A PROGRAM FC

By J. B. SALSBERG

T= elections are over, Canadian unions are turning

their eyes towards the 1949 conventions of the two
trade union congresses in September and October. This
is a good time for labor to take stock; to look back
soberly on events since the 1948 conventions; to learn
lessons from them; to examine developing trends and to
map a course of action to meet the needs of “working
people,

Without such a careful evaluation of
pened and what is going to happen,
ceed blindly into the future. Alarming
They are more’ alarming and much
workers think.

These dangers concern your job, your family, your
hard-won rights as a union member and the future of
your union. You and your workmates should, therefore,
give the questions raised here careful consideration. At
any rate you will certainly be better able to form opin-
ions and to help your union make policies after examin-

ing the facts and proposals below than you otherwise
would be.

& has Liberal party won a Sweeping victory. The im-
mediate hopes of the Tories lies shattered. The CCF

what has. hap-
the unions will pro-
dangers lurk ahead.

closer than many

suffered a serious setback. The Labor-Progressive Party *.

failed to make any electoral advance. Hundreds of thous-
ands undoubtedly voted Liberal to defeat the dreaded
Drew-Duplessis Tory alliance.

But is also evident that the CCF leaders contributed
to the Liberal victory and to their Own setback. The
Coldwell-Lewis leadership went along with St. Laurent
and Drew on the Marshall plan, which is already be-
ginning to explode in the faces of the people of Western
Europe, and which threatens your job. They joined the
Liberals and Tories in voting for the Atlantic pact, which
is a Wall Street plan for war and not for peace, The
CCF leaders also took the anti-Communist, red-baiting
line of the big business politicians, They tried to outdo
Drew and St. Laurent in red-baiting. They spent weeks
of their campaign praising St. Laurent and made sure
that no one' would mistake their intentions of “only
winning a few more seats.”

So the Liberals won, and make no mistake, it is
a big business government that is in power. Despite its
deceit and reckless promises, it is the government which
tied Canada to the foreign policy of Wall Street. Be-
Cause of its hatred of socialism it joined the Marshall
planners in refusal to trade with the IUSSR, China and
the countries of the new People’s Democracy, even though
this is beginning to paralyze our economy and bring
layoffs and short time to. Canadian workers.

It enacted a federal labor code against which the
labor movement is up in arms. It carries on a cruel and
violent strikebreaking campaign against the union of
the Canadian seamen, Corporation lawyer St. Laurent
serves big business well indeed.

That top CCF leaders removed the differences be-
tween them and the old-lire parties on these major is-
Sus, and the fact that their red-baiting led them to out-
right union-splitting, also affected the elections in Nova
Scotia and British Columbia. Coldwell’s attack on the
Canadian Seamen’s Union leadership in the middle of
the strike demoralized Nova Scotia miners, steelworkers
and others. The CCF lost votes there and barely elected
its two sitting provincial members. The CCF leaders’
union-splitting in B.C. led to similar results. In both
cases the parties of big business won and swept many
workers into their net. The right-wing CCF leadership
temporarily arrested the movement of the working people
&way from the old-line parties,

Labor will face hostile governments in the coming
four or five years.

who carry red-baiting into the unions; who raid other

: betray unions because of the political
beliefs of their leaders; or those who suspend mem-
bers, leaders, or unions because of what those work-
ers or unions believe in or advocate, are playing the

Trade union unity is needed now more than ever
if labor is to defend itself against the big business
= of St. Laurent in Ottawa, Duplessis in
Quebec and Frost in Ontario, the two main industrial

J OBS are becoming scarce. Layoffs are‘spreading. About
a quarter’ of a million workers are unemployed. That
number will rise drastically in the fall. Lumber workers
are idle. Ford laid off those employed on export cars. .
Inco fired 1,000 miners in Sudbury, with more to follow.
Massey-Harris laid off hundreds who were producing
tractors.
The shorter work week is re-appearing in the textile
and rubber industries, and others are to follow their
example. ' =
- Tied to Wall Street by Liberals, Tories, and CCF
leaders, Canada is being dragged deep into the unemploy-
ment and economic crisis which is spreading out from
the U.S. — this at a time when the world needs every-
thing we can produce. The Soviet Union, Poland, Czecho-
slovakia and other people’s governments in Europe, as
well as the government of liberated China, are anxious
to buy our cars, trucks, tractors, tires, electrical] equip-

i

'

