——

French miners united
in strike to up wages

—PARIS

The French government has ordered a compulsory “draft”
of mine technicians to destroy the general strike of coal

miners.

At the same time it denied rumors that it would

force all strikers into the army.

This decision may provoke vio-
lence as warkers resist attempts

to break their strike, which has
been conspicuously orderly and
peaceful thus far. Government

measures are now being framed
exclusively by the police and
rightist members of the Cabinet.
Julius Moch, Socialist minister of
the interior took, off on a trip to
North Africa to dodge criticisms
that he was acting against the
workens,

The French mine’ strike, now
involving nearly 400,000 men, is
the most complete ever to take
place in the country. It is backed
alike by the General Confedera-
tion of Labor (CGT), the right-
wing Force Ourviere (Workers’
Strength) and the Catholic Con-
federation of Christian Workers

(CFT). Members of the three
federations take their turn on
the picketlines. Technicians, en-
gineers and clerical workers in
the industry have gone out with
the colliers. :

Consumers’ prices in France
have gone up 115 percent since May
1947, when the Communists were
excluded from the government and
a. rightist - Socialist combination
took over on U.S, Marshall plan in-
sistence. Wages have remained
frozen during most of this period.
A 15 percent increase finally grant-
ed by the government was immedi-
ately more than wiped out by a
25 per cent price jump. The miners
now demand an additional 33 per-
cent hike in wages to catch up
with the soaring inflation.

Aluminum

Co. builds

‘naridise’ on Pitcairn

—NEW YORK

Isolated Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, inhabited by de-
scendants of British seamen: who participated in the mutiny
on the warship Bounty, nearly 200 years ego, is now the Alum-

inum Company of America’s idea of paradise.

corporations are so envious that
the Wall Street Journal, top organ
of U.S. big business, thought it
worth a long front page story.

Alcoa is now using the British-
ewned island, which is both hot
and constantly blown by damp
saltbearing sea winds, as a weather
resistance test station for its pro-
ducts. What makes Pitcairn a
paradise, however, is not its cli-
mate but its wage rates. These
were arrived at with the kind as-
sistance of the British Labor gov-
ernment, which so often reports at
United Nations meetings how it
is trying to raise standards in the
colonies,

When Alcoa Research people
picked Pitcairn, according to the
Wall Street Journal, they offered
an islander, Andrew C. Young, the
job of test station supervisor. “Al-
coa ‘expected to pay Mr. Young the
kind of salary that would be con-
sidered fair in the U.S.,’ the paper
tells us, “but the British authorities
advised Alcoa to go easy, for if Mr.
Young’s salary was too high, the

economy of the island would be

upset . . . After several consulta-
tions with the British, the sum of
five dollars a year was agreed
upon,”

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The rest of the Wall Street Jour-
nal story is concerned with how
useful, and profitable, the Pitcairn
station is to Alcoa. And the Jour-
nal’s Wall Streét readers got a
glimpse of how everything is pos-
sible. of how the bosses’ paradise
exists not only in dreams but in
some places on dear Mother Earth.

Curbs for monopoly,
‘Red’ ban ditched

—CANBERRA.

Australia will not allow big
business monopolies to resume
their prewar domination of the
country, Premier Joseph B.
Chifley promised the annual
Australian Labor Party confer-
here October 6.

Nationalization of some major
industries, Chifley said, will be
pressed by the Australian gov-
ernment. It should begin, he
stated, with public utilities now
poorly managed by their private
owners. But there is no inten-
tion of nationalizing small in-
dustries, the Premier said.

After hearing Chifley’s speech,
the conference threw out a mo-
tion calling for the outlawing of
the Communist Party. Reiterat-
ing opposition to Communist
ideas, it decided to issue coun-
ter-propaganda pushing its own
principles.

In a foreign policy resolution,
the party went back on its long-
standing opposition to the rais-
ing of troops for overseas serv-
ice ift peacetime.

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The State versus the Union -

This solid wall of armed Indianna state troopers, who were sent against striking members of the
United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers (CIO) picketing the Bucyrus Erie plant in Evansville
paved the way for a parade of scabs and congressmen. The congressmen, members of the Hartley
labor committee, moved in after the strike was broken to “investigate” the union.

e

Payoff

Richard Serreo, National Mari-
time Union (CIO): member, was
sentenced to three years in jail
for slaying NMU Port Agent
Robert New with a butcher knife
in the union’s Charleston, S.C.,
hall. May 7. The confessed killer
was accorded mercy on_ the
grounds that the killing of New,
who was chairman of the local
Wallace-for-President committee
and an opponent of NMU presi-
dent Joseph Curran, was an “an-
ti-communist act.”

