Labor

seen as a threat to labor’s life —
the effort of a gang of bureaucrats
to set up a dictatorship over the
unions through using the boss wea-
pons of calculated disunity, disrup-
tion and anti-red hysteria.

For the boss has not been able
to break Canadian labor from the
outside. A million Canadian union-
ists standing like one man cannot
be broken, The IWA’s 1946 strike
led off an unbroken string of wage
victories from the Queen Charlottes
to Cape Breton. The workers
achieved unity in action. Labor won
in 1947 too—until the disastrous

* CCL convention in September when
Aaron Mosher, Pat Conroy and
Charles Millard—top CCL leaders—
stacked a convention to open the
bosses’ red-baiting attack inside
labor.

UN scores 16¢ a day
wage for SA miners

LAKE SUCCESS—The Union of
South Africa, a nation whose Jim-

crow legislation is unexcelled even’

by the state of Mississippi, has
been officially charged with gross
exploitation and
the Negro people of Southwest
\Africa—90 percent of the popula-
tion of that country.

The accusation was made
strangely enough—by U.S. delegate
Francis B. Sayre and representa-
tives of several other nations be-
fore the United Nations Trustee-
ship Council here. Soviet delegate
Semyon Tsarapkin was even
stronger in his condemnation. He
_ said South Africa’s administration

of Southwest Africa should be out-

lawed internationally, since South

Africa holds on to the territory

only by virtue of a defunct League

of Nations mandate, which the UN
has never ratified.
: Prior to the discussion, South

_ Africa herself admitted serious
misgovernment of the Southwest
‘African trust territory in a written
reply to UN questions. * j

Wages of miners in Southwest

Africa, it stated, are 16c a day

as compared to 50c daily in South

Africa,

Sayre charged that only 10 per-
cent of Southwest Africa’s budget
is earmarked for the Negro nine-
tenths of her people, who produce
‘well over 90 percent of the wealth.
‘The white tenth of the population
has grabbed 58 percent of ali the
land since South Africa took over
the area, pushing the natives into
inferior tracts.

LPP opens drive
for fighting fund

“In the face of a period of inten-
_ sive political activity during the
coming year, the Labor-Progressive
Party has recently launched a
fighting fund drive for $5,000 dur-
ing September,” Maurice Rush,LPP
provincial organizer, announced
this week.

“There are prospects for provin-!

cial and federal elections, there are
municipal elections, there is the
‘campaign to elect our provincial
leader Nigel Morgan in the Alberni
scenstituency, and there is the over-
all need to fight back the vicious
red-baiting attacks on our party.”

“All this requires money, yet our! ed to withhold payment of per cap-

provincial organization is constant-
ly laboring under financial diffi-
culties which will weaken our polit-
ical work unless strong and imme-
diate steps are taken to overcome
this. :

“The $520.60 already turned in

makes us confident that our mem-,

bership, friends and supporters will
come forward as always to see this
campaign over the top, both by in-
dividual donations and organized,
money-raising activities.

Donations should be sent to 209 remedy this situation.”

Shelly Building, Vancouver.”

enslavement of,

There’s been no wage co-ordina-
tion in 1948, no-united fight against
union-busting laws. Shrinking pay-
checks are the measure of labor
,treachery. The boss found a pack
|of careerists inside labor ready to
‘use the weight of the big business
“red bogey” barrage to cover their
attacks on honest workers when
they should be attacking bosses.

These vultures attack unions like
the Canadian Seamen’s Union and
the Mine-Mill union, which are fac-
ing the full oppression of the boss
state. They sell out their own un-
ions, as in Millard’s steel settle-
ments ranging from 0 to 11 cents
and Frank Hall’s sellout rail settle~
ment for six cents less than the
membership demanded. None of
them bear any of the scars of Ja-
bor’s struggles, but they propose
to remove the- militant leadership
that built labor the hard way. |

In stepping into the fight to
clean out the phonies, older work
ers have grim memories to spur
them on. They remember what
happened in the 1920’s, when the
same type of high-salaried bur-
eaucrats sold out. The price of
their treacherous expulsions of
militants was a wholesale smash-
ing of unions, loss of half of la-
bor’s membership, unemployment
and speed-up.

The bosses and the phonies are
more desperate in 1948—but labor
'is three times as powerful. And la-,
bor has the gruesome experience
of the 1920’s and 1930’s to spur on
workers who are determined it
must never happen again.

Under the _ time-honored cry,
“United we stand, divided we fall,”
labor is rising to clean house.

