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Wage parity: a ‘dangerous dream’?

By RAE MURPHY

F YOU, ARE a Canadian steelworker, you are con-

Saeed to be the most productive steelworker in
the world. For your efficiency you are paid about

16 cents an hour less than your American brother.

If you are a Canadian auto worker, your wage aver-
age is 41 cents less than ‘your fellow worker in De-
treit. Moreover, you can watch the automobile which
you built being shipped across the border and being
sold for several hundred dollars cheaper than you are
entitled to buy it.

For example, a model that is produced in Canada
by Chrysler, the Valiant 200, retails in Canada at
slightly higher than $3,000. When it is shipped to the
USA it is called the Dodge Dart and it costs about
$2,400. —

It is quite natural then that you are demanding and
are prepared to fight for wage parity.

When ithe recently signed auto pact was being
foisted on the Canadian people, it appeared that one
of the irresistible effects of the pact would be to
eliminate the wage differential between the Canadian
autoworker and his American brother. After all, the
pact meant that automobile production between Can-
ada and the United States would be integrated—
completed vehicles or any component parts would
move freely across the border and the industry would
be completely rationalized. -

The old argument that Canadian workers would
have to suffer with less wages would of course
evaporate. After all, there was now no small Canadian
market and a large American market, there was just
one great, efficient, happy and equal market.

The auto pact was lauded to the point of being
referred to as a “free trade agreement” — no more
old-fashioned borders for us. There are a few hitches,
of course, like if your name isn’t Henry Ford don’t
try and drive across the river to Detroit to buy your
next car, there is no “free trade” agreement for the
likes of us.

if you’re heading into negotiations with parity on
your mind you'll also find that the border is some-
thing mcre than a customs clerk’s optical illusion.

According to Canadian management. the demand
for wage parity amounts to a greater curse on the
Canadian economy than the 40-hour week and holiday
pay. They’re even editorializing on the danger.

“Parity of wages — dangerous dream,” says an

a
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editorial in the Toronio Star. Canadian productivity,
it claims, is on an average 25 percent below American.
standards. Even in cases such as the stee] and auto
industry where this is not true by any standards, ihe
Star says that workers should not demand parity
because it would cause a great wage disparity in
Canadian industry. i

“We doubt if any responsible labor leader would
want the Canadian labor movement thus divided into
princes and paupers,” the Star adds.

They have a point. If 16 cents an hour is going to
make every steel worker a prince, better everybody
should be a pauper. 2

The Star is not alone in this nonsense. In the
annual report to shareholders, the president of Massey-
Ferguson, A. H. Thornborough stated that the drive
toward wage parity “raises questions about the future
of Canadian production facilities in relation to com-
petitors located within the concentrated U.S. market.”
Which means simply that Massey-Ferguson intends
to blackmail its workers in accepting substandard
wages.

We are caught in a web. If it is-true, as the Star
says, that we are less productive than Americans,
wouldn’t this be because our secondary industry has
been dwarfed and stunted by the conscious pattern
of trade between our two countries? How do we
extricate ourselves from this treadmill? Neither the
Star nor the president of Massey-Ferguson provide
the answers, except to imply that Canadians must

accept a lower standard of living for ever.

The intention of the policy towards continentaliza-
tion as illustrated by the auto pact is to guarantee
Our existence as a cheap labor area, as well as a
reservoir of natural resources for the American indus-
trial complex. Now when Canadian workers demand
wage parity with Americans the bosses act like the
young man who killed his mother and father, then
begged for compassion because he was an orphan.

It’s not a case of dividing the workers, as the Star
suggests, into “princes. and paupers.” This division
has already existed too long in this world. It’s simply”
a demand for more of the fruits of labor. And that
demand is irresistible.

HEN 20,000 __ production
workers of the Interna-

tional Nickel Company
use their organized strength day
in and day out to produce $7,000
per man in annual profits for
the company, the law and order
of the House of Morgan reigns
supreme in the Nickel City. But
as soon as the men who dig the
rock and keep the wheels turn-
ing for this United State mono-
poly use the same organized
strength to defend their rights
to be treated as human beings,
all hell breaks loose.

The workers are painted as
lJawbreakers and villains who
are out to destroy and do harm
for no apparent good reason. At-
torney-General Arthur Wishart

rushes 300 provincial police to .

Copper Cliff and Sudbury to sev
that law and order is maintain-
ed. Richard J. Needham of the
Toronto Globe and Mail laments
that the police who pick up boot-
 Jeggers, bookies and prostitutes
allow trade unionists to do as
they please.

Yes, Mr. Needham, it’s a sad
day indeed for some people
when the organized strength of
the workers challenge the omni-
potent and untrammeled power
of a giant like Inco. Of course, it
all depends on whose side you
are on. You ‘see, this business of
“law and order” is a relative and
not at all an absolute concept.
Perhaps we can explain this so
it becomes a bit clearer for pre-
judiced minds like yours, by
quoting what an American writ-
er, John Dos Passos, once wrote:

“Wars and panics on the stock

‘exchange, machine-gun fire and

arson, bankruptcy, war loans,
starvation, lice, cholera and
typhus: good: growing weather
for the House of Morgan.”

All of these things are still
with us, the hallmarks of bour-
geois law and order, as we see
all too clearly today in the case
of Vietnam. It would even be
possible to quote American ad-
mirals and generals to substan-
tiate how the U.S. Marines oper-
ate to enforce Jaw, order and

freedom for the American and
international bankers.

It is not difficult to see the
extent of exploitation of the
Sudbury miners when one sees
the fabulous assets accumulated
by Inco, whose net assets are
now more than 20 times greater

LABOR SCENE
| by |
BRUCE MAGNUSON

than the total assessed property
value of all of Sudbury.

In the reorganization of great-
er Sudbury, the Ontario govern-
‘ment allowed Inco’s own com-
pany town of Copper Cliff to re-
main outside the enlarged muni-
cipality in order to allow it to
escape paying its proper share
of civic taxes.

te = =

‘class

While hundreds of millions of
dollars in wealth pours forth
from Inco’s mines and smelters
and refineries, the citizens of
Sudbury pay 20 percent more
taxes than any municipality in
Ontario and receive the most
primitive and inferior type of
civic services. The huge areas
of mining property outside city
limits escape municipal assess-
ment.

No community in Canada pro-
duces more wealth per capita of
production. Yet, no community
js poorer than Sudbury.

The criminal policy of inter-
nal union raiding carried out by
collaborationist, — right-
wing union leaders under the
cover of red-baiting and cold
war propaganda, has served for
years to keep workers divided
while grievances piled up and
the company enjoyed’a field day
of profiteering and abuse. It is
this situation which forms the
basis of the accumulated resent-
ment that has now found expres-
sion in united actions for the

first time in several years to put
an end to the unsavory prac-

tices of this profit-hungry slave

empire.

Once people discover that by =
acting together in unity their —

power is stronger than the pow-
er of the company, they will re-

fuse to accept the brutal rule. 5

and exploitation of -absenteé
owners whose only interest Jies

n pillaging the resources in this” ‘

country and extracting every
last ounce of profit for the: in-
ternational bankers.

The day of domination by this
American empire is drawing
nearer to its end. Its nei profit

for 1965 was reported at $144,- :
000,000, more than $8 million

1964.

Instead of responding to In-
co's call for police to provoke
he workers, the Ontario govern-
ment ought to expropriate this
mammoth corporation and oper-

over

ate it as a public enterprise in

the interest of the people an
the community.

August 5, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4