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Unionists rally outside the Granville Seven Cinema in downtown Vancouver Tuesday in support of locked out theatre workers.

Tories called ‘economic terrorists’

The federal government's dependence on
country is a form of “ economic terrorism”
—and Michael Wilson, Brian Mulroney
and Barbara McDougall are “economic
terrorists,” a leading Canadian economist
and women’s movement activist told union-
ists Monday.

Marjorie Cohen, jf :
an economics pro-
fessor currently lec-
turing at Simon
Fraser University,}

of Labour that the
massive economic
re-structuring being’
carried out in Can-j
ada and other indus-
trialized capitalist
countries is being presented as the “work-
ings of pure market forces.

“But real planning and real manipulation
of the global economy are in the hands of

COHEN

giant, private corporations and everyone

else has to adjust,” she declared.

World-wide, some 600 transnational
corporations with sales of over $1 billion
each, control over one-quarter of every-
thing that is made in the world and some
80-90 per cent of the exports from indus-
trialized countries, Cohen noted. “‘Yet they
employ only three per cent of the world’s
labour force.”

In Canada, the state is “in the hands of
these giant corporations,” she said, and the
result has been that this country has the
highest level of corporate concentration of
any major industrial power.

“Mergers and takeovers have accelerated
since the Free Trade Agreement and “giant
U.S. firms are moving into Canada at an
absolutely unprecedented rate.”

In her hard-hitting and detailed speech to
the federation’s 34th convention, Cohen
also challenged the economic assumptions
being perpetuated by the Tory government:
that government spending is too high and
must be cut; that inflation, not unemploy-

ment, must be curbed; and that business is °

best suited to run the government.

Government spending on programs is
not a problem, she emphasized.

“Since the government took control, it
has been raising taxes and reducing spend-
ing at an unparalleled rate,” she noted.
Between 1985 and 1988, government
revenues increased by 32 per cent while
government expenses increased by only
nine percent.

“The real problem with the deficit is the
national debt — because of the govern-
ment’s deliberate policy of high interest
rates,” Cohen said.

That policy is in turn prompted by the
Tory policy of curbing inflation “but it is
only the threat of inflation,” she said. “Real
inflation isn’t a problem although it proba-
bly will be if the government goes ahead
with the Goods and Service Tax.” And des-
pite government and business propaganda
about rising wage levels, the real inflation-
ary pressure is coming from big business,
Cohen declared.

“Last year, while workers’ real wages fell
slightly, the profits of the top 1,000 corpora-
tions in Canada increased on average by 35
per cent.”

She emphasized that the problems of
inflation and the deficit “tare the govern-
ment’s own creation, not ours.

“But it is workers and lower-income
groups which are going to pay the price,”
she said, adding that the deficit is being used
by Ottawa as the pretext for restructuring
the tax system, including introduction of the
GST:

Carrying out that tax re-structuring
under the guise of making the tax system
fairer as the Tory government is doing “‘is
the most cynical attempt at public deception
which we are ever likely to see,” Cohen
charged.

“Corporations are paying a smaller por-
tion of government revenues than ever
before, she noted, citing figures showing
that portion dropping from 26 per cent in
the mid-1970s to only 11 per cent this year.

But the GST is a “massive shift in public
policy that is extremely regressive, will hit
middle and lower income groups very hard
and will raise prices, creating unemploy-
ment,” she warned.

Worse, she said, the real beneficiary of
the GST is big business which will be
getting a $9 billion-a-year gift as a result of
the abolition of the manufacturers’ sales
tax.

But the labour movement and other
groups can win a fight against the
GST — if they focus on the campaign on
winning a fairer tax system and deflect
attempts by business groups to make
government spending the issue.

Cohen, who was a leading spokesperson
for the National Action Committee on the
Status of Women during the free trade
debate, emphasized that the coalition

-movement built during the fight against the

trade deal provided a basis for opposing the
government-business agenda.

“We built a movement against the trade
deal which has a shared vision of the kind of
Canada we want to live in,” she said. “We
are well connected across the country and
we built up networks which are geared for
action.”

Cohen also warned delegates that it is
important to stop the government from
“destroying the country” before the next
election and halt such projects as the GST
and post office privatization which would
become virtually irreversible once enacted.

“Tt’s important that the progressive for-
ces have some victories or we lose
hope — and I think the GST is a winnable
issue,” she said to applause.

More than anything, said Cohen, the par-
ticipants in popular coalitions have to
organize and fight back.

“We are not helpless — and there is
hope because there are more of us than
there are of them,” she said. “Everything is
at stake and if the government meets no
serious resistance to the measures it pro-
poses, it will be free to destroy what we have
worked for over the last 20 years.

“Our organizations were heroic in the
way they worked against free trade. We
must now build on this to make sure the
future unfolds the way we want it, not the
way big business and the Tory government
want to have us live.”

Locked out projectionists and thea-
tre workers facing attempts by the two
multinational theatre chains to break
their unions got a much-needed boost
from the labour movement this week as
the B.C. Federation of Labour announ-
ced a province-wide consumer boycott
of the chains’ theatres.

More than 200 unionists staged a
rally in support of the locked-out
workers Tuesday night outside the
Capitol Six and Granville Seven , the
two multi-screen flagship theatres in
downtown Vancouver owned respec-
tively by U.S.-based Famous Players
and Cineplex-Odeon.

Some 100 members of the Projec-
tionists Union, Local 348 of the Inter-
national Alliance of Theatrical, Stage
Employees and Moving Picture Mach-
ine Operators (IATSE), have been
locked out since Oct. 11. The union has
been four years without a collective
agreement at Famous Players.

They were joined on the picket line
this month by members of the B.C.
Government Employees Union which
represents ticket takers, ushers and
concession stand workers at a number
of theatres.

The two chains have demanded
wage cuts and had trained scab projec-
tionists some time before the strike in
what the union has charged has been a
clear attempt to break the union and set
a pattern for concessions across the
country.

“We are asking our 275,000 members
and their families to refuse to patronize
Cineplex-Odeon and Famous Players
theatres throughout B.C.,” Ken Geor-
getti, president of the B.C. Fed said in
announcing the boycott:.‘‘We don’t”
take this action lightly but we feel it is
necessary in order to bring the theatre
owners back to the bargaining table to
negotiate.”

He said that federation affiliates as
well as local labour councils would also
assist the two unions on the picket line.

The announcement of the boycott,
which was launched by the federation’s
executive council Monday, came as
delegates to the federation’s annual
convention in Vancouver were warning
that the traditional strength of the pro-
vince’s labour movement was being
threatened by the increasing use of
scabs in labour disputes.

The convention Tuesday unanim-
ously endorsed a resolution calling for
the enactment of anti-scab legislation
but throughout the debate delegates
emphasized that the labour movement
must itself stop scabs with a renewed
commitment to solidarity and the use
of various picket line strategies includ-
ing mass picketing.

Carpenters delegate Bill Zander
pointed to the increasing incidence of
violence sparked by the use of scabs,
including the murder of a Retail
Wholesale Union member during the
Slade and Stewart dispute and the
serious injuries suffered by a Public
Service Alliance picket who was delib-
erately run down by a USS. civilian
working at the Nanoose Bay military
base last week.

“It’s happening more and more,” he
said, “and we’ve got to start looking at
some of the tactics we used in the past
to stop it.”

“The affiliates can’t do it them-
selves,” Ray Arsenault from the Cana-
dian Union of Public Employees
warned delegates. “We have to get out
there and support them 100 per
cent — it is the solidarity of the labour
movement that is going to stop scabs.”

Pacific Tribune, November 27, 1989 « 3