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 a i ale andi Reo nt