Six west coast unions in the
U.S, and Canada met in Portland,
Oregon on February 23 to dis-
cuss ways and means of uniting
in order to strengthen their posi-
tions in coming negotiations.

Unions invited to the meeting
* —One in a series held over the
Past two years — were the IWA,
Lumber and Sawmill Workers,
Association of Western Pulp and
Paper Workers, International
Longshoremen’s & Warehouse-
_men’s Union, Teamsters Union
and the Western Conference of
Printing Specialty Unions,

I,W,A, International President
A, F, Hartung, who serves as
Chairman of the inter-union com-
mittee, announced that invitations
to the meeting had been sent out
by J. R, Robertson, vice presi-
dent of the ILWU and co-ordina-
tor for the inter-union group,

Robertson suggested in his
letter that the main point on the
Meeting agenda should be:

“How each of the organizations
Can assist one another in con-
tract negotiations and any sub-
Sequent action that any of the
organizations takes to secure an
agreement,”

On the following day, Febru-
ary 24, members of the multi-
union committee attended the
annual convention of IWA West-
ern States Regional Council No.
8, where the main point taken up
was an IWA negotiating program
for 1966,

“This will be the first oppor-
tunity that the committee will
have to participate in such mat-

KEEP THIS DATE OPEN
MARCH 13th

For
Vancouver Celebration
INT'L WCMEN'S DAY

1:30 P.M.

GOLDEN HORSESHOE HALL
2786 East Hastings St.

Disagree With Critic

John Hope, Interior of B.C.,

Writes: With reference to the
letter in Open Forum of TheTrib
issue of February 4th from T.
Bardal criticizing Joe Wallace’s
Poetry and, in particular, his
Parable - like story of the mu-
Sician and the light-house keeper,

| suggest that Mr, Bardal is way
Off course,

First, as regards the poetry.
Mr. Bardal objects to the mean-
mg—or lack of this—he gets from
Certain of Wallace’s poems when

he reads them as if they were
Prose}, :

What he should think about
Perhaps is that poetry gives a
different quality to words by way
they are arranged, This some-
times includes rhyming, allitera-
tion and repetition,

When he starts talking about
+ «+ “a lot of so-called poetry
1S foisted on the innocent ()
Public, (innocent of what?) and
-cecepted as art though itisneith-
er...” and later... “but all
S00d poetry must make sense,”
aw he so lost his bearings that
nS is in need of more than one

Six west coast unions
hold parley on unity

ters, and it could well be the
most important meeting to be
held since the Co-ordinating
Committee was established over
two years ago,” Robertson’s
letter said.

All the unions will go into
major contract negotiations.
within a few weeks, affecting
many thousands of workers in the
western U,S, and B,C, In many
cases, each of the unions will
be negotiating with the same em-
ployers or industry associations,

B.C, coast locals of the IWA
were slated to meetin Vancouver
February 25-26 in a Wages and
Contract Conference to formulate
contract demands in the forest
industry. :

Back Little Mf.
for planetarium

An unknown Vancouver philan-
throphist has donated $1.5 mil-
lion for the construction of a
planetarium as a Vancouver Cen-

tennial project.
In contempt of the accepted

practice of “not looking a gift

horse in the mouth” Vancouver
City Council has entered into
battle with the Parks Board over
a site for the project.

Vancouver Parks Board, had
proposed such a project as a
city centennial project two years
ago and favors Queen Elizabeth
Park (Little Mountain) for the
planetarium while the City Coun-
cil want to stick it out in Kitsi-
lano.

The Vancouver Communist
Party supports the proposal of
the Parks Board and points out
that Queen Elizabeth Park is
centrally located in the citysoas
to be accessable to all school
children “as well as families,

The attitude of City Council,
says the C,P,, is typical of its
exclusive preoccupation with the
downtown and western regions of
Vancouver,

light-house to find his way out
of the reefs ahead!

To be fairly blunt about it I
would say that Mr, Bardal should
stop trying to decide what is
‘good’ or ‘bad’ poetry but try
to understand that if a person
uses ‘one of the many techniques
that are peculiar to poetry to
convey his attitude to some aspect
of the world around him, then he,
or she, has written a poem.
Whether Mr. Bardal—or I—like it
or not is another matter alto-

gether.

But let’s have lots more people
—again including Mr, Bardal and
myself—having a go at it!

Finally, for Mr. B, to pull to
pieces the really fine little alle-
gorical story about the light-
house keeper is rather absurd,
If he wants to pass on his knowl-
edge about the Icelandic people—
fine, Write such an article,

Meanwhile, his treatment of
this story resembles someone
breaking up, say, a watch and then
complaining that all he has are

pieces of brass and steel which:

don't tell the time,

nBN sa vais

Teamsters’ Hoffa calls for
higher level of labor unity

DETROIT — James Hoffa,
president of the Teamsters’ Un-
ion declared here he favored a
common expiration date for all
unions on contract in each city,
and for unions nationally in al-
lied industries,

This type of action, he said,
would make it possible for united
strike action to overcome court
decisions and anti-labor legisla-
tion.

