Mainly for

Conducteg by
WINNIE

oe eee SE A ane

WILLIAMS

All letters, ‘articles, etc.,
for or concerning this
page should be addressed
to Winnie Williams, Pa-
cific Tribune, 650 Howe
St., Vancouver, B.C.

Domestic service probl

ems show

need for building strong union

“When a domestic worker is sick—who should pay for the doctor? Should she come
under the family doctor of her employer, or is she obliged to call in her own?

“What is to be done about the worker who is denied by the mistress to eat eggs—
except on Sunday? And she can’t buy her own at the store, because it might embarrass

realy she works for.”
fallin at about the accidents —
Seg off ladders, bad cuts, burns
wend Scalds the. household
bd who has to wait on the
and has no time to sit down
o ae her ewn meal.”
€se, and many others—lon;
Oe (10-14), Goon: eee ome:
Bie | 8s low as $20 a month, poor
ikea or simply not ‘enough to
ae. = are the problems which
Blo y face the Home Service Em-
vees Union, Locai 211,
ae moet in September of 1945
Bee affiliate of the Trades and
the Teonstess of Canada (AFL),
ing ome Service Union is hav-
ditions uphill’ battle to better con-
th oe for the women ‘who work
€r women’s homes.

the Onditions improved during,
the war, but as Olive Wilkinson,
“eat hard-working presi-
“Edad “Before the war
Wages worked for very low
CN eae the employers were
hon ey were going to get a
Sehold worker very cheap
sure © war. We are just as
they and determined to see that
on don’t and that wages and
nditions improve.”

ie ar ecitically the union is seek-
‘ oe esides the things named

» legislation t¢ bring house-

ee cs under the Minimum

ee the Hours of Work,

dee ‘oOrkmen's Compenkation.
Tr ; pe

ae is the legislation other or-

zed labor has gained,” said

Whaleburgers’
added to menus

BE NDON — British scientists
bilitic menting with the possi-
€S of whale meat as a staple

Um; .
Wort. 00d. Research culinary
Tkers are a

hold

oe Most palatable methods of
es whale meat for the

Medical science maintains
€ whale meat proteins sur-
nN health value for children
Obtained for land animals.
pleburgers” may soon be add-
© relieve the ‘austerity’ of
SSed British housewives.

Pass j
Ose

“Wh

eq

hara:

Raffle winners

i iners in the Central Burnaby
Pacing we held in aid of the
Apri, 4. pune drive on Friday,
Prize 5, are as follows: . First
1615’ ticket No. 306, Geo. Carr,

West 8rd; 2nd _ prize, ticket
1042, Wally Chutsky, 2469
Ave.; 3rd prize, ticket No.
» Mrs. Parker, 3002 Laurel St.,
Westminster.

Montreal women launch

price control

MONTREAL, Que.—Bitt

campaign

erly resentful over the King

rgovernment’s brazen lifting of the price and rent control lids,

housewives’ and consumers rallied here last Friday to plan
positive action to fight Ottawa’s ill-considered move. At a

public protest rally called by sev-{
eral leading consumers’ and wo-
men’s groups, over 300 angry, de-
termined women demanded the im-|
mediate re-institution of controls
by Federal authorities.

Lois Frost, local radio commen-
tator and housewife criticized Ca-
nadian women for sitting back and
taking things, such as price in-'
creases, much too easy. “This de-!'
featism,” warned Mrs. Frost, “is,

Olive, ‘and we demand to be in-
cluded.”

’ One thing the union feels would
solve many conflicts in housework
is a training plan, similar .to the
one being formed in Britain under
government auspices to supply
‘university trained” girls to help
run Britain’s homes. The idea is
to make domestic employment an
attractive career for girls and also
to increase British women’s know-
ledge of housecraft and homemak-
ing.

Girls will take courses in cook-
ing, child care, laundry, budgeting
and even emergency household re-
pairs. The institute will then see
to it that its graduates are given
every consideration by their em-
ployers, and will lay down certain
conditions, such as wages, hours,
days off, comfortable quarters, and
so on which employers will be re-
quired to abide by.

During the war years the trade
unions made the slogan, “Equal
Pay for Equal Work,” one of their
main points. Women realized, some
of them for the first time, that if
they were to have better working
conditions and higher wages, the
trade union was the answer.

At the end of the war, mass lay-
ors lwok piace and woumen, who
had contributed so much to the
winning of the war, were the first
to go. Promises or ‘Jobs tor All
failed to materialize and possibili-
ties of jobs for women are narrow-
ing down. One of the main . fields
left is housework, To add further
insult to injury, is the 1947 income
tax regulations—aimed to discour-
age married women from working,
even though most of them are
forced to, to.add to the family
income.

For the most part women and
girls in service feel helpless and
alone, due to the nature of their

- ‘work. The trade union movement,
lready testing out”

however, has’ proved that this iso-
lation can be overcome. For in-
stance, teachers in isolated rural
areas have been organized for
years.

The main benefits will be de-
rived, not only from the one local
union, but also from the strength
gained from afliliation with thous-
ands of “workers affiliated to the
Trades and Labor Congress. In this
way, the union hopes to steadily
win something better for a class
of workers who certainly have bet-
ter things coming to them.

