By MARION TAGGART

HAMILTON — Hamilton and
District Labor Council is deter-
mined to make Oct. 14 a day for
this country to remember.

The delegates Aug. 19, unanim-
ously endorsed the one day pro-
test planned by the Canadian
Labor Congress on Oct. 14.

Larry Wheaton, United Elec-
trical workers (UE) local 504 said
that he saw Oct. 14 as more than
just an expression of opposition to
controls, but also the struggle that
will determine-what the future of
this country is going to be.
Whether we are going to continue
to allow the government to oper-
ate as an arm of big business or
whether we are going to compel
them to legislate in the interests of
the working people.

Wheaton went on to point out
that the government doesn’t have
a program to create jobs for the
unemployed. ‘‘They don’t have a
program to provide decent hous-
ing, and they don’t have a pro-
gram to control prices’’, he said.

The UE delegate expressed the
conviction that ‘‘on Oct. 14 the
workers will respond in such large
numbers to make the protest the
most momentous day in the his-

“New price and profit regula-
tions under the federal anti-in-
flation program, now awaiting
final approval by government,
will not necessarily be more re-
strictive on business,’’ Anti-In-
flation Board chairman Jean-Luc
Pepin was quoted as saying
Aug. 9.

Mr. Pepin was quoted in the
Toronto Globe and Mail, dated
Aug. 10, as saying that draft rules
— which may be amended follow-
ing representations from business
— will neither be tighter for all
firms nor tighter over-all than cur-
rent regulations. Just how tight

these regulations were can be as- -

certained from the following
comments by Mr. Pepin.

“The reports filed with the AIB
demonstrate that for a surprising
number of companies Oct. 13 (the
date of imposition of controls) was
an extraordinarily profitable
day’’.

What, if anything, may be in-
tended by new draft regulations
on profit controls announced in
the federal budget May 25, will be
to strengthen the profit position of
the big corporate sector still
further at the expense of workers
and small business.

To make doubly sure that
enough loop-holes are provided
for big business to escape even
more completely from any so-
called controls, the government
very generously gave industry an
opportunity to protest and to
amend. They were invited to
make submissions to Mr. Jean-
Luc Pepin, Anti-inflation Board
chairman, suggesting changes in
regulations. Over 400 sub-
missions were received before the
cut-off date, July 14.

: eee
It is against this farce that

tory of the trade union movement
in this country.”’

Bill Scanlan, Hamilton area
supervisor for the United Steel-
workers, lashed out at the con-
trols as a ‘“‘vicious piece of
anti-union legislation’. He urged
the delegates to go back to their
various organizations and make
sure that their workmates
thoroughly understand what the
legislation means. If the delegates
do this Scanlan declared, ‘‘I’m
convinced that in this communi-
ty, as it will be across the country,
labor will properly demonstrate in
large numbers in response to the
type of trash coming from our
federal legislative body.’’

A letter from the CLC suggest-
ing ways the delegates could plan

. for the Day of Protest: including

parades, mass rallies, leaflets and
picketing to complement the na-
tional work stoppage, was read.

The council also decided to
hold a special meeting Sept.-9 to
lay plans for Hamilton’s partici-
pation in the Day of Protest. The
delegates were urged to make
sure the executives of their vari-
ous unions attend this important
meeting.

the Canadian Labor Congress
has decided to conduct a national
day of protest on October 14
with meetings, demonstrations
and a day off work for this pur-
pose, all the way from Newfound-
land to Vancouver Island.

As my friend and colleague,
George Harris of the UE writes in
his column in the UE News:
“‘This historic decision is in line
with the anger and determination
of Canadian workers against the
bare-faced fraud which Trudeau
introduced as an anti-inflation
program. It was clear from the
outset that this program was in
fact designed to control wages
while protecting the profits of the
corporations.

““With a unanimity seldom seen
on any one issue in trade union
conventions, or for that matter in
any other organization, the close
to 2,500 CLC delegates voted to
continue and expand the
fight-back against the wage con-
trol program and the actions of
the federal Anti-Inflation Board in
administering the program. The
vote at the CLC convention
specifically endorsed the request
of the congress leadership that it
be given the authority to ‘organize
and conduct a general work stop-
page or stoppages, if and when
necessary.’

“To many trade unionists, and
certainly to the big majority of the
delegates to the CLC convention,
the ‘if necessary’ was never in
doubt, and the ‘when necessary’
has increased with every passing
day as the Anti-Inflation Board

-continues on a rampage of cutting

back on wage settlements made at
the bargaining tables. With an
army of petty officials doing no-
thing else than churning out deci-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 3, 1976—Page 4

THE
HAM
REPORT

Apalling conditions,
goverment apathy

TORONTO — Ontario’s min-
ing industry, and both federal and
provincial governments were
strongly criticized in a Royal
Commission report on: mine
safety released Aug. 23.

