EDITORIAL

Class war on workers’ wages

Militant rejection of wage freezes, wage
cuts, or any form of attack on workers’ wages,
rose as a rallying issue at the just-ended
Canadian Labor Congress convention in
Winnipeg. The pledge to fight any such at-
tempt of bosses or governments was ex-
tended to all CLC affiliates, a recognition and
consolidation of positions already taken by a
number of unions.

Every bit of militancy and determination —
and unity! — will be needed, the monopolies
and their government yes-men have let it be
known.

The Business Council on National Issues,
made up of fat cats from 150 Canadian cor-
porations — some of them war goods profit-
eers — told the federal government to crack
down on public service workers, hold them to
a 7% wage increase (while inflation is about
12%), and use this as a bludgeon to curtail
private sector wages as well.

These gougers who rob their own workers
on the production line, rob the public treas-
ury through tax exemptions and hand-outs,
and rob the public at the sales counter, de-
mand in the same breath with wage controls
for workers, a restoration of “confidence” in
the “investment climate.” That means they
want bigger returns on the stolen dollars they
“invest”. Take it from the workers and give it
to us, they order the government. The impli-
cation is that if the Liberals don’t then the
boardrooms will swing their loyalty to the
Tories — who most certainly will, if they can
get elected.

There’s another side to this class battle.

Policies mesh

How prophetic are nursey rhymes! “Little
Jack Horner sat in the corner, Eating a
Christmas pie. He put in his thumb, and pul-
led out a plum, And said, “What a good boy
am I!”

And now Canada’s Jack Horner has indeed
pulled out a plum and been crowned chair-
man of Canadian National Railways.

This plum of a job at a fat salary — dis-
couraging passenger rail travel, and grabbing
at lucrative freight — is anormal enough one
for a long-time Tory politician who turned
Liberal. And now he’s rewarded. What is
striking is the fact that Tory and Liberal
policies are inclined to mesh. And the work-
ing people of Canada are left-to wipe it up.

Flashbacks

25 years

ART OF THE FUTURE

MEXICO CITY — One of Mexico's most prominent
citizens, the indefatigable painter and staunch Marx-
ist, David Alfaro Siqueros, is back from a trip around
the world. It was no ordinary Cook's tour: he ex-
changed views with prominent leaders of the political
and artistic world, he got opinions on the future of art
from Egypt's Nasser, India’s Nehru and China’s Chou
En-lai.

Sequiros believes the present concept of art has
reached its end and a new function, unavoidably of a
public nature, will substitute for it. He argues the new
art must be state supported art on a grand scale.

The painter feels easel painting cannot play an im-
portant role in a socialist world of grandeur referring
to future armies of architects, sculpters and painters
who will unite to construct and decorate the new build-
ings of socialism.

Tribune,
June 3, 1957
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 4, 1982—Page 4

Treasury Board chairman Donald Johnston
told an International Monetary Conference
in Vancouver, May 25, that the federal
government would do nothing to stimulate
new jobs. That might raise “fears” in financial
markets about Canada’s “financial integrity
and solvency”! What about the “solvency” of
1.5 million unemployed and their families?

The determination to attack workers’
wages and living conditions seems, interest-
ingly, to be on the minds of the federal Liber-
als, B.C. Socreds, Ontario and Newfound-
land Tories and Quebec’s Parti Quebecois.

The fightback needs every bit of the mili-
tancy expressed at the CLC convention. More
and more it demands class consciousness by
workers, who can only battle effectively by
recognizing that monopoly capitalism is the
enemy, an enemy who uses every trick
known, to deceive and divide workers.

Finding peace with the MX! _

We have the word of honor of yet another
“neutral”, “scientific”, “analytical” pro-
Pentagon think-tank of experts that, yes, of
course, the USA (wearing the white cowboy
hat) could survive a’ Soviet first strike with
nuclear weapons. (The Soviet Union has
never shown an interest in a first-strike
strategy, but only in a strategy for dis-
armament. They want to get that monstrous
arms budget off their backs. And so should
we want to!)

To get back to the Carnegie Endownment
for International Peace (!), that body dis-
covers that the U.S. arsenal “is not now vul-
nerable.”

Fine; then disarmament talks should pro-
ceed apace. Well, no. This peace endowment

finds that the USA’s land-based ICBMs.
(inter-continental ballistic missiles) could be:

vulnerable to the attack it has invented, and
so, urges Reagan “to take this threat serious-
ly” and consider the MX missile as the ans-
wer.

For the other kind of peace group — say,
the bulk of humanity — there’s a better way.
Canadians are a part of that way and they’re
going by bus to the U.N. Special Session on
Disarmament; they’re phoning, writing, wir-
ing Pierre Trudeau, their Member of Parlia-
ment, and saying: Make Canada a nuclear
weapons-free zone; get Canada out of
NATO; and show serious efforts for dis-

50 years
RECORD PARLIAMENT

The second session of Canada’s 17th parliament
ended, setting something of a record in putting
through legislation directed against Canadian work-
ers.

The series of Acts amount to a sweeping and savage
onslaught. It has endorsed a reduction in the already
meagre unemployment relief, slashed the wages of
civil servants, endorsed a tariff bill that will sharply
raise the costs of living necessities so bondholders may
collect millions in interest.

It has sanctioned the enlargement of the police,
especially the RCMP as a means to suppress workers’
struggles.

Parliament has given Bennett a blank cheque, em-
powering him to arbitrarily deal with unemployment
and farm relief and employ further fascist methods
against people who refuse to submit to the capitalist
economic offensive.

The Worker,
June 4, 1932

A Little Recession

armament or you'll be replaced by peopl
who will work, might and main, to prevetl

nuclear war.

When the people finally. shut off the tol
rent of dollars for the arms monopolies thes
war-oriented think-tanks will either have 7
dry up or turn to calculating the best steps (4 —

world peace.

foods Ltd., Toronto, had an after-tax profit of $10,726,0'

up from $8,569,000 in the previous fiscal year. In fact," —
you count what they got for the sale of their frozen foo
operations, profit hit $12.7-million. They include flo!

mills, various foods, poultry, and Mr. Donut shops.

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O’CONNOR

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60 years
FARM OR STARVE

There are thousands of men in Winnipeg who ca”
not get work. The City Fathers tell them to go ont
farm — or starve. But there’s no work on the far
either. :

The Winnipeg Free Press has no love for the ¥*
employed. Neither has it any great love for those W

advocate the abolition of capitalism. But once i?"

while it spills the beans. Ej

While the city has been cutting thousands off reli’
the Free Press has published the first crop report. s
says, “farm labor appears to be ample in requireme? :
with average monthly wages running from ab? 5
$35-$40. This is a reduction of about $15 to $20 fr?
the average oi last year.”

Do you get that? In other words, even though wage?

have dropped there’s no room for workers from the

are told to get a job or starve.

June 1, 19

Ith

cities. And the thousands of unemployed in the ci! 7

The Wort a