Hoffa told a meeting here of
Teamster local leaders from 13
mid-western states that “if we
get anything from the U.S, Su-
preme Court and the National
Labor Relations Board, we get
bones and no meat, Weare worse
off in the American labor move-
ment in 1965 than we were in
1935,

*U.S, labor will have to follow
the example of foreign nations
where you see whole cities shut
down by labor, in political and
economic strikes to win their de-
mands,”

This latter comment was ob-
viously connected with the drive
the Teamsters are staging here
to unionize 250,000 state, county
and municipal workers who, be-
cause of recent legal amend-
ments, now can have union repre-
sentation,

Hoffa said the steel industry,
the building trades and the re-
tailers are areas where unions
can help each other to win de-
mands,

The steel industry, he said,
stores steel for six months in
anticipation of a strike, then
settles down to starve strikers
into submission, Taft-Hartley
restrictions on secondary boy-
cotts, he noted, prevent the
Teamsters from refusing to haul
the stored steel,

“They are forced to ignore our
picket lines and we have to ignore
theirs,” he added.

If contracts all expired at the
same time, he said, all unions
would have to be satisifed with
new contracts before workers
would return to their jobs,

He was asked, “Have you talked
this over with other labor
leaders?”

He replied that he had, and that

the :
LEGISLATURE
ae ne and

CKWX SUNDAYS

COMMUNIST PARTY’S
WEEKLY RADIO -
COMMENTARY

by NIGEL MORGAN

“As long as Steel is raiding Mine Mill, heads or tails, I win.”

most of them saw the value of a
common expiration date, but they
haven’t negotiated any, he said,
because “that blowhard Meany
is continually scuttling their
plans.”

Hoffa said that when George
Meany (AFL—CIO president)
learns that an affiliate wants a
joint expiration date with the
Teamsters, he threatens it,

Asked if he thought this talk of
city-wide and industry strikes
would scare Congress, Hoffa re-
plied, “What the hell are you
worried about scaring Congress
for? They pass every piece of
anti-labor legislation that comes
along,”

Hoffa cited as an example of
common expiration dates the uni-
form contract his union has with
truckers covering 600,000 Team-

sters, which unites teamsters on
a national scale, ending the form-
er four different regional con-
tracts,

Harold Gibbons, International
vice-president of the Teamsters,
said; “National contracts have
to become the No, 1 item on the
agenda of this union if we are
to live and grow,”

He and Hoffa said all Team-
ster locals will be urged to nego-
tiate national agreements with a’
similar expiration date. Then,
they said, they will strive tc

establish it in warehouse and
construction industries,

Gibbons is in charge of a
campaign to organize pro-
fessional athletes, with the De-
troit Lions football team, owned
by the Ford Motor Co,, asaprime
target.

Oshawa workers win
for Canadian labor

Through united action and a high

degree of solidarity, the workers of
Oshawa have won a resounding vic-
tory for all Canadian labor. Here is
how the Canadian Tribune editori-
ally greeted this development:

e

The settlement of the strike at
the Oshawa Times represents an-
other major victory for labor,

It is, first of all, a victory
for the 34 members of the Tor-
onto Newspaper Guild who went
out on strike, They have wonfor
themselves and 15 other edi-
torial, circulation, advertising,
business office and maintenance

workers: a $15-a-week increase ~

over a three-year agreement,
job protection against the intro-
duction of new equipment and new
processes, and a modified union
shop that requires all new em-
ployees to join the union,

It is a victory also for labor
solidarity, so vividly and effec-
tively exempiified in the support
given the strikers by the 15,000
members of the United Auto
Workers union in Oshawa,

The strike’s most important
result, however, was that it be-
came a rallying point for labor's
fight against the use of court
injunctions to prevent picketing.

By its open and massive de-
fiance of a boss-inspired law the

‘trade union movement compelled ~

the authorities to think twice
before trying to enforce it and
has thus placed the need for a
review of this and other anti-
labor laws squarely before the
government and the general pub-
lic,

The settlement of the Oshawa
strike by no means ends the mat-
ter, On the contrary, the fight
has really just begun, On the eve
of the strike’s end a conference
of 40 top trade union leaders
decided to launch a Canada-wide
campaign to eliminate the use of
injunctions against picketing, It

~also planned a mass demonstra-

tion at Queen’s Park to coincide
with the submission of a brief
on the subject,

These decisions of the trade
union leaders will be welcomed
by workers everywhere, The job
now is to carry these decisions
out,

In Oshawa labor won an im-
portant battle against injunc-
tions — but only a battle, It
must now muster its forces to
win the war, :

_ February 25 1966—PACIFIC TRIBL