PETITION

in South- Vietnam.

negotiations.

country as they wish.

TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

STOP THE WAR
IN VIETNAM!

We, the undersigned, urge the Canadian government to:

1. Follow the example of the Swedish government by
stopping the sale of war material to the United States.

2. Publicly call on the United States to stop the bomb-
ing of North Vietnam, and to end its scorched earth policy,
its poisoning of crops, and its bombing of civilian targets

__ 3. Support the call of the Secretary-General of the
United Nations for inclusion of the National Liberation
Front of South Vietnam as an essential participant in peace

4. Call for the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign
troops from Vietnam, so that the Vietnamese may run their

Please mail this Petition with signatures before Oct. 31 to:
Ottawa Committee to End the War in Vietnam,
71 MacLaren Street, Ottawa 4, Ont.

Address

Above is a reproduction of the petition that is sponsored
by the Ottawa Committee Against the War in Vietnam, which is
being circulated across the country and will be presented to the

government early in November.

Reohsch (Bratisleved

The ABC of neo-colonialism.

LABOR SCENE

PGE workers strike _
to win Board award

Monday morning at one minute
past midnight, operations on the
government-owned Pacific Great
Eastern Railway (PGE) ground to
a stop when 400 workers went on
strike for substantial wage in-
creases and other long-overdue
benefits.

PGE management and repre-
sentatives of the Federation of
PGE Employees were. meeting
Sunday evening, almost up to the
‘zero’ hour set by the Federation
for strike action. Unable to reach
a settlement, PGE rail workers
‘hit the bricks’,

A conciliation board award had
recommended all PGE employees
receive a 50-cent an hour wage
increase, plus other ‘fringe’
benefits. PGE management had
attempted to restrict the board’s
wage recommendation of 50-cents
to PGE tradesmen only, offering
a 40-cent package tonon-trades-
men while ignoring the ‘fringe’
benefits included in the concilia-
tion proposals,

PGE management had also pre-
viously attempted to intimidate
and head off strike action by
instituting extensive layoffs and
threatening more,

Some 2,000 PGE employees,
including operating and non-
operating staffs will be affected
by the strike, PGE manager J.S.
Broadbent has intimated he will
not attempt to operate the 790-
mile PGE rail link between Van-
couver, Dawson Creek and Fort
St. John with supervisory staffs
as they did during the 14-day
strike in February of this year,
Nevertheless PGE Federation
workers plan to keep a tight
picket line at all major PGE
terminals,

Dave Chapman, key spokesman ‘

for the PGE Federation has stated
that ‘nothing short’ of the con-
ciliation board recommendations
will be acceptable, PGE manager
Broadbent, echoing Premier Ben-
nett, has stated that ‘the company
will match any settlementfeach-
ed in final negotiations now being
conducted with the union repre-
senting workers employed by the
two national railways’,

PGE workers have indicated
they are not inclined to await that
decision, and are now striking to
win the wage increases and other
benefits as recommended by a
conciliation board,

* OK OK

The eight week strike-lockout
dispute between the Carpenters
Union and the B.C, Building Con-
tractors Association, officially
ended last weekend with both
parties voting acceptance of the
Industrial Inquiry Commissioner
W.E. Philpott’s formula for
settlement.

Key points in the Philpott
recommendations coincide with
carpenters’ demands, viz., a 40-
cent an hour wage hike, and the
implementation of the 373-hour
work week in 1967, It was the
latter on which the contractors
and their ex-labor ‘leader’ R.K.
Gervin vehemently opposed and
on which their drastic ‘lockout’
strategy was based,

While most key Carpenters’

local union members throughout
the province have given almost
unanimous approval, the Contrac-
tors declare their acceptance of
the Philpott formula for settle-
ment “was a most reluctant one
and not a matter of choice’’,
Gervin expressed the sentiments
of his paymasters as being
“angered and frustrated”, “ex-
tremely bitter” and so on, Since
the contractors were the people
who insisted that the government
appoint an Industrial Inquiry
Commission, when already a
large number of their associa-
tion members had reached agree-
ment with the Carpenters on the
union’s wage and shorter work-
week demands, the union held
there was ‘nothing to inquire’
into.

