x

F = — = ee
A = — SSS —

y A Delegates
paek In Couneil

‘or the first time since their organization was suspended
i the Canadian Congress of Labor last January, sixteen
Beates from the International Woodworkers of America
#> Seated at the regular meeting of Vancouver Labor
tuesday night. Credentials
ss two delegates of Boilermak-
nd tren Shipbuilders Union,
#. di, suspended in January,
also accepted.
iong delegates were figures
(known in the labor moye-

Coun-

George Mitchell, TWA delegate
from Loeal 1-357 New Westmin-
ster, told delegates that rumors
concerning scarcity of ehildren’s
clothing were definitely true, and
protested that, “clothing workers
tell us that the reason is that it

@ here, including Harold is just as cheap to make a suit
Pactt, IWA district president, Of underwear for an adult as it
_ Morgan, Bert Melsness, is to make one for 4 child. “Man-
of The Lumber Worker ufacturers find it more profitable

BWA district Secretary, and
jemakers’ Union President
wstewart and Tom McKenzie,
ary.

to make adult clothing,” he Said,
“and to let the Canadian Manu-
facturers’ Association determine
What shall be produced in vear_

iy

cesolution from Prince Ru. time in ridiculous in the ex-
Boilermakers, Local 4, call- ‘reme.” :
mor the construction of a Delegates voted unanimously

to send a protest to Ottawa on
the closing down of the Granby
Consolidated Coal Mine at
Princeton, B-C., and also to pro-
test to the oil controller dealing
with the new proposal to reduce
the octane rating of gasoline
without lowering the price.

= industry in British Colum-
VaS endorsed unanimously.
alizing the urgent need of
4 industry in British Colum-
read the text of the reso-

}, we demand that the goy-
: eut of Canada take steps im-
@itely to construct and oper-
- steel mill within the proy-

t

@me of the benefits to be de-

# from this project are:
€ opening up and expansion

tories for the manufacture

= clwares.

ye Opening up and develop-

of the already known enor-

* iron ore deposits of this
FLce.
benefits of building trades

®> development -of both old

3 ew communities.

2 stimulation of the coal
Zz and power industries. :
reasing and steady employ-

for a rapidly growing popu-

Labor Mourns
Mainarich Death

Matt Mainarich, veteran Croa-
tian Communist, for years an ac-
tive worker in left wing circles,
died in Vancouver Christmas Eve.

after an illness lasting several
months.

An active worker for the Croa-—
tian Workers Home in Vancouver,
and in all press drives and gener—
al labor campaigns, Mainarich
Was particularly well known for
his work in support of the Yugo--
slay partisan fighters of his na-
tive land.

Born in Delnice, Yugoslavia, he:
came to Vancouver in 1928, and

as early as 1930 was active in
the Nelson area in the Canadian
‘Labor Defense League, and later
in the Communist movement. His:
> Ottawa, to the provincial left wing ctivities were main-

® ment, and to all B.C. labor tained despite failing health in
as. later years.

2 immediate construction of
1 plant would facilitate the
ag of steel ships, which in
would speed the war effort
minating the long haulage
Fongested conditions of our
id Systems, and would main-
his important industry in
ist-war period.”

ies of the resolution will be

UNEVERSAL NEWS STAND

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fail your Order for all PROGRESSIVE LITERATURE
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+

December 24 at the age of 54, .

S

Montreal |
Dispute
Continues

MONTREAL, — Twenty-
five hundred “white collar”
2mployees of the city of Mont-
real have entered the third
week of their strike against
the Quebec Municipal Com-
Mission determined that their
demands for equal treatment
With the city’s police and fire-
men must be met before they
would again take up their duties
at the city hall.

This week a ballot among the

Strikers to decide whether the

strike would be continued or
called off in fayor of arbitration
with no definite assurances from
the Civic administration found a
big majority supporting continu-
ance of the fight and mainten-
ance of picket lines.

The employees are represented
by a strike committee of nine
tepresenting the Canadian Bro-
therhood of Municipal Employ-
ees, CCL, National Catholic Syn-
dicate of Municipal Employees,
and the Independent Association
of Municipal Employees. The
Catholic Syndicate has been re-
commended as the sole bargain-
ing agent, but the other two as-
sociations are participating on the
strike committee with equal rep-
resentation. d

The three organizations are
agreed upon and adamant in their
demand that the city’s “white
collar” workers will receive the
$500 annual wage increase prom-
ised the police and firemen by
L. E. Potvin, Chairman of the
Municipal Gommission.

Interviews with several work-
ers picketing? the city hall in
squads of fifty in below-zero wea-
ther revealed some startling fig-
ures on the wage scales paid mu-
nicipal workers in Canada’s larg-
est and wealthiest city with an
annual budget of over $50,000,000.

