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The growing economic and

political instability in the
capitalist world, the mounting in-
flation and unemployment, the
total failure. of traditional
capitalist methods to get the
economy going and to put a stop
to the erosion of living standards,
all of this goes.to prove that the
present crisis is not simply a cyc-
lical or transient crisis but some-
thing built right into the structure
of state-monopoly capitalism as
an economic and social system.

In Canada the situation is
greatly aggravated by United
States control over key sectors of
our economy. Devaluation of the
‘Canadian dollar, as a means of
capturing new or to retain old
markets in the face of a trade war
between U.S., Japanese and
European capitalist monopolies,
has turned into a boomerang. It
has not only failed to restore
economic health through export
trade, but it has stimulated in-
flation-by rising prices of energy
and food and of all imported
commodities.

As the Communist Party
pointed out more than a year ago,
monopoly capital seeks a way out
of its crisis through massive un-
employment -and a stepped up
drive on the gains of the working
class. This goes together with a
well orchestrated campaign
against the trade union movement
and the working class, the aim

_ being to place the blame for the
crisis on them and thus absolve
the system of state-monopoly
capitalism from responsibility.

All of this makes it imperative
for the working class and the
trade unions.to work for an al-
liance of all democratic forces to
beat back this anti-working class
monopoly offensive and to ad-
vance new aims in the fightback
against the effects of the crisis. To
achieve this requires a systematic
exposure and isolation of right-
wing trade union and social-
reformist policies and leadership

_ Which stands in the way of united

action and against class struggle
policies. Their policies of de-

featism and despair can only end
in frustration and cynicism and,
eventually, abject surrender to
monopoly.

Fightback Diverted

The excellent fightback which
led to the ‘Day of Protest’’ on
Oct. 14, 1976, suffered a tempor-
ary setback when the Canadian
Labor Congress leadership be-
came involved in tripartite dis-
cussions with big business and
government. That departure from
the class struggle proved disastr-
ous and costly for the trade union
movement and the working class.
It gave the multi-national corpo-
rations the opportunity they were
looking for to go on a rampage of
revenge, including the imposition
of heavy fines on unions that
joined the Oct. 14 work stoppage.
Joining in this attack, the gov-
ernment advanced a three-point
program of its own to bolster the
anti-labor offensive by monopoly.

The working class answer to
this was expressed in a CLC cam-
paign for full employment. This
developed activity at the grass
roots which led to.adoption, by
the CLC’s 1978 convention in
Quebec City, of a fightback prog-
ram including a campaign for a
32-hour work week without re-
duction in take-home pay to be
undertaken by the Congress.

Implement Policy

Today, in the face of a militant
strike movement developing in
both the public and the private
sectors, the time has arrived to
implement CLC convention pol-
icy of full employment through a
shorter work week, along with an
effective wage policy to guarantee
the buying power of workers
wages. If inflation and mass un-
employment are to be effectively
dealt, with at the expense of
monopoly super-profits, which
are responsible for the economic
crisis in the first place, these two
aspects of the trade union
fightback cannot be separated.

To win this struggle for a re-
distribution of the national in-
come in favor of the working class

Ottawa goading labor
into big postal strike

OTTAWA — The federal gov-
ernment Sept. 21 completely ex-
posed itself as the engineer of a
major country-wide postal strike.

As 19,000 members of the Let-
ter Carriers Union of Canada
began the 12:00 midnight count-
down to launch Canada-wide
rotating strikes designed to bring
the government around to
negotiating a serious wage in-
crease, postal management was
showing its bad faith in busily

negotiating directly with its.

22,000 inside workers, members

of the Canadian Union of Postal.

Workers.

The LCUC, without an agree-
ment since June 30 this year, left
the door open to talks with
Canada Post right up to the mid-
night strike deadline. At issue is
the LCUC’s just demand for a 6%
wage increase, with COLA pro-
tection. The government refuses

to budge from its offer which
would mean an increase of only
3% in new money, and no real
COLA.

CUPW, without.an agreement
since June 30, 1977, was con-
fronted Sept. 20 with a country-
side series of meetings of Post
Office ‘supervisors and employ-
ees, with management using a
32-page pamphlet to directly
place its negotiating position be-
fore the workers, completely ig-
noring both the union, and a 1975
court decision which forbade
such action.