The report, entitled ‘‘Report of
the Royal Commission on the
Health and Safety of.Workers in
Mines’’, was prepared by a one-
man commission, Dr. James Ham
of the University of Toronto,

In a dry and clinical tone which
tends to miss the point that the
subject of the study concerns the
life or death of working people in
the mining industry, Dr. Ham
nevertheless criticizes the pro-
vincial government and the min-
ing industry for ‘‘on more than
one occasion unjustified com-
placency at the policy-making
level.”’

The report catalogued appal-
ling working conditions, ‘‘pater-
nalistic attitudes’ by some of the
mining companies and charged
government apathy in the face of
the problem.

Ham reported that divided
jurisdictions on the part of the
government agencies have con-

sions which roll back settlements,
in some cases cutting them in half,
the much vaunted ‘free’ collective
bargaining system, so much
praised in the past by so many,
including labor leaders, has gone
down the drain and into the sewer
of the phoney -anti-inflation
program.

“Jean-Luc Pepin and his Anti-
Inflation Board members have
now made very clear that the only
real purpose of the Trudeau pro-
gram was to smash the wage
movement, and sharply cut back
on the wage settlements being
won by the Canadian working
people through their union or-
ganizations. Pepin knows his job
and recently began expressing
some concern that some in the

- business community were over-

reacting to the ‘talk’ about. profit
control.

‘To allay any concern in the
ranks of business, Pepin met with
Finance Minister Donald Mac-
Donald on Aug. 4, 1976, and
urged him to abandon even the
thin pretence of price and profit
control contained in the anti-
inflation regulations. According
to press stories the purpose of the
Pepin-MacDonald meeting was to
express the fact that the members
of the Anti-Inflation Board ‘are
anxious that MacDonald heeds
the call by business to give indus-
try better incentives (profits) to
invest and expand ...’”’

All of which makes October 14
important as a day of real
working-class solidarity to smash
this plot to rob the working people
in the. name of a phoney anti-
inflation program to meet the in-
satiable appetite for profits on the
part of the huge multi-national
corporations and monopolies.

This leaflet, published by the Steelworkers last year, decries conde
tions in the Elliot Lake mines. The Ham report finally acknowle
some of the problems unions have been protesting over for years:

tributed to confusion of authority
in the face of,solving health and
safety problems arising from the
industry. This confusion, the
commissioner said, is the first
way in which the system has
failed to protect the workers. The
second fault of the system he said,
was that workers, individually as
well as collectively through their
‘unions, have been denied effec-
tive participation in tackling these
problems. ‘‘The essential princi-
ples of openness and natural jus-
tice have not received adequate
expression’’, the report said.
Lynn Williams, director of Dis-
trict 6, United Steelworkers, on
the day the report was released
called it ‘‘a horror story from
cover to. cover that supports ev-
ery charge labor has made against
the industry and the Ontario and
federal governments.”’
Representing 25,000 miners,
the Steelworkers are the major
mining union in the province, and
it was through the pressure that
they put on the provincial
government that the Royal Com-
mission was convened.
Some of the commissioner’s
main recommendations include,
e joint labor-management
safety committees with worker-
inspectors, paid by the companies

‘to investigate deaths and acci-

dents and monitor conditions for
unsafe gases, dusts, chemicals,
noise and other hazards.

e a new Occupational Health
and Safety Authority replacing
the three separate branches of
ministries which presently share
the authority in different juris-
dictions.

e enforcement of threshold
limit values and standards for ex-
posure to noise, dust, gas and
other hazardous conditions. In

Ontario there are no legally &
forceable standards now in
province for any dangerous SU
stances in the working &
vironment. f

@ permanent records on ¢a¢
worker of exposure to potenti }
deadly chemicals, gas, af
radiation. :

Though Ham would give mil
ers the legal right to demand
inspection of the work place if!
was considered dangerous, he ©
fused to support the union’s post
tion that miners have the right 1)
refuse to work in any envifo™)
ment they consider to be unsafe!
without fear of reprisal.

Unlike other workers in Of
tario, who are covered by the In
dustrial Safety Act, miners #
covered by the Mining Act whi¢
does not give them that right. F

Dave Cochrane, undergroul
chairman of Local 6500, Ste
workers Health and Safety Com
mittee in Sudbury, said that wit
out this right ‘‘the whole Minif
Actis useless. Until we can refu%

to work in conditions that we @|.

lieve unsafe under the law wit!)
out retribution from the com)
pany, then you can have all thé
rights you want —and they’ re 1?
worth the paper they’re writte?
ons

The union also criticized th
report for failing to call for testif®|
of new chemicals and process®
before they are introduced int?
the work place.

Despite the criticism, Ly!
Williams and the Steelworke®
feel they ‘‘can support nearly ev’
ery recommendation enthusias#
cally. ‘‘Now its time for the p@™
vincial government to act’’, be
Steelworkers’ leader said, “1°
just file the report in th?
archives.”

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TIM ROM Ley
UE News Service

"It's perfectly safe...No smoke
problem here...’’

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