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THE MICRO-ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION

Will a computer
degree mean
a job ticket?

By KERRY McCUAIG

It’s half the size of your thumbnail and is the key to
Canada’s economic future. If the 1950s and 60s was the
age of the car, the 1980s belongs to the silicon chip. As its
potential to mechanize operations from the most mun-
dane to the highly skilled unfolds daily, Ottawa has put
out an S.O.S. to prepare the Canadian labor market to
meet the challenges of the decade.

Canada is on the ground floor of the micro-electronic
revolution.

Our own silicon valleys are emerging. Outside of the
nation’s capital in the townships of Nepean and Kanata,
is the country’s fastest growing high tech region, already
containing some 234 firms, most of them in the tele-
communications, computers or silicon chip widgets of
some form or another.

They employ some 14,000 workers at the moment. But
by the end of the decade there could be 100,000 techno-
crats there — the workers of the future will wear a white
lab coat and brandish a computer science or electonic’s
degree Ottawa predicts.

To ward off attacks for its inaction in the face of
massive growing unemployment, Ottawa has held up the
microelectronics revolution as its ‘chicken in every
pot”’ of the future. The problem it says is to bring up the
skills of the workforce to meet technology’s demands.

Reports like Labor Market Development in the 1980's,
sponsored by Employment and Immigration forcasts a
critical shortage of skilled workers from millwrights to
electronics’ experts. Other reports estimate that the job
demand will be so great that there will not be enough
male workers to fill the vacuum and women workers
will have to come to the economy’s rescue.

Coupled with this are dire reports from agencies like
the Ontario Education Ministry and the Science Council
of Canada predicting massive female unemployment and
adverse effects on the economy if girl students continue
to drop the maths and science courses essential for the
job market of the future.

Job Guarantee?

But will a computer program be a ticket out of the
pogey line? Canada is ina transition. From the times the
Commons were fenced in to drive people into the cities
to take part in the first industrial revolution, technologi-
= changes have caused great displacement in the labor
orce.

The question is will enough jobs be created to offset

those which are lost? Organized labor is skeptical. The
Canadian Union of Public Employees recently expres-
sed its concerns before the Task Force on Micro-
electronics and Employment. Canada’s largest union
with over a quarter million members in the public ser-
vice, CUPE has special reasons to be concerned since it
is the service sector which will feel the brunt of job

- displacement. With a large female membership, it warns

that as many as one-million women could be without
work by the end of this decade.

The CUPE brief sites the automation of even the
formerly labor intensive, silicon chip assembly and pro-
duction, leaving unions to wonder about the possibility

The worker of tomorrow ... sporting a white lab coat and
brandishing an electronics degree?

- porting shortages of skilled workers in jobs paying k&®

of eliminating even highly skilled, male-dominated jobs
in the manufacturing sector.

In fact the very jobs Ottawa says dre now crying out
for workers are found to be grossly overestimal
according to a 1982 study on unemployment by the So
cial Planning Council of Metro Toronto. Shortages alt
based on employer surveys and employers are only tf

than the prevailing rate. The question could be posed —
is Ottawa seeking women workers for these vacancies!
drive down the wage scale in the skilled workforce?

Women Misinformed, Misused

CUPE researcher Jane Stinson also accuses Ottawadl
misinforming and misusing women. ‘“‘It is leaving the
message that women should aspire to become computel
programers, technicians and electronic experts but evel
teachers are reporting a much harder job market fo
program graduates.” :

Her opinion is shared by others. Deborah Littman @
instructor at Ryerson Polytechnical School has dont
considerable research into the impact of the micro-chiP
on women’s employment. ‘‘As new systems are put inl
place the demand for programers will continue’, shé
says, ‘‘but once the software is operating the program
ers. job is done.”’

Employment Counsellor Holly Kirkconnell of Time
Change in Toronto feels that having every working
woman aspire to become computer experts is being us¢
not only to misdirect but divide women workers. “Pla
ing non-traditional work as the answer does not deal wi
the problems of the female job ghetto,” says Kirk

‘connell. ‘‘A managerial position is not an option fo!
every working woman.”

But should the spectre of unemployment that haunts |
us turn working people into Luddites?

