s uy & g; a BOYCOTT CALIFORNIA GRAPES. About 250 men and women turned out on a picket line the Saturday before Christmas to support the boycott campaign of California and Arizona grapes. Photo shows pickets before the Safeway store at Broadway and Commercial. Cesar Chavez, leader of the strikers, was in Vancouver to take part in the campaign and spoke at a public meeting Saturday night. See story on Page 11. Photo by J. McCaughran Jr. Welfare Allowances ‘Shocking, Inadequate’ City fathers were told in a hard-hitting joint presentation by the United Community Services of Greater Vancouver and the B.C. Association of Social Workers and the Unemployed Citizens Welfare Council, that the present social welfare allowances, plus civic health and welfare handouts are “‘shockingly in adequate’’. The joint submission handed the City Council, two days before Christmas, emphasized the fact that while welfare allowances have remained substantially un- changed since 1965, living costs have increased during the same period by a minimum of 16 percent. : Aside from the miserable and inadequate pittance doled out to welfare recipients, the UCS demands an ‘‘end to this degrading 19th century spectacle of ‘lining up’ for welfare checks, this after third degree methods of scrutiny as to the bona fides and of the poverty of the re- cipients. The UCS urged, upon City. Council the need to “simplify and dignify”’ the whole procedure of welfare payments. Commenting on the United Community Services representa- tions to the Council, Alderman Harry Rankin stated: “Government and welfare officials are always telling tax- payers that welfare rates must be kept down, or taxes will have to go up. This sounds plausable enough, but actually it is a short- sighted and false economy. The fact is that our present. low welfare rates, with their accompanying poverty, humilia- tion and frustration, are breeding ail sorts of social disturbances including~ illness, delinquency and demoraliza- See WELFARE, pg. 12 - FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1970 VOL. 31, NO. 1 HALF MILLION WORKERS WITHOUT JOBS IN ‘70? udeau pushes jobless policy ‘“‘Prime Minister Trudeau has delivered a cruel blow to the high hopes and expectations of Canadians by threatening to increase unemployment to 6 percent of the labor force unless working people accept a wage freeze,’ said William Kashtan, national leader of the Communist Party in a Christmas Eve statement. In a‘‘get tough’’ year-end statement the prime minister said he was. prepared to see Canada’s jobless rise to 6 percent in pressing his austerity program. Trudeau’s statement came only a few days after the Dominion Bureau of Statistics said that unemployment in November rose to 354,000-up 40,000 from October, and amounted to 4.4 percent of the labor force. A jump to 6 percent or more could well lead to mass unem- ployment reaching the _half- million mark in 1970. Hard hit by unemployment, B.C.’s jobless figure had reached 5.6 percent of the labor force in November. Trudeau’s austerity program could push unemploy- ment in B.C. up to 7 or 8 percent during the coming year. Lashing out at Trudeau’s policy, Kashtan said in his press statement: “While calling for restraints on wages and threatening to increase unemployment, - the Prime Minister at the same time proposes to establish a Com- mission to study salary increases for members of Parlia- ment. : “What cynicism! What a parody on the Just Society he claims to stand for! “It is additional proof of the fact that the Government’s anti- inflation program is harmful to the Canadian people. What should be self evident now is that it is not curbing inflation. Pro- duction is declining, but prices and unemployment are rising. What the Canadian people may well be faced with in 1970 is a recession and continued inflation. “This is the Just Society in action, a society directed to strengthen monopoly control over the economy at the expense of working people, small business and the social needs of the Canadian people. “The government’s so-called ———__— anti-inflation program has failed because it has refused to come to grips with the real causes of inflation. Wage increases are not a cause of infla- tion; they are an inevitable response to inflation. To freeze wages will not curb inflation; it will give more profit to mono- poly and speed the trend to reces- sion. “Two immediate factors are responsible for inflation — the war in Vietnam and monopoly price gouging. Until these immediate causes are dealt with by effective Government action, inflation will continue, and erode living standards and the purchasing power of wages, salaries and pensions. Under- neath chronic inflation is the inability of the capitalist system to maintain full employment, stable prices and_ rising standards which ostensible is the aim of Government economic policy. See AUSTERITY, pg. 11 —Business Week (USA) “Good to know I’m helping to fight inflation. Trouble is, ve lost my job.””