He tia lige atietat oa acilidace aeitealineneinaleden akan

Pie ae pico mamante

®

At last -- a new library

This year Vancouver citizens will see the consummation of their long fight for adequate library.
facilities when their new $2 million library goes up at the corner of Burrard and Robson. The old
library at Hastings and Main will remain as the civic eyesore it has been ever since it was built, but
the new building, as this model shows, will be one of the most modern in the country.

By WILLIAM KASHTAN

Gov't must be

‘reminded of

Unemployment Insurance vow

es the Speech from the Throne,

the government promised
amendments to the Unemploy-
ment Insurance Act to bring it
into line with present day needs.

As it is now, benefits cover less
than 80 percent of those work-
ing. Benefits are totally inade-
quate and force the unemployed
to exist on starvation rations. The
waiting period is too long, the
benefit period too short, and red
tape plagues the whole operation
of the act.

For these reasons the trade
union movement thas been active-
ly pressing for the amendments.

There is almost complete un-
animity on the need to include
all working people. There is
agreement that benefits be con-
tinued until gainful employment
is available with particular in-
sistence on the need to substanti-
ally increase the actual benefits.

Some unions have demanded a
50 percent increase; others that
benefits be based on 75 to 85 per-
cent of a person’s earnings. Some
demand that benefits be raised to
$40 per week.

These demands are receiving
the cold shoulder. Some of the
proposals the government is -re-
ported. to have worked out are
not at all in line with labor's re-
quests and are highly objection-
able. :

If this is so, the entire labor
movement needs to be alerted
and rallied to ‘exert maximum
pressures upon government and
parliament. Formal statements
won't do the job. But united
pressure by the organized labor
movement at every level will.

at.

Ottawa must again be remind-
ed of its responsibilities with re-
spect to employment and unem-
ployment. ¥

As far back as 1945 the gov-
ernment formally recognized its
responsibilities for “maintaining
a high and stable level of em-
ployment and income.” It also

recognized tts responsibilities
with respect to unemployment.

Humphrey Mitchell, then min-
ister of labor, proposed to the
Dominion - Provincial Conference
that until the Unemployment In-
surance Act “covers all possible
cases,” unemployment assistance
would be made available to every

_individual “who had been an em-

ployee for a minimum specified
time, or, being a young person
would be expected to have been

employed had it not been for em-.

ployment conditions at the time
when he. entered the labor
market.”

Mitchell also proposed on be-
half of the federal government
that. such unemployment assist-
ance be made available as well
for. those “who exhausted their
insurance benefits.” For both
categories of workers the pro-
posal was made that they receive
such unemployment — assistance
for a period of two years at 85

percent. of their insurance bene-_

fits.
% xt 503

If these proposals appeared
valid in 1945 they are a thousand

times more valid today when un- |

employment has reached serious
proportions and threatens to be-
come worse. Nor is it satisfac-
tory to the unemployed .and the
labor movement generally when
the government condescends to
discuss unemployment at the
next Dominion - Provincial Con-
ference some time next fall.

The problem needs action now.

The government must be com-
pelled to amend the Unemploy-
ment Insurance Act in line with
the demands of the trade union
movement. And it must also be
made to assume _ responsibility
now to assist those whose unem-
ployment insurance benefits will
have ended on April 15.

If the labor movement steps
up its pressure now government
and parliament can be made to

act. Some unions have under-

taken their own campaigns on
this issue.

The last United Auto Workers
district council meeting launch-
ed a postcard campaign around
its proposals. United Electrical
Workers is moving along similar
lines. The Union of Unemploy-
ed Workers of Toronto is doing
likewise, spreading its cards in
many. Toronto plants.

Such grass roots activity reach-
ing out to the community at large
and further strengthened through
coordination by all unions at the
national level is bound to achieVe
positive results.

seeee | sae CI TTT tT oh

By MARK FRANK

Champion fights for ©
what youth wants

iz was close to midnight. Papers

and galley proofs were scatter-
ed over the long editorial tables
at the print shop. A typewriter
was feverishly clattering out a
last-minute story to catch the
deadline for the latest edition of
Champion, national youth publi-
cation issued fortnightly from
Toronto. F

Libby Fine, 23, the paper’s
youngest editor in its four year’s
history of continuous publishing,
was on the phone:

“Rush it is, Ben, we’re® holding
up page one for your story on
the youth delegation to Gregg.”