However the contractors won
their point and got such a com-
mission. Now a handful of them
are “bitter, frustrated and anger-
ed” according to Gervin, because
Commissioner Philpott didn’t
come up witha settlement formula
in keeping with their union-
busting strategy!

Gervin is reported to have
described the Union efforts to
win a just settlement as being
“like a pack of vultures picking
our bones”, This a carpenters
union member told the ‘PT’ is
the ‘typical language of an ex-
labor fakir who goes over to the
bosses, and then gets licked’,

* * OK

-*Tt?s time to stop coddling
U.S. interests,” C.S, Jackson,
national president of United Elec-
trical, Radio & Machine Workers
(UE), said in a wire to Prime
Minister Pearson today,

‘Jackson’s wire called for an
all-Canadian gas pipeline and
hit out at reports of “government
approval of gas pipeline through
United States.” This, he said,
“runs counter to our national
interest as your previous state-
ment contended and should be
vetoed,”

“Your government’s responsi-
bility is to protect Canadian
people’s interests and aid in
expansion ofan independent Cana-
dian economy,” he said,

The wire underlined that “de-
velopment of northern areas could
be speeded up by all-Canadian
pipeline,” and noted that *Can-
ada’s big-inch pipe industry cur-
rently has idle capacity.”

Full text of wire follows:-

Your government’s responsi-
bility is to protect Canadian
people’s interests and aid in
expansion of an _ independent
Canadian economy, Suggestions
of government approval gas pipe-
line through U.S. runs counter
our national interests as your
previous statement contended and
should be vetoed, Development
of northern areas could be speed-
ed by all-Canada pipeline also
Canada’s big-inch pipe industry
currently has idle capacity, Time
to stop coddling U.S. interests.

INFLATION

Cont'd. from Pg. 1

implementing medicare and stu-
dent scholarships now, nota year
or two later—ornever, ~*

5. The proposed compulsory
savings program should be open=
ed. If the Government needs an
additional $300,000,000 revenue
it should come out of high in-
comes and capital gains, not the
living standards of the Canadian
people. For this .reason there
must be no increased taxes On
those earning less than $5,000
a year while all Canadians earn~
ing $3,500 or- less should be
exempted, :

6. Genuine collective bargain-
ing which includes the right to
strike, must be guaranteed all
Canadian working people. More=
over labor must not only be
consulted on_ technological
change; it must have a voice
on production and on economic
policy, investment and trade. :

The Communist Party believes
such a program could protect
the people’s welfare, halt the
erosion of their living standards
in face of inflation, profiteering |

“and price gouging, and reverse

the dangerous trend to economic
crisis and mass unemployment.

' Parliament which opens on
October 5th should be compelled
to consider such a program, The
issue of rising prices and what
is to be done about it cannot be
left to a Parliamentary-Senate
committee. The question of what
economic policy to pursue — one

leading to a slowdown in ecO- —

nomic growth and inevitably un-
employment or a policy directed
to ensuring useful work and risin&
standards to an ever growiné
population cannot be left to GOV"
ernment, Parliament must de-
cide,

What Parliament decides de~
pends upon the action of labor,
the farm organizations, the NDP, _
genuine left Liberals, in fact all
Canadians, If they unite their
efforts present Government
policy can be reversed and aneW
policy of economic and social
advance can be achieved.

Labor...

Cont'd from Pg. 1 :
by stating that his proposition tO”
prevent strike-breaking was 2
“positive” approach, where the
fight to eliminate injunctions was
‘tnegative”.

Speaking in the discussiOM,
William Stewart of the Marine
Workers and Boilermakers (B.C)
expressed the idea that *we call
get so legal that we forget the
issues , . . who’s law is it?”
Steelworkers Union W, Mahoney;
who has been touting this ‘abolish —
strike-breakers’ demand, came —
to Osler’s defense with the ex"
pression “we must think our way
around obstacles”,

Among the delegates there was
ill-concealed suspicion of legal
diversions and it remains to be
seen if the CLC Executive i
able to cope with the need to gé
the movement against injunction
rolling. -

September 30, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page