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VOL..14 No. 47

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Vancouver British Columbia, November 18, 1955

PUP ai Pehle: was

PRICE TEN

Engineers’
Strike ‘gets
into stride’

“Our strike is just beginning
to get in stride,’ Operating
Engineers’ leader Harry Berger
Said this week. “The IWA’s stand
ordering its members to report
for work to the mills is poor
8dvice from the standpoint of
trade unionism.”

A roundup of the Engineers’
Strike situation at Pacific Trib-
Whe press time showed -that
Berger’s claim was justified.

® Eight operations out of 14
are now shut down. All
®perations are being pick-
eted 24 hours a day.

® Main development of the
week was the shutting down
of the Alaska Pine steam
plant in New Westminster.
The chief engineer who
Was keeping it running
has taken sick and is in
hospital.

® At Honeymoon Bay, Lake
Cowichan, men who did
- hot go on strike last week
have voted to hit the bricks.

® Five deepsea freighters are -
tied up at Port Alberni,
and ILWU longshoremen
are respecting Engineers’
Picket lines. A meeting of
150 AFL representatives in
the King Edward hotel

Continued on back page
See ENGINEERS

Warsaw tablet honors SEASONAL WORKERS VICTIMS

memory of RCAF men
WARSAW

A tablet to the memory of
five RCAF men, one of whom
came from Vancouver, has just
been unveiled here.

The five were ‘killed when
their plane, flying a mercy
mission to Poland with a gift
of penicillin from the Canadian
government, crashed near Halle,
Germany, on November 4, 1945.
Among them was Alfred Ernest
Webster, DFC, of Vancouver.
All are now buried in Warsaw.

The memorial ceremony in
Warsaw on November 4 was
attended by members of the
Polish external affairs, defense
and health departments, mem-
bers of the Canadian legation
and French, Britsh and U.S.
military attaches.

which lasted more than an hour.
Ironical was the fact that coun-
cil had previously endorsed
King as a labor candidate for
alderman.

Following his selection by the
NPA for the lesser post, King
wrote labor council to “explain”
his decision to switch from the
council to the parks board race.

He had not known Ald. Birt”

Leslie Morris comments:

like, in the year 2000?

What will Canada
be like in 2000?

By LESLIE MORRIS
What do you think Canada will be like, or

should be

That is the challenging question, pué by the Royal

Commission on Economic Prospects

~Walter L. Gordon, the
Said that it is not the job
commission to make pro-
®osals, but to take a long look
eae country as it will shape
P in the next 50 years.
Bae doubt such a long look
8reat value. But proposals
‘a to what to do about the in-
Tmation which is gathered
wee would be
much more
valuable..

It is the dif-
ference be-
tween looking
at a sick per-
son and call-
ing a doctor
to do some-

has

Cor it.
iob rdon may say, that is the
at the government. How-
have other royal commissions
and made recommendations;
bean Vile most of them have
2 buried in dusty cupboards

for Canada.
chairman of the commission,

to meet the criticism of the
mice, they have added to the
political knowledge of the coun-
try, to say the least.

It will be difficult for people
interested in social progress to
appear before the commission
without making recommenda-
tions. .And that has been the
experience up to now.

In the Northwest Teritories
and the Yukon where the com-
mission first held hearings a
couple of months ago, then in
‘Newfoundland and the Mari-
times, Gordon and his colleagues
were bombarded with propos-
als and suggestions. Each of
them deserves study and evalu-
ation. se

In any case the commission
is of great value, if only for
the mountain of information
and opinions it will collect. It

Continued on back page
See CANADA IN 2000 ie

‘Jokers’ hidden

in UIC benefits.

British Columbia workers are rapidly discoverin

By BERT WHYTE .

g that amendments to the Unem-

ployment Insurance Act which became effective October 2 contain many “‘jokers’’ which
hit particularly hard at casual workers in yards and plants.