Experienced unionists see no
grounds for exultation at these first
developments. The danger is dead-
ly, they say—far too deadly for,
anybody to be able to exaggerate
it. The need is still to sound the
alarm. .

But the counter-attack has start- :

edue-” ‘

Ban CCF’er

Fred Dowling, Canadian director
of the United Packinghouse Work-
ers of America (CIO) has been,
barred by U.S. inimigration from
crossing the border on union busi-
ness. Big business dailies and the
Canadian department of external
affairs are expressing amazement,
since Dowling was prominent
among those right-wing CCF’ers
who are heralded as “anti-commun-
ist” and “respectable”. Experienced
labor men say this ban bears out
their earlier contentions that once
a section of labor helps the boss
attack communist unionists, the at-
tack would quickly be extended to
all unionists including ‘some of
the red-baiters themselves.

This new ban follows similar ac-
tion last week against six AFL
Chemical workers, 12 CIO Electric-
al workers and two CIO Auto work-

ers.
Jack Scott, Trail delegate to
Mine-Mill’s international conven-

tion, has also been banned.
ATU ITU RU MURT TE RA
Mosher puts new

gag on Murphy

CCL President Aaron Mosher
has slapped a new gag on Harvey
Murphy, regional director of the
International Union of Mine, Mill
and Smelter Workers (CIO), who
was personally suspended from
the CCL simultaneously with the
Mine-Mill ouster. He has ruled

that Murphy cannot appeal his-_|

suspension to the CCL conven-
tion. Murphy points out that the
CCL constitution states any de-
cision can be appealed to the
convention, and says this mo-
tion bears out his charges the
Mosher group is scared to have
him speak at the convention.
Many trade unionists are still
searching for the section of the
constitution under which he was
first place.

ALUN UAL

demand for 35 cents an.hour,

IWA members open
war on “White Bloc’

While the IWA is locked in conciliation on behalf of its

union security, strict 40-hour

week and welfare fund for 40,000 B.C. woodworkers, its angry
membership has opened a cleanup drive on, the “White Bloc”

disrupters on whom the lumber
borns have counted to paralyze the
‘union’s bargaining power.

Four big locals threw down the
| gauntlet to U.S. Immigration which

| bans from the United States B.C.

IWA members who follow the mili-
tant policies of the B.C. member-
ship, and admits the minority fol-
lowers of the IWA International’s
policies of knuckling down to anti-
labor laws and disrupting struggles
with the boss. Victoria local 1-118,
| Mission local 1-367, Vancouver lo-
cal 1-217 and Port Alberni local
185 elected full pro-district slates’
‘of delegates to the IWA interna-
tional convention scheduled for
Portland October 11. All four locals
resolved that if any single delegate
‘were barred all would stay away.

Mission and Port Alberni decid-
| ita tax to the International until the
_ international board ceases to or-
ganize disruption in the B.C. dist-
‘ieet (International ‘vice-president,
Al Hartung has promised disrupt-
‘ers in Vancouver full financial as-
sistance).

Vancouver local, after hearing
business agent Robert Jackson re-
, port on orgainzation of a disrupt-
jive faction, instructed ‘its executive
to “take such action, no matter how
drastic, as may be necessary ,to

Alberni dealt with a letter from
J. S. Alsbury, New Westminster’
“White Bloc” president, written on
his local’s official stationery, ad-

vising an Alberni “White Bloc”
member to get a good turn out to-
the next meeting to back Interna- |
tional Organizer George Brown and |
dealing with attempts to drum up;
{White Blog support in other: |

parts of the district. The individual

}concerned had paid no dues for 37

months:

The local condemned New West-
minster officers and all “outside
meddlers” and is sending the reso-
lution to New Westminster so the
membership there will know what
its officers are doing. Next New
Westminster meeting will have to
deal with the situation arising from
the fact that 17 more ballots were
cast for B.C. Federation of Labor
delegates than there were mem-
bers present eligible to vote.

Alberni, Vancouver, Mission and
Victoria all electéd delegations to
the CCL and IWA conventions loy-
al to district policy, Mission, scene:
of an intensive drive by Interna-
tional appointees, elected a pro-
district executive. Press charges
by the “White Bloc” that over 400
ballots were thrown out in Mission
are answered by officers who state
that the ballot receipts were not
signed at Hammond Mill.

Interior conciliation boards have
met at Prince George and the
Okanagan and hearings are now
proceeding ,at Nelson. Coast hear-
ings continue in Vancouver this
week.

