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By FRED WILSON :

Part one, which appeared last week, dealt with a call
by Campeau Corporation for the Canadian Construc-
tion Association to have sole bargaining rights with
building trades unions and this as an attempt to weaken
the building trades unions.

The inherant weakness in the trades was high-
lighted in January by the action of the United As-
sociation of Plumbers who took:a supreme court ac-
tion to break up the B.C. building trades bargaining
council, just as the Canadian Construction As-
sociation) (CCA) is pressing for closer co-ordination
among employers. ae

Behind Campeau’s call for accreditation 1s the de-
sire to unite all contractors, large and small, behind

the giant monopoly interests that dominate the in-
dustry. Campeau Corporation is one of the only 160 .

construction firms in Canada with assets greater than
$10-million, but those firms accounted for 60% of all
construction revenues in Canada in 1980. In B.C.
there are only 20 construction companies with assets
greater than $10-million, but they also account for
60% of total construction revenues in B.C. in 1980,
and they employed 56% of all workers employed by
construction contractors with assets of $10,000 or
~ more.

CE Self-defeating

The plumbers’ action dramatizes the continuing
craft divisions within the building trades. Of the 17
international building trades unions in English Cana-

“In the depth of a depression, the housing market is
the most obvious area of real demand for. con-
struction.”

da, only five have more than 20,000 members Canada
wide, the minimum figure cited by the CLC for a
viable self-financing Canada-wide union. ;

Facing a depression and such an unfavorable ba-
lance of economic force, CLC membership for the
trades would seem indispensible. But the building
trades perfunctory ‘‘house of labor’’, the Canadian
Federation of Labor, (CFL) has frozen stiff amid its
own intransigence. International domination, craft
divisions, political deals with the old line parties —
everyting anachronistic and self-defeating for the
building trades, the CFL is sworn to defend.

The building trades are face to face with the largest
challenge in the post war, however, and the search for
progressive solutions can’t help but challenge many
of the old dogmas of business unionism.

To begin with, the idea that megaproject resource
sellouts provide stable employment for the building
trades has by now been completely discredited in life,
although the CFL leadership have yet to be con-
vinced. It was demonstrated as far back as 1975 in an
Economic Council of Canada report on the con-
struction industry, the major existing study to date,
that construction jobs and manufacturing jobs are
completely interdependent. Taken together the two
sectors of the economy account for two-thirds of in-
stability in employment in Canada. The study proved
that when autoworkers, steelworkers, smelter work-
ers or mill workers are unemployed, construction
workers will also be lining up for unemployment in-
surance.

Construction-related Investment

Construction jobs are a result of capital investment,
60% of all capital investment is construction related.
The issue before the building trades is where and how
that investment is placed. Resource megaprojects
produce relatively few jobs and result in a flow of raw
materials and profit out of the country. Public invest-
ment in the manufacturing sector creates far more
jobs and results in further growth of the domestic
market, which brings further construction jobs. The
Economic Council report put it this way, **... peaks
and troughs in construction employment frequently
coincided with those in manufacturing. This was
partly because the construction industry bought most
of its materials from the manufacturing sector and
partly because the demand for construction materials.
accentuated the need for expansion of manufacturing

Building trades need unity to win

News Analysis

capacity, which in turn added to the demand for con-
struction...”

Part and parcel of the megaproject syndrome has
been the diversion of investment funds away from the

‘residential sector. There simply hasn’t been the profit

in affordable housing and the result is housing short-
ages and gluts in downtown office space markets in all
of Canada’s major cities. To some extent the building
trades have been indifferent to the housing crisis be-
cause 90 to 95% of the housing industry is non-union.
But in the depth of a depression, the housing market is
the most obvious area of real demand for con-
struction, and a dynamic housing program would go a
long way toward stimulating the economy as a whole.
If the trades indifference were transformed to a parti-
san commitment to a larger scale public housing pro- -
gram it could create the conditions both for putting
people to work and for a major penetration by organ-
ized labor into the residential housing market.

There are substantial allies for construction work-
ers in the community around the issue’ of public
investment to take the country out of the depression.
Community groups, small business, seniors’ organi-
zations and others are in need of capital projects and
union wages in their communities. Bringing these
forces together is an urgent task not only to push for
job creation, but to undercut the campaign from the
right to use the depression to generate anti-union
hostility and anti-labor legislation.

Robert Campeau has put one set of proposals be-
fore the CCA, and it would be fair to assume that they
are already under discussion in the federal govern-
ment and some provincial governments.

