‘Union favors pollution
control over hydro exports

TORONTO — Demanding both jobs
and a clean environment, the 20,000-
member United Electrical workers,
(UE) called on the federal cabinet May 4, |
to overturn a National Energy Board de-
cision allowing Ontario Hydro to export
electricity to the United States by cable
under Lake Erie.

The union’s position, unanimously
endorsed by the UE-CGE Conference
Board, representing some 11 Canadian
General Electric (CGE) plants across
Ontario, is aimed at scuttling an agree-
ment between Hydro and General Public

” Utilities to jointly build a 103-kilometer

underwater cable with the capacity to
transport more than one million kilo-
watts of power a year to the U.S. General
Public Utilities owns the Three Mile Is-
land nuclear power station which was
closed down two years ago because of an
operating accident.

Basic to the union’s opposition to the
deal is that Hydro’s planned extension of
the coal-fired generating station at Nan-
ticoke, Ontario would add, according to
environmentalists, 80,000 extra tonnes
of sulphur dioxide pollution into’ the
environment each year.

Sulphur dioxide emissions produce
acid rain and it is estimated that the addi-
tional pollution generated at Nanticoke
would kill some 25 lakes each year and
damage tens of thousands of others.

. The UE also points out that allowing
this increase in sulphuric acid pollution
would severaly undermine Canada’s ef-

forts to persuade the U.S. governments —

at the federal and state levels to lower
emission levels for American utilities.

The bulk of the acid rain, problem, ruin-
ing Canada’s lakes and inland fisheries
comes from sulphuric acid pollution gen-
erated from the U.S. border states.

The issue and the union’s position has
sparked a lively debate in Ontario parti-
cularly in CGE towns like Peterborough
and Guelph where the U.S.-owned
multi-national urged the community’s
support for the National Energy Board
approval, because it could mean 300
more jobs would be created to manufac-
ture the generating equipment.
. In Peterborough both CGE and the
local Chamber of Commerce have hit the
air waves, attacking the union for its
opposition to the plan.

But, the UE says the deal is a very
poor one for the workers as far as jobs
are concerned. In the first place, the 103

As well as manufacturing generating
equipment, CGE also manufactures the
scrubbers.

‘Further,’ the UE pointed out in a
statement by the union's top officers,
April 30, ‘‘if the Ontario and Canadian
governments would concentrate on
developing the manufacturing capacity
of Canada, rather than selling power and
resources to the United States, our
power generating capacity could be tsed
to sell power to Canadian industry.’’ The
union predicts that tens of thousands of
new Canadian jobs could be created as a
result of such government policies.

The UE also noted the irony in CGE’s
bid to blackmail the union with jobs,
‘‘when it has thrown thousands of work-
ers out of work through its corporate re-
organization in the last few years.

The advantage of the sale to the Americans is obvious .. -
They sell us the coal. We make electricity and pollute our
own backyard, selling the clean power back to the United

States. :

kilometers of cable are going to be built in
Europe without a single Canadian job
being crated.

Secondly, the UE points out that many
more than 300 new jobs could be created
if the provincial government forced On-
tario Hydro and other sulphuric acid
polluters to install scrubbers on all exist-
ing smoke stacks to drastically cut down
sulphuric acid emission entering the
atmosphere.

“If CGE wants to preserve jobs, let it
reverse its decision to go out of the.
distribution transformer business and the
wire and cable business — businesses, in
which it had sales in the millions of
dollars.”’

In a letter to prime minister Trudeau
accompanying the April 30 officers’
statement and in similar letters to NEB
chairman Marc ‘Lalonde and Ontario
premier Bill Davis, the union blasted the

Installing scrubbers on all existing smoke
stacks would do more to create jobs than
building one hydro cable, says the United
Electrical workers union.

short-sightedness of the Canadian
government's and Ontario Hydro’s deal
with the U-S.

“The advantage of the sale to the
Americans is obvious’, the union said.
‘They sell us the coal. We make elec-
tricity and pollute our own backyard,
selling the clean power back to the
United States.”

The UE told Trudeau, Davis and the
NEB that while the union “desperately”
wants jobs for its members, it isn’t
‘‘prepared to fall for the phoney alter-
natives posed by CGE and Ontario
Hydro which pretend that the choice is
between a clean environment and jobs.