~Both male and female clerks
start at the sum of $760 yearly,
or about $63.00 a month. Married
men with families to support re-
ceive $1,560 annually or $130.00 a
month. These categories give a
rate range of $15 to $32 weekly.
About 70 percent of the workers
earn $1,300 a year or less, with
about 10 percent in the $1,560
bracket. :

The demand for a $500 annual
inerease is based on the extreme-
ly low starting wage, at which
an employee may work for years
without any increase. One work-
er stated that he had been em-
pioyed for 11 years and had re-
ceived only one increase of $60 a
year.

Another basic demand of the
workers is the inauguration of a
system of classification based on
service and merit. Naturally,
there is no overtime pay or sup-
per allowance, and although over-
time is frowned upon the great
shortage of staff and increase in
work makes it absolutely neces-
sary.

(7

conn Stanten

Barrister, Solicitor, Notary

503 Holden Bldg.
16 E. Hastings St. MAr. 5745

—)

ES

WARNE STUDIO

“Anything With?a Camera”

8 E. Hastings St. PAcific 7644
VANCOUVER, B.C.

Labor Personalities —18

Elgin Ruddell

By CYNTHIA CARTER

jeer) a desk piled high with letters, pamphlets and memos

about the hundred and one jobs that fall to the lot of the
Labor-Progressive Party’s organizer in a city the size of Van-
couver, Elgin Ruddell sat one day this week and took a few
minutes off to tell me a bit about himself and to answer some
of my questions about his work in the position to which LLP
city committee -members re-
cently elected him—that of
secretary-treasurer-organizer.

“The main work of a city
organizer,’ said Ruddell, “is
to carry out, or make sure
somebody else carries out,
the decisions of the City
Committee, a body of repre-
sentatives from every city
party branch. He must sup-
ervise the organization of
existing branches and make
plans for setting up of new
branches. And he must help
to give leadership and direc-
tion to party work on muni-
cipal issues.”

Which would call, obvious-
ly, for a great deal of exper-
ience in the labor movement.
And during the next half
hour I found out that Elgin
Buddell had accumulated
just that!

Elgin was born in a little
Ontario town called Swastika,
on July 13, 1912. His mining
engineer father, after living
close to the poverty striken
miners, decided while in his
thirties to go back to college and study for the ministry.

Elgin’s mother was quite resigned to. the fact that when an
idea struck her husband it struck with all the force of a kick-
ing mule (he had suddenly decided, some years previously,
that workers on the horse-drawn Toronto street railway needed
a union, and thereupon set to work and organized one) so with
good grace she accepted the role of wife of an itinerant preacher.
The family was poor. There were five boys and two girls. They

moved from one prairie rural community to another and the

preacher’s salary was usually stretched to the breaking point.

[* THE fall of 1927, when he was thirteen, Elgin went to

work in the harvesting and on the money he made he was
able to, bring his sick mother to the west coast. For two years
he worked his way through Lord Byng High School, then quit
and took a job as department store window dresser.

When he was nineteen Elgin decided to go back to school
and finish his junior matriculation, so he paid his way by spend-
ing his summers in the interior selling magazines, and the
poverty of the farmers appalled him. During his winters at
school he took time out from being a crack basketball player to
read everything he could lay his hands on: books about the
Soviet Union, books on spiritualism and Dadaism, the Koran,
the religious writings of the eastern mystics—and then more
books on the Soviet Union. By the time he passed his junior
matriculation in 1932 he had chosen his philosophy, and he
has never changed his mind. He had become a member of
the Young Communist League.

A month after he took out a card he was placed on-the YCL
provineial executive. A month later he became youth organizer
for the Lumberworkers’ Industrial Union. Within the next thirty
days he took on in addition the job of youth organizer for the
B.C. Unemployed Councils.

During the next few years Ruddell, unable to get work, spent
some time organizing the Workers’ Sport Assocition, an org-
anization which at one time had more than 1000 members. For
three summers beginning in May, 1933, he worked as packer
with American Can, devoting most of his evenings to the study
of Marxist works. In 1937 he first became active in the Com-
munist Party as a branch organizer.

In 1942 Ruddell went to work at Boeings and became such a
competent workman that within eight months he was given a
journeyman’s rating. At the same time he was active in the
union as shop steward, a member of the legislative committee
and union advisor on the labor-management production com-
mittee. After the Boeing lockout he was fired as a result of the
company’s discrimination against union leaders. ;

With two brothers in the RCAF, one in Britain and one in
the Aleutians, and a third working on secret military con-
struction “somewhere in the north”, Ruddell wears in his lapel
a button signifying that he has already been five times a blood
donor.

“The strength of a working class party lies in its branches,’
says Ruddell, “and the measure of its success, particularly on the
parliamentary field, is the degree to which the branches become
a real driving force in community campaigns, whether on purely
local issues for the local application of provincial and federal
issues. Out of the experiences gained in a municipal election.
campaign, for instance, comes the knowledge and organization
to conduct provincial and federal campaigns. Upon the unity
of progressive organizations reached to obtain some local de-
mand can be built the wider unity needed to win greater de-
mands. The most successful branches of the Labor-Progressive
Party in Vancouver are those where well-organized educationals
in the principles of scientific socialism are combined and related
to the issues of the day through equally well-organized local

activities.”

os