N socialist lands there is no un-
ployment. There is no inflation
"er. Nor are there private pro-
Taining the economy. Profits
PM steadily rising productivity
© plowed back into the
re aiid and into social require-
| The €conomy is planned. This
Fans the complex tasks facing
Sem society are planned for
Fople. It explains why socialist
puntries can afford free medical

Orks of daycare, the very
_Tecreation and_ sport
{£lities,

It also helps explain why, in-
! ad of millions of unemployed,
Te are shortages of workers in
y fields. Education is the key
More highly skilled workforce
|-. SOcialist education is or-
Zed to meet society’s needs.
IS includes all levels and
ches of education — primary
ol, universities and technical

ftanteed work in their field
N graduation.

How could it be otherwise? Is it

Ceivable that people should be

filed the basic right to work

‘Maps a comparison between
two main social systems —
Pitalism and socialism — might
Prought down to some specific
ses:

| The Construction Industry
|~anada’s construction industry

=o claimants either not being
4 fiat of their rights to appeal, or
+, -28 to do so out of fear or for
€f Teasons.

A Single Parent
i ne Ons told of a Canadian
: ral Electric worker, a single
; aa with children to support,
hile . benefits were ended
re ne: layoff. Thinking it must
Vora Misunderstanding, the
old si Went to the UIC and was
ted io no mistake. They re-
8 er to the local welfare of-
Do €r she asked how she was
Boone ther family without any

se then went to her union

eR Successfully argued with

‘da, rial of Referees that she

, a adequate number of job

e Se Joining that 20% with

‘ Una to tackle the big-

: SS-serving, government

D Y, her action and the UE’s

er Compelled the UIC to: pay
~ 9800 in Stolen benefits:

: anther CGE worker con-

Ost he With the same situation
tision T appeal. The arbitrary de-
Ont the local UIC’s benefit

ay Officer that was required
Ordey three job searches re-
lo her Per day or 15 per week led
& being cut off after criss-

ing colleges. Students are’

has ground to a halt. Construction
unemployment is rising by 400
men a week in Toronto alone. In
Ontario 20.8% of the workers are
jobless. In some cities: the figure
has hit 80%.

Where’s the logic? This coun-
try has a desperate shortage of
housing at rates people can af-
ford. Apartment vacancies in
many areas are less than 17% and
single dwelling homes are priced
out of range for all but top income
families. =

A shortage of housing and mas-
sive unemployment in the con- .
struction industry — that’s free
enterprise! It’s the stupid and
tragic outcome of government
policy which worships profit, the
developers, the mortgage com-
panies, banks and land sharks.
The people pay triple — by high
‘rents, taxes and mortgage rates,
by high unemployment and pov-
erty and by a lack of decent
homes in which to live.

* OK OK

The. USSR improved housing
conditions for 11 million of its
citizens last year, building 2.2
million apartments and houses.
Hungary built 94,000 flats,
Czechoslovakia 132,000 and
Romania 138,000 in 1976. Po-
land’s housing construction went
up 4% and Bulgaria’s 6% in the
same period. The German Demo-
cratic Republic improved housing
conditions for 450,000 people last
year.

; crossing Toronto to record 27 job

searches in 34 days. The fact her
husband is too sick to work and
requires some attention, and that
she lives in Mississauga, making
the use of public transit in her job
searches expensive, didn’t make
an impact on the Board of
Referees.

Flimsiest Reasons

In most cases, Armstrong said,
the disqualified claimants are not
told until after they are cut off
how many job searches are re-
quired or the number of sup-
posedly available job openings.

The hyprocisy of the whole
system is reflected in the fact the:
Unemployment Insurance Act
doesn't even specify a number of
required’ weekly job searches,
other than that the claimant must
make a ‘‘reasonable and custom-
ary effort” to find work.

The UE representative pointed
out, the majority of the cases
‘which are appealed are won be-
cause the claimants are cut off for
the flimiest of reasons.

‘It appears’’ she said, “the
benefit control officers have to
knock off 40% from the rolls of
thosé receiving benefits to make
up Cullen’s $300-million, and
they’re doing it any way they
can.”

- Workers and socialism

’ Ts there a crisis in the construc-
tion industry in socialist coun-
tries? Are there jobless workers?

_ The opposite is the case. Techni-
cal training schools. and all @

branches of education are under
pressure to train more workers,
increase their skills and know-
ledge for the work to be done.

