| COntrol.

his
. Wage controls program.

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sermemenansnurssnrenaers

HAMILTON — About 1,000
) ‘gry workers staged a soup line
Outside a $135-a-plate Tory fund-
Taiser, Nov. 2 and gave Ontario
Premier William Davis a vivid pic-

80vernment’s public sector

1€ workers, members of all
Public sector unions, teachers’

1 Soups, the unemployed and af-

lates to the Hamilton and Dis-

ue Labor Council yelled:

Das fe, shame, shame!’’ as
Vis and his entourage arrived at
ton’s convention centre for

at One angry jobless worker

Called a “Tory pig-out’’.

_ Rarlier , the demonstrators had

bed Up to pay $1.35 a plate for a

Davis depression soupline’’ put

i by the labor council that coun-

Cilspokesmen said was the sign of
ture under Tory economic

No More Rhetoric’

‘caer Council president Harry
|, “€Wood personally handed
Davis a

letter on behalf of more
4n 100,000 Hamilton-area

| Workers telling him that jobs and

- More Tory economic rhetoric
et the people want and

ltis certainly obvious to us in

«.’ Workforce’, the letter stated,

: se the regressive monetary
icles of your government, by
Imposition of bill 179 is a

of the people’s opposition to-

further attack on low income and
middle income earners. It is so
obviously a bad idea that it must
have originated in the corner of
some senior public servant’s of-
fice, or in the waste-basket of
your public relations depart-
ment.”’

The letter, over Greenwood’s
signature didn’t pull any punches
with Davis. ““‘We don’t wish to
see the future of our children
placed in jeopardy because we
failed to speak out against in-
competent politicians”’, the labor
council told the premier.

“It is our charge, Premier
Davis, that you fit such a descrip-
tion and we intend to speak loudly
in asking for the resignation of
your government’.

Opening Shot

The message to protesters from .

the organizers of the demonstra-
tion was consistent. Peter Doug-
las of the Canadian Union of Pub-
lic Employees told the crowd that
this rally should be seen only as
the opening shot in all of labor's
fight against the controls. He wel-
comed the unity of public and pri-

vate sector workers in the rally, ©

and urged participants to bring
their friends, neighbors and
workmates to many more such
protests.

. CUPE Ontario division trea-
surer Terry O’Connor said work-
ers were there to celebrate labor’s
strength and determination to de-
feat the controls which he
characterized as a bid to destroy
the labor movement.

War Measures Act -
. Malcolm Buchanan, president

of the Ontario Secondary School
Teachers’ Federation compared
the law to the War Measures Act,
called for the building of massive
unity among all groups within the
labor movement and with allies
outside of it to fight the law and
eventually bring down the Tory
government.

Steelworkers Local 1005 presi-
dent Cec Taylor pledged his
union’s total backing in the fight
against Bill 179, and in organiza-
tion of the unemployed. Other
speakers included Mike Skinner
for the unemployed, Roy Martin
of the Ontario Public Service
Employees Union and United
Auto Workers representative
Frank Moroz.

PHIL LIP:

TRIBUNE PHOTO — Mi

Soup outside, steak inside

Hamilton Labor Council president Harry
Greenwood backed by jobless workers and
their supporters, uses bulilhom to address On-
tario premier William Davis, inside the Conven-
tion Centre for a Tory fundraiser.

Dennis McDer

It took the Canadian Labor Congress from June till
October 13 to issue a program of fightback against the
€deral government’s wage control program. We have
Still heard no official response from it on Prime Minister

Tudeau’s three air time talks; nor have we seen any

Saleen,
oF

‘i

William Stewart

Labor in action

poorer from Mr. McDermott on the most recent, take
Tom the poor, give to the rich, mini budget of Mr.
Lalonde. Neither has there been any CLC reaction to the
80Vernment’s bashing of locked out west coast long-
Shoremen.
y What we have, however, is a quick and decisive inter-
€ntion on behalf of Solidarity in Poland. Perhaps De-
ins finds the Polish Government an easier target than
anadian Government.
uve are presented with a statement by President
he Dermott (not the CLC executive, we notice) in which
dees the “unequivocal” support of the CLC to Sol-
h ty. ‘A triumph of human spirit created in the face of
OStility from a bankrupt political machine backed by the
Power of the Soviet Union’’, he says.
This bankrupt political machine “‘relies on tanks and
ee to deny the Polish people the basic rights which
long to all people everywhere,” says Dennis in full
"hetorical flight.
and j “CLC stands by its Polish counterpart, in Poland
creat’ Official structures in exile, and will not give any
tie to the phony unions that the Polish Commu-
da Will now set up, ina tradition going back to the early
'YS of Lenin and Stalin’. And finally, he announces
me the CLC will call for the suspension of Poland from
Onperctshi in the ILO (international Labor
iZation).