‘ ganized they opposed capitalist wars,

protect our way of life.”
men repeat that stuff. It is poison whether peddled by
Coldwell or by a certain
out of the police for being in league with a den of thieves
on the force, '

ment, railroad stock and food. Yet such is the mad logic
of the government’s pro-Wall Street and CCF-approved
prefer to see industry slow down
and workers without jobs, rather than do business with

policy that our rulers

non-capitalist countries! -

The big shots have plenty of reserves to pay divi-

But working people and their
families will suffer. That is a small “sacrifice” to make

from the big shots’ viewpoint, You, not they, ‘will be

dends when crisis comes,

the sacrifice. :

But it isn’t only markets in anti-imperialist countries ©
that are being sacrificed. We are also losing the British,
South African and Latin American markets.

Australian,

These countries have no American dollars, and the U.S.
millionaires who run the Marshall plan deny them the
right to arrange bilateral (two-way) trade treaties. As
for the European countries who receive Marshall “aid,”

they may not buy from us anything of which the U.S.
declares it has a surplus,

Yet only a year ago, at the CCL convention, Mosher,
Conroy and Cotterill raved against those who opposed the
Marshall plan. How ridiculous those right-wing CCF
labor chiefs look in the face of Yankee opposition to
the British-Argentina trade treaty, Washington’s drive
to force Britain to devalue the pound, Wall Street’s drive
to revive German monopolies, and the loss of jobs which
this “plan” is causing in Canada! And how quickly the
predictions of the Communists about the consequences
of all this came true! The predictions of the Communists
Asually do come true. That’s one reason why the bosses
stir up anti-Communist hysteria — to hide the conse-
quences of their policies,

There are other basic reasons why jobs are becoming
scarce. Another economic crisis looms. You should know
that economic crises are inherent in the capitalist system
of production. They come as a result of the drive for
profits, the accumulation of huge piles,of capital created
by the unpaid labor of the workers and on which the
boss must constantly make further profit — without the
slightest concern for the consuming power of the work-
ers, which always declines as capital grows in size.

The result of this mad race for profit is a reduction
of purchasing power, a decline in .consumption, a piling
up of the things produced. This leads to, layoffs and

_ further shrinking of buying power and a deepening of
the crisis. Today profits are still climbing to dizzy
heights; our living costs are now the highest on record,
while our purchasing power declines.

. Such are the “normal” capitalist developments leading
to crisis. But the Liberal-Tory-CCF foreign policy hastens
and worsens the crisis. It narrows down export markets
and rejects socialist markets. The “cold war” already
‘has robbed thousands of Canadians of their jobs and is
threatening yours also. Canadians could have more jobs
if the people compelled the government to divorce our
country from Wall Street’s policy of world domination
and to embark instead on an independent Canadian policy
based on peace and the economic needs of our people.

The issues around the Marshall plan and the Atlantic
pact are closely related to your most personal problems.
They affect your job, the wellbeing of millions like you,
the prosperity of the country. Labor’s future is at stake

in our foreign policy, _ :

In the fight for jobs, the struggle against layoffs
and short time and other ravages of crisis, Canadian
workers and their unions must unite to ‘win higher
wages (purchasing power), a universal 40-hour week

‘ (for more jobs), defeat speed-up systems, a 50 percent
increase in unemployment insurance, welfare bene-
fits (sick, hospital and retirement funds, etc.) and
a change in our foreign policy so that the markets

of the non-capitalist half of the world may be opened
for us. : a

seat working class bears the torch of democracy in
the world. It is also the staunchest fighter for peace.
This is understandable. Workers in the
tries are the oppressed class.

They have to battle for every right, for the right to
vote, for the right to form unions, to run for public of-
fice. The workers have also learned that securing their
own democratic rights: is inseparable from the growth
of democracy elsewhere, That is more true today, when
capitalism is dying and gives birth to violent -fascism,
than ever in the past. ‘ 4

From the time modern industria] workers first or-
They recognized
that only capitalists, munition makers and bankers, profit
from such wars. The working people suffer. Labor under-
stood that the people of another country are not their
enemies but their friends. There is such a thing as work-
ing class attitude to capitalist wars. Today such a mili-
tant working class opposition to war is more necessary
than ever.