The answer coming from labor and social researcher®
is to harness the industry before it causes irreparable
damage. In its brief CUPE calls for bringing the micro
electronics industry under public ownership with dem
ocratic control. ~—

The Social Planning Council wants Ottawa to get int?
the industry itself by establishing a technologically 1)
novative and competitive manufacturing sector as pat
of a country-wide job creation program.

Both are the only legitimate responses government
can give to massive unemployment.

Next week: Does it matter if you’re 24 and jobless?

INTERNATIONAL NOTES

Fiore

Germ weapons scheme

New facts showing a criminal collusion between
U.S. and Japanese militarists who developed bac-
teriological weapons by experimenting on human
beings during WWII have become public knowledge
in Japan.

Writer Seyichi Morimura tells about the Penta-
gon’s secret deal with “‘medics” from Unit 731, the
secret bacteriological center of the Kwantung army,
in his book The Insatiable Devil. The book is based on
numerous documentary materials, collected by the
author and a Japanese journalist, Masaki
Shimozato.

Over 3,000 people were destroyed as a result of
the criminal experiments at the concentration
camps of Unit 731, which was located near Harbin, in
the Manchuria territory. :

After the Soviet armed forces crushed the Kwan-
tung army, from Unit 731 fled to Tokyo
with their data. There the head of the Unit,
Lieutenant-General Shiro Ishii, met with U.S. milit-
ary commanders, who accepted 731’s materials in
exchange for sparing Ishii a trial for war crimes.

As a result, U.S. bombs filled with bacteria caus-
ing fatal diseases and toxic gases which were drop-

on Korean villages were improved versions of
Unit 731 bombs. As well, the notorious “‘pellet
bombs” widely used by the Pentagon against the
civilian population of Vietnam resembled the shrap-
nel shells developed by Ishii’s team as they ex-
perimented on human beings.

Support for Chileans

military-fascist dictatorship of Pinochet.

ression nor massacres have broken their will.

youth organization, develo
monstration of solidarity.

countries.

gle for the world.

4
monopolies, farming out natural national wealth to
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) them.
has urged the working people of the world to step up
support for the Chilean patriots’ struggle against the UNESCO exec ut ive board meets
A WFTU statement, made in connection with The 115 session of the executive board of the Un-
world-recognized week of solidarity with the Chilean ited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
people’s struggle, states admiration for the courage Organization (UNESCO) opened at its headquarters
and heroism of the fighters for freedom and inde- ” ke pecraay on fe nage i draft plan
: P ‘ : or the ’s activities for ’84-’89, the convoca-
Pee Bie eny ie wet Celie nes SEP tion of the UNESCO general conference’s special
A meeting in Maputo, Mozambique on the 50 an- Session devoted to the problems of disarmament,
niversary of the founding of the Chilean communist and other items.
into a vigorous de- The session will continue until October 8.
iY e meeting was ee :
by representatives of various organizations 0 cS
ckumnbiqiie’ a delegation of the Young Communist Ant i-fase ist ann iversary
League of the USSR and representatives of the youth Anti-fascist demonstrations marking the 39th
organizations of Vietnam, theGDR, Cuba and other anniversary of the first battle between the Italian
patriots and Hitlerite invaders at the gate of San
The Young Communist League of Cuba sent a Paolo on September 8, 1943, were held in Rome yes-
message to Chilean youth, expressing full support terday. This date is marked in Italy as the start of
for their fight. They noted that heroes such as mur- armed resistance to the invaders.
dered folk singer Victor Jara are symbols of strug- Meetings dedicated to the resistance-movement
fighters’ struggle against nazism were held in many
A mass meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, addres- _ parts of the city where fierce clashes had also taken
sed by the chairman of that country’s Federation of _ place. A mourning ceremony in memory of the vic-
University Centers noted that Pinochet’s criminal _ tims of Hitlerites’ monstrous crimes in Italy took
regime is in power only as a result of all-round sup- _ place at Ardeatine Caves near Rome where 335 civi-
port by the U.S. In exchange for U.S. ‘‘aid” the fas- lians were shot on Himmler’s personal order in
cist regime has flung the door wide open to U.S. March 1944.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 24, 1982—Page 10