| Steelworkers
protest wage

Control move

_TORONTO — The Canadian
director of the 190,000-member

Nited Steelworkers expressed

€ union’s total opposition to the
Te-introduction of wage controls,
May 13.

“Federal Finance Minister
Allan MacEachen has appealed to
the people of Canada to accept
energy price hikes without trying
to compensate with wage in-
Creases,”’ Gerard Docquier said.

Biting the Bullet

“MacEachen asks people to bit

€ bullet without recognizing
some people are a lot better
able to afford to bite it than others.
It is unfair to expect workers to
lower their standard of living
While corporations continue to
ae very generous profits,’ he

%

1,155 violations found in death pit.

aie

Budget
‘legalized
muggery’
says UE

TORONTO — The 20,000-
member United Electrical work-
ers, (UE) ina stinging telegram to
Premier William Davis and his
Treasurer Frank Miller accused
the. Tories of ‘‘legalized
Mmuggery”’ with their May 19
budget.

Signed by UE secretary-
treasurer Val Bjarnason, the tele-
gram said the Tory budget con-
firmed the predictions made by
organized labor that it would be
‘a callous attack on working
people and a bonanza for the
corporations.” , :

The UE noted how workers’
incomes have fallen behind the

\ inflation rate and that the 9% in-

crease in personal income taxes
would mean a further reduction in
take home pay of $603-million this

In Tesponse to MacEachen’s in-
terest in new forms of wage con-
trols, Docquier pointed out that

year with a projected one-billion
next year.
“Instead of eliminating OHIP

Body of miner Hugh Pierce Jr., leaves church after funeral service in Glenwood Springs, Colo. Pierce was one
of 15 miners who were killed during an explosion at the Mid Continent Resources Inc. Dutch Creek coal mine at
Redstone, Colorado. There was no union in the mine. A U.S. government report has since revealed 1,155

_ Previous wage controls have
| Meant that, overall, from 1978 to
1980 steelworkers’ wage in-

inflation.

Industry Unconcerned

Private industry has de-
Monstrated little concern for the
welfare of Canadians’’, Docquier
Said. ‘Profits of major corpora-
_ tions are invested abroad or in-
~ vested in transactions which
create few jobs. The recent take-
over of MacMillan Bloedel by
Noranda is a good example.”

Docquier added that it is the
| 80vernment’s own economis
Policies which fuel inflation.
_ “The federal government’s con-
) Stant raising of interest rates

through the Bank of Canada is
ering inflation while ensuring
' that a working person will never
be able to buy ahome. If the trend
| Continues,’”’ said Docquier, ‘‘in-
terest rates will inevitably drive
Up rents too, so that decent
ae housing will be impos-

le.

a

Same as Wage Controls

“The proposed tax-based in-
Comes policy being considered by
€ finance minister will have the

| Same effect as the government’s
5 wage and price controls.

| Wages Stay put and the prices

__ Docquier warned that in the ab-
_Shce of fair economic policies,
the labor movement will resist
With all its power any kind of
_ Wage controls.””

creases have not kept pace with

violations in that mine over the last five years. Safety is a key issue in the seven week coal miners’ strike.

Health coalition protests
attack on social programs

OTTAWA — Ina brief to a federal government
task force, May 14, the Canadian Health Coalition
(CHC) strongly opposed any cuts in federal spend-
ing on social programs in general and health care in
particular. It suggested instead that health care
funding should be increased and re-directed with
more emphasis on prevention.

. Asked where the money for such a plan would
come from, the coalition pointed to the funds that
could be recouped from the billions of dollars of
lost tax revenue represented by corporate tax shel-
ters and plugging existing tax loopholes for big
business.

The CHC is made up of more than 40 organiza-
tions mostly Canada-wide, including groups repre-
senting labor, farmers, churches, consumers,
health services, Native people, senior citizens, so-

‘cial workers and institutions, teachers and women.

In its 10-page brief to the Parliamentary Task
Force on Fiscal Arrangements the coalition said it
““was not only alarmed but amazed to hear that the
federal government was even considering a reduc-
tion in its spending on health services.’’ Canada,
the brief noted, spends less of its Gross National
Product on health care than virtually all other
countries in the capitalist world.

