Canadians are being robbed
of their wage and salary dol-
lars on an_ unprecedented
scale, The monopolies, price-
fixers, super-profiteers and
money-lenders are bleeding
the people to the point ofutter
exhaustion, We have reached
the limit of endurance, and
grumbling must now give way
to fighting on the broadest
front.

The combined pirate crews
of all history never even
dreamed of the wealth which
accrues to a relatively small
group of people in the free
enterprise system, the mod-
ern price pirates, sheltered
and encouraged by laws and
lack of laws which elevate
them to respectable pillars
of society, instead of con-
demning them for the crim-
inals they are,

An individual who holds up
a bank and escapes with a
few thousand dollars, risks
capture and imprisonment for
a long term, The easy-money
artists who with a stroke of
the pen raise prices, and make
millions, risk nothing, and as
likely as not will be eventu-
ally rewarded by appointment
to at least a university board,
if not the senate, and almost
certainly to the Red Feather
campaign, so his heart can
bleed for those he has helped
pauperize,

“Looks like things ore picking up!”

How to battle the
price profiteers

The people can win against
the price robbers only by
acting together — through de-
claring war on the price-
fixers and profiteers. In such
a war we can all join — there
are no age or sex barriers,

What is needed is powerful
consumer action, based on the
wage and salary workers and
their organizations, In this
respect the trade union move-
ment can play a vital and de-
cisive role through accepting
responsibility for providing
leadership and resources in
the building of broad com-
munity consumer organiza-
tions,

Pressue on government, and
pressure on the profiteers
should be the program of ac-
tion, The government must
be made to force the monop-
olies, the wholesalers and the
big retailers to publicly justify
with facts and figures each and
every price increase,
Through mass public action,
such as selected targets for
boycott, the profiteers can be
forced to roll back prices,

The people are fed up and
if given leadership will take
action, The trade union move-
ment can and must provide

leadership, essential in its

own and the public interest.
—George Harris,
U.E. News

Huge Vietnam protest set
for Washington May 15

Dr. Benjamin Spock, co-chair-
man of the National Committee
for a Sane Nuclear Policy, last
week called for a massive turn-
out for the Washington demon-
stration of the Voters’ Peace
Pledge on May 15,

A huge rally is planned in
Potomac Park in the U.S, cap-
ital on May 15 to protest the
- U.S, action in Vietnam, Many
_ prominent speakers will address
the rally, including Dr. Spock,

socialist leader Norman Thomas,
and cartoonist Jules Feiffer.

A huge turnout, said Dr. Spock,
would dramatize national revul-
sion to the “methods of whole-
sale destruction now being em-
ployed by the U.S. forces in Viet-
nam.” It would, he added,
support Congressional candi-
dates who seek ‘‘de-escalation
of the Vietnam war and a nego-
tiated settlement.” Dr. Spock
‘described President Johnson’s
Asia. policy as “brutalization,”

Carpenters charge Bennett
with contractors

collusion

The Vancouver local of the
Carpenters Union charged in a
statement last week that Premier
Bennett has allowed himself to
become directly involved in labor
negotiations in the construction
industry.

“By accident or design analli-
ance has developed between the
provincial ,government and the
contractors to take responsibility
for the high costs within the con-
struction industry with the trade
union movement,”said a state-
ment issued by J. Takach, presi-
dent Local 452 of the Carpenters
Union,

He said that the financial re-
ports of the construction industry
show that these companies can
well afford wage increases, “Our
union is being placed in the role
of a scapegoat and we are being
made to appear responsible for
high construction costs when, in
reality, it is government policy
which has led to this fiasco, It
is asking too much of our mem-
bership to in effect subsidize the
errors of others,”

Pointing to the provincial gov-
ernment contracts let on the
Columbia project, the statement

charges that Bennett is trying to ©

shift the blame on the union for
the government’s underestima-
ting of construction costs.

DONALD GREENWELL, prominent Van-
couver community leader, was recent-
ly elected general chairman of the
Vancouver East Centennial celebration
by a meeting of some 35 representa-
tives of various community groups.

The statement adds that, ‘* When
Public Works Minister Chant
stated that construction costs
jumped from 20-25% in 1965 over -
the estimated costs, the Carpen-
ters received only a small por-
tion of the total increase as their
total wage increase was only 5%
last year,

“Our proposal for a reductior.
in hours of work is just, as there
is a high degree of standardiza-
tion and mechanization in the
construction industry which tends
to eliminate jobs and results in
unemployment, Our membership
demand to have shorters hours
implemented to create more job

opportunities,” says the state-
ment,

It further points out that at
present 14% of the Carpenter’s
membership are unemployed. In
1964, when there was approxi-
mately the same volume of work
than in the boom year of 1957
there were 13,000 less fulltime
jobs worked.

