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Central Union of Workers Sree 26 years
Banner of freedom in Chile

By MIKE PHILLIPS

TORONTO — Canadian and
exiled Chilean workers Feb. 12,
together celebrated the 26th an-
niversary of the Central Union of
Workers — “‘the banner of the
working people, the banner of
democracy and freedom in

Luis Cortes, Toronto represen-
tative for CUT, in the keynote
speech, called for stepped up sol-
idarity by Canadian working
people for Chileans in their fight
to defeat the criminal fascist jun-
ta. He urged Canadians to join in
the fight to isolate the junta with a
world-wide boycott of Chilean
products, and to step up the de-
mand for complete restoration of
the trade union rights abolished
by the Pingchet government.

Canadians should also demand
the junta reveal the condition and
whereabouts of the thousands of
“‘disappeared”’ prisoners and ta
allow all Chileans who want to
return, to live in their own coun-
try.

Solemn Event

The 26th anniversary celebra-
tion of the founding of CUT was a
solemn event. Speakers. re-
counted the brutality of the junta
and the determined, inspiring
struggle of the Chilean working
class and people to restore their
democratic trade union and
human rights.

This passionate solemnity was
reflected in the cultural program
performed by the Victor Jara
Folk group and youthful Chilean

singers.

_ In hohor of women CUT mem-
bers who are missing, impris-
oned, or have been murdered by
the junta, a moving interpretation
of a traditional Chilean folk
dance was performed by a single
male dancer without a partner.

Val Bjarnason, secretary-trea-
surer of the United Electrical
workers (UE) chaired the celeb-
ration, and shared the platform
with Fernando Martinez repre-

Senting the Rome-based Chile

Democratico, and Don Lee,
Human Rights Director for the
Ontario Federation of Labor.

“Controlling Interest,” a film
commissioned for the UE about
the role of multi-national corpora-
tions in the world economy, par-:
ticularly in nurturing fascist dic-
tatorships like Chile’s was
screened as part of the anniver-
Sary program.

OFL spokesman Don Lee cal-
led for the strengthening of the
Canadian Labor movement and
the socialist movement in particu-
lar, to increase the effectiveness
of solidarity with the Latin
American peoples’ struggles.
“Your experience tells us that
democracy and trade union free-
doms aren't ours by right but by
reason of struggle’’, Lee told the
Chileans. ‘‘Your movement
should help Canadian working
people see that what they prize so
highly (trade union and dem-
ocratic rights), they may someday
have to defend.”

Condemning the role of inter-
national big business and the U.S.
Government in destroying the
democratic Chilean republic and
murdering its president, Salvador
Allende, Val Bjarnason pledged
the UE’s full support in both
CUT’s efforts to mobilize Cana-
dians in support of the anti-fascist
battle inside Chile, and in pressing
the Canadian government to cut

all ties with the Pinochet junta.
Fernando Martinez welcomed -
the strength of solidarity expres-
sed by Canadians for the Chilean
people but added, ‘‘we need that
solidarity now more than ever be-
fore.’’ He called CUT, ‘‘the ban-

ner of the working people, the ~

banner of freedom and democ-
racy in Chile.”’

In his speech, Luis Cortes de-
tailed the growing resistance. to
fascism in Chile by the labor
movement, the farmers and grow-
ing sections of the population.
The brutal repression of the junta
against the people has been
answered with the militant May
Day rally last year which at-
tracted 10,000 protestors, de-
nouncing the flagrant destruction
by the fascists of trade union and
human rights. He pointed to the
heroic 17-day hunger strike which
was waged by 200 relatives of the
2,500 prisoners being detained by
the Pinochet secret police. This
protest was widely supported by

. Chilean workers and the Catholic

Church of Chile.

Student demonstrations, work
stoppages and various other pro-
test actions, Cortes noted, all tes-
tify to the depth of the popular
resistance to the junta.

The fascists have tried to crush
this defiance by outlawing the -
trade unions. Last October, the
junta decréed that seven of the
country’s largest unions and fed-
erations would be dissolved im-
mediately.

~ Phoney Union Elections

“‘In less than 70 hours’ notice,
Cortes said, ‘‘the junta took away
the leadership of every union in
the country and called for a
fraudulent union election, exclud-
ing all Chilean citizens who be-
longed tg any political tendency
or occupied any popular office in
the last 10 years, leaving them'no
right to elect or to be elected.”’

Cortes recalled how the three
world labor centres, the World
Confederation of Labor, the
International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions, and the
World Federation of Trade
Unions were unanimous in sup-
porting the Chilean labor move-
ment and in cabling their protest
of this fascist act to the United
Nations and the International
Labor Organization.

The Pinochet government. is
“selling Chile in order to maintain
himself and his cabinet in
‘power’’, Cortes said. This refer-
ence to the financial support by
multi-national corporations and
other reactionary regimes to prop
up the Chilean fascists, was con-
trasted with tragic unemployment
and poverty statistics showing the

CUT representative Luis Cortes
called for stepped up solidarity by
Canadian workers for Chileans
fighting fascism.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MARCH 2, 1979— Page 8

jobless ranging from 24-35% of
the population. Some 200,000
Chilean workers on minimum
employment try to eke out an

‘existence for themselves and their

families on no more than $30 a
month.

The fascist regime, Cortes
charged, was ‘‘surrendering the
country’s resources to- multi-
national corporations, which
exploit the workers more and
more, paying them in misery for
their labor.”’

