isl [iirc LABOR RALLIES 10 HOLD GAINS BIG BUSINESS BEGINS LATTACK Paci lic soy VANCOUVER, B.C. lO¢ A f uthorised as second class mail by t é he Post Office Department, Ottawa flectrical Workers "al BCE pay claims oa he w : ee ; 1 2ders ip he to ensure victory in this strike is for our union 4 wi 5 EG the entire labor movement and take steps “ple,” Public support by explaining the issues to the Elects; | k-and-file member of International Brotherhood orkers told the Pacific Tribune, after listening I : 9 teaders report cake — just a slice of it. We Strike to v tical Workers won’t crawl like Lazarus to Ung; ancouver Labor get crumbs from Grauer’s cil : Night. Meeting + uesd ay table.” Continuing, he said scorn- Prec _ te *t pene ot Art O'Keefe told fully that “the strike isn Indust Slegates the electrical 22 DOUTS old and the system . TACHke : 2 We're Was expanding and is breaking down already. Pho, termined to eet oe @ don’t want all the Tee Union Continued on page 7 See ELECTRICAL By BERT WHYTE A conference of all trade unions to fight “vicious attacks by anti-labor forces in edi- torials in the press” is in the offing, following a decision by Vancouver Labor Council this week to have its officers meet with B.C. Federation of Labor otficials to discuss such a parley. Angered by a Vancouver Sun front page editorial entitled, “High Wages Can Shrink Payrolls,’ VLC delegates denounced the newspaper's attack as “part of a well-planned man- oeuvre by. the employers to cut wages.” Teeing off against the “mo- guls_. of industry,” Orville Braaten (Converters Local, Pulp and Sulphite) charged that “the Sun editorial is poppycock, but behind the editorial, and responsible for launching this anti-labor cam- paign, are those who would like to put the trade union movement in a straitjacket. “Labor must answer the bosses’ challenge with facts. We must review the past 10 years, publish the profits made by the big industrial firms, compare prices today with a decade ago, show the other side of the ledger to the public.” Sam Jenkins (Marine Work- ers) recalled that as far back as 1947 his union was told that high wages were killing shipbuilding. Yet that same year, on a contract to build ships, for France, Burrard Drydock made a profit of 66 percent. “And talking of high wages, industry recently lured two judges with yearly salaries of Continued on back page See BIG BUSINESS ONnstruction firms resorting to retaliatory lockouts When Teamsters Union struck the giant Bridge River power project Tuesday this week, some 1,000 men had hardly walked off the job before the Heavy Construction Associa- tion of B.C. was asking 20 member firms to lock the Teamsters out of jobs, even when no strike action was in the offing. Reporting to Vancouver Labor Council on the bosses’ tactic, Ed Lawson (Teamsters) said the Construction Asso- ciation “is going to companies where we have no dispute and trying to get them to lock us out. “We will place lockout pic- kets around every job where our men are locked out,” continued Lawson. “This is shaping up as a dandy strug- gle. The Vancouver Sun edi- torial came out with the em- Continued on back page See LOCKOUTS Vancouver Sun opens the attack on labor HE Vancouver Sun front page editorial of March 1 headed T “Higher Wages Can Shrink Payrolls” undertook the public promotion of a standardized Chamber-of-Commerce ‘solution’ te the economic ills of this province: “Hold the line on wages.” According to the Sun editorial, provincial wage levels are “competitively critical now” and to bolster this contention the editorial uses the current strike in the electrical industry as well as the wage increases gained or demanded in the pulp and paper, forest, fishing and construction industries. Present wage levels and demands for further wage increases, the editorial argues, are losing markets for this province. It’s a familiar and, to many people who don’t stop to examine it,°a plausible argument: “Wage increases cause prices increases” and “Labor is pricing us out of the market.” As the Sun anticipated and, in fact, promoted, big business leaders praised it for its “courageous” and “timely” raising of the issue. Why shouldn’t they, since wage cuts are always their “solution” to economic crisis? J. V. Clyne, who recently resigned his B.C. Supreme Court post to become board chairman of MacMillan and Bloedel lum- ber monopoly, and who now is leading the anti-labor campaign, describes the Sun editorial as a “highly constructive piece of work” and fervently hopes “it will lead the people of B.C. to face the facts.” Continued on page 5 — See SUN > Here Maurice Rush (standing), LPP candidate for Van- couver Centre, and Tom McEwen (seated), LPP candi- date for Vancouver South, read the Pacific Tribune at Lpp election headquarters.