OR FRONT

By WILLIAM KASHTAN

This past year has been a rather turbulent anq difficult
one for the trade union movement.

The decline in membership which set in a few years ago
still continues, a fact which anti-labor elements have seized
upon to point to growing weaknesses and
isolation of the trade union movement.

Jurisdictional squabbles and raiding
continue to afflict the trade union move-
ment ang this too is being seized upon by
anti-labor elements to press more vigor-
ously for legislation directed to curbing
the democratic rights of the workers and
their unions.

Injunctions are increasingly kéine
made use of by employers in their drive
to smash strikes and break unions.

* * *

As against these negative features the workers are learn-
ing through bitter experience that to maintain their positions
and advance them they need to strengthen their unity and soli-
darity all down the line.

After much talk and little action the trade union move-
ment is beginning to face up to the need to organize the un-
organized, and to pay particular attention to the organization
_ of the white co]lar workers.

A growing body of trade unions have expressed them-
selves in favor of reduced hours of work with no reduction
in take-home pay, and one or two have begun to fight for it.

There is now wider acceptance of the need for Canadian
trade union autonomy. The movement for ang around it is
bound to take on wider scope in the coming year.

Despite opposition in some trade union quarters the

- movement toward independent labor political action express-
ed in affiliation to ang electoral support of the New Democra-

tic Party has begun to take on flesh and blood.
i * * *

The year ahead promises to be even more turbulent and
perhaps more difficult. But given the maximum of unity and
solidarity, backed by militant policies, the trade union move-
ment is in a position to move ahead and begin to curb the
power of monoply.

Now that the government is establishing a National Ec-
onomic Development Board the trade union movement ought
to press to have its representatives on it and advance its own
independent policies, policies directed to expanding the eco-
nomy and strengthening the independence of the country,
while opposing with might and main any effort by monopoly
to curb its right to strike and to organize or to impose wage

restraints on the working class.

A united drive to increase wages and reduce hours of
work, to organize the unorganized and advance labor’s politi-

cal aims

in what promises to be another election year, to

campaign against nuclear arms in Canada or for the armed

forces —

these ought to be at the centre of attention of the
trade union movement in 1963.

Dief’s ‘Xmas surprise’
for civil servants

By FED. CIVIL SERVANT

On Dec. 10th, obviously caught
up in the spirit of the holiday
season, Prime Minister -Diefen-
baker issued a sweeping state-
ment that the infamous wage-
freeze against civil servants was
being lifted.

However much it was greeted
with justifiable skepticism by the
rank and file civil servant, it
was a holiday gift that was wel-
come and long overdue. But any
hopes for satisfaction soon went
the way of other Diefenbaker
“Now You See and Now You
Don’t’? promises.

The tinsel and fancy wrap once
removed revealed further ex-
amples of Tory sham, bankruptcy
and blatant deception.

The brick took the form of
many heavily exploited classifi-
cations having failed to get any-
thing at all. Such classifications
as nursing orderlies, maids, nurs-
ing aids, cleaners, clerks, typists,
etc., ad infinitum, soon discover-
ed that the only ones to receive:
the Tory crumbs were the pro-
fessional and key administrative
classifications.

In effect ‘‘Scrooge’’ Diefen-
baker split the civil servant
ranks smack down the middle,
buying off the higher echelon
classifications for a grateful Tory
vote, and leaving those least in-

clined to return a bankrupt Tory
administration irregardless, out
in the cold with empty pockets. —

The gravity of the deception

against Canada’s second class _

citizens was given further aid by
their own opportunist right-wing
leadership. Those paper-mouthed
advocates of “good employee-
employer relations at all costs,”’
soon revealed their reactionary
colours ag betrayers of the rank
and file civil servant.

Knowing in many cases as
much as seven months ago, by
their own admission, of the fur-
ther injustice Diefenbaker was
about to commit against their
membership, they withheld this
information, preventing any de-
mand or plan from below for
militant action.

This aiding and abetting by the
reactionary civil servant repre-
sentatives is inexcusable.

Many civil servants have drawn
the appropriate lessons from this
experience, and from the exper-
iences of the rest of the labor
movement, by increasingly voic-
ing the demand that reactionary
opportunist leadership be re-
placed with progressive leader-
ship, and that policies of endless
compromise and capitulation be
replaced with militant policies
that rally the rank and file in
the fight for their interests.

Once again is offered fresh
proof that civil servants need and
want have the right to strike
and the right of collective bar-
gaining, along with the rest of
the labor movement.

ee

VETERAN LOGGERS ACT TO:

Rescind board's
OK’ing overtime work

A demand for the Board of In-
dustrial Relations to rescind its
recently granted order extending
overtime work was made last
week in a leaflet widely circulat-
ed in the woodworking industry
by the Victory Square (Loggers)
Club of the Communist Party.

The hardhitting leaflet stated:
“The recent order of the B.C.
Board of Industrial Relations,
which will allow the logging
operators to compel their crews
to work 44 hours or more, with-
out having to obtain a permit,
turns back the clock 25 years!

