OTTAWA—Mediation talks between the Treasury Board and the Public Service Alli- ance of Canada broke down here last weekend and 19,000 employees started a series of rotating strikes on Monday, Feb. 17, that halted grain handling on the West Coast, slowed down mail delivery Winnipeg International Air- port. On Parliament Hill, at noon on the first day of the strike 350 workers represented by the PSAC marched in protest al to negotiate a reasonable wage offer. The demonstrators marched for about a half hour carry- .and forced the closing of the — of the Treasury Board’s refus- | ing placards demanding the resignation of Jean Cretien, Treasury Board president, and calling for a 32% wage increase over the next two years. The protesters then left Parliament Hill when ‘buses arrived to take them to the picket lines at the Canadian Armed Forces base at Rock- - cliffe. Civilian employees at the base are members of the PSAC. Guinea Pigs Many of the demonstrators were angry with the govern- ment’s hard line in the nego- tiations. One trades worker and a member of the PSAC in Ottawa told the Tribune, “Turner called for wage re- straints recently and although @ Iutenational Yews ® Europe troop freeze asked at Vienna The socialist countries at the Vienna talks on Thurs- day proposed a freeze on the numbers of troops in Central Europe . This important proposal was made public by Radoslav Klein, the Czechoslovak representative to the talks at a news conference in Vienna after Thursday’s regular session. The Vienna talks, which resumed at the end of January, are on mutual reduction of armed forces and arms in Central Europe. Nineteen countries from East and West Europe, and the U.S. and Canada, are tak- ing part in the talks. Communists to run 25 in Alberta vote Special to the Tribune EDMONTON — Alberta Prem- ier Peter Lougheed’s decision to Call a snap election in the prov- ince on March 6, is an attempt “to divert attention from the Syncrude steal,” Alberta’s Com- munists have charged. Lougheed’s announcement in the Legislature, Feb. 14, brought Swift response from the Alberta Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, which has appealed te its mem- bership and supporters to field as many~-as. 25 candidates throughout the province. ' _“The central issue in this elec- tion is Syncrude,” the CP state- Ment said. “The voice of the people of Alberta must be joined with the forces of progress against Syn- ude mounting across the coun- ry.” . The Communists accused the Premier of trying to divert atten- tion “by demanding a ‘mandate’ to increase oil prices for the benefit of the same monopolies as have benefited from the Syn- Crude agreement!” The fact that no other political Party in Alberta will present this . Ssue clearly places a great re- Sponsibility on the Communist Party, which accepts the respon- Sibility for providing an impetus to the anti-Syncrude sentiment across the country, the Alberta committee stated. ‘The maximization of Commu- nist Votes in the March 26 elec- tion is the overwhelming task of © Communist Party in Alberta at this time,” the statement said, Calling for an all-out effort. The Party is appealing for imum -financial assistance ‘tom members and all those who See the need to oppose the give- away of public monies to the oil Corporations, financial assistance _ Which will enable Communist Party candidates to launch pub- Jic campaigns dealing with Syn- crude, related resources and taxation, and all issues of con- cern to the people of the prov- ince. : The Party statement calls for “the mounting of the most mas- sive campaign in the history of Alberta against the Syncrude deal, and for the creatron of a democratic, peaceful and socially prosperous Alberta and Canada. “The Syncrude steal can be reversed! “The Syncrude steal should be - reversed: “The Communist Party in Al- berta will do everything in its power to ensure that the Syn- crude steal will be reversed,” the statement concludes, “and the oil sands development, together with the whole monopoly oil in- . dustry in Alberta, will be brought under democratic public control.” CALGARY — The biggest blackmail scheme ever perpe- trated in this province has paid off. : ; Syncrude Canada Ltd., with the help of the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments walked out of a series of meetings around the country $800 million richer. : : And even that figure. pales in the light of the other concessions made to Syncrude in the form of tax dodges and guaranteed high prices for its product —— synthe- tic crude oil. Here’s how it happened. About a year and a half. ago, Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed gleefully announced that his gov- -Syncrude, he backed down from his statements after the protest from organized labor, it is ob- vious ‘that the government wants to make us the guinea pigs for a program of wage curbs. “We are already so far be- hind other workers in the building trades field,’ this worker said, “that I wonder if we will ever catch up. But that doesn’t seem to bother the government. They want wage ‘restraints and they’re trying to get them by walk- - ing all over our backs.” Another demonstrator told the Tribune, “We’re not ask- ing for too much, I think that we're really asking for too Continued on page 10 MAIL, AIRPORTS HIT BY STRIKE action to stop layoffs OTTAWA — “If we don’t get some results in a month or six weeks, we are going to be back. Only the next time we're going to have a demonstration similar to the one in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, but ours is going to be larger,’ Dennis McDermott, Canadian Director of the United Automobile OTTAWA—Dennis McDermott, Canadian Director of the UAW led By RICHARD ORLANDINI cabinet. a delegation to Ottawa to present their economic program to the federal cabinet. ernment had made a deal with whereby Syncrude would build, at a cost of: $850 million, an oil sands extraction plant in northern Alberta, which would produce 125,000 barrels of “synthetic” crude daily. Such plants stripmine thou- sands of acres of the oil sands, extract low-grade oils from the sands, and then upgrade those cils into synthetic crude. Split after Expenses Syncrude was composed of four huge U.S. oil monopolies, Cities Service, Atlantic Richfield, Gulf, and Imperial, the subsidi- ary of Exxon, the world’s big- gest oil company. : The deal was for a 50-50 profit THE SYNCRUDE PA YOFF split, between the companies and the Alberta government. The catch was that the companies would be allowed to recover most of their expenses before the 50-50 split began. But late last year Atlantic Richfield withdrew from the Syn- crude consortium, claiming that inflation had driven the plant’s cost to a prohibitive $2-billion. The real reasons were that At- lantic Richfield is already com- mitted to massive energy devel- opments in Alaska, and that the federal government was curtail- ing oil exports — Atlantic Rich- field has no refineries in Canada, and had no intention of produc- Continued on page 10 Workers told a press conference follow- ing a meeting of the Auto Workers Council with members of the federal With 27,700 members of the UAW on temporary or indefinite layoff last week in Canada, the meeting with the cabinet to present the union’s economic pro- gram, should have come at an opportune moment. But when the Tribune. asked McDermott if “anything happened in the meet- ing with cabinet to give the more than 27,000 workers who are laid cff any hope of getting back to work soon,” McDermott answer- ed: “Not in any positive or tan- gible way — no.” One of the more than 250 dele- gates to the meeting with the cabinet told the Tribune why he felt it was important to present cabinet with the UAW’s econo- mic program. “When there is a slump in the economy,” he said, “auto workers are the first to get hurt. We need something to stimulate the economy and I think that this program of the UAW is a step in that direction.” _ (Excerpts from the UAW pro- gram were published in the Trib- ~ une two weeks ago.) But the same delegate also be- lieves that although the cabinet listened to the brief, “I really don’t expect much action from them on the proposals. Just be- cause the cabinet members sat SACRIFICES — FOR WHOM? FOR WHAT? See Labor Scene =P: 8: there and nodded their heads when we made our proposals dcesn’t mean that we are going to get any action.” Although the program of the UAW deals with a broad spec- trum of economic issues includ- ing new housing, better pension plans and a lower income tax for working people, the presen- tation to cabinet dealt mainly with the auto industry. Some of the points called for in brief included: —A removal of the 12% fed- eral sales tax on automobiles; —Public scrutiny of pricing by auto companies and the eli- mination. of a price differential Continued on page 10 PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1975—Page 5