Cortes saluted the workers of |
the world for their solidarity with 8

3

the Chilean struggle, including
‘the resolutions of the Ontario
Federation of Labor in its latest
convention held in Toronto last
November.” ‘

UAW President Douglas A.
Frazer has placed his union in
support of the Carter Administra-
tion’s phoney ‘“‘wage insurance”’
proposal now before the U.S.
Congress as a bait to secure U.S.
workers’ cooperation for a volun-
tary wage freeze. Speaking to the
Detroit Economic Club, January
29, Mr. Frazer stated:

‘The centrepiece of President
Carter’s voluntary anti-inflation
program was his innovative prop-
osal for real wage insurance. ...
This legislation would mean that
all workers who settle within the
guidelines would not have their
purchasing power automatically
eroded. ... Workers desperately
want to see inflation brought
under control, because we are
among those who suffer most
from it, but any anti-inflation
program must demand equal
sacrifices from all.’’ (?)

It is amazing that any trade
union leader in our times could be
SO naive as to expect working
people to swallow such malarky.
Whoever heard of ‘‘real wage in-
surance’’ or ‘‘equality of sacri-
fice’’ in our dog-eat-dog capitalist
system, except as hypocritical
propaganda to hoodwink work-
ers. The reality is quite different,
something Canadian and U.S.
auto workers will have to re-
member when they enter into
contract talks later this year.

Present-day reality in the
capitalist world is a war for mar-
kets. The name of the game is to
undercut competitors and oust
them from the market and, when
that is done jack up the prices to
make super-profits. Only in con-
ditions of state-monopoly capital-
ism does the systematic price-
gouging become a precondition of
inflation.

Current inflation is not merely a
temporary upset in the balance
between the total amount of
money in circulation and the sup-
ply of goods on the market. In-
flation today is deliberately used
as an instrument of state-
monopoly regulation in the pro-
cess of capital accumulation. But
it is accumulation of capital for
the financial and industrial oligar-
chy rather than extended repro-
duction of social capital. The in-
flationary methods of economic

:
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e LUA |
|S THE®
— STRENGTH
OF CHILEA
_ WORKERS”

regulation emerged out of war
economy-~and the cold war that
followed.-

Militarization of the economy

has been the prime cause of ’

chronic inflation since World War
II in two ways. First, the arms
build-up is lavishly financed by
unbacked paper money and
government bonds. Second, the
steady growth of government or-
_ ders for military hardware has re-
sulted in qualitative changes in
the system of price formation.
The arms merchants of today sell
their products at prices that are
virtually not subject to the laws of
the market and come under no
control whatsoever.

The second most important
cause of inflation after militariza-
tion is to be found in the methods
of state-monopoly regulation.
These. methods evolve around

‘deficit spending — making for
chronic budgetary inbalances.

The growth of borrowing from
the bankers is not related to an
increase in the circulation of
commodities essential for ex-
tended reproduction. On the con-
trary, these borrowings tend to
curtail both production and con-
sumption. And to pay interest on
old loans, new loans have to be
floated. With government bonds
as security, banks issue credits far
in excess of the loans made. The
U.S. News and World Report es-

_timates that for every $100-
million borrowed by the U.S.
government the total amount of
money in circulation increases by
$600-million.

According to recent estimates
made by Business Week, the total
U.S. Federal debts amounted to
$474-billion on the eve of the
1974-75 crisis, and by the end of
the current year (1978) is ex-
pected to run into $800-billion, the
equivalent of more than one-third
of the gross: national product.
This ‘‘new debt economy,”’ Bus-
iness Week points out, is able to
function only if the government’s
finance policy remains as gener-
ous (to the banks and corpora-
tions) as it’s been hitherto. But,
the journal adds, that policy car-
ries the seeds of its own destruction
because it breeds inflation.

Inflation. benefits only some
section of the bourgeoisie, and

Fraser’s backing of wage
freeze betrayal of UAW

- ist politicians, to take the edge of

then only for a time and within
certain limits. It nets enormous.
‘profits for capitalists engaged in
speculation, real estate, big
stockholders, and corporations
that swallow up smaller busines-
ses bankrupted by inflation.

For the big banks, too, inflation
is a gold mine. they issue loans at
interest rates that usually exceed
the, inflation, the thereby pocket
additional profits. ~ 4
~ Industrialists also have a stake.
in inflation up to a point. Con-
sumers, apprehensive of a further
soaring of prices, tend to rush to _
convert their ready cash into
goods and to buy on credit. This
eats into the savings of the popu-
lation and accelerates the turn-
over of capital. ;

Lastly, inflation is of advantage
to the monopoly bourgeoisie as a
whole so long as it can use the
depreciation of money to cut the
workers’ real wages and to in-
crease profits through price hikes. ”

The idea that an incomes policy
is a mechanism for state control
Over wages and prices on a fair
and equal basis is a myth. What
happens is that a ceiling is set on
wages, while prices continue to
rise along with rents, interest and
taxes paid by the working people.
No limits are set on the incomes
of the propertied classes...

The upsurge of the strike
movement of the late sixties and
early seventies showed that the
working class is not willing to ac-
cept the steady lowering of real
income which chronic inflation
spells for it. Nor is it prepared to
fall in with the so-called incomes
policies framed by capitalist
governments, like the U.S. Carter
Administration and other capital-

:

class conflicts.

Capitulation before such
policies is a betrayal of the na-
tional interest as well as the in-
terests of the working class. What
is needed now is a united stand
against the attack by monopoly
and its governments in workers’
rights and living standards. The
UAW members have a fighting
tradition. Let us hope they will
uphold that tradition at this his-
toric moment of bargaining in
1979,