Disarmament is key -
to build durable peace

By iVAN BAGRAMYAN
Marshal of the Soviet Union
MOSCOW (APN) — Thirty

Three years ago, on May 9, 1945
World War Two ended in Berlin, ~
the capital of the defeated Nazi
Reich. It had taken years of joint
Strenuous fighting by the coun-
tries of the anti-Hitler coalition

‘and all peace-loving nations to
win.

World War Two, which broke
out, just as the first one, on Euro-
pean soil; cost mankind a tre-
Mendous effort, sacrifice and suf-
fering. As one who fought on the

battlefronts of the last war and

who is well aware of the conse-
quences of the use of modern
Weapons, I believe the major les-
Sons of the war are in the knowl-
edge that an armed conflict in
Europe today and all attempts at
Tesolving political problems by
force of arms fraught with dread-

1 consequences.

The lessons of the. past, the
exigencies of modern times and
the responsibility for the future
Call for a stable and durable peace
to be established in Europe.

Although the east and the west
of Europe-are following different
ways in their social development,
it is the interests of security and
Cooperation that they have in
common. And now sufficient
groundwork has been laid in

“As long as our governments
and the labor laws. they enact
allow employers to exploit and
underpay workers, and frustrate
their desire for union repre-
sentation, we'll continue to have
high levels of industrial strife in
Canada.

“The Fleck plant is no different
from hundreds of others that take
advantage of the country’s unor-
ganized workers and lax laws and
Safety standards’.

So says Ed Finn, writing in the
Toronto Star on the Fleck strike.

True”, he says, “there were ex-
Ceptional happenings in the Fleck
dispute.”’

_ He then lists police officers
Joining with management in their
effort to intimidate the workers,
Most of them grossly underpaid
women working in terrible condi-
tions, and the fact that the family
of James Fleck, deputy minister
of industry and tourism, owns
50% of the business, while the
Premises are leased from the On-
tario Development Corporation,
a branch of Fleck’s ministry.

“‘Whether these are just coin-

Cidences, or whether the union’s

Conspiracy theory is valid, we
May never know. But in any case
it is not the most important issue
involved’. (emphasis added)
Capitalist System

What is important, in Mr.
Finn’s estimation, is that the
Wishes ‘of the Fleck workers to
have a union and a collective
agreement are being thwarted by
Fleck, as if Fleck indeed were the
exception rather than the rule.

Europe for preventing the tragedy
of another war and for turning our
continent: into a zone of true
peace which has been the dream
of many generations of
Europeans.

The important experience
gained in the course of the last
world war indicates — that the

anti-Hitler coalition had proved’

the possibility of an effective
political and military cooperation
of states with different social
systems.

The only way to prevent
another world war and keep the
peace is promoting the relaxation
of international tensions, ending
the arms race and bringing about
real disarmament. No task is
more important today than that of
securing real disarmament.

What is needed is to put an end
to the arms race and reduce and
eventually remove the danger of
thermonuclear disaster. It is in
this direction that the funda-
mental issue of the further
development of the international
situation is going to be settled.

The Soviet Union together with
other nations of the socialist
community, will ptess ahead for a

steady advance towards military

détente and real disarmament. It
is the nations of the West, the
U.S., above all, that have to do
their bit.

Fleck strike a

Wage controls cost Sask.

Special to the Tribune

REGINA — For the working
people of Saskatchewan and their
economy, the federal govern-
ment’s wage and price control
program had a cost of more than
$19-million, according to a study
undertaken by the Saskatchewan
Federation of Labor.

The study, released last month
showed the workers of the prov-
ince lost $19,079,920.90 in pur-
chasing power as a result of wage
rollbacks on 113 contracts which
had been negotiated and agreed
upon but overruled by the so-

called ‘‘Anti-Inflation Board’’
(AIB).
The withdrawal of this amount

of money from the Saskatchewan
economy, the study pointed out,
has had repercussions on the
overall Canadian economy as
well. “‘On a Canadian basis’’, the
study noted, ‘it has led to the
highest level of unemployment
since the Dirty Thirties with over
one million Canadians out of
work. In Saskatchewan com-
munities, unemployment has
worsened as a direct result of this
massive withdrawal of money
from the economy.”
Bankruptcies doubled in the
1976-77 period, the SFL found,
and noted it was the worse record
for this in 20 years. The inflation
rate is nearly as high now as when

political

Challenge to labor

Mr. Finn’s contradictory
stance stems undoubtedly from
his social reformist approach,
which sees little or nothing wrong
with the capitalist system that a
proper working of bourgeois par-
liamentary democracy cannot
cure, without interference with
the power and privilege of private
monopoly capital.

This attitude is, of course,
rooted in the capitalist theory of
state and law which extols
bourgeois parliamentarism. Their
multi-party system and free mar-
ket economy is considered sac-
red. Capitalist governments are
preoccupied with the stability of
their capitalist regime, and the
opposition pursues the same aims
and purposes as the party that
happens to be in power. All this is
skilfully intertwined in such a way
as to prevent the people from
coming to grips with the problem
of ending capitalism based on the
exploitation of man by man, asys-
tem that has long since outlived its
usefulness.