The union statement also
makes this significant point: That
in 1957 the wage share of the
construction dollar was 34.8%
whereas in 1964, despite wage
increases, it had dropped to

33.8%.

ON U.S. CAMPUS:

‘Student revolt against
war-orientated system’

Paul Goodman, noted American
sociologist and author and town
planner, spoke at a seminar of 75
University of B.C. students and
faculty members May 1 at Marks
College in Vancouver. His topic
was, “The University — Assem-
bly Line or Communities.” ;

In his first address he said
that youth and particularly stu-
dents were exploited by the cor-
porate and state bureaucracies in
America.

The Berkley revolt, he claim-
ed, was a reaction to the de-
humanized war-oriented univer-
sity system of mass production,
He went on to illustrate the
relationship of the present uni-
versity system to the war drive
of the Pentagon and stated ‘that
opposition to the war in the
campus community could not be
separated from the need to de-
centralize and democratize the
universities,

He cited an example of the
San Francisco State College
where the faculty and administra-
tion were co-operating with a
student-run ‘‘free university”, He

‘AN POBLACHT ABU’

said also that the faculty of tue
San Francisco State College had
refused to co-operate with the
United States draft board in pur-
suance of the Vietnam war.

Dr. McGregor, head of the
Classics Department at UBC,
and chairman of the student resi-
dences, argued that Dr. Goodman
did not know anything about stu-
dents.

When challenged from the floor
by student participants, Dr. Mc-
Gregor suggested that most of
the trouble on campuses was
caused by “outside agitators like
what’s his name,. Mario Lanzio”
(sic. Mario Savio.)

Dr, Rowan of the Philosophy
Department stated that Savio was
a registered student and first
class student at that, at Berkeley
and he agreed with Goodman that
the present educational system
was sterile and dull,

A student panel met on the
subject of how to bring about
social change in North America.
The Seminar was sponsored by
the Academic Activities Com->
mittee at the UBC.

lrish leaders greet PI

In response to his tribute in the
April 7 edition of the Pacific
Tribune on the 50th Anniversary
of the Easter Uprising in Dublin,
Ireland, during’ the. Easter Week
of 1916, PT editor Tom McEwen
received the following letter from

Irish fraternal delegates attend- -

ing the recent 23rd Congress of
the Soviet Union,

Under a Moscow dateline, the
letter reads as follows:

“Dear Comrade McEwen: The
undersigned delegates from Ire-
land to the 23rd Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet
Union wish to express our fra-
ternal appreciation of your
splendid article on the Easter
Week Rising in *The Canadian
Tribune,” of April 4th,

«:When we arrived here in Mos-
cow we had our own plans for the
celebration of that glorious event
of fifty years ago; these have
been fulfilled by means of broad-
casts, articles in the Soviet
press, and a social function in
which your Canadian Party dele-
gates, Bill Kashtan, Paulette
Walsh, and Don Currie partici-
pated, However your article

arrived the day before so in fact
you were first in!

«Naturally, we are proud of
the anniversary of our country-
men’s revolt against Imperial-
ism, They struck a blow when
all the odds were against them,
put they have left us a glorious
anti-imperialist tradition — not
only to the Irish people, but as
your article indicates, to all who
struggle for the cause ofnational
liberation.

‘¢Next to being in Ireland, we
find it most appropriate to cele-
brate the Golden Jubilee in the
land of Soviet Power. Lenin’s
championship of their gallantac-
tion has forged links between the
people of the Soviet Union and
Ireland, In this land, as you know
well, on the basis of Socialist
nationalist policy the “prison
house of oppressed nationalities”
has been razed to the ground, and
a new edifice has been built in
which all nationalities have full
freedom, and the opportunities
in which their national culture
blooms in full blossom,

*As you have correctly stated,

®this great Easter Sunday drama
in Ireland’s struggle for freedom
and independence is today being
played out ina different age and
under different conditions in
Vietnam, Asia, Africa, Latin Am-
erica, and the Near East (Aden).”

“Once again, ‘Comrade Mc-
Ewen, we express our apprecia-
tion for your splendid tribute to
James Connolly our great Irish
Marxist; to Padraig Pearse the
great radical nationalist: and
to the men and women who fought —
and fell in Ireland’s Easter Ris-
ing of 1916, ;

“Please accept three hearty
Irish handshakes! An Phoblacht
Abu! (Up the Republic!) "

‘syours fraternally,

Michael O’ Riordan,
Secretary, Irish Workers’
Party (Dublin);

Andrew Barr, :
Chairman, Communist Party:
N, Ireland:

Hugh Moore,
Secretary, Communist party:
N, Ireland (Beifast).

May 6, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page