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| Thunderbay Conference rejects wage controls

Working women and job equality

Special to the Tribune

THUNDER BAY — A Con-
ference of Working Women,
eld at Confederation College
here, March 11-13, issued a call
Or a minimum wage of $4 an
Our, for basic training prog-
Tams to provide equal opportun-
ity for male and female workers
Tegardless of type of job, and

Placed emphasis on oppor-

tunities for Native Peoples,
among other urgent needs. A re-
Solution condemning wage con-
trols passed unanimously.

The Conference, involving
Some 250 people, mostly working

.Women from northwestern On-
lario, heard two women trade
Union leaders and a woman
Member of the Ontario provin-
Cial_ legislature. . Norman

hards opened the conference
On behalf of the Thunder Bay
and District Labor Council. The
8athering was co-sponsored by
the Labor Council and the
Northwestern Ontario Interna-
tonal Women’s Decade Co-
ordinating Council.

Grace Hartman, president of
the 210,000-member Canadian
Union of Public Employees, also
8 vice-president of the’ Canadian

abor Congress, attacked the
discriminatory rulings of the
Anti-Inflation Board. All low in-

come workers were being ripped
off by Board rulings based on
percentage of increase, she said.
The Board actually increases the
spread between workers at lower
and higher parts of the pay scale.
Women in Unions

Hartman warned against ten-
dencies toward a male versus
female attitude in trade unions.
It is in the broader field of the
whole work force where equality
can be achieved, through
negotiating collective agree-
ments that deal specifically,
where need be, with problems
encountered within the work
force by women. Women are in
the unions with a good influence
for better laws and better stan-
dards, she said.

Back in the spacious lecture
room and the classrooms used
for workshops, all other activities
of the weekend took place.

Evelyn Armstrong, national
representative, United Electrical
Workers, and founding member
and first president of The Or-
ganized Working Women, gave a
spirited talk on the rising level of
consciousness among women.
Armstrong is also a member of
the Canadian Labor Congress
Standing Committee on Equality
of Opportunity and Treatment
of Women Workers.

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the double shift
The source of unemployment

Organized women, she said,
would continue to press for rec-
ognition of women’s rights in
concrete forms like legislation,
union contracts, non-disparity of
job opportunities, equal pay,
equal treatment and human dig-
nity.

Evelyn Gigantes, New Democ-

ratic Party Member of Provincial
Parliament for Carlton East-
Ottawa, urged women to become
more active in the struggles to
overcome the wage gap. She felt
there is an area where women
workers are exploited as part-
time workers, allowing manage-
ment to shirk fringe benefits and
pension rights.
Eight Workshops

The Conference’s eight work-
shops dealt with! benefits in or-
ganizing — how to organize; or-
ganized. . . what next?; equal pay
and opportunity; lobbying
techniques; existing labor laws —
effective utilization; controls —
how do they affect women?;
housewife and mother — full
time job; Native women in the
work force.

One of the resolutions dealt
with an apparent discrimination
against Native People in obtain-
ing entrance qualification rights
similar to immigrants for courses
in the English language at Con-
federation College.

A resolution recommended
compiling and listing books
which provide teachers with an
understanding of Canadian
labor history for classroom pur-
poses, and recommending the
teaching of labor history.

Agreement was reached on
formation of a local branch of the
Organization of Working Wo-
men, linked to a drive to organize
the unorganized into the trade
union movement.

A resolution for endorsation
of the Stockholm Appeal to end
the arms race — an international
Appeal which more than a mill-
ion Canadians have now signed
or endorsed through organiza-
tions — was referred to the

Pe ,

Grace Hartman, National Presi-
dent of CUPE and General Vice-
President of the CLC.

Evelyn Armstrong, National
Representative of the United Elec-
trical Workers and founding
member of OWW.

executive of the Women’s De-
cade Co-ordinating Council be-
cause of a time deadline for that
part of the conference.

Canadian bank
profits jump
18% a year

Canada’s banks are making a
killing, both from the milking of
Canadian clients and the exploi-
tation of workers in the banker's
wonderland of racist South Afri-
ca.

A study prepared by financial
analyst Mark Kassirer of Burns
Fry Ltd., shows that the assets of
Canada’s five largest banks grew
at a compound rate of 18.6%
from 1970 to 1975. This is com-
pared with 23 of the largest U.S.
banks, whose rate was 15.7%.

Operating profit for the Cana-
dian banks jumped 18% a year,
compared to 8.9% for those in
the USA.

Bank of Nova Scotia led with a
profit increase per share of
22.6%. Toronto-Dominion was
next with 21%. That is among the
whole 28 banks studied.

