LABOR LAWS ABUSED

Compulsory arbitration threat

Socreds turn clock
back to Hungry ’30s

B.C.’s Social Credit government rolled back the clock to
the Hungry Thirties last week when Social Welfare Minister

Dan Campbell announced that the province will cut off any and
all cash welfare payments to out-of-province single males

this winter,

In an increasingly “hard line” towards lower income groups
and the destitute, the provincial government is adopting a “let
*em starve” policy if Canadians from another part of Canada
want to come to B,C, Or even if they get stranded here looking
for work.

The callous policy announced by the Socred government is

said to be aimed at hippies who are reported to be heading to the
Pacific Coast for the winter, However, welfare officials have
pointed out that very few hippies actually apply for welfare. The
likelihood is that the B.C. government aiming its arrows at
single men who come to B,C, looking for work, They come in
the summer as well as the winter,

Single unemployed male workers from other parts of Canada
have been coming to B,C, in large number during all months
of the year, Many find jobs, but many are not so fortunate,
During the summer months an average of more than 400 have
registered in Vancouver for welfare, having no other means
of subsistence,

The situation is more serious in the winter when there is
less work and many find themselves stranded without jobs,
Last January some 1,400 single male unemployed applied for
welfare in Vancouver. Of this total, 600 were said to be from
outside B,C,

The crack-down on the jobless is part of the government’s
cutback in low-rental housing and refusal to increase welfare
payments which have been recommended by many social
agencies,

In taking the action it did the Socreds have violated the
federal-provincial agreement, spelled out in the Canada Assis-
tance Act which says that there shall be no discrimination on
grounds of province of origin.

Under the Act the federal government puts up half the cost
of the aid, the provinces 40 percent, and municipalities 10.
During the Hungry Thirties one of most contentious issues was
the discrimination against Canada’s unemployed youth as they
travelled from province to province looking for work, Each

province refused to take responsibility for them.

VIETNAM

Cont'd from pg. 1

The party’s central com-
mittee determined to exert the
maximum energy of the party
towards working to help bring
about a shift in the balance of
political and social forces in
favor of the working class and
democratic interests; and to
counteract the drive of big busi-
ness to push Canada to the
right and to block democratic
forces, *

The Communist Party would
like to see such a common pro-
gram of action based around
such main themes as: peace
and neutrality, independence
and nationalization, the techno-
logical revolution and social
progress, the extension of
democracy and trade union
rights; including proposals fora
new deal for the farmers and for
the youth, problems of housing,
taxes and prices,

Peace Council

wires Martin

The B.C. Peace Council last
week wired the Hon, Paul Martin,
leader of the Canadian delegation
to the United Nations, urging that
he call on the U.S, government
to heed Secretary General U
Thant’s advice for a permanent
cessation of bombing in North
Vietnam as a preliminary to a
negotiated peace.

September 29, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 12.

HOUSING

Cont'd from pg. 1 |

ing crisis, Such a course would
be much more beneficial to
Canadians than the present
wasteful policy,

Reacting strongly against the
inactivity of governments at all
levels, the following demands
were heard in the last few
days:

e The Union of B.C, Munici-
palities, meeting in Prince
George last Friday, passed a
resolution calling on the pro-
vincial government to embark
on a greatly expanded public
housing program, It also urged
the setting up of a provincial
housing authority,

e The International Wood-
workers of America convention,
meeting in Vancouver this week,
has before it resolutions brand-
ing the housing situation as “a
national emergency” and calling
for public low cost subsidized
housing, Another resolution
urges the setting up of a Rent
Control Board to protect ten-
ants from rapacious landlords,

More public pressure is
needed to compel Ottawa, Vic-
toria and City Hall to launch a
crash program of subsidized
low rental housing and to en-
courage the building of homes,

In his keynote address to the 30th Annuol B.C. Regional
Convention of the International Woodworkers of America which
opened Monday, President Jack Moore sounded a grave warn-
ing, not only to the convention delegates representing over 37,-
000 IWA members, but to all labor in B.C.

Drawing attention to the mount-
ing attacks against labor by
employer-government forces,
Moore noted that these forces
are now out to replace labor’s
right to strike and free collec-
tive bargaining with the obstruc-
tive machinery of compulsory
arbitration, Moore drew attention
to the fact that at the recent
convention of the Union of B.C,
Municipalities a resolution to
put acompulsory arbitration ball-
and-chain upon civic workers was
only defeated by a small margin.