Women in the Workforce

Women in Canada make up ab-
out 40% of our workforce. How-
ever, they earn only 55% of what
men earn annually. Quick
mathematics will tell you what
this figure means in extra profits
for their employers. ©

It’s also simply untrue that
women work only as a second
source of income. A full 43% of
Canada’s 3.5 million working
women are single, separated or
divorced and many support de-
pendents.

In 1974 women provided sole
support for 261,230 families and
60% of these families lived below
the poverty level. Low paying
jobs, lack of daycare and absence
of protective laws make the

_Canadian workplace a dis-

criminatory experience for Cana-
dian working women. It’s appa-
rent that human rights for Cana-
dian women are sacrificed in the
interests of the Almighty Dollar.
As pointed out elsewhere on th-
ese pages, more than 100,000
Canadian women want to work
but can’t for lack of. daycare
facilities.

kok

In socialist countries it is illegal
to pay women less than men for
work of equal value. These laws
are clear-cut and enforced. In the
USSR, women comprise 51% of
the workforce.

Unlike here, Soviet women en-
gage in all spheres of work requir-
ing highly-developed skills and
education — they make up 35% of
design engineers, 45% of
technological engineers, two-
thirds of management, four-fifths
of the country’s medical staff.

Women comprise half the
USSR’s students at all levels and
six of every 10 economists.
Thirty-five percent of the coun-
try’s parliamentarians are women
and 48% of local elected officials.

Daycare is universal and more
than 10.5 million children attend
with 72% of the cost covered by
state funds. Mothers are allowed
112 days pre and post delivery
time at full pay regardless of
length of service. In the German
Democratic Republic the time is a
full 26 weeks. In that country 86%
of women are employed.

Equality, then, includes the
right to work. It means equal
training, and opportunity as well
as equal pay for work of equal
value. It means the right, guaran-
teed to all socialist citizens, not to

suffer from unemployment. All
this is codified in socialist law and
made a reality by socialist plan-
ning.

BACK TO WORK!

Priorities must be turned
around.

The crisis in human and
economic terms cries out for solu-
tions. Federal and provincial gov-
ermment policies, catering as they
do to big business, cannot solve
the crisis. These policies brought
on the economic depression and
created the 1.5 million unem-
ployed. They are responsible for
today’s widespread misery.

‘*Put Canada Back to Work!”
is the need of the day. This is the
Communist Party slogan heading
its campaign. It is the demand
which sums up a series of im-
mediate and long-term proposals
to overcome the economic crisis
Canada has been thrust into.

The need now is for united
mass action to force basic change:
for development of broad
people’s movements around
specific demands to impel a turn-
around in our economy. The
fightback, beginning with the
labor movement and including the
Communist Party, New Demo-
cratic Party, democratic organi-
zations, must be increased in face
of the present employer-
government attack.

The demands must include an
immediate end to the wage-
cutting Bill C-73 and an end to
attacks on the unemployed. They
should reject ‘‘deals’’ and
‘*agreements’’ which are aimed at
guaranteeing unbridled corpora-
tions profits, continued hikes in
living costs while holding work-
ers’ wages down and restricting
the hard-won principle of collec-
tive bargaining.

“Put Canada Back to Work”’
should include:

e A vast housing program to
provide accommodations at prices

© of e s)

. working people can afford;

e A public works and voca-
tional training program at trade
union rates of pay;

e Reduced taxes for low and
medium incomes;

e Reduced hours of work — 30
at 40 hours’ pay;

e Earlier retirement policies”

based on substantial increase in
pensions;

e Establishment of child care
centres;

e Extension of trade with the
socialist countries and with the
Third World; '

e A 50% cut in the arms
program.

In a longer term sense, only a
basic change in approach will
guarantee a constantly develop-
ing economy. The overall control
of Canada’s economic, social and
political life by huge corpora-
tions, the majority of them
foreign-owned, means continued
crisis and unemployment, higher
living costs and a steady decline in
people’s living standards. The
gap between rich and poor will
continue to widen.

The Communist Party prop-
oses democratic ownership and

control .of the huge multi-na- |

tionals, the development of our
rich natural resources for our
people’s needs, the building of
secondary industry and re-
direction into the economy of bill-
ions wasted for arms.

These are expansion policies,
policies geared to redistribute the
country’s wealth in favor of work-
ing people. These are policies to

end the disgrace of mass unem- |

ployment and launch into
economic growth. These are the
policies the federal budget should
be advancing. :

The Communist Party contingent at the Oct. 14 Day of Protest in
Toronto. Slogans carried go beyond the defeat of Bill C-73 and call for
economic control of foreign multi-nationals, ownership of our natural

resources and a cutback on profits, not wages.

x