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A real-life horror
story every day at
Canada Manpower

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By YVES LOZON

WINDSOR — Patrons are lin-
ing up at the Capitol to see The
Exorcist. It is only one p.m. but
two city cops are on hand _ to
handle the jostling queue. Sick-
ening horror is what they .want,
sickening horror is what they'll
get.

They should have kept their
money and walked west a few
blocks along University Avenue
to the office of Canada Man-
power.

Real-life horror — if you look
beyond the glass-and-stainless-
steel public relations front — is
freely available there.

Hard-hit Windsor’s labor force
— 3,500 is the current estimated
industrial unemployment here
with a promise of more to
come — is faced with the hard-
ship of two extremes: the in-
ability to fill a number of vacan-
cies in some trades due to gov-
ernment educational myopia,
and minimum-wage sweathshop,
unionless employment . . . for
the “lucky” ones.

You could, for instance, strip
and wax the floors of a West
Side church for two and a half
bucks a hour.

Or how about a position of
Hand Cutter—Manpower Order
No. 3-6651 — for which you
don’t need any _ experience?
“Must speak some English —
but mainly European languages
are spoken — Hungarian and
Czech. Cutting buttons and zip-
pers off of material. Cutting
material into square _ shape,
grade material.” Two bucks an
hour. <

By RICHARD ORLANDINI

HAMILTON—A cost-of-living
clause based on a one cent hour-
ly raise for every 0.3% increase
in the cost, of living has become
a major issue in the strike by
1,200 production employees
against the Firestone Tire and
Rubber Company.

To win their demand for the
cost-of-living clause and their

other demands, the picketers at.

the main plant and at the two
warehouses have become a well-
disciplined and close-knit unit.
Picket captains maintain very
tight control over the operations
of all the lines and the dicipline
manifested itself when the Trib-
une asked several picketers

‘about the strike and was told

“we don’t make comments to
the press, if you want to know
anything you'll have to go to
the union headquarters for a
comment.” At the headquarters,
Officials of the striking United
Rubber Workers of America
told the Tribune that the disci-
pline was necessary because,
“We're settling in for a long
strike and we feel that it’s best
to establish discipline as early
as possible.”

=e MAGS ial

Order No. 2-130 will have you
wear a uniform at two bucks
an hour as a rented cop. Not
only will you have to be finger-
printed by the OPP, but you
also “must have a clear back-
ground.”

Manpower’s Job Bank — very
comfy booths with three-ring
binders holding job orders by
categories and flanked by an in-
teresting labor library — is even
offering restaurant jobs at $1.85
an hour, Order No. 2-7748, and
$1.80 an hour, Order No. 2-7000,
provided you have your own
uniform and speak Italian.

Manpower also offers so-cal-
led “babysitting” jobs .at cri-
minally low rates of pay, with
job descriptions generally in-
cluding tasks performed by
household workers known even
today as domestic servants.

Here are some of the worst
examples of inhuman exploita-
tion offered by our very own
“national” placement service:

Order 2-601, babysitter, cook
meals for three kids aged 2, 3
and 5... . Sixty-six cents an
hour.

Order 2-263, babysitter, to
look after three kids, ‘some
light housekeeping,” ‘must be
experienced,” all for $25 a week.
But wait: there is a bonus added
each week ... $5.

Sixty-two cents an hour is
what you would get if you let
Manpower’s Order No. 2-805

send you to this West side priv-
ate home to feed and watch four
pre-schoolers.

If you are a die-hard philan-
thropist Manpower Job Bank

The union officials are talking
of a long strike because the
company is, to date at least, re-

fusing to negotiate. The Fire- .

stone Co. appears to be most
concerned over the demand for
the cost-of-living clause, which
if won, will be the toughest in
Canada. And not only would the
winning of: the clause be a pat-
tern setter for other unions in
Canada but it would also open
up the possibility of the U.S.
membership of the United Rub-
ber Workers, who have yet to

win a cost-of-living clause, de- _

manding a COLA in their next
round of negotiations.

At the headquarters, some of
the strikers were willing to talk
about their demands and none
of these interviewed showed any
hesitation in pointing out that,
“We'll stay out as long as we
have to. We have to win that
clause because prices are going
up so fast we can’t keep up with
them without the clause.”

The picketers on their one-
hour tour of duty are reinforced
by pensioners who come out to
walk the line. Many of the pen-
sioners on the line remember
the 1952 strike when the ‘local

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1974—PAGE 6

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has a real live one for you:
Orded 2-802 will let you look
after two boys aged 9 and 11 if
you provide your own transpor-
tation to and from the private
home located 12 miles from
here .. . for 57 cents an hour!

The new employment stand-
ards made effective Jan. 1, 1974
by Fern Guindon, Ontario Min-
ister of Labor provide a $2.00 an
hour minimum wage rate for
general labor.

By the samé stroke of the pen
the Honorable Fern Guindon has
condemned to the most brutal
exploitation the so-called domes-
tic servants and the farm work-
ers ... . with certain exceptions.

“I was just following orders,”
could. also claim Guindon with
some justification. The Ontario
Human Rights Code itself has a
gaping loop-hole as evidenced
in article (8) of Section 4: “This
section does not apply to a do-
mestic employed or to be em-
ployed in a single family resi-
dence.”

The section referred to deals
with discrimination in employ-
ment because of race, creed,
color, age, sex, marital status,
nationality and place of origin.

An Ontario Department of
Labor Women’s Bureau publica-
tion says: “Housekeeping knowl-
edge is almost innate in mature
women and it follows that a
woman who has kept her own
house well and_ successfully
raised a family has gained all
the attributes required by a full-
times domestic.”

