ee

Workers fight hack
as weekly jobless
in the thousands

It’s getting to be that unemployment
has to be calculated on a weekly basis
rather than by the month or year. Within
a space of two days last week some 3,200
workers in Ontario and Quebec were told
they'd be spending Christmas un-
employed.

The list strikes at the heart of the crisis
besetting the Canadian economy and
emerges sharply from the bankruptcy of
the federal and provincial governments
in managing the economy as well as the
structural crisis of capitalism itself.

Massey Ferguson announced Nov. 16
that 1,750 workers at its Toronto and

Brantford plants were to be laid off in- |

definitely Nov. 20. This puts the figure
at more than 2,400 Massey workers
who've been chopped from the payroll
over the past three weeks.

The last batch to get their pink slips
were the 600 laid off Nov. 6 with four
hours’ notice.

On Nov. 17 Pratt and Whitney Aircraft
of Canada Ltd., of Montreal, put 610
production workers out the door of its
Longueuil plant. The first 475 went Nov.
20 in what the U.S.-owned aircraft firm
said would be a two-to-six-month layoff.

The news was worse in Kitchener,
Ont., where it was announced last week
that 826 workers at Budd Automotive
were to be indefinitely laid off. From
3,100 workers in the plant two-and-a-half
years ago, Budd Automotive’s work-
force has been slashed to some 274
workers following the latest job cuts.
The first 128 to go were laid off Nov. 20;
another 199 are slated to go Jan. 8 and
another 499 will be dropped Feb. 8.

The list goes on and on: General
Motors, St. Catharines — 962 workers
laid off as of Nov. 23; Hudson's Bay Co.,
announced the closing ofits 65 Shop-Rite

‘ahead of the banks”,

catalogue stores, Nov. throwing
another 600 full-time ay part-time
workers out of their jobs; the collapse of
Canadian Admiral Corp. shot down
2,450 jobs in Ontario and Quebec;
Camco Inc., 320 indefiitely laid off in
Montreal; public sector cutbacks in
Quebec could affect 10,000 workers; 138
public service workers in Prince Edward
Island will go as a result of the federal
government slashing cost-sharing
agreements with the province by 50%;
9,624 B.C. forest industry workers cur-
rently off the job; some 5,750 miners
throughout Quebec were laid off for dif-
ferent lengths of time last week. Add to
this 900 Newfoundland miners expecting
the chop any day, and about 2,000 un-

employed fish-plant workers throughout -

the Atlantic provinces, it is estimated the
current hit list of recently laid off work-
ers has already passed the 40,000 mark.

It's clear that the economy in this
country is very sick. The labor move-
ment has been hammering away at the
big business policies of the federal and
most provincial governments, which are
making working people suffer through
doing nothing to stop unemployment,
tackling massive inflation and curb soar-
ing interest rates.

Bob White, United Auto Workers di-
rector for Canada, commenting on the
Massey Ferguson layoffs charged the
federal government’s policy of refusing
to take action to lower interest rates as
economic madness designed to create
unemployment on the scale of ihe 30s
Depression.

“Its about time the government put

the welfare of the people of Canada. _
, White said, noting

the growing anger among the people as
they lost their homes, and are being
forced on to welfare.

weeks.

Speaking to the centennial convention
of the AFL-CIO in New York, Canadian
Labor congress (CLC) president Dennis
McDermott described the Liberal
government as a bunch of! ‘‘turkeys”’
victimizing the Canadian people with
‘tabsolutely unbelievable, idiotic, imbe-
cillic, economic mismanagement’’.
McDermott told the U.S. labor con-
vention Canada is in the grip of
“economic chaos of the worst kind and
political impotence of the worst
kind .

He thammered the recent banker’s
budget for ‘‘doing nothing about econ-
omic reform, nothing about economic
stimulation, nothing about any-
thing.’’ He predicted a massive turnout
for the CLC’s planned protest in Ottawa
against high interest rates Nov. 21.

He was joined by other labor voices in

hammering the budget. Dick Barry pres-
“ident of the United Electrical Workers

(UE) hit the government for failing to
beef up the foreign Investment Review
Act and ¢efusing to tax excess. bank

_ Steelworkers from oronto’s Inglis plant demonstrate outside Queen’s Park agains
layoffs. Over 40,000 Canadian workers have lost their jobs through layoffs in the past fea ;

. recent flood of layoffs originating from —

profits and stop corporate price gouging.