It was a tense moment, ‘just

minutes away from the final

lock-up of the paper.

The next day when I visited
the plant for a chat with young
Libby, the paper had been run
off, clean and. bright with that
front-page hole filled in with an
exclusive on-the-spot story of
what unemployment means to
young people, and outlining what
National Federation .of Labor
Youth delegates told federal
Labor Minister Milton Gregg
about the needs of Canadian
young people. —

Weeks earlier the editor had
interviewed leading unionists on
the subject of the pending
changes in the Unemployment
Insurance Act, seeking their
opinions on changes that would
benefit young people “last hired
and first fired.”

The example cited was but one »
instance of the piénéering and |

challenging role Champion is
playing in voicing the problems
and aspirations of young people

in industry, on the farm, and in’

the schoolroom,

One of the big exclusive stories
broke by Champion in past weeks
was an interview witk Chris
Chataway when he visited Toron-
to. The story told of the great
distance runner’s enthusiasm
about participating next Septem-
ber: in the British Track and
Field Team visit to the Soviet
Union—a story blotted out of
the commercial press.

% 503 Ses

Champion is probably the only
youth paper in the country edit-
ed by one full time person, the
editor herself. Six other volun-
tary workers give their spare
time to the details of production

and circulation—most of them
in their early twenties.

Four of the group are young
women. An office worker, Gwen
Whittaker, edits the cultural
page; a railway worker, Jim Hun-
ter runs the sport column. Com-
mercial artist Rube Bromstein
manages the business end with
an assist from printing appre2-
tice Joe Munro. ;

Two young mothers are active
inthe work of the paper. They
are Lena Endicott and Kay Rep-
ka, a former school teacher. who
edits the popular Junior Champ
page. :

_ Libby, herself, was in un the

LIBBY FINE’:

paper's start and first worked 02
the Junior Champ page. ‘

“Not a single family should
be’ without a subscription 1
Champion, because its appeal 35
not only to the young people, but
to parents as well.”. Libby Fine
is nothing if not an ardent cam
paigner for the paper she edits.

- She pointed to the Junior
Champ page.

.“Lots of parents buy it. fot
their children, from the age 0?
seven up. Often there are young
“sters below this age — in the
kindergarten period, who get @
real kick out of receiving their
very own paper in the mails.’

Libby Fine’s enthusiasm fF
her work, reflected in every page
of the paper, is an eloquent
argument for support. And the
best expression of this is a sub
scription at $1.50, a year.

A FEW hundred yards from
one of Moscow’s imposing
new multi-storey buildings
stands a single storey timber
house. It is a part of old
Moscow with its glassed-in
porch, its little garden with
fruit trees and gnarled limes,
its strongly individual air. The
street is cobbled and runs
steeply down a hill slope.
Here live 36 old’ women and
four old men—old age pen-
sioners formerly in the em-
ploy of the Tryokhgornaya
Manufactura—a large textile
mill in west Moscow. All of
them are over 70; one, indeed,
is said to be 105. And they
are ‘all old folk, who, for one
reason or another, have no-
body to support them. No-
body, that is, except the state
and their former employers.
The pensioners’ ‘home is run
on the principle that the old
folk contribute to the cost of
running it. True, what théy
pay out of their pensions is
only a small part of the cost.
But it avoids giving the old
people any impression that

they are living on charity.

“I visited Soviet pensioners’ home’

‘Actually, the home is sub-
stantially financed out of pro-
fits from the mill where they

ed great role in Russian

' being thé mill’s dependents.
-Rather, they felt themselves
still as part of the collective,

they used to work and were

——

were formerly employed and
by grants from the state and
trade unions.

As I have said, the old folk
in the home have no relatives.
The reason is simple — the
war. Many of the old folk in
this home would ‘have been
living liké most of Moscow’s
babushkas, with their sons,.
had not those sons been kill-
ed defending their country.

The Tryokhgornaya Manu-
faktura is a mill that has play-

working-class history and its
workers have a keen sense of
loyalty to it. poten ;
Perhaps it is partly for this
reason that the-old people I
talked with had no sense of
being a burden on society, of

took a keen interest.in the
fortunes of the shops where

}

always looking for excuses to -
pass the mill’s gate keeper and
sit in the yard within hearing
of the looms.

RALPH PARKER

—

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 1, 1955 — PAGE +