Workers desire peace

says ILWU delegation

By PHYLLIS ROSNER

—LONDON

“Wherever we went, particularly in eastern Europe, the
workers told us. they wanted peace and asked us to go back
to the States with that message.” This was told me by
Jovan Zuber of Ozkland, California, and Julian Napuunoa of

Honolulu, Hawaii, now in England
on the last lap of a 60-day Euro-
pean tour on behalf of the Inter-
national. Longshoremen’s & Ware-
housemen’s Union (CIO).
Napuunoa and Zuber, with two
other longshoremen, were chosen
to go on the trip for which only
rank-and-filers were eligible. Be-

fore arriving here they visited
France, Italy, Holland, Belgium,
Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Fin-

land and the Soviet Union. They
omitted Greece, they said, because
“we didn’t want to visit a country
where unionists are jailed, exiled
and executed.”

Giving his impressions of west-
ern Europe, Napuunoa said he was
distressed to find that workers in
most countries were divided into
two, three, four and even five con-
federations. “Instead of fighting
the common enemy, they fight
among themselves,” Napuunoa

South African

face nazi ‘labor front’

Another step toward suppr

unions

—CAPETOWN

ession of free unions in South |
that several factories were building

Africa has been, taken. by the labor ministry of Premier
Daniel F. Malan’s Nationalist party “white supremacy” gov-

ernment.

The ministry has ordered an “in-
vestigation” of the South African
Garment Workers Union for de-
fending itself against the attacks
of hired hoodlums identified with
a small racist minority within the
organization. :

The pretext is an incident that
took place at a general member-
ship meeting attended by 2,500
workers in Johannesburg City
Hall. Gangsters brought in by spe-
cial train and led by expelled union
Vice President G, H. Van der Walt
tried to storm the hall shouting:
“Send the Jew-Communist Solly
Sachs back to Russia.” Sachs is the
general secretary of the union.

After the meeting had passed a
vote of confidence in Sachs and
other officers, the gangsters .broke
the resistance of workers trying to
keep them out. Followed by a
crowd of Nationalists (South Af-
rican fascists) who had been egg-

ing them on from the street, they
passed their own “no confidence”
vote and asked the government to
intervene. The labor ministry
obliged at once by launching its
probe, ‘

The phony investigation has been
condemned by many major unions
here. It has also been assailed by
Dr. Steyn, minister of labor in the
government of Gen. Jan Smuts, as

‘{otally unjustifiable.”
A Capetown mnéwspaper, the
Guardian, commented that “the

trade union movement is in mortal
danger” from such tactics. It re-
vealed that the Nationalists aim
“to establish a Labor Front on the
Nazi model which will ‘reconcile’
the conflicting interests of workers
and employers and make the ex-
istence of trade unions ‘unneces-
sary’.”

complained. “Actually workers
should unite not only in each coun-
try but on a world scale. That’s
why we hope the threatened split
in the World Federation of Trade
Unions won't. happen.”

What about eastern Europe, I
asked, “Workers in eastern Eur-
Ope all belong to unions because
they know they wiil fight for
their security,’ Zuber said.
“These workers also know they
are working for themselves, that
the country belongs to the peo-
ple and that when they produce
they are producing for them-
selves. Thefe’s nobody to exploit
them and no unemployment.”

In the Soviet Union, both men
said, they went about freely talk-
ing to people in streets and fac-
tories. Many Russian workers to
whom they spoke asked them:
“Why does America carry on such
a campaign against our couhtry?
We want -peace, we want to be
able to carry-on our work. We want
to be friends with everybody.”

In Moscow, Zuber and Napuunoa
reported, passers-by often stopped
them in the street and took their
pictures. What particularly im-
pressed them in the Soviet capital
was the number of apartment
houses being built. They mentioned

workers’ apartments out of their
profits, which are all used for re-
investment and local improve-
ments instead of going into private
pockets. In Leningrad, the men
said, the people were working day
and night to rebuild their war-
scarred city.

“When we go home we will tell
U.S. workers of the real feeling of
friendship workers of all countries
have for us and that they all want
peace,” the two longshoremen said.
When asked whether the American
people, would support a war, Zuber
replied: : :

“Right now.American workers

lose $14 out of every $100 they
earn in taxes to pay for the last
war and for war supplies for
Greece, Turkey and other coun-
tries. If the U.S. makes war,
each worker will be asked to pay
another $24 out of every $100 he
earns. Don’t you think that when
that comes, the American worker
will turn around and say ‘No,
thank you.’ %

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 15, 1948—PAGE 3