Barry called the failure to act on FIRA —
“‘one more tragic example of the Cana- —
dian government caving in to the U.S. .
multi-nationals and putting their in-—
terests ahead of the interests of Cana-

dians.”’ His criticism is underlined by the —

U.S. corporate board room decisions.
Cliff Pilkey president of the 800,000-
member Ontario Federation of Labor
called the budget ‘‘a blueprint for a de-—
pression’’. Predicting further provincial —
education and health care cuts, resulting ©

from reduced transfer payments to the
provinces, he hammered the govern-
ment’s continuation of concessions, —
exemptions and handouts to the corpora
tions. at
He called for a planned industrial
strategy, with tax cuts for middle and
~,lower_income _ groups._and a. serious.
~~ Jowering « of interest rates and. mortgage -
relief. Pilkey also urged the immediate —
creation of winter works programs and ~
programs to spur housing construction.

©

From Hamilton to Parliament Hill

From Hamilton to Ottawa. Its about 300 miles by car
but that gap was closed to nothing this week when 10,000
workers from Stelco in Hamilton, joined together with
perhaps 10 times that number and more in Ottawa, to say

to the same bosses and their governments — not enough! |

— that’s enough!

There’s a spirit afoot in the Canadian working class
and it’s a spint of struggle. All the efforts of big corpora-
tions and their media have not been able to dampenit. In
fact it is growing in intensity, determination and scope.

It comes from the workers themselves, where it is
given leadership, such as in the Hamilton Stelco strike
and the November 21 protest in Ottawa. It rallies behind
the leadership and pushes the whole process forward.
Where it is not given leadership it is more and more
pushing its way through, forcing leaders to move before
it or get out of the way. Ask Stew Cooke.

This labor scribe cannot remember a meeting of
10,000 workers from one single enterprise gathering to-
gether in such united determination to back up their
demands, as happened in Hamilton, Nov. 12. Nor has
Canada seen a recent demonstration to match the scope
of the November 21 Ottawa rally.

Taken together they express the determination of
Canadian working people not to be made the goats for
the present monopoly-government crisis besetting
Canada.

On the picket line, on the streets and in the arena of
political struggle, workers are showing that they do not
buy the lies being peddled by the corporations aad
governments about the way out of the present crisis.

Slowly perhaps, but surely the workers are plotting
their own way out of the crisis — an anti-monopoly way.
A way that is at the expense of the big transnational
corporations and Canadian monopoly. A way that will
protect and extend the living standards of all Canadians

> Labor in action
William Stewart

who work by hand and brain to produce our country’s
great wealth. A way that will ensure the health and
education of our young and the security and dignity of
our elders. A way that will help Canada make a mighty
contribution to world peace and friendship among all
nations, big and small.

This. is the essential message of the militant strikers
from Hamilton Stelco. It is the message of the workers
together with their allies, converging on Ottawa on
November 21.

In these actions, and many others which back them up
from coast to coast in Canada, the labor movement has
moved into the centre of the fightback of the people
against monopoly.

What the working people in Canada are proving today,
just as they proved the same yesterday, and will again
tomorrow, is that they must of necessity be at the centre
of the fightback of all people against exploitation and
injustice, because they have no other alternative, no
other way to solve their own problems. And, in order to
solve their own problems, they must at the same time,
solve the problems of all those under the gun of the
system.

It comes down to that. The resistance of Stelco to the
demands of its workers is not simply conditioned by its
bank balance If this were the case there probably would
not have been a strike in the first place. It reflects, rather
the needs of its class, the ruling class. Workers’ demands

for catch-up pay and protection against inflation, as well
as some part of the increasing profits of big corporations,
must be stopped, according to monopoly. There is not
enough in the pot to satisfy their demands for profit, meet
the growing challenges from corporations in other coun-
tries and keep up the present standard of living in Cana-
da, let alone meet legitimate demands for improvements.

The resistance of Stelco to its workers’ demands are,
part of the overall operation of the corporations and their
governments against the living standards of all Cana-
dians.

At the same time, Stelco is aware of a growing move-
ment in the Steelworkers’ union away from right-wing
control toward progressive trade union policies, militant
struggles on the picket line as well as on other fronts.
They want to arrest this movement. They see a defeat
for the Stelco local as an important part of this process.

From the picket line in Hamilton to the steps of

’ Parliament Hill in Ottawa is therefore a short and logical

step for workers to take. The struggle in the plants, on
the picket line, on the streets and on to the struggle to
elect new governments pursuing new policies which
represent the interests of working people and their
natural friends in the farm and democratic movements
across Canada, join together into a single stream of
struggle.

The pot of gold at the end of this struggle is socialism.
In between are actions to control monopolies, place our
energy and natural resources, banks and financial in-
stitutions under public and democratic control, and put —
Canada back to work at decent wages and better social
security.

These are indeed exciting times with big stakes for the
working class and people. United we have the power to
win. This demonstration, together with such actions as

the Stelco strike and others, can help us on the way. -

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 27, 1981—Page 8

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