CUPW president Jean Claude
Parrot has charged management
with unfair labor practices and the
union has indicated it will not
cross LCUC picket lines. With
the presentation of a conciliation
board report Sept. 22, CUPW will
itself be in a legal strike position
Oct. 1.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 29, 1978—Page 4

Fightback demands |
leadership

and all working people at the ex-
pense of monopoly, requires un-
ited action by labor at every level,
in the work place, in the trade
union movement, in the working
class and in the broad democratic
movement. It requires unity at the
polls in civic, provincial and fed-
eral elections, to elect progressive
majorities including communists

to guarantee real change. Above ©

all, it calls for leadership and
coordination of the trade union
fightback on a country-wide scale
which the Canadian Labor Con-
gress is in the best position to pro-
vide.

The recent strike of Metro To-
ronto transit workers iliustrates
perféctly the various concrete as-
pects of the attack on workers’
buying power in the public sector.
A basic wage increase far below,
the current rate of inflation and
with no indexing to protect work-
ers in the face of future inflation
confronted these workers with:no
alternative but to strike. Where-
upon they find that even this
weapon of last resort is met by
state intervention to legislate the
strikers back to work.

Another case, this time in the
private monopoly sector, is the
predicament of workers
employed by the giant U.S.-based
Inco Metals Co. Ltd. at Sudbury

and Port Colborne. After decades -

of producing massive profits for
this mammoth corporation, these
workers have the threat of layoffs
dangling over their heads while
facing speedup and worsening
conditions on the job. In the
meantime inflation has eroded
their buying power while the
company remains adamently op-
posed to any monetary conces-
sions on its part.

To Inco the motto is maximum
profits to take out of the country,

while the workers producing;

those profits, the community and
the country as a whole can go to
hell. The answer must be a
country-wide mobilization of the
working class and all democratic
forces behind the struggle of these
workers to defeat the aims of this
giant monopoly in the interest,
not only of Inco employees, but
for the sake of living democracy
and the national interest.

—

unemployed last fail. Inthe face of mounting unem
5,000 jobless must pay back UIC ‘overpayments’.

TOUGH
ALL OVER,

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HALIFAX — An immediate
appeal with the Canadian Um-
pires Board (Federal Court
Judge) was launched Sept. 14
after a decision by the Halifax
District Board of Referees that

some 5,000 former unemploy-

ment insurance recipients have to
return the $1.5 million the
Unemployment Insurance Com-
Mission overpaid: them in 1977
because of its own computer er-
ror.

The Halifax Coalition For Full
Employment, and Dalhousie
Legal Aid Services made the
announcement immediately fol-
lowing the decision of the Board
of Referees came down. They
charged the board had ‘‘failed to
even consider’ the extensive
points made in theirjoint 100-page
brief presented to it Sept. 6.

“The board simply voiced the
Commission’s position that they
ought to have their money back’’,
the coalition said. ‘‘In disallowing
this appeal, the Board of Referees

_is perpetuating the same injustice

that the Commission is attempt-
ing to execute.”’

Gerald Yetman, President of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labor at a Halifax demonstration of the \
ploymentin that city, a UIC board of referees has ruled that

5,000 in Halifax must
pay for UIC bungling —

_people in Halifax, and anothel

VAS 11-77

A computer error by the UIC it
1977 resulted in some 5,

5,000 in Quebec receiving 3!
overpayment in their benefits fof
an average period of four weeks.
For the Halifax recipients, the
overpayment amounted to $1.>
million, which the UIC has de
manded they pay back to the
commission. The joint brief to thé
Board of Referees argued there
was nothing in the Unemploy-
ment Insurance Commission Att
to allow the UIC to reclaim
money. In fact the brief noted, the
act allows the UIC to cancel debts
a claimant may have with the
Commission where repayment
would result in undue hardship.
The brief also argued that
though the UIC could reconsidef
the value of someone’s claim fof
benefits within 36 months of thé
payment of these benefits, it h
no power to reconsider an errof
made by a computer. The coali-
tion and the legal services refused
to accept the validity of the 5,000
recipients being penalized fot
government inefficiency.

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