The Bank of Commerce
ranked fifth in the 28 at 16%, the
Royal was seventh at 15.7%, and
the Bank of Montreal was tenth
with an average profit increase
yearly of 14.6%.

A different report shows, iron-
ically, that profit increases of
Canadian banks in 1974, the year
before wage controls on banks
workers, were: TD Bank — 27%,
Commerce — 27.3%, Royal —
36%, Scotiabank — 54%,
Montreal — 80%.

Join the Young Communist League

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O Iwould like to join the YCL

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Mail to:
Young Communist League

24 Cecil Street, Toronto
Phone: 979-2909

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Spokesmen for monopoly capital
Claim that high wages are the source of
Unemployment. They tell us that high

_ Wages are pricing Canadian products

Sut of foreign markets, and out of the
anadian market as well.

Prime Minister Trudeau takes this
Notion a step further. He solemnly re-
Peats, over and over again, that our
«gh expectations’’ have caused us to
We beyond our means”. This, ac-
herding to Mr. Trudeau, has resultedin

1gh UIC benefits, high welfare pay-
_Ments, extravagant social services and
SO on,

According to the above notions, high
Wages coupled with a too generous re-

\Stribution of the national income in

Vor of the working people (actually a

°rm of indirect wages payments) are
the root cause of Canada’s stalled

i £conomy and of the severe unemploy-

Ment across the land. All of this is
Meant to hide the real source and the
al culprit — capitalism.
= * *:
3 The aim of the capitalist is to con-
cantly build up his capital. He ac-
~“Omplishes this by the production of
i S$ containing more labor than what

Paid for; i.e., values created by the

Worker for. which he pays nothing and

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

which he realizes when the product is
sold. This (surplus value) is the source
of capitalist profit, of capital accumula-
tion, of unemployment (surplus labor
power).

The correlation of the rate of wages
(whether high or low) and accumulation
of capital'is, states Marx, ‘“‘nothing less
than the correlation between unpaid
labor transformed into capital, and the
additional labor necessary for the set-
ting in motion of this additional (our
emphasis) capital’. (Capital, Vol. 1,
Part VII) Ale.

- Marx disclosed that a rise in wages is
always confined within those limits
which leave intact the foundations of
the capitalist system, while at the same
time securing the reproduction of capi-

- tal on an upward scale. He pointed out

that the very nature of capitalist ac-
cumulation cannot help but exclude
any lessening in the degree of the
exploitation of labor, and any rise in the
price of labor which would seriously
imperil the continual reproduction on
an ever-growing scale, of the capitalist
relation.

In our times capital accumulates at
an enormous pace and at a terrible cost

to its victims. The capital accumula-

tions of individual capitalists are

merged into ever bigger conglomera-
tions of capital. The centralization of
capital, created by the values produced
by the unpaid labor of generations of
workers, proceeds apace. This is man-
ifested in giant holding companies,
multi-nationals, trusts, banks, insur-
ance companies and so on.
ee

Capital consits of two parts. One part
is ear-marked for the means of produc-
tion; i.e., machinery, premises, raw
materials, energy, general overhead
and so on — what the capitalists refer to
a fixed capital and Marxism as constant
capital. The other part is earmarked for
wages, termed working capital by the
capitalists and variable capital by Marx-
ism. We shall use the Marxist ter-
minology.

The proportions of each part change
in direct relation to the increase in the
social production of labor. A low inten-
sity of production requires a higher
proportion of labor power and con-
sequently of variable capital. A high
intensity of productivity requires a
higher proportion of mechanization and
consequently of constant capital.

. In other words, as mechanization
advances the variable capital employed
declines relatively to the total social
capital in use. Conversely, constant
capital increases relatively. This means
a higher degree of exploitation of the
hired labor, which in tum leads to a
relative decline in employment of
workers for the same amount (or more)
of the total amount of commodities
produced.

* * *

The massive accumulations of capi-
tal made possible through modern pro-
duction methods enables the monopoly
capitalists with the same, or even less,
outlay of variable capital to set in action
more labor (but not more, or, even
fewer workers) through greater exploi-
tation of each individual worker.

. In this way, capital creates a relative

over-production of labor power — a
surplus working population for which
no jobs are available. Intensification of
the rate of exploitation swells the ranks
of the jobless, and conversely the pres-
sure of the unemployed forces the
employed to over-work while the job-
less remain without work. This in turn
leads to the further enrichment of the
monopoly capitalists.

Next week a look at the jobless.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 8, 1977—Page 9

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