment since 1964. He’s currently running for
Labour Party leader against incumbent Neil
Kinnock, a matter that will be decided at the
party’s conference in October.

A known champion of peace, civil liber-
ties and industrial democracy, he puts
health care, education and housing at the
top of the agenda for any socialist govern-
ment.

But the charismatic MP says socialism
must “empower” people, because “top
down” approaches don’t work.

To gain respect and support, Benn
believes socialist parties must employ a
democratic process. Most important, par-
ties must be consistent in their ideologies,
and not swing right in opportunist grabs at
power, he stresses.

The true strength of a party, says the
dynamic Benn, lies in the broad involve-
ment of “grassroots” members. When it’s a
matter of educating workers about social-
ism, he see people learning from experience
what the philosophy means.

“When people resolve their crucial prob-
lems with the assistance of socialists, they
appreciate the nature of socialism,” he
offers.

Of course, the 63-year-old wily orator
also has to take a strip off the opposition.
“Socialism equals centralism? — there’s
nothing more centralist than capitalism,” he
quipped. Using the example of his native
Britain, he points out that the right to self-
government by the House of Commons had
been handed to the U.S. in the military field;
legislation is now the property of the Com-
mon Market Commission while the Inter-
national Monetary Fund rules the country’s
economic programs.

Closer to home, Benn strongly suggests
that if Canada enters into a free trade pact
with the United States, Canadians would
witness similar results.

And in another warning to Canadian pol-
itical activists, he cautions against relying on
the media to deliver the message. The Brit-
ish Labour Party was in many ways the
victim of a hostile media, he relates. “A
meaningful involvement of socialist parties
with the electorate removes the old necessity
for media extravaganzas.”

The dynamic conference, held at the
University of Alberta Campus, was co-
sponsored by the Woodsworth-Irvine
Socialist Fellowship and the Department of
Elementary Education of the university.

Among the featured speakers was Com-
munist labour leader Dave Werlin. “Social-
ists can induce social change,” stressed the
president of the Alberta Federation of
Labour. Central to this process is the labour
movement, he emphasized, which must
adopt “a deep interest in the full range of
human problems.”

Werlin pointed to a coalition of interests
forming between many segments of society,
including peace and anti-poverty activists,
environmentalists and aboriginal peoples.

With files from Roy L. Piepenbury in
Edmonton.

6 Pacific Tribune, October 3, 1988

Motorists on the Island highway outside Victoria get a different message on the trade deal, countering the saturation
newspaper and magazine ads from business nd government promoting the deal. The billboard, paid for by the Victoria
Coalition Against Free Trade, will remain up for three months.

Pension issue looming larger
on country’s political agenda

It’s testimony to the greying of the
baby boom generation that pensions
have emerged among the priority con-
cerns for Canadians. The issue is domi-
nating collective bargaining, House of
Commons, public and even international
debate.

But the spectrum of discussion is now
broadening from calculations of monthly
returns to an examination of the vast
pool of capital tied up in pension
plans — who owns it, who controls it,
how is it used.

Pensions are money — big money.
Over $250-billion is under pension fund
management in Canada. This equals 70
per cent of the market value of all com-
panies now trading on the stock market.

According to the report of last year’s
Ontario task force charged with looking
at protecting pension payments against
inflation, this fund provides one-third of
Canadian investment need and, barring
any major policy shifts, will play an even
greater role over the next five years. The
question arises — what say is there for
workers in how this money is spent?

For most employees, pension con-
cerns are focused on retirement security,
giving rise to burgeoning demands to
index payments to the cost of living.
When the Canadian Auto Workers
struck Chrysler last September and won,
indexing of private sector pensions had
been — in president Bob White’s words
— "placed on the collective bargaining
and political agenda.”

His predictions proved correct. Food,
brewery, airline and other workers

_ placed pensions indexing at the top of

their negotiations and were prepared to
strike to back up the demand.

Pensions have also resurfaced as an
issue in the federal public service. Federal
government employees were the first to
win indexed pensions, but in the process
were forced to remove pensions from the
negotiating table. They would in future
have to be satisfied with whatever Treas-
ury Board decided. The Public Service
Alliance of Canada, the largest union in
the federal service, is now challenging
that rule.

The question arose when the Tories
introduced Bill C-33 into the Commons,
a package which would have removed
indexing but committed the government
to paying interest on employee contribu-
tions.

The bill was both politically and fis-
cally motivated. Business, under pressure
from unions to introduce indexing in the
private sector, didn’t want the govern-
ment providing a precedent. The bill was
also aimed at reducing the growing
deficit in the plan, a deficit the union
argues is not its responsibility. Unlike
private funds, federal employee contri-
butions are not invested, they go straight
into government revenue and are used
for general expenditures.

The deficit worries the Alliance.
Coupled with present and projected
government hiring policy, it leaves the
plan on shaky ground. Personnel cuts,
plus the hiring of casual and part-time
workers who are not, required to con-
tribute, leave a steadily shrinking-work-
force to maintain the fund for a rapidly
growing number of pensioners.

The Alliance has been voicing its con-
cerns in lobbying and lunch-hour dem-
onstrations, demanding that pensions
become a bargaining table issue and

wsorkers be given a say in how their
contributions are used.

An equal voice in pension fund man-
agement is a rising demand within organ-
ized labour, but some caution it may
bring dangerous side affects. Equal voice
means equal responsibility, and some
unionists are concerned they could be
held liable for a possible bad decision
that jeopardizes their members’ retire-
ment security.

Others note that if unions were
partners in fund management, they
would be vulnerable to pressure from
their own members to bail out flounder-
ing employers.

Antennas also go up when such sour-
ces as the MacDonald Report (the free
trade instigator) argue that pension
funds be freed up for venture capital.

Despite current warts, the expansion
of public pensions remain the best gua-
rantee of pensions'accomplishing the job
for which they were intended — to pro-
vide security and dignity on retirement.

It should also be remembered that it
has been initiatives taken in the public
sector, not the private, which addressed
the scandal of poverty among the aged.
In 10 years, the elderly were moved from
the bottom of the economic ladder to
above the poverty line through state
intervention.

Despite some improvements — 40
per cent of Ontario’s workforce are noW
covered by private plans, for example, up
from 25 per cent in 1970 — the majority
of Canadians do not have access to pri-
vate plans, and even among those that —
do, 40 per cent will still have to rely on ~
some form of extra government assist-
ance to make ends meet during retire-

ee