‘“We want both, and we can have both
if governments would exercise their

power properly.”

Canada’s future — the socialist alternative (3)

Social ownership of the means of pro-
duction opens the way to a radical recon-
struction of all social relations. The new
class structure formed in socialist society
fundamentally changes the entire picture
of class relations prevailing in capitalist
society. By abolishing the exploitation of
man by man, socialism does away for-
ever with the subjugation of other classes
by the capitalist class.

In socialist society all classes and so-
cial strata become equal in their relations
to the means of production, to the state,
in their rights and duties. No individual,
group or class can any longer appropriate
the means of production and use them for
exploiting others. From this basic prin-
ciple flows all other social and economic
advances provided by the new socialist
society.

Peas ees

Social distinctions do not disappear at
once under socialism. However the na-
ture of such distinctions radically
changes. For, they are no longer con-
nected with relation of domination and
subordination, but are simply distinc-
tions between separate groups of work-
ing people which enjoy equal rights.
These distinctions arise from the dif-
ferent forms of socialist property, ‘i.e.,
state property and cooperative property
which results in groups of people engag-
ing in different forms of labor in different
branches of one socialist economy.

As modern production methods re-
place manual labor, and the means of
production in agriculture more and more
approximate those of industry, the dis-
tinctions between industrial, farm and

intellectual forms of labor decrease — a
process actively promoted by the
socialist state. This is not the case under
capitalism. On the contrary, in capitalist
conditions, social distinctions do not de-
crease. In fact, they become social bar-
riers that are persistently raised higher
and social injustice, far from declining,
becomes ever more flagrant.
* * *

Full equality and social justice are
general features of class relations under
socialism. All classes and sections con-
sist of working people, and since all are
connected with property of the same
type — socialist property — relations be-
tween them are free of antagonisms. This

- means that interests of the people coin-

cide in all main areas. All the people are
intimately interested in the advance of
the national economy, in the strengthen-
ing of the socialist system, and in the
Aevelopment of democracy, ethics and
culture.

A new class structure of society comes
into being as a result of economic and
social change. The former exploiting
classes are completely abolished as a
class. Society becomes a community of

| Marxism-Leninism Today
Alfred Dewhurst

working people — workers, farmers and
intelligentsia. Such change applies first
and foremost to the working class. From
being the most exploited class, the work-
ing class becomes the leading force of
society. And, socialism replaces the
age-old struggle of classes by solidarity
and unity arising from a community of
aims, ideology and ethics.

* * *

The economy is the backbone of any
Rociety. In a society setting out to build
socialism, the abolition of private owner-
ship and the establishment of public
ownership are of decisive importance. In
such case, socialist nationalization is the
fundamental means of establishing pub-
lic ownership.

Socialist nationalization means the
expropriation of the factories, the banks
and other financial institutions, all forms
of major transport and communications,
energy and power stations, large agricul-
tural and trade enterprises, as well as
other basic means of production owned
by the big capitalist monopolies, and the
transfer of such ownership to the
socialist state. In this way capitalist

monopoly ownership is abolished and
replaced by socialist public ownership.
This places the decisive levers of the
economy into the hands of the state,
enabling the socialist state to develop the
economy for the benefit of the people,
organize the management of the econ-
omy and control other social programs,
plan production, accounting and distri-
bution and ensure economic
independence.
* * *

Socialization of the means of produc-
tion opens the way to a socialist recon-
struction of the state. The exploiting
capitalist system has its own state ap-
paratus, its own code of laws based on
the sanctity of private-ownership of the
means of production, its own customs,
morality and ethics. The new socialist
society also establishes its own state ap-
paratus and its own code of laws, moral-
ity and ethics, all of which are based on
the sanctity of social ownership of the
means of production.

Based on public (social) ownership,
genuine. democracy is the chief charac-
teristic of socialist society. In com-
parison with other socio-economic sys-
tems, socialism extends the concept of
democracy to include not only the poli-
tical but also the social rights of the work-
ing people. Under socialism, democracy
assumes a new meaning by extending it
to all of society, making it a true democ-
racy not just the formal declaration of
rights, as is the case in capitalist society,
but provides the possibility for exercis-
ing those rights.

N.B. more next week

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 21, 1982—Page 5