At fifty-seven cents an hour?

went out for 17 weeks to win
the first non-contributory pen-
sion plan in Canada. This year
they are walking the line for a
one dollar increase for every
year worked in the plant.

Other demands being made by
the union include a substantial
hourly pay increase, voluntary
overtime, a dental plan, and one
of the country’s largest Supple-
mentary Unemployment Benefit
programs.

Leo Orourke, president of the
striking Local 113, said that it
was a low-key strike and another
striker backed up his statement
saying “We are not in this to
win headlines — we're in it to
win what it takes to keep a

family going.”

In spite of the low-key ap-
proach the union has received
messages of support from other
unions throughout the area, in-
cluding the striking United Elec-
trical Workers and from the
large United Steel Workers Lo-
cal 1005 in Hamilton and “just
as importantly,” said Orourke,

we have a good and solid mem-
bership who are determined to
win this thing. And they will
win.” °

Heath is gone. Wilson is back.
The. struggle of the British
working class which brought the
Tories down, now goes on to
compel the new Labour govern-
ment to-~act decisively to meet
the urgent needs of the -people
of Great Britain.

As the government changed,
Britain’s largest union declared
that the deep national crisis
could only be overcome by a
Labour government acting with
the full co-operation of the trade
union movement,

The Transport and General
Workers’ Union called for im-
mediate implementation of
seven measures:

1. The settlement of the min-
ers’ claim and the restoration of
full normal working in industry.

2. The repeal of the Industrial
Relations Act under which the

Tories sought to imprison the

unions in a strait-jacket.

3, Repeal of the Housing Fin-
ance Act which has taken the
control of public housing rentals
out of the hands of the local
authorities, and opened the way
for brutal rent-gouging.

_ 4, Immediate increases in pen-
sions.

5. A program of direct price
control in the shops and control
of housing costs and mortgage
interest rates.

6. The commencement of re-
negotiation of the terms of
British entry into the European
Common Market preparatory to
a referendum.

7. Restoration of independent
collective bargaining alongside
the development of a compre-
hensive system of voluntary
conciliation and arbitration.

Commenting of the ‘valuable
points” made by the Transport
and General Workers’, and edi-
torial in the Morning Star says:

“But, in addition, financial
measures will also have to be
taken to deal with the balance
of payments problem.

“Like the Tories and Liberals,

Labour leaders said during the
election campaign that they
would go to the international
financiers for a loan of £3,000-
million or more ($7.2-billion) .

“It would be fatal to do, since
this would only put the-country
in pawn, and involve a heavy
price in the form of the condi-
tions which would be imposed.

“Instead, some of the invest-
ments which big business firms
have made abroad be sold, to
get the country out of debt and
enable a new start to be made,
with an end to overseas military
spending and cuts in the exports
of capital. <

“The transport workers’ state-
ment does not refer to the ques-
tion of public ownership, on
which important, though limited
decisions were taken by the
Labour Party conference.

“It is a matter of especial ur-

“gency that North and Celtic Sea

oil and gas should be taken over
without delay as part of an in-
tegrated energy policy.”

The editorial went on to call
for not just controls, but roll-
backs in the price of food, and
for big increases in taxation on
the rich. It concluded:

“The fact that will be a gov-
ernment based on a minority in
parliament makes the struggle
of the people outside parliament
more important than ever to
support the government against
its enemies and to press on it

policies which are in the inter-
ests of people.” 4
Commenting on the British ©

election for the Soviet news
agency APN, Spartak Beglov

after : noting the failure of
Heath’s campaign around the
“Communist menace,” makes
the point that the foreign policy —
aspects of the election campaign
“also provide grounds for defi-
nite conclusions.

‘It is aboslutely clear that
London’s_ so-called ‘European
policy’ added fuel to the fire of
internal economic disorders. The
first year of Britain’s member-
ship in the common market, far
from weakening, has only wor-
sened the crisis factors in the
economy. The benefits derived
from participation in the com-
mon market by capital-export-
large companies turned into a
double disadvantage for ordin-
ary British people. The sluices
of inflation’ opened yet wider.
The growth of prices began to
be stimulated even more strong-
ly by factors that are not subject
to national control, the ‘floating
qualities’ of the pound sterling,
proved lower than those of
other ‘floating’ capitalist curren- |
cies: .:.

“Only by joining efforts can
the European countries with dif- |
ferent social and political sys-
tems establish co-operation in
all fields and lay the basis for
security and peace correspond-
ing to the realities of today. In-
dulgence in bloc-building in new,
closed ‘Atlantic’ or West Euro-
pean forms is increasingly turn-
ing against the national inter-
ests of each West European
country, against the realities of
all-European cooperation.

“This is only one of the con-
clusions prompted by the elec-
tions in Britain, but it is a con-
clusion of no small importance.”

Communists poll

32,771 votes

candidates run-
ning in 44 ridings in the recent
British election polled 32,771
votes. This compares with 38,431
votes in the last general election
in 1970, but. at that time the
Communist Party of Great Bri-
tain fielded 14 more candidates.

The Morning Star points out:
“the electoral system had an ef-
fect on the Communist vote in
an election in which the more
committed labor movement vot-
ers chose Labor. Many would
prefer Communists in parlia--
ment, as they do in industry.”

Underlining this point, the
paper reports that in the month
of February during the campaign —
600 men and women applied to
join the Communist Party.

Substantial .votes were secul-
ed by several Communist candi-
dates, Jimmy Reid who led the
Upper Clyde shipbuilders in their
memorable struggle against the
closing of the yards, rolled up
5,298 votes in Central Dumbar-~
tonshire. In nearby Central Fife,
Alex Maxwell secured 2,019. In
five other constituencies Com-
munists won over 1,000 votes —
Aberdare, Dagenham, Mother-
well, Rhondda, and_ Stepney.

Communist