Only four years since the most ‘destructive of wars—
the anti-fascist war—the warmakers prepare openly for
another war of unparalleled horror. That is something
that unions should be concerned With, yifos

Yet there are union leaders who repeat every war-
inciting word of Wall Street. American imperialists go
out of their way to win “labor leaders” as their cham-
pions among the workers, and they do find such charac-

capitalist coun-

ters just as the Kaiser, the Tsar and other rulers found
them in the First World War. Even Hitler and Mussolini
found labor “spokesmen.”

Why should Canadian workers swallow the war line

of our ruling class? They don’t take boss advice about
joining a union, about wage demands or the laws they
want, what political
boss advice about foreign policy,

party to support. Then why take
about war or peace?
You are told “we must prepare to fight Russia to

What nonsense! And “labor”

“labor leader” who was kicked

: ‘

we aap
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 5, 1949—PAGE ”

Reason this out for yourself. The Sov
China, “Poland and other non-capitalist
no bankers, no munition kings, no profi
fore, no class that profits from war. The
ments of workers and farmers, The P
banks, mines and factories. These countries!
in the last war. They are now building 47
society from their ruins. No, our heroi
day, the countries governed by workers
do not threaten us with war. They fight

It is the imperialists, led by Wall St
of their own and other people, the dan
bomb, who threaten the world with ¢a
They fear unions and the ever-widening
world in which ‘people are going forward
crisisless, socialist future. :

Their rage against this free half of
them to Marshall plans and Atlantic wat
pass the United Nations. They have ™0?
sought escape from economic crises by lau?

“But,” you may be told, “isn’t Bi
Isn’t Spaak of Belgium a ‘socialist’? TH!
Same thing as Truman, St. Laurent and C

They do, and that raises suspicion. Ask he
of China, Israel, Malaya, or Indonesia a4

fake Dutch socialists. There are Jaborites at
who serve their own imperialists and fight
and “fellow socialists” of the oppressed ¢
They are not really socialists and Bes
unionists.. They try to smash strikes of Brit’
tralian workers right now. Fact that such ft
repeat what the Wall Streeters, st. Lauretl
Say only condemns them. ot]
Canadian labor cannot agree to strene.
neo-fascist governments of . Greece and : |
despots in Iran and French Indo-China
Chiang Kai-shek; Nazis in Germany, Arabi ie
other such scoundrels. That would mean ee
cism, would be helping to destroy demoe' :
and ultimately at home. Canadian worker of
the workers’ and people’s governments W?
democracy, socialism... Canadian labor ™
oppressed nations who fight for freedom ai
ism. By doing that we strengthen freedom * (iq)
,. What's wrong in demanding an indent
dian peace policy which the enemies of P&™
most made a crime? : }
'_ Isn’t it clear that the unions must
‘fight against war and stop taking boss
life and death of the Canadian people? (|
oppose attempts to scuttle the UN help

in

_ Here’s the at

Wir a gan& of fat-salaried buroctals
asking, “What now >” This articles °
is the answer. It says the rank-and-fte

. Fight against layoffs. ie
- Wage levels to protect purchasing P?
Universal 40-hour week to prov! f
- 50 percent increase in unemplo!
payments to extend for entire pe!
ment; provide coverage for lumber
dustries.

5. Government works projects to prov
Open trade with USSR, People's

hina.

AWHONN

Sy

{ ' Ree,
_¥es. But through the UN not the Mé

Labor should lead the nation in a fight £7!
against the enemies of democracy abel

Cun unions face a shocking menae i
our borders. A dangerous combination
forces is pressing its way in our unlone be
union officials, vetoes the will of the rami’ s ¢e
vokes strikes and then institutes a Bere and
connives to, remove elected union office wllisy
them with “labor” tools. It conspires to 7 the
of congress conventions and intervenes i2 as
fairs of the congresses, pion
If this is not checked, Canadian ene”
robbed of their most elementary rights: cig?
sresses will become rubber stamps of fo? be
the national rights of Canadian unions W re
It must never be allowed to happen. f viol?
This sinister combination consists s “g
labor industrialists, the Canadian and cription,
and the bosses of the AFL, A full dese? yet
they operate against decisions of Candie ples
be an eye-opener. We offer one or two ns
the ugly situation. -pecia ne
The pattern of attack is modelled try #2
ada, which is the only sovereign magi hae
without a completely independent, nat was Fl
ment. The development of our country are read
most of Canada’s organized workers 9° ——
unions of another country—the U.S. stepPe
Since the war U.S. imperialism as Cll
drive through the Truman doctrine, ete
Atlantic pact to control the life of
entered its orbit. The capitalist class |
fearing socialism, gladly surrendered