Parliamentary Domination

The system, to be sure, allows
for reforms provided these so-
called reforms do not question the
power and profits of monopoly
capital. Social programs are pro-
vided for only if anything is left in
the budget after deductions for
military needs and corporate rip-
offs. Allowance is made for activ-
ity in art and culture, as long as
these serve to promote business
and monopoly profits. All kinds of
rights are proclaimed without any
efforts of serious implementation,
including the right to education,

which many working-class
families cannot afford. In other
words, both the theory and prac-
tice of bourgeois state and law are
founded entirely and solidly on
class positions.

What the working class is faced
with is a struggle for an end to
parliamentary domination by
monopoly capital which leads to-
wards curtailing the role of parli-
ament and the paring down of its
legislative power, while the
executive apparatus is made
stronger and more closely bound
to monopoly capital.

In this forthcoming federal
election the working class and the
democratic forces in Canada are
strong enough to turn back the
drive to the right and to political
reaction. This can be done if the
working people, through their
trade union movement and far-
mers’ organizations, take up the

- struggle for a real democratic al-

ternative — a democratic coali-
tion that includes both the New
Democratic Party and the Com-
munist Party — and elect a
progressive majority, including
Communists, to parliament, to
carry on the struggle around new
policies to ensure real change.

Correction

In Bruce Magnuson’s Labor
Scene, May 1, the year given in
which public service employees
won the right to strike was 1976.
A typographical error reversed
the figures. The year, in fact, was
1967.

workers 0

~

ver $19-million

An SFL study shows that over $19-million was lost In purchasing
power in Saskatchewan as a result of wage rollbacks on 119 contracts

negotiated and agreed on, but overruled by the AIB.

the wage-cuting program was im-
posed on the working people. .
The study also showed inflation
rising at a faster rate at 1.1% in the
month of April, than it has since
mid 1975, 223 F
Pertinent Information

The SFL said information relat-
ing to the devastation brought on
by wage controls is pertinent be-
cause the government maintains
they were a good thing, though
the facts demonstrate the oppo-
site, and the attack on workers
wages isn’t over. ‘‘The proposed
monitoring agency, which will be
another slightly disguised attempt
at wage control’’, the study re-
vealed, ‘‘the attacks on public
workers under the guise of com-
parability, and threats of renewed
wage controls are still with us.

‘*The record is: millions of dol-
lars lost to workers and their
community, record unemploy-
ment, continued inflation, record
bankruptcies. Wage control was
not just a problem for the work-
ers’’, the study declared, ‘‘ ... its
devastating effect (was de-
monstrated) on the whole
economy.”

The SFL study was part of a
Special Project begun in 1977 and
conducted, by SFL-hired
fieldworkers who reviewed col-
lective agreements, classification
by classification, calculating the
actual dollar Value of the roll-
backs. The $19-million’ doesn’t
include the money lost as a result
of lower contract settlements
forced on workers in order to
avoid rollbacks, the long term ef-
fect of the wage controls on fringe
benefits such as sick plans and
pensions, the effect of rollbacks

on overtime earnings, and the
amount of money lost to middle
Management wages.

CUPE’s AIB’s Obit

The Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE) in their own
study on the effects of the wage
control program, ‘‘the AIB’s
Obituary’’, recently published in
“The Facts’’, a CUPE research
bulletin, noted, ‘‘from a worker’s
point of view the AIB has been a
disaster. With inflation at 9.5%
and wages going up only 6%,
workers in Canada are experienc-
ing a real cut in their living stan-
dards.”

Quoting a February 8, 1978
item in the Toronto Globe: and
Mail, the CUPE research team
showed that after-tax profits of
publicly owned Canadian corpo-
rations for 1977 were ‘‘considera-
bly better’’ than in 1976 or 1975,
with an annual increase almost as
large as 1974. Meanwhile average
increases of wage Settlements for
1977 dropped from 10.2% in 1976
to 7.7% in 1977.

““These facts alone’’, the
CUPE bulletin argued, ‘‘should,
once and for all, give the lie to the
statement that wage settlements
cause inflation. In the past year
we have witnessed a decline in the

-rate of wage increases and at the

same time an increase in prices.”’

The CUPE study showed that
the same basket of goods and ser-
vices which in 1971 cost $10, cost
$16.72 in December, 1977.

“From a corporation point of
view,’ the CUPE study said,
“‘the AIB has been a great suc-
cess. Prices have gone up and
profits are rising.”’

Why an N-bomb deferment?

BERLIN — What do President
Carter and other circles of the
NATO alliance expect to gain by
Carters ‘‘deferment”’ of neutron
bomb production? asks Panora-
ma, the news agency of the Ger-
man Democratic Republic in a re-
cent commentary. ae

Pointing out that Carter has
stepped up development of car-
riers of the neutron weapon,.
Panorama notes that the “‘inten-

tion was for example,
shamelessly revealed in the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany news-
paper, Die Welt. In its April 10
issue it stated: ‘‘According to the
Americans, perhaps a year may

be won if Carter gives orders to |

produce the nautron weapon la-
ter.” That is, by ‘‘deferring’’ the
weapon and going ahead with car-
riers, the USA and NATO will be
able to deploy the neutron more
quickly in the long run.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 12, 1978—Page 5

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