Youth dance

The National Federation of La-
bor Youth (NFLY) is holding a
dance at Lochdale Hall, corner of
Sperling and Hastings, from 9 to
12 p.m, this Saturday. Music will
be supplied by the Rythm Four
and price of admission will be 40

cents.

i

‘
ane

rs

4

ei.

Tax

will end March 31 - next.

HERE... Voy
FINISH HIM up.

Extracting the profit juices

)

Canadians are facing a new threat to already depleted
pocket books—a rent increase of at least 20 percent.
Last week Judge A. E. Doak of the WPTB rentals
board said “the general opinion” is that rent controls

Other Ottawa reports say

controls will be handed over to the provinces.

agreements but there is strong con-

disregard of the law.

“You have read stories of vio-
lence on the Great Lakes. Even
without the employer inspired pro-
vocation, the fact that Sullivan
could boast openly that he had so
many men who would go in to
see that the seamen did not get
a foothold, and the companies’ as-
sertions that they had live steam
hoses—even without all this pro-
vocation, it is hardly possible to
stage a strike of seamen and make
it into a Sunday School picnic.

“The question of communism
has been brought into the issue
by the employers and they took
the position that they would not
do business with an organization
having communist officers.

We asked for a labor act giv-
ing the right to the workers to
have a union of their own choice
and bargain through represent-
atives of their own choosing not
Mr. Hall’s choosing.

“The CSU was chartered by this
Congress in 1936 when there was
no international union of seamen
affiliated to the AFL. Today the
CSU has about 9,000 members. Dur-
ing the life of the CSU wages
have been raised from $35.00-$40.00
per month to $125.00-$160.00 and
conditions have been materially im-
. proved. 4

“Tf this |Mongress ever sub-

right to say who shall represent
a union, then all unions will soon
become company unions, The pre-
sent issue is not one of commun-
ism. The issue is that the mem-
bers of an affiliated union are in

| @ legal strike. While on strike |

with such hostile employers, no

one with any semblance of trade

union principles would condemn

the workers and side in with the
_ employers.

“What our membership has to de-
cide is: should the executive coun-
cil carry out the instructions and
policies as set out at conventions,
'or should we be governed by a
group of self-appointed leaders who.
arbitrarily commit acts contrary
to convention decisions?

we must always condemn the ac-
tions of Sullivans and Halls.in sid-

demnation of the companies for.

mits that the employers have a

In the;
opinion of your executive council

» Be Bengough

CSU has been conducted or where ing with the employers while work-
they have reneged on any of their

ers jare on strike; to do otherwise
would be to abandon all trade un-
ion principles and could only lead
to chaos and destruction of our
movement.

“Considerable outside forces are
at work to divide the ranks of labor
and it cannot be mere coincidence
that the merger of the company-
dominated Canadian Lake ‘Sea-
men’s Union/ with a dual Seafar-
ers’ International Union was an-
nounced by Frank Hall just when
negotiations were progressing be-
tween the CSU and the deepsea’
shipping operators. It is a hor-
rible thing to occur in the organ-
ized labor movement.

“We believe that this is import-
ant enough that every organiza-
tion affiliated to this Congress
should discuss this matter), tell
their delegates to the convention
what they think about it, and let
the executive council know what
is the opinion of your organization.”

_In Toronto and other leading in-
dustrial centers, TLC officials with
well-known conservative politics
are not hesitating to say they will
support Bengough at the October
11 convention in Victoria. Many
emphasize the notable thing about
Hall’s rebel conference was not
that there were 23 roadmen pres-
ent but that there were so many
absent, This, they say, shows that
Hall's influence fis not as great as
the dailies would have the public
believe.

(‘Roadman” is a term used in
labor circles for an AFL interna-
tional vice-president or interna-
tional organizer, usually well-paid,
responisble only to international
headquarters. Hall, for example,
receives $12,000 a year.)

Hall’s chief supporters are Rus-

_ sell Harvey, “vice-president” of the

splitting group, Archie Johnstone,
“secretary-treasurer” and A. Mc-_
Arthur, member without portfolio.
The latter is an international reP-
resentative of the Teamsters’ Un-
ion} while Harvey and Johnston
are respectively an AFL organizer
and international representative of
the Hotel and Restaurant Union.
Johnstone made a trip to Vancou-
ver last fall to oust Emily Watts,
Mae Leniczek and Roy Moore, of
ficers of Hotel and Restauarnt 10-
cal 28, which was placed under #
trustee. —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 17, 1948—PAGE 12