The need for a co-ordinated response by the build-
ing trades unions was never more pressing. The road
out of the present impasse faced by building trades
workers: a) lack of co-ordination with the main stream
of Canadian labor, b) lack of Canadian autonomy, c)
lack of trade union autonomy — may well lie in their
response to the deep-going economic crisis now af-
fecting the industry.

Fred Wilson is B.C. Provincial Organizer, Com-
munist Party of Canada. :
Second of two articles. —

Pay TW —

effectively cuts the CBC off from this .

The Canadian Radio-television and
elecommunications Commission
(CRTC) recently made public its decision
that only cable companies are eligible to
apply for a Pay TV licence. This decision

Potentially billion dollar business. While
that is serious enough, more serious is
that Pay TV has been handed over to
Privately owned companies.

* * *

aa

_’ Marxism-Leninism Today

gi ie!

_ Alfred Dewhurst

finance is continentalism; i.e., one North
American market, which cannot help but
be dominated by U.S. imperialism, and,
in the course of doing so, turn Canada
_ into a satellite of the USA. This, too, isa
} . task for the mass media. And the most
advanced version for mind-bending is
Pay TV. For these reasons alone this
medium must be (as far as monopoly is
concerned) privately owned.
* * *

a special tool for monopoly

The CBC and the National Film Board
) have been allotted roles in the
Production of films and other cultural
Programs which they must sell in a highly
Competitive market. Of course, this is
Not presented as a restriction on these
two state-owned corporations, but as an
Onor bestowed by a benevolent bureau-
Cracy on two well-deserving institutions
In the realm of Canadian culture.

One may ask: what has Pay TV got to
do with monopoly, other than a new
Source for profit-taking? Simply put, the
Private corporations have been given the
Opportunity to take over the new
technology in telecommunications which
will soon control the production and
Marketing processes, shaping of public
entertainment, knowledge and inform-

ation resources. It is this that gives Pay

a special role as a tool for monopoly.
* * * F

Monopoly control-of the new technol-
Ogy in telecommunications means that
the stage has been set for the tightening

of monopoly’s grip over key sectors of

the Canadian economy. One cannot op-

_ Pose Pay TV as such, if that is the only:

~ ownership,

way the country can afford it. What is
vital though, is who owns this key sector
of the economy. bat, eee
Monopoly ownership assures
monopoly control of the economy and
the political and social direction of the
state. On the other hand, public (social)

ownership opens the door to the possibil- -

ity of people’s democratic control of the
economy which in turn, can open the
door to the socialist transformation.

The monopoly corporations in their
never-ending search for maximum profit
see the developing trend to state inter-
vention in the economy, up to state

poly’s long-term aims. For under the

political system of parliamentary democ- |

racy, control of the state could pass into
the hands of the demecratic majority.
Monopoly makes a few exceptions to
state ownership, namely, the profit-
ability of a given enterprise, and certain
key areas of the economy which all corp-
orations must have access to. Only in

such cases do the monopolies entrust:

ownership to the state for the common
good of monopoly as a whole.

as a serious threat to mono- -

‘The role of the mass media in any

country — capitalist, newly-developing
or socialist — is to bring the general pub-
lic into harmony with state policies and
aims. TV is the best medium to perform
this task. For capitalism, Pay TV is the
most advanced version of this medium.
This is why a private property-biased
state institution decided that only pri-
vately owned cable companies could
apply for a Pay TV licence. The cable

companies are part and parcel of the

computer and_ telecommunicaations
corporation set-up.

The first priority task of the buc-
caneers of high finance at this time is to

shape the public mind against state inter- .

vention and ownership in the main
means of production and marketing,
starting with privatizing already state-
owned property in key sectors of the
economy. Privatization of the key sec-
tors of the economy is the number one
priority of the monopoly corporations.
That is a task of the Canadian media.

The second priority of these U.S.-
oriented modern buccaneers of high

The right-wing neo-conservatives are
to be found in both Conservative and
Liberal parties and outside of these par-
ties. They are gung-ho to place Canada’s
economic future wholly at the disposal of
the blind, and consequently erratic,
‘“‘market forces’’: Joe Clark is one of the
most vocal champions of this road. He
never misses a chance to charge that it is
state intervention and ownership of some
enterprises in key industries of the econ-
omy that got Canada into its present eco-
nomic mess. This being the case, he
says, it is high time that ‘““business’’ takes
over again and puts Canada back to
work...

The real financial winners in Pay TV
privatization and one North American
market will be the U.S. film and video
corporations. The great bulk of programs
now aired on Canadian#TV, including
CBC programming are U.S. programs.
Sixty-five per cent of world com-
munications material has its origin in the
United States. This is not accidental. It is
a component part of a U.S. imperialist
scenario to win world hegemony.

N.B. more next week

—.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 1, 1983—Page 5