Tory budget destroying
our jobs SGEU protests

Special to the Tribune
REGINA — The province’s
public service workers union has
charged the recent Tory. budget
will produce a net loss of at least

496 jobs in Saskatchewan.

In an April 5 statement, Sas-
katchewan Government
Employees Union, (SGEU),
president’ Jim Hayes said,

_ “creating unemployment, (and)

axing huge numbers of jobs”’
would be ‘‘the inescapable bot-
tom line’’ of the government’s
budget. At the same time he said
the government will .be, doling
millions out to the private sector in
the form of subsidies.

“‘One very disturbing feature is
the areas of government service
and programs where these jobs
were eliminated’’, Hayes said.

- He pointed to the province’s So-

_ cial Services department, already
overworked because of growing
unemployment, where 50 per-
manent positions have been lost.
Seventy-six jobs are gone at
Health Services, 18 at Consumer
Protection, and despite the high.
est jobless rate in the province,
100 positions have been lost in
Norther Saskatchewan.

*‘Services to people were cut”’,
the SGEU leader charged.
““Meanwhile it’s worth noting that
departments that provide services
to business, like Industry, Trade

_and Commerce, have not lost one

position.
Hayes also indicated his belief

that there could be as many as

1,000 jobs that remain unfilled,

yet funds have been allocated by
the government to do so.

“In total’, the union charges,
“‘with eliminated and unfilled pos-
itions, the government can be said
to be operating with a skeleton

staff. The services that citizens _

pay taxes for have to be suffering
as a result.

Pledging to fight the cuts,
“every way possible,”’ SGEU
hosted a meeting, April 6, of
union, community service and
educational organizations to dis-
cuss a response to the budget’s
impact. :

Particular concern was expres-
sed at the meeting about the loss
of protection and service to Sas-
katchewan women by Torv
budget cuts to education, day-
care, health, and Women’s Divi-
sion labor programs.

Spokespersons for the un-
employed criticized the effective
loss of social service, health and
consumer protection for the job-
less in Saskatchewan in the wake
of the budget cuts. The govern-
ment’s cynical pretense to job

creation in the budget was angrily

dismissed. Any jobs the budget
may create will be of the insecure,
short-term, low-paying and
non-union variety, while the
budget cuts are hacking away at
secure, better-paying and
unionized jobs.

SGEU says the groups will con-
tinue to work closely together and
contact other organizations to
broaden the fight. against the
budget cuts.

FEDERAL BUDGET SOP
TO BUSINESS OFL SAYS

TORONTO — Ontario Federation of Labor
President Cliff Pilkey said April 19, the new
federal budget will do nothing for the two million
unemployed in Canada and is a sop to business
to enhance the Liberal Party’s sagging fortunes.

The $2.4-billion alloted by Finance Minister
Marc Lalonde for capital works projects, the
OFL leader said, isn’t enough to make a dent in
the current unemployment crisis. Ottawa’s
plans to set up a tri-partite productivity council,
Pilkey said is a ploy to blame workers for lack of
productivity rather than admit the total failure of
the government’s monetarist policies that have
caused plant shutdowns and crippled industry to
the point where it only operates at two-thirds
capacity.

The OFL called for an industrial and
economic development strategy, tax cuts for
middle and low income groups, a serious lower-
ing of interest rates and measures to stimulate
demand.

‘‘The budget lacks the stimulation needed to
reverse the weakness in personal consump-

tion’, Pilkey said. ‘‘It should have been de-.

signed for a consumer-led recovery to provide
jobs. What we got was an investor-oriented
budget that will do nothing but enrich the coffers
of the corporations.”

QUEBEC TEACHERS
SIGN PACT

MONTREAL — Quebec’s 70,000 ele-
mentary and secondary school teachers signed a
contract with the provincial government April
17 ending their strike, launched in January,

against a massive government-legislated roll
back of wages and attacks on job security.
They were the last of the common front of
teachers, public sector workers and hospital
workers who challenged the Parti Quebecois
. anti-union legislation brought down a year ag0—
which rolled back salaries of 325,000 provincial
public. sector workers. In December the
govertunent stripped all public sector workers
of their right to strike until 1986 when the cul-
rent government-imposed contract will expire.
Under the terms of the teachers’ settlement,
some 1,200 of the jobs that would have been lost
in September have been saved and the strike
was able to win increased layoff benefits to 3,500
who will be axed by the Levesque government
at that time.

NFLD TEACHERS’
LOCKOUT CONTINUES

ST. JOHN’S — About 5,000 locked out
teachers marched on the provincial legislature
April 20 to protest the government’s action 10
locking out Newfoundland’s 7,600 unionized
teachers. The province’s 650 schools have been
closed since the April 12 lockout when the
teachers, who’ve been unable for a whole year
to get the employers to sign contracts, launched
a work-to-rule campaign, to speed up negotia- |
tions.