pPlain away the role of Israel in the invasion l
pessacre: in Lebanon, a task which even the Israeli
nt resisted.

pratcked away in this recent statement by the CLC
fo Sident is the real purpose of the message. Well in-
me €d that Solidarity has shot its bolt among Polish
ant Kers and has only a small base left among the youth
ma intellectuals and realizing that the Polish Govern-
Pant 88 well as the Polish United Workers’ Party (the
en Y of communists) are now involved in helping create

Mine unions, unions which will correct the errors and

is is the same Dennis McDermott who tried to —

ve

omissions which helped give rise to the crisis in Poland;
Mr. McDermott has announced that the CLC will con-
tinue to recognize the Solidarity movement in exile.

Objectively this lines Mr. McDermott with President
Reagan. Reagan proposes to starve the people of Poland
and McDermott attempts to isolate them from inter-
national working-class support. Both of these attempts
will fail.

Is the CLC moving to solve the dilemma it finds itself
in in refusing to establish fraternal relation with the
unions in socialist countries, by recognizing ‘‘pretend
unions’’ made by assorted right wingers, CIA agents,
ultra left and just plain lumpen elements?

More and more Canadian workers have come to see
that Solidarity in Poland, while it reflected errors made
by the Polish Government, the Workers’ Party and the
trade unions, was never primarily a trade union centre
but a counter-revolutionary movement which set out to
replace socialism in Poland. Is this what Mr. McDermott
is referring to when he speaks about ‘“‘the agreement
which ended the (Gdansk strike), laid the basis for the
economic and social rebuilding of Poland’’?

Most thoughtful people also recognized that this was
an internal affair for the people of Poland, and as well
was a threat to the stabilization and peace of Europe and
the entire world.

None of these considerations have bothered Mr.
McDermott, however, who seems determined to echo
the line of AFL/CIO President Lane Kirkland on this
issue. It is to the shame of the Canadian Labor Congress
that it should be dragged into such mire as this, as it was.
on the issue of Israel and Lebanon.

If Mr. McDermott feels there is not enough to busy
himself with in Canada, cranking out programs a mere
six months after the event, we can suggest an area even
closer to home than Poland to which to address his fiery

anger.

mott’s misdirected fire

We learn, from no iess an authority than Fortune
magazine, (Sept. 30, 1982) that only 16% of the private
sector workers in the United States are in unions. In the
year 1980 alone, 15,000 workers were fired in that coun-
try for union activities. How come, Dennis?

In this great citadel of democracy 84% of the private
sector workers don’t have the ‘‘basic right which be-
longs to people everywhere’’.

After making all due allowance for differences which
might well exist over events in Poland, one could only
arrive at the reckless conclusions of Mr. McDermott on
the basis ofa totally wrong appraisal of the situation from
a working-class point of view.

We noted at the time of the CLC convention, and we
repeat here, the stand of the CLC on international issues,
the burning questions of peace, détente and disarma-
ment, will, in the end condition its stand on matters at
home as well, vital matters of the economic and social
well-being of Canadians. You can't cozy up to imperial-
ism abroad and fight it at home. The national and inter-
national policies and programs of labor must square with
one another.

The need today is for the maximum unity of the entire
trade union and labor movement in protection and
extension of its economic and social needs, in the
preservation of world peace in face of the imperialist
threat of war.

We are sure that no one, Dennis McDermott included.
disagrees with this evident fact. Such unity, however,
cannot be secured on the basis of anti-communism, nor
anti-Sovietism. This is the lesson of the terrible cold war
period. It is the lesson of the entire struggle of the work-
ing class.

As the class struggle intensifies on the democratic
front, as it is doing today, the need for working-class
unity around working-class policies mounts. Also sur-
facing are efforts to thwart such unity and divide workers
organizationally as well as politically. There can be no
quarter asked or given in this struggle.

Dennis McDermott is dead wrong when he attempts to
take the CLC back onto the cold war trail, and he must
be made to see this basic flaw before it renders even more
harm to the fightback movement to which he himself
addressed the CLC convention, as well as to the decisive
fight for peace.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 12, 1982—Page 7