What is more, UIC officials here don’t understand how some of the new amend-
ments work, and consequently many applicants find it difficult even to get intelligent

NPA juggles

‘labor front’

Non-Partisan Association influence over the right wing
of the trade union movement was clearly demonstrated
Tuesday this week when an NPA-sponsored candidate for
parks board, Everet King, was endorsed by Wancouver
Trades and Labor Council (TLC) after a bitter debate

Showler would not be resign-
ing because of ill health when
he made his bid for aldermanic
endorsation, he said lamely, but
now it was “common knowledge”
that Showler had recovered suf-
ficiently to carry on. (Just this
week Ald. Showler asked for,
and received, permission to take
another- leave of absence from
city council for health reasons.)

Angry delegates lambasted

King for accepting NPA sup-
port. :
. Bakers’ union agent Mel Kem-
mis read off a list of NPA di-
rectors, all prominent business-
men; and remarked: “I can’t
find a single labor man among
them.”

King objected that he was be-
ing “tried by association” and
deplored “an attempt to whip
up hate of the employers.”

Orville Braaten of Local 433,
Pulp and Sulphite Workers, re-
ported that his union, at a mem-
bership meeting, had decided to
give no support to any candi-
date endorsed by the NPA.

George Johnson, council vice-
president, opposed King’s bid
for support because he had first
asked endorsation as an alder-
manic candidate, and now was
coming back as a candidate of
the NPA and asking backing
for another position.

Council president Tom Als-
bury relinquished the-chair to

Continued on back page
See NPA

answers to their questions.
Before the amendments be-
came effective, some of the UIC
“top brass” visited Ottawa for
a briefing on the new legisla-
tion. On their return classes
were held for employees, but
it was soon discovered that
scores of questions were raised
for which no one had the

answers. Effect of this has been
to make UIC employees super-
cautious in dealing with. appli
cants. ;

To date the government has
failed to issue any booklet ex-

‘ plaining in simple terms how

the amendments operate, and
the official text is phrased in
such garbled English that even
a genius couldn’t understand it.

This point was'raised by Aaron
Mosher last May when he sub-
mitted the Canadian Congress
of Labor brief to the Industrial
Relations Committee of the
House of Commons.

Mosher quoted some of the
official gobbledegook and then
commented:

“Were it not that we are able
to appreciate the difficulty of
drafting legislation so that it
will do what it is meant to do,
neither more nor less, we would
be tempted to echo the words
of Sir Winston Churchill: ‘This
is bastard English, up with
which I will not put.”

One of the biggest “jokers”
in the new amendments deck
is the change-over from a daily
to a weekly benefit system. In-
stead of 180 daily contributions
30 weekly contributions are re-
quired. But a weekly stamp is
placed. in the book whenever
any part of a week has been
worked, so that the part-time
worker winds up with a lower
rate of benefit than at present.

The old regulations allowed
a claimant on benefit to earn
up to $12 a week in casual em-
ployment and still receive his
benefit; the new act recognizes

Continued on back page
See UIC BENEFITS

LPP to name in Centre

Nigel Morgan, LPP provincial leader, announced this week
that his party will contest the byelection in Vancouver Centre
made necessary by the death of Socred MLA George Moxham. ©

“Qur decision to field a candidate is in line with the policy
adopted at our recent provincial convention to contest every pro-
vincial riding we possibly can in the next provincial elections,”

said Morgan.

“A Vancouver Centre LPP constituency conference

has been called for November 29 to nominate a candidate.

MR. JUSTICE CLYNE '

Report urges
overhaul of

milk setup

Some. Fraser Valley dairy
farmers were criticised for “in-
describably filthy” conditions,
milk distributors were hit for
“cut-throat competition” and
the Social Credit government
was accused of “lethargy” in
enforcing health regulations in
a massive teport by Mr. Justice
J. V. Clyne made public this
week. :

The Clyne Report, product
of a 14-month study of the B.C.
milk industry, proposed a 12-
point program for stabilizing
the industry through stringent
laws to fix a price to the farmer

_ milk. It opposed returning to

controls on the retail price of
milk. Such control was lifted
in October, 1953.

Agriculture Minister Kenneth -
Kiernan released the report and.”

Continued on page 6
See MILK