AvP oe Oxt petition protesting cutbacks in The Canadian Union of Postal Workers set up information pickets last Friday outside a postal substation threatened with closure to dramatize an attempt by post office management to curtail postal service by contract- ing out. CUPW said that Station F. at Sixth and Commercial on Van- couver’s east side, is slated to be closed and converted into a letter carriers depot, resulting in a loss of service and staff cutbacks. CUPW charged that the post office is contracting out postal services to drug-stores and other small businesses. Talks that union business agent George Beadle said “‘might just reach a settlement”’ - were still continuing this week as strikers at Adam Laboratories in Surrey marked the anniver- sary in their year-long battle to win a first contract. Beadle, business agent for the Retail, Wholesale and Depart- ment Store Union which represents the strikers, said Tuesday that talks with Adams Lab’s lawyer, the first since last August, were held last week and a further day-long meeting was scheduled for the end of the week. “We got some things stan- ding in the way of an agreement out of the way,”’ he said, ‘‘and ‘I’m hopeful we can reach an . agreement Friday.”’ ’ There was no indication if the employer had moved on basic issues of wages and union security which had earlier block- ed negotiations. -But the vitamin manufac- : turer had earlier shown little in- CUPW INFORMATION PICKET ... gathering signatures on _-——LABOR SCENE— LP ert fe be ) Staff, service. CUPW protests cuts “For the past five years, in spite of substantial increases in the population of the greater Vancouver area, there has been no increase in staff,’”’ CUPW Vancouver Local president Lloyd Ingram said in a statement distributed by the union. “‘Management’s answer to this lack of staff is to contract out the service to drug stores instead of increasing the staff in order to provide you with adequate ser- vice.” CUPW has urged people to protest the cutbacks to the public relations department of the post office. The Vancouver number is 666-1821. Adams pact ‘maybe’ clination to compromise, as it continued its campaign against: the strike, including sending let- ters to six strikers, arbitrarily fir- ing them. That issue is now before the Labor Relations Board along with another contentious issue — an application for decer- tification filed by a group of Adams employees who are cur- ‘rently strikebreaking. The LRB is expected to deal with it some time around Mar. 10, Beadle said. “It’s unheard of that a decer- tification application would be considered while we’re on - strike,”’ he added. Meanwhile, RWDSU members and. other unionists have continued to picket several London Drugs stores, the main outlet for Adams products, in line with a B.C. Federation of Labor boycott against the drug chain? eayi2e = Beadle said that other unions have pledged further help and that picketing would be stepped up if no agreement is reached. aw RisUNeE Address City or town Postal Code ee Sa NN Ce 1 year $10 0 Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186 Read the paper that fights for labor ee ec tam enclosing: 2 years $18 [1 6 months $6 [) Old New Foreign 1 year $12 0 Donation $ ee Ce PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 29, 1980—Page 12 “TRIBUNE PHOTO— SEAN GRIFFIN Tim Buck's 1925 pamphlet” still timely for unionists 7 Fifty-five years ago in 1925, Tim Buck, later to become the leader of the Communist Party of Canada,, wrote a pamphlet for left-wing trade unionists entitled Steps To Power. It was published by the ~ Trade Union Educational League, usually referred to as a minority movement. The TUEL had as one of its major objectives the reuniting of the Canadian trade union move- ment in the wake of the disastrous split which took place in Western Canada, under the banner of the One Big Union. The One Big Union was formed in 1919, at aconference held in Cal- gary. Nearly every local union west of the Great Lakes, every labor council in this area and the Alberta and the British Columbia federa- . tions of labor were officially repre- sented. Many of the most promi- nent trade union leaders in Western Canada were there, arguing in fa- vor of leaving the international un- ions and the organization of the One Big Union. : Tim Buck, although -he was from Toronto, attended the Cal- gary conference and argued against secession. Starting out with a claimed affiliation of 41,000 (approximate- ly 11 per cent of the 1919 trade un- ion membership in Canada), the OBU declined to. 5,300 within two years. The American leaders of the in- ternational unions sent representa- tives into Canada to make deals with the employers, who then re- fused to employ active OBU mem- bers. In this, they had the support » of the federal and provincial gov- ernments. As Tim Buck later wrote, a situa- tion developed ‘‘in which left-wing _ workers were divided among them- selves on the issue of trade union tactics, within the same industry and on the same job.’’ While Buck respected the leaders of the OBU and described them as men with considerable practical trade union experience, proven courage and sincerity, he sharply criticized their “ill-considered attempt to destroy the then-existing trade unions by secession and to replace them by an organizational hodgepodge.”’ This was the historical setting for Steps To Power, which was widely circulated among left-wing trade unionists in the middle 1920s. The TUEL had the full support of the Communist Party of Can- ada. In 1959, in Our Fight For Can- ada, a selection of Tim Buck’s writ- ings (1923-1959), we find the fol- lowing: ‘‘Canadian Communists have always stressed three things in their work as trade unionists: maxi- mum unity through industry-wide negotiations; rank-and-file control and involvement of the members in trade union affairs; Canadian aut- ’ onomy of the trade unions whose international headquarters are in . the U.S. These three methods of Canadian trade union activity are as alive and pressing as they were in 1925.” Today, we have a much larger and more influential trade union movement, including a substantial percentage of Canadian branches of international unions enjoying different degrees of Canadian aut- onomy. We also have a substantial number of purely Canadian unions within the main trade union. cen- tres. This makes it possible to speak of an independent, sovereign and - united trade union movement in Canada as a realizable objective. Some of the projections made by Tim Buck in his pamphlet deserve to be the property of every left- wing and militant trade union member of this period. Class struggle: _ “Itisnot a question of good cap- italists or bad capitalists; neither is it a question of whether we desireto’ be on friendly terms with our mast- ers or not; the inexorable law of capitalist development renders the class war inevitable; and except by LABOR COMMENT BY JACK PHILLIPS agreeing to wage cuts and loss of conditions at the will of the employing class there is absolutely no way out. We can be the upper millstone or the lower, but the struggle is there and we must con- quer or be crushed.’’ The fact that wage-cutting today usually takes the form of prices ris- ing faster than wages only serves to substantiate Buck’s thesis. Consolidation of capital: ‘Within the more important in- dustries competition has been vir- tually eliminated. Capital has con- . solidated itself to a degree that ren- ders individual action on the part of an employer or company, outside. narrow limits, practically imposs- ible. Over companies, over trusts, stands finance capital.”’ Power in the shops: “Ultimately, the power of the unions is in the shops. It is there — where we produce all the things that make the world a good placeto live in — that the reins of power lie waiting for us to grasp them. And the worker nearest to each of us, most directly and closely connected with and influenced by us, is the worker who works by our side. And our first step toward solidarity and power must be recognition of the unity of interests of all workers on a particular job, and organiza- ° - tion of the workers on the. basis there shown.”’ Nationalization: ‘Due chiefly to the fact that we have never fought for it, and that our only example (the CNR) was, ‘because of capitalist bankruptcy instead of working class demand, guaranteeing interest on paper ra- ther than working class rights, the question of nationalization has been viewed from the capitalistic rather than the revolutionary view- point. Everything depends, of course, upon how and by what means nationalization is brought about. ‘ ‘«..if with nationalization there goes a wiping out of common stock, etc., a general marking down of fixed charges, and a meas- . ure of workers’ control, then it isa revolutionary development of first importance. “‘Nationalization in only a step, of course, but it is a step in the right direction; and a determined cam- paign for it would transform the labor ‘movement. The principled industries of Canada are based upon exploitation of the natural re- sources of the country, and from the viewpoint of right and justice, nationalization of industries based - ‘upon the mineral and forest wealth should have the broadest possible appeal.” -be appointed by the provincial gov" trol, who would function prac — class would fight desperately In the recent federal electiot campaign, the Communist Patty campaigned for an all-Cané energy policy based on publicowh ership of all sources of energy, PUP lic ownership of natural resources under joint federal-provincial come trol and the nationalization of 4 multinational corporations, the — banks and credit system. = } Buck, in his long tenure as leader! — the Communist Party of Canada; — played a major role in develope this anti-monopoly program. | Sometimes we are asked where — the money will come from to 18 tionalize an industry. In Steps — Power, Buck gives a most approP” — riate answer: ‘‘nationalization — must also contain the germ of &%& propriation, in that compensation — — if any — must be on the basisO . what we can afford to pay without — overburdening the workers in U1 — industry,-and not according to P@ per capitalization or’ supposed 1 earning power.’’ He also su Z| that the small shareholders should A be considered for compensation — and pointed out that in the majoe ity of industries the capitalists had already taken out more than they — ever put in. aa ‘‘Nationalization,”’ he wrote — ‘must mean greater security 20¢ — well-being for the worker, and It must mean that first. If in the pf" cess some of the master class lose @ 9 little of their superiority, so much the worse for them.” a 4 In discussing how a nationalize® industry in a province should be managed, Buck advocated thal — half the management board should ernment and half by the workers 1 ~ the industry. 4 “This body,” he proposed, — “would appoint the managers of each undertaking under their col- — tically the same as at present, wit — the difference that the workers 1 — each plant would elect a committee or board which would actually, participate in management.”’ Buck, of course, was an out- standing Marxist. He fully realized that the nationalization of certall industries that would continue t0 function within the framework of © the capitalist market (without 4 | planned economy) was not the ul- timate solution. That is why he - wrote, “I do not believe that na- tionalization alone is going to solv our problems, far from it.”” He pointed out that the capitalist. against any move to expropriaté their holdings, and that in the struggle to overcome that resist- ance, the resulting development of the industrial and political arms of the labor movement would help lay the basis for the ultimate solution. If the word socialism was not us- _ ed in that document, we must re __ member that it was a left trade un- j ion document, not a Communist Party program. However, when — Buck wrote that ‘“‘every local or sectional conflict will become a re- hearsal of the final struggle for ~power,”’ there is no doubt that he — was referring to working class power. : Much has changed since 1925 — but much remains the same, evenif in a new setting. The need to win — support in the trade union move- — ment for clear-cut, class struggle policies is still on the agenda, but in the context of the national and in- ternational relationships of the 1980s. @