N.B. NURSES DEMAND
SOLID WAGE HIKES

FREDERICTON, N.B. — Rejecting the
“New Brunswick government’s stingy offer of a
7% wage hike over two years, negotiators for
the provincial nurses’ union said contract talks,
which lasted only one and a half hours, April 20, ©
have broken down. The 3,400 nurses are de-
manding a two-year pact with wage increases of
9.5% and 6% in each year, and their union ac- |
cused government negotiators with refusing to
seriously bargain.

Recovery for workers or system?

Monopoly has moved the goal-posts on the working
class.

Following the great depression, World War Two
and the strengthening and expansion of the world
socialist system, the assumption was made by
monopoly that the working class would not stand for
another depression. Conventional wisdom was that
any full-scale depression would lead to a collapse of
their system.

A whole system of state monopoly interventions
into the economy, nationally and internationally,
were undertaken to resolve the regularly occurring
crises of the system without recourse to a depression,
the most convulsive, and from monopoly’s view-
point, the most useful and rewarding method of re-
solving its inner contradictions at the expense of the
working class and its own weaker elements.

Eventually, capital found itself unable to resolve its ’

own inner contradictions without a full scale depres-
sion. It accompanied this inevitable convulsion with
an almost unprecedented attack on the working class
on the ideological front. One side of this attack is the
systematic daily attacks on real socialism which are
now a regular part of the Canadian diet. The other part
was designed to isolate the working class from its
natural allies at home and at the same time undermine
its confidence in itself.
System’s Recovery, Not People’s

A candid appraisal of today’s Canada would in-
dicate that monopoly, assisted by its governments,
have succeeded, at least in the short run, in winning
acceptance of a depression as being beyond the con-
trol of the Canadian people, and a natural phenomena
that will have to be cured by a shake-out of the
system.

Mass unemployment, involving more than two mil-

_ lion Canadians would have been held intolerable a few

short years ago. Now we have such record-breaking

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: Labor in action

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unemployment and brazen talk of ‘‘a recovery’’. In
plain terms this means.a recovery for the system, but
no recovery for the working people.

The federal budget which was handed down last
week, as the statement of the Communist Party says,
“is a cynical political ploy at the expense of the
employed and unemployed workers’’. It increases the
handouts to monopoly, takes more out of the pockets
of the people, at a time when there is already a serious
decline in the real wages of working Canadians.

At the same time, people in Ontario are being pre-
pared for a further assault on their incomes by the
Ontario Government which is arguing that the federal
budget leaves them -no other alternative than to
further plunder working people.

Labor Must Fight Back
We don’t suppose that any Trib reader is surprised
that monopoly would use whatever means at its dis-
posal, including the power of its governments, to

maintain and increase its profitability at the expense ~

of the people. What may come as a surprise, both to
monopoly and the people, is the relative ease with
which they have carried through their great steal so
far.

The organized labor movement in Canada indeed
needs to unite to call a halt to the monopoly. offensive
and set the stage for a massive economic and political
counter-offensive.

It is clear that if this is not done, monopoly intends
to back labor up against the wall. Just during the past

weeks, we have had the example of murder on the
picket line and alongside it the open collaboration of
private police, public law officials and corporations in
strike breaking.

The best the labor movement could come up with in
these circumstances was calls for new laws to prevent
strike breaking. While no one can object to such a
demand it certainly takes the matter away from any
direct action by the workers to strengthen their mili-
tancy and unity, and diverts their attention to legisla-
tive solutions to their problems.

Actions to Back Voices

It must seem to monopoly that they have been
given the green light by organized labor to run the
country into the ground and then reconstruct it at
labor’s expense. It’s true that the CLC and provincial

‘federations of labor have voiced their disapproval,
but voices of disapproval will not change anything
unless they are backed up by concrete actions by the —
organized working class, supported by. its allies,
which will have sufficient muscle to force monopoly
and its governments to retreat.

' The Quebec public workers set a courageous ex-
ample in their struggle against wage controls, just as
they are doing in their planned May 28 March For —
Jobs. A great struggle from the ranks of the trade
union movement is needed to prod the CLC and pro-
vincial federations into similar and more far-reaching
actions, up to and including general strikes, where
necessary, to make the workers’ demands loud and
clear.

We want jobs — no depressions — no concessions
—no cutbacks — refuse the Cruise, peace not nuclear
war. Such demands, together with the demand for
new policies and new governments to carry them out,
can galvanize the labor and democratic movements
into action and put Canada on the real road to
recovery.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 29, 1983—Page 8

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