Medicare in Canada, the CHC told the task
force, is “‘one of the best health care systems in the
world ... and the federal government has a clear
and unstinting obligation to continue its financial
support of medicare.”’

The ‘CHC criticized the move by the federal

government, some years ago, from cost-sharing (a
system under which the government required that
money allocated to provinces for medicare must be
spent for that purpose) to block-funding, where
provinces need not justify this fact, and recom-
mended that cost-sharing be re-instated.

‘We find little consolation in the current ar-
rangement when the only recourse available to the
federal government to protect the national health-
care system is a measure to ultimately destroy it’’
by withholding monthly transfers to provinces, the
CHC said in its brief.

In support of its recommendation that more em-
phasis be put on preventing than curing, the CHC
said: ‘‘For every dollar we devote to the promotion
of health, many more dollars are allocated to the
treatment of illness — the by-product of poor
health ... What we actually have is a system of
illness care ... The majority of (our) resources are

premiums,’ Bjarnason said,
**you have once again increased
the discriminatory tax and placed
the burden of health care on the
working people. Increasing the
tax on gas and diesel fuel and
tying it to escalating prices of
these commodities will also hit
the workers and the poor hardest,
while still further contributing to
even higher inflation as the
corporations pass on increased
costs through higher prices.”

The Tories’ failure to increase
taxes on corporate wealth in this
budget, the UE charged, ‘‘ex-
poses (the Tory) government as
being the hand maidens of big
business.

‘The poor, those on fixed in-
comes, the aged, the handicapped
will now suffer even more while
the profits of the large corpora-
tions continue their un-
precedented rise’’, the UE told
Davis.

‘**Your budget is gouging the
people in this province still
further and provides no relief
from the crisis faced by home-
owners, farmers and small busi-

still channeled to the treatment of illness and poor “ness, struggling with record high

health rather than to their prevention.”

The CHC also criticized Finance Minister Allan
MacEachen’s suggestion in his submission to the
task force, advocating a reduction of federal trans-
fers to provinces for cost-shared programs.

“We find that suggestion very puzzling,’’ the
CHC said, pointing out that such a move might
encourage more. prosperous provinces to increase
their contribution. ‘‘ That would exacerbate rather
than alleviate the existing imbalance’’ and ‘‘hasten
the process towards checker-board federalism,”
the CHC suggested.

Trade union peace committee formed

HAMILTON — An important
Step was taken in this historic
_ Sor city May 3 when trade union
Members and retirees joined to
und the Trade Union Peace
| Committee.
f In a press statement, at the
©unding conference, the TUPC
Said it will be committed ‘‘to alert-
'Ng fellow unionists to the dangers
Current world situation and

the escalating arms build up.”’

In its constitution the TUPC
notes that “‘preparations for -war
have so dislocated our economy
that leaving aside the terrible
threat of a nuclear holocaust the
arms race could produce an
economic explosion the likes of
the great depression of the
thirties.” ney

The committee’s objectives,

.Said the TUPC, will be to prom-

ote the conversion of war indus-
try to peaceful production; prom-
ote the concept of disarmament
and detente and, support the
Canadian Peace Congress, the
World Peace Council based in
Helsinki, Finland, and the UN.
The founding convention
elected Joe Schofield as its pres-
ident. Schofield is currently pres-

ident of the United Electrical
workers local 550 at CAMCO in
Hamilton.

Other TUPC executive mem-
bers were elected from various
regions in south-western Ontario
ranging from Toronto to Niagara
Falls. However the committee
plans to expand its activities
throughout the province and has
contacts throughout Canada.

interest rates, and it does nothing —
to cure mounting unemployment
and job loss’, the telegram said.

~Bjarnason predicted the budget
would ‘‘add to further labor un-
rest as workers strive to recoup
from their employers the amounts
you are stealing through legalized
muggery.”’

VAL BJARNASON ... “a callous
attack on working people and a
bonanza for the corporations.” .

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 29, 1981—Page 9