“Tt torpedoes the 40-hour week,
established for many years in
this and other industries, and at
a time when labor is campaign-

- ing for a shorter statutory work-

ing week to meet rising unem-
ployment. Longer hours have
never resolved the problem of
take-home pay!”’

The leaflet then pointed out ~

that the extension of hours would:

e Strengthen the employer’s
hand. in compelling employees to
abandon the established 8-hour
day and the right to refuse (ex-
cept in cases of emergency) to
work overtime;

® Make the hours of work
clause established in the union’s
collective agreement meaning-

less and useless;

® Increase the accident danger
in an extremely hazardous _in-
dustry; :

e Set back labor’s present
battle for establishment of the
35-hour week.

There was no need to put up
with this kind of thing, it stated,
and added that ‘‘no one wants to
work hevond the normal working

order

hours today when hundreds of
our brothers are without employ-
ment.

“What we need is not extension,
but the reduction of
hours!’’

The leaflet closed with an ap-
peal to write to all MLA’s and
also to the Board of Industrial
Relations.

working

Ease world tensions

Cont’d from pg. 1
constructive endeavor this
earth.”

Khrushchev said in his message
to German Democratic Republic
leader Walter Ulbricht that a
German peace treaty and normal-

on

ization of the Berlin situation are.

“completely necessary and not to
be postponed.”’

Also, in a message to Cuban
Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the
Soviet leader said the settlement
of the Cuban crisis was a moral
and political victory and recalled
that the United States had as-
sumed a commitment not to at-
tack Cuba and to restrain its
allies in the Western Hemisphere
from doing so.

In a New Year’s message to
> Canadians, Governor - General

Vanier said ‘‘The tensions of the
world in recent years make us
mindful as never before of the
necessity for understanding
among nations.”

COLD WAR IN TRADE

The Japanese Foreign Min-
ister told a press conférence
in Tokyo recently that both
NATO and the U.S. had put
pressure on Japan to stop the
export to the Soviet Union of
large-diameter pipes for oil
lines.

Obviously the hand of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
ization reaches into the Pac-
ific as well, when. fighting
the cold war is concerned.

Boundary settlements
highlight China year-end ©

By BERT WHYTE
PT Correspondent

PEKING — Signing of the Sino-
Mongolian boundary treaty and
reaching agreement in principle
on the Sino-Pakistan border
highlighted political activities in
Peking during the last week of
1962, while the arrival of Ceylo-
nese Premier Bandaranaike,
spokesman for the Colombo con-
ference ushered in the New Year

2 Year and rais-
ed hopes that
the Sino-Indian
border dispute
will be resolv-
ed in the near
future.

Both Mongo-
lian Premier
Tsedenbal who
paid a whirl-
wind three- Sait visit to Peking
to sign the treaty, and Premier
Chou En-lai hailed the final fix-
ing of the Mongolian-Chinese
boundary line stretching over
2,400 miles as a contribution to

the further development of friend-
ly relations between the two
‘countries. At a mass rally of
10,000 people in the Great Hall of
the People Premier Tsedenbal
outlined Mongolia’s stand on key
questions of our time:

“To save mankind once and
for all from the fearful catas-
trophe of thermonuclear war and
to cast away war ag a means for
settling international disputes,
the Soviet Union and other social-
ist countries have been unswerv-
ingly and perserveringly carry-
ing out a peace policy aimed at
preventing world war, ensuring
peaceful coexistence between
countries and different social
systems and the realization of
general and complete disarma-
ment.

“This can be seen in the case
of the recent crisis in the Carib-
bean region. When the frantic
U.S. imperialists, attempting to
strangle the Cuban revolution by
force, had decided, with swords

— Algemeen Tandelsblad, Amsterdam

“Of course independence — but they must first learn
to stand on their own feet.”

' Jan. 4, 1963—PACIFIC PRIBUNE—Page 2

- tries

in hand, to attack free socialist

Cuba, thus posing the direct
threat of world thermonuclear
war, the leaders of the Soviet

Union, in co-operation with the
leaders of the Republic of Cuba

- and relying on the ardent sup-

port of the peoples of the world,
took resolute and flexible action
and removed the catastrophic
danger then hovering over all
mankind.

“This outcome of the Carib-
bean region event is a great vic-
tory for the peace policy of the
whole socialist camp, for the
policy of peaceful coexistence.

“The development of the Cuban
event shows once again that it
is possible and necessary to
make wise compromises in our
policies after objectively consi-
dering the whole situation and
the specific condition in inter-
national life.”’

On the Sino-Indian border dis-
pute Premier Tsedenbal said:

“We welcome and support the
initiative taken by China of
unilaterally ceasing fire and with
drawing its frontier guards. We
deem that the boundary question
which hag led to the extremely
undesirable deterioration in the
relations between the two coun-
should be settled only by
peaceful mean—that is, through
negotiations .. .”’

SPECIAL
SUPPLEMENT

This week the PT brings its
readers a_ special two-page
supplement dealing with the
views of the Canadian Com-
munists on the differences in
the world Communist move-
ment. .

This important statement in
the form of a letter to the
membership by the National
Executive Committee deals
with a vital subject on which
we felt all our readers should
be informed. .

ict aS alates aend eek ert tae tei cel ills

ii il