Moore underscored the grow-
ing danger of compulsory ar-
bitration by emphasizing that,
“If the government of this prov-
ince continues the programithas
at the present time, we are
going to be saddled with com-
pulsory arbitration, The way this
government has manipulated the
statutory government-supervised
strike vote in the Interior IWA

parity wage demands already in- ~

dicates that we have come the
closest to compulsory arbitra-
tion that we have yet seen in
this industry.”

This was seen in the govern-
ment-employer manipulation to
ram through a supervised strike
vote in the Northern Interior,
while obstructing and delaying
a similar vote in Southern In-
terior operations, Northern
workers voted in favor of strike
action by a very flimsy margin,
596-588, a mere 8 majority,

according to official government
tally.

Now the Northern operators
are loudly clamoring for the
IWA to sign on the dotted line
on the terms recommended by
government-appointed mediator
Mr, Justice Craig Munroe, terms
which are still far below IWA

JACK MOORE

Coast base rates, This while
the government staged its “slow-
down” supervised strike vote in
Southern Interior operations,
(This delayed-action vote is now
scheduled for Sept, 29).

“By this splitting strategy of
government-employer forces, as
President Moore correctly em-

phasized in his keynote oa
“the government 1s deter:

to force unsatisfactory os
mendations on people fuse
interior of B.C. having wit
to give them the right 1 i:
draw their labor legally, vont
their wages ll
conditions.”

The IWA convention will
take under considera gs
its sessions in the Hotel s
this week, a $5 a mon on's
ment to build uP aa: fo
strike fund in prepare. jp
strike eventualities oi
terior dispute, and in® tins
for coast contract né in 1968

which will open early =”

the

One of the nightighls Gas
IWA convention was se
of retiring IWA nee
President A.F.Hartuné decla”
ed his remarks with bs a
tion that, “the solidart) ie
is weakening and the Um” af
standing still oF falliné ~ yao"
in this vital element
struggle. Hd

«solidarity in et
labor is weaker than cuit
been in the past,” 5%
while Big Business, 107° cat
gers and other f0F . rave ©
solidation, “will sonnet
all tied up lock, stock ing cone
and there’s nothing Pé
stop them.”

: sid
The retiring IWA rust
drew much the se rast

at. the recent IWA andl
convention in Pom ehe si
when he referred f read!
pants brass Hees ct
as being the pri eotio®

in
labor solidarity
Ne
extended organizatlo

Cancel natural gas ded!

with U.S., urges Morg@!,

Canada’s National Energy
Board was urged this week to
cancel the deal with El Paso

Natural Gas company because.

the U.S, Federal Power Commis-
sion is attempting to blackmail
Canada into giving away ournatu-
ral gas at bargain prices.

The demand came in a letter

‘from the B,C, Committee of the

Communist Party, signed by pro-
vincial leader Nigel Morgan, The

letter to the chairman of National
Energy Board in Ottawa, said:

*Last Saturday the Canadian
Press reported from Washing-
ton, D.C, that the U.S, Federal
Power Commission has rejected
the application of El Paso Natu-
ral Gas Company to purchase an
additional 200 million cubic feet
of natural gas from Westcoast
Transmission except at a sub-
stantially lower price than pro-

of External Affairs, at Ottawa:

a negotiated settlement,

ment of Middle East crisis,

Kashtan wires Martin

William Kashtan, national leader of the Communist Party of
Canada, Tuesday sent the following wire to Paul Martin, Minister

Strongly urge you use UN Assembly-rostrum to dissociate
Canada from criminal United States war of aggression against
Vietnamese people, and urge that Government to immediately
and unconditionally end its bombing and other acts of war as
a basis for opening up negotiations,

The Canadian Government would be doing a grave disservice
to the cause of peace were it to propose by-passing the
Geneva Conference and support instead efforts of the U.S.
Government to place Vietnam on the UN agenda,

No useful results can accrue without the presence and
participation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the
National Liberation Front and the Chinese Peoples’ Government.
U.S. policy is directed to bringing about another Korea not

We urge further that Canada call for withdrawal of Israeli
troops to June 5th line and an end to territorial claims or
territorial expansion, and for guarantees of the security and
sovereignty of all states as a basis for a just political settle-

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