—

TV pom protest in Edmonto

By CHRIS FRAZER ]
EDMONTON — A lunch-time.
rally against Pornography, attracting
over 70 protesters at Eaton’s Canada
Ltd., was termed ‘‘successful”’ by
Janet Maher, president of the Al-
berta Status of Women Action
Committee (ASWA).

The Edmonton rally was part of a
Canada-wide protest on January 18
against the introduction of soft-core
pom onto television through First
Choice pay TV. Anti-porn activists
chose the Eaton’s site because of the
Corporation’s substantial investment
in the production of Playboy ‘‘flicks”’
by First Choice. Asa result, the pro-
testers were encouraging anti-porn
Supporters to destroy their Eaton’s charge cards and to cancel
subscriptions to First Choice.

Representatives of Edmonton Working Women (EWW)
pointed to a connection between a deepening of the economic
depression and the growing accessibility of pornography.

“The insidious role that pornography plays is defining a certain
attitude towards the place and role of women in society,’’ said
Christine Conley of EWW. ‘‘Women are being pushed further
into service industry and low-paying jobs, or out of the job
market completely.”’ In this case Eaton’s hires women for the
low-paying jobs, rips off their predominantly women customers
and uses the profits to further oppress and exploit women through
investing in pornography.

Across Canada

Canadian war vets
blast Cruise tests

HALIFAX — Veterans for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
here said on Jan. 20, that in allowing the U.S. militarists to test the
nuclear Cruise missile in Alberta, ‘‘our government appears to
have drifted into a commitment which would place Canada sol-

idly on the side of one of the most insane developments in an
insane race.”’

C.G. Clifford, chairman of the 80-member group of veterans,
and a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross during World
War II, said: “By saying ‘me too’ on the Cruise, Canada will
climb on this particular bandwagon which unless it is stopped,
will make nuclear disaster virtually a certainty in this decade.”

Fed Liberals clap

lid on pensions

OTTAWA — By a vote of 132 Liberals against a combined 107
New Democrats, Tories and two Liberals, Commons passed
legislation Jan. 25 limiting civil service workers’ pensions to 6.5%

and 5.5% over the next two years. (The current inflation rate is
9.8%)

Campaign urges feds

try Nazi criminals

TORONTO — The Canadian Jewish Congress is in the process
of collecting signatures on a petition which urges the Canadian
Government to prosecute Nazi war criminals who are hiding out
in Canada. The Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association
Says there are more than 1,000 of them in this country. The
Organization says that the War Crimes Act provides for their trial
before a military tribunal. When the signature drive was launched
on Jan. 9, co-ordinator Samuel Resnick expected it to continue
for about two weeks.

Socreds, McBlo hit at workers

VICTORIA — Social Credit premier William Bennett, after
threatening in December to cut the 44,500-member public service
by 25% over two years, is now on acollision course with the B.C.
and Yukon Building & Construction Trades Council in his at-
tempt to make the northeast coal project an open shop.

Meanwhile, the giant forest industry corporation, MacMillan
Bloedel is ‘exporting our livelihood,”’ according to Jack Munro,
president of the International Woodworkers of America.

Communist construction
workers back strike

TORONTO — Ina message to the Quebec Teachers’ Central
— one of the three labor bodies involved in the Common Front
general strike — the Building Trades Club of the Communist
Party of Canada, in Toronto, expressed full support of the strike.
The message reads: ‘‘Dear sisters and brothers: At our meeting
last evening, January 26, your struggles were the topic of discus-
sion. In your determination to defeat the infamous Bill 105, be
assured that we for our part will exercise our responsibility with
our co-workers in identifying ourselves with your cause.”’ |

Best hope for Chile workers

Special to the Tribune

Susan Keeley, president of the Calgary Labor
Council, has recently returned from two weeks in
Chile. The trip was sponsored by the Calgary Chi-
lean Association and endorsed by the Labor Coun-
cil. Last year a group of senior officers from the
National Defence College of Canada made a study
visit to Chile as part of a career-development pro-
gram, but Keeley’s visit was on a different level.
She went “‘to see first-hand the conditions of the
people and in particular of the workers.’’ Her
impressions and conclusions, outlined below,

should be of much interest to Canadian workers. .

