| th ti ee G The Big Three in the auto field, €neral Motors, Ford and Chrys- ee taked in a total net profit in me and a half billion dollars : € first six months of 1968 S compared with $1.2 billion Ollars in the first half of 1967. mae each of these companies is sing its prices on the 1969 Cars and trucks. In the first half of this year, hetted $959 million, com- Pared with $911 million for the ame period in 1967. Ford made $26 million, compared with 7 million, and Chrysler $148 Millio; ; ‘1. ten. Mm compared with $66 mil co ate Gaylord Nelson of Wis- Qsin has just released what © Says was Ford Motor Com- Pany’s unit cost analysis on its Model cars. And the figures are shocking. fo € figures show that on a % ur door Galaxie 500, for ex- ane the cost to the dealer in- Fo, €d a 16.8 percent profit to : td. But optional equipment— Sually amounting to one-third a the selling price—was mark- More ta BY GASTON BEAUDET é What is Quebec’s Société Gén- Tale de Financement (General vestment Corporation of Que- €c) doing? . Another Quebec industry has Just been taken over by the checticans: Les Industries Bou- ard Inc. The Miami, Florida, a eeny Giffin Industries Inc., ter having previously bought No-Prince and Princecraft, two Motorboat industries, have now Purchased a “ski-doo” plant. What happens when there is Merger of companies? Produc- °n is concentrated in one of aoe while in 50 percent of the d Ses, the other plant is closed ou When the merger is ono ught about under foreign ntrol, both companies some- €S cease production. The par- A Company no longer faces Smpetition. This is the danger try Tonting the ski-doo indus- a ti It should be further noted that © ski-doo is a Quebec inven- °n. All manufacture of ski- ad is now being taken over American monopoly. th,wnother American corporation, 1S One in the field of books, 8 gained control of the Centre i, PSychologie et de Pédagogie scr, (largest French language Shool textbook publishers in ee) up between 57.8 percent and [967 293 percent over the cost. Here is how the figures tell the story of the Galaxie: e It costs $1360.38 in regular material to build the standard model. This does not deduct the profits made by Ford subsidiaries who supply the parts. e It costs $20.23 for minor material such as glue, solder and paint. e Standard parts nuts and bolts cost such as screws, $16.32 and the cost of material transportation was another $19.98, e Labor cost to assemble the unit was set at $57.85. e Light, power and deprecia- tion was $147.12. So it cost Ford $1,621.88. And what do you think the dealer had to pay? $1,827.37. And the suggested (!) list price was $2,676.82, But as if Ford’s wasn’t mak- enough, look at what Nelson calls the “frosting on a very large cake” — the mark-up on optional items. e V8 engine—dealers pay an ig extra $75.60 for an engine which costs only $19.22 more than the standard model. .@ $136.89 for a $56.24 trans- mission, $40.16 for a $21.74 AM radio, $46.72 for a $13.01 set of tires, $250.14 for a $158.49 air conditioning unit and $10.17 for $5.93 seatbelts. And when you add on the deal- er’s profit, well, you know what the retail price then becomes. If ever a case was obvious for a prices review board it is ‘here in the auto industry — and in Ottawa what do we find? In answer to questions in the House of Commons on Sept. 19 about what the Canadian govern- ment is going to do about the price hikes on the ’69 models we have the following reply from the Prime Minister: “Mr. Speaker, I have not ex- actly followed all the context, but the hon, member knows the federal government has no con- trol over contractual price set- ting between a consumer and a dealer in respect of automobiles or other similar types of goods.” Buying a new car, anyone? - eovers in Quebec Quebec). For some three or four years increasingly insistent voices have been raised demand- ing Quebec should publish its own school textbooks, written by Quebec authors. The Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, a large American publish- ing monopoly, has just acquired control of the Centre de Psychol- ogie et de Pédagogie (C.P.P.) Inc. Who is to publish Quebec’s school text books? None other than the American editors who will now undertake themselves to translate their own volumes. And what is to be said of the unconfirmed report that E. P. LED STRIKERS HIT RAND REPORT The Rand Report recommendation to further Testrict | Taylor and Paul Desmarais are preparing to sell their two finan- cial empires ‘“‘en bloc” to Ameri- can interests? The Quebec government will act just as it has in the sales of the C.P.P. to the Britannica, and of the Industries Bouchard. It won’t utter a solitary word. What’s to be done? The gov- ernment of Quebec should force the owners of these enterprises to sell them to Quebec interests, or failing that, to call on the workers to reorganise these in- dustries with the assistance of ‘the General Investment Corpora- tion of Quebec. Riot police COMPANY The workers of the Cominco operations, whom he led and represented for over 25 years, paid tribute last week in Trail to Harvey Murphy. In a testimonial banquet to mark his retirement from the staff of the United Steel Workers Murphy was pre- sented with gifts and greetings from the representatives of the union, management and the com- munity, as well as scores of tele- grams from around the country. Trail Mayor F. E. DeVito de- scribed him as a “legend in his own time.” In a similar vein William Mahoney, Canadian Di- rector of the USWA alluded to the years of struggle between the. Mine Mill and Smelter Workers and Steel stating that over the years he has thought many times of coming to Trail to wish Harvey on his way. “We had many fights together,” Mahoney continued, ‘“‘but we al- ways had the same objective— to organize working people.” Saul Rothman, general man- ager of Cominco in presenting Murphy with a bound copy of the first agreement signed be- tween the union and the com- pany in 1945 said, “I’m not go- ing to tell you how well we got used in strike Windsor police, complete with riot helmets and mace are being used to try to break the United Auto Workers strike at Dominion Forge, in Windsor, Ontario. The strike started on August 16 and Ford costs revealed continues with 180 items still to be negotiated. SPEECH 43 on together, because it would be a damn lie.” Answering the tributes Mur- phy praised the recent merger agreements between Mine Mill- and Steel as opening the way to strengthening the position of all workers in the industry. He thanked the workers for the friendship and support that he received over the years. Describ- ing the first agreement won from the company whose basic point was the recognition of the union, Murphy ‘said the essen- tial struggle was to win full dig- nity for the worker. The evening was one of bois- terous good humor, typified by the cartoon reprinted above which was drawn by one of the workers in the smelter. Murphy is depicted as giving “speech 43” which legend has is the speech calling for a rejection of a proposed agreement. Replying to this, Murphy de- scribed a meeting he attended a few evenings before when one worker told him that he had been giving the same speech for 25 years. He said he took this as a compliment because “we still haven’t won all that we set out to win 25 years ago — we still need more.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 4, 1968—Page 5