As Olive concluded her inter-
view with the P.T.. “Every
household worker who is not in
a union is a detriment to other
organized labor. Nothing is on
alone. So girls, join the union.
Let our voice be heard. We have

been forgotten long enough.”

MIM AD A

THREE DAYS

“ONE OF THE BEST...1

St PRIZE

ALL SEATS
eS

3 SHOWS DAILY — 2.80; 6.30 and 9.00 P.M.

ARTKINO PRESENTS

ONE 7
FLOWER’

N EXCELLENT COLOR”

nl Ly RI

PRODUCED IN USSR

TICKETS ON SALE — KELLY’S, SEYMOUR STREET
Matinee, 50; Evenings, 50c, 7c, 90c (tax included)

MAY 5—6—7

es
w

\)

RESERVED

Just ducky

With three and a half acres, a little creek,
and lots of initiative; WRCNS veterans Ger-
trude .Nunn of Vancouver (left) and Elizabeth

Wimperly of Toronto, started a duck ranch in Burnaby last fall.
With DVA credits and a course in animal husbandry at the UBC
the ex-WRCNS got going. Already they have a forty-five bird
flock, and have set themselves the objective of a 400-bird a month

market turnover.

‘Austerity’
on display

gowns not
in salons

A fashion. note from Britain says that “the salons of
the big London dressmakers have been crowded by buyers
and journalists, from Britain and overseas, who came to see

the 1947 spring and summer collections of clothes.

evening gowns were more luxur-
ious than we have seen since be-
fore World War II. Norman Hart-
nell showed a gown in gold tis-
sue with a skirt showing six
separate drapings; the effect was
something like a harem.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Jones of Bill-
ingsgate, had her own private

ASTOR CAFE
1222 Broad Street

(Opposite Colonist)
VICTORIA

Ph. B2311
Specializing in .
Sea Foods — Steaks — Chops

F
RIDAY, APRIL 25, 1947

The

showing of spring and summer
designs. Her dress is also like
‘tissue’, but not ‘gold tissue’. It
is only of very poor quality, a
tissue thin cotton, the only type
of cloth which Mrs. Jones is able
to buy from the few dollars that
can be spared after food and shel-
ter has been bought for herself
and family.

In fact, this is a ‘tissue’ wear-
ing family, if the truth were to
leak out. (And tissue, we might
add, at the risk of laboring a
point, is not very adequate even

in spring, when it extends even
to coats.)
Mrs. Jones’ dress is in style

in still another way. It also has,
but not just six—a multitude of
separate drapings. This comes,
the fashion experts might per-

unhealthy and dreadfully danger-
ous. We must. do something
about it at once.”

Lea Roback, popular organizer
for the CIO United Electrical
Workers’ Union declared: “What
is the use in getting educational
material from the government
about the nutritional value of milk
when the majority of us can’t af-
ford to buy it.”

One of the few men in the au-
dience was Rev. K. C. Bolton, who,
pointed out that three out of every
four members of his parish being
married, were forced to live with
relatives, because they could not
afford the high rentals being
asked.

Several women: spoke from the
floor of the meeting, pointing out
their own particular difficulties as
the result of rising living costs.
They were unanimous in their de-
termination to rally Montreal's
women to an all-out fight against
rising living costs by calling for
price controls on all essential con-
sumer goods.

House regarded
fd
for men only’

(Excerpt from “Women M.P.’s in
Britain,” Oct., 1945, by Hanna.
Sheehy-Skeffington.)

Two stories are told of the first.
woman elected to parliament in:
Great Britain. Countess: Markievicz,.
a prisoner undergoing’a life sen-
tence after 1916, when summoned
to take her seat replied from Hollo-
way Jail that she was already His:

Majesty’s guest there and declined
to attend. ~ es :

Lady Astor, a good feminist,
though in other respects a support-
er of the privileged classes, nar-}
rates in her memoirs that no male
M.P. spoke to her for two years:
So shocked was the House that:
hitherto exclusive male club at
woman’s  sacriligious entry! The:
only trace of Constance Markievicz.
in the House of Commons was the.

appearance of a peg to han ;
hat on! who

Where it belongs

Representative Helen Gaha-
gan Douglas (D. Cal.) carried
a basket of groceries onto the
floor of the House. She told her |
colleagues that last June, under
OPA, she had paid $10.08 for
the same selection, The cost
today—$15.02.

3 Nios aoe. AS ese

‘TI want to place
basket where
squarely in the
publican Party!”
no takers,

this food
the Re-
were

t
'

haps say, from: the fact th

Jones does not wash uecn
thin dress in: Lux (even if she
could get it). This could be the}
answer, but I don’t say it is. The
answer is that no matter what
kind of washing you give the kind
of dress Mrs. Jones wears, it will
shrink into Separate drapings. |
The only fortunate part about the
whole thing is that this year even,
Mrs. Jones is in style.

1

t

To draw a parallel; the hone
effect was something like a harem |
(scarem). It should also be noted |
that while the ladies who haunt!
the big dress salons are not af-i
fected by the enforced economic
‘austerity’ of Britons, the Mrs. |
Joneses have little choice than to |
stick to the patch-work ‘tissues’
of poverty. }

PACIFIC - TRIBUNE—PAGE 7

| ae

JUL TT TTT