To begin with, the iron fist of the military
dictatorship is still very much in evidence nine
years after the coup. ‘‘To see the large number of
police and military on a daily basis, weapons in
hand and aimed directly at you, is frightening.”’
Correspondingly rigid economic policies — priva-
tization, monetarism and austerity — have reduced
inflation and restored the country’s credit in inter-
national capital markets while crippling domestic
purchasing power and employment. ANEF, the
public sector workers’ union, ‘has lost some
200,000 members since the coup ... the only pub-
lic sector workers among whom there is no
unemployment are the police.”’ The general stan-
dard of living is such that ‘the middle class in Chile
would be below the poverty level in Canada.”

Leaving the centre of Santiago the slums be-
come more visible until ‘plywood shacks give way
to fields, where people live.”’ Catholic Church
groups, which ‘‘play an active role in the fight for
social reform’’, estimate that ‘‘in Santiago alone
700,000 new residences would be required to house
everybody.’’ In addition to working in organiza-
tions to free political prisoners, help the families of
missing people and provide legal aid, the Church
runs an important ‘soup kitchen”’ in Santiago feed-
ing 26,000 daily (in 1981 the figure was 12,000) with
more and more being turned away each day as the
crisis bites ever deeper. Officially unemployment
is around 33% but the desperately poor, marginally
employed make the real figure “much higher’’.
“Street hawkers — some as-young as eight years
old — are very numerous.’’ Needless to say,
unemployment insurance and welfare are not
available.

“If the business community pushes for refoms,
they usually get them, in Canada or in Chile,” and
the Chilean business community, which is hurting,
has been petitioning the government for more
expansionary policies. The government has re-
sponded with a make-work “Minimum Employ-
ment Program’’, the inadequacy of which reflects

IS ‘intemational Solidarity’

the regime’s subjection to even more conservall™
interests.

And what of the unions? Susan Keeley’s init
contacts were with the Women’s Committee oft
Co-ordinadora Nacional Sindical which rough!)
corresponds to the Canadian Labor Congress. 4}
necessity this body subordinates the workers
struggle for better wages and working conditions”
the fight for “‘return to democracy’’. The Chiles
Government “recognizes only certain unioD
mostly ones it has set up itself or appointed the
leaders to.”’ Strikes are rare, partly because whel
not illegal they are legally limited to 30 days. P.
also workers may seldom strike because they havé
no “‘grievances’’. At least Keeley found that, de
spite the assistance of an interpreter, the Chilea!
unionists she spoke with ‘‘didn’t understand the
word ‘grievances’ ”’.

In the construction union (comprising all built
ing trades) the unemployment rate is 75% wi
similar figures for the port workers’ and far®
laborers’ unions. Many of the people still workilé
are doing so at less than the negotiated union rates
The labor legislation of the Pinochet regime, 12
less than the business environment, makes
“difficult indeed to negotiate a contract which pro”
tects the rights of the workers.’’

And what, then, of the ‘return to democracy’?
Political parties in Chile are illegal but still in exis
tence. ‘‘Meetings of a political nature are strictly
forbidden but they still happen ... informers are
well-paid ... people are very careful .. .’’ Despil®
their illegality and- the arrests which accompany
them, demonstrations for reform and democracy
still occur. And finally, ‘“‘the people haven’t givel
up. They realize that their best hope is for intef
national solidarity. They feel that only throug!
internaffonal pressure will democracy come.”’

When asked whether, in view of the people's
material conditions and of Pinochet’s promise
““No more elections for 50 years.”’, a revolutio#
might not be provoked by some crisis — a furthet
sharp deterioration in living standards or war wit!
a neighboring country, say — Keeley spoke of
“co-operation between military governments if
South America’”’ and mentioned the Argentin€
military’s stated intention to restore civilial
government this year. Further, based on heft
observations, she said, “The Chilean people would
much prefer to solve their problems in a mannef
different from that which brought the present
government to power ... After nine years they
realize they wouldn’t win. They don’t have thé
guns.”’ +

‘aww!t0 {I
EL SALVADOR

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— FEBRUARY 4, 1983— Page 8