Letters

Is there commitment to GST fight?

The April 7-9 Campaign for Fair Taxes
weekend has passed. The Tribune, like the
CLC, B.C. Fed and Pro-Canada Network
leaders, has expressed positive delight with
the “2 million+ sign cards: Scrap the Tory
GST” (Tribune, April 23) And the Trib
merits accolades for supporting the anti-
GST campaign, even when they snuck in
valid criticism of the B.C. Fed and the CLC
leadership for moving with the speed of a
glacier on the issue.

The activists, organizers and participants
in the campaign are to be congratulated for
their efforts; it is a thankless task and no
easy chore to orchestrate such a venture.

Nonetheless, amongst the euphoria and
congratulations there remains a ominous
cloud. If one looks closely as the figures
involved, what in fact do they reflect?

Unions, which took a leading role in this
fight, have a membership of just under three
million. Yet only 2.2 million signed cards in
opposition. From collecting signatures, it is
clear that pe those who signed cards
were union members. And polls repeatedly
reported that three of four or four of five
Canadians opposed the GST. Is there a
slight discrepancy here? What happened to
the union membership sign-up?

There may be an answer in the union
leadership. The CLC and other unions
before the anti-GST campaign were
expressing a willingness to accept a GST if it
were less than nine per cent — possibly
seven per cent or five per cent. They also
spoke of circumventing it in their contracts
through a COLA clause or something com-
parable as had been used successfully in the
contracts negotiated during the wage con-

trols of the 1970s. They were brought on

board reluctantly, by public pressure, but

their commitment? The COLA argument is °

now resurfacing.

Something appears to be missing in their
perception of what is taking place. The GST
is a means of protecting capitalism and the
privileged few. Not all people are in unions
but those in the community who are less
able to pay the increased taxes — and there
are more and more of them as the economy

GST
BALLOTING }
... lukewarm |-
support of
union
leadership
evident.

moves into depression — are the ones who
are going to be solidly hammered by the
GST. How can they be included in the
overall strategy and tactics of rejecting the
GST?

Perhaps the contest has to move on to
other considerations and those unions lead-
ers who want to go to bed with business and

government should do so. Ordinary people,
unionists and non-unionists might consider
educating the public of the merits of recy-
cling by placing their income tax forms in
recycling bins, or working in collusion with
small businesses and refuse to pay the GST.
Foster Griezic,

Ottawa

Finding ‘quasi-socialism’ in the good old U.S.A.

In your issue of April 2, 1990 you carried
my letter (“Soviet writers displaying lack of
knowledge,” Tribune April 2, 1990) in
which I criticized an article in Moscow
News by Valery Chalidze. Since then I have

- Jearned that Chalidze, who also writes for

New Times magazine in Moscow, is an
American citizen who lives in a village in
Vermont. In 1972, he was stripped of his
Soviet citizenship while on an American
speaking tour.

Even though I disagree with the views
expressed by Chalidze, I do not favour deal-
ing with political dissent by revoking a per-
son’s citizenship, particularly when that
person is a citizen by virtue of his birthplace.
Be that as it may, I believe that Chalidze has
found his true, spiritual home in the United
States. Another of his articles in Moscow
News convinced me of that. A few quota-
tions are in order:

«,. the steel companies in the U.S. keep
finding themselves one after another on the
brink of bankruptcy: the trade unions have
forced up wages to such an extent that the
USS. steel industry has lost its competitive
power.

“The employer, for his part, invests the
profits he gets in the expansion of produc-
tion and in this way serves society better
than merely by paying more wages.”

According to Chalidze, “criticism and

struggle led to a veritable humanization of
labour relations, to the legislative protection
of labour. Labour relations were estab-
lished there on the basis of free will, and
whenever this free will has been limited, it
was always i in favour of the working per-
son.”

When I read statements like that, I can
only conclude that this writer knows as
much about labour economics in the U.S.
and Canada as I know about nuclear phys-
ics, which is nothing.

To shore up his case for American free
enterprise, Chalidze writes: “For example,
as an employer I have no right to conclude
a labour contract for a wage lower than the
minimum wage established by the state.”
And, he adds, if the worker is not satisfied
with what is offered, he can find another
employer!

But what about that minimum wage in
the U.S.? On June 13 of last year, President
George Bush vetoed a bill to raise the fed-
eral minimum wage from $3.35 to $4.55 an
hour over three years. Bush favoured a top
rate of $4.25. He also opposed a provision
under which a lower minimum could be
paid for no more than 60 days. He wanted a
longer period.

As for the trade unions in the U.S., only
16.8 per cent of the employed, non-
agricultural wage and salary workers

belong to trade unions in 1988. If the crisis
features of the American economy can in
any way be traced back to the trade union
movement, it will prove that this movement
is a relatively weak force in relation to
American capital, not a strong force.

The substance of Chalidze’s philosophy
can be summed up in these words:

... those in the East who gained the
right to speak on behalf of the people con-
tinued criticizing Western working condi-
tions as if nothing had changed, as if it were
still in the 19th century. Many eloquent
words were said, but the speakers did not
know and could not know that their once
timely criticism of free enterprise would
help in the peaceful transformation of the
capitalism they hated into a perfectly new
system — really democratic capitalism —
quasi socialism.”

I can’t speak for the Soviet working peo-
ple, but frankly, I don’t believe they will
settle for quasi-socialism, American style.
Further, I am very happy that in all of the
pre-convention documents published by the
Communist Party of Canada, the ultimate
goal is socialism, not democratic capitalism
or quasi-socialism.

Jack Phillips,
Burnaby

provocation —

explosive

_— (“Shadow of a colossus,” Tribune
_ April 23, 1990) and the short

-the U.S. — did not mention the

domestic U.S. radio and TV.

- thus retaliate if the U.S. continues —

. _ Cubans agreed to a search by
Mexican authorities. No drugs

the freighter was taken in :
stan hei aeateyed at some - /|

potentially

“Your April 23 editorial

article about the U.S. invasion of —
a Cuban TV channel were very
timely. The U.S. effort to
destabilize Cuba has become

more vigorous and dangerous
since the invasion of Panama and ©
the electoral defeat of the —
Sandinistas. Bush and company ~
are revelling in a mood of
triumph which is also derived
partly from the recent changes in
Eastern Europe and the USSR.

Your piece about Cuban
TV — what the Cuban
newspaper Granma has said will
be an electronic Bay of Pigs for

great danger the situation poses.
Cuban transmitters are capable of
jamming not only the American

telecasts to Cuba but also

~ Cuba has hinted that it may

its TV invasion. The Cubans have __
installed anti-aircraft batteries
near their transmitters, fearing =
that the Americans might resort _
to air strikes to knock them out.
Should such a scenario develop,
Bush would have a pretext for
invading Cuba.

Perhaps more ominous was the
U.S. attack on Feb. 1 ona
Cuban-chartered freighter bound
for Mexico with a cargo of
chromium ore. When the Cuban
captain of the ship refused to stop
in international waters and be
searched by an American Coast
Guard cutter — on the pretext
that it was carrying drugs — the
American ship fired on the
unarmed freighter for nearly two

hours. After reaching the
Mexican port of Tampico, the -

‘turned up. The decision to attack —

it level,

Pacific Tribune, May 14, 1990 « 5