—_. <> aS ee Se a bo te | ==> x - Council and lousy BY BRUCE MAGNUSON _The RCMP raids on construc- tion union offices throughout British Columbia on June 20 is @ most serious occurrence that Organized labor in this country Must face up to. Offices of the B.C. and Yukon Building Trades A affiliated local Unions were invaded by the fe- deral police (which in B.C. also acts. as provincial police force) M Vancouver, Victoria, Cran- brook, Kamlops, Kitimat, Nanai- Mo, Nelson, New Westminster, Tince George and Prince Rupert. The construction industry in ritish Columbia is clearly faced Y a conspiracy on the part of © 840-member Construction r Relations Association of \C. and by the Bennett Govern- Ment to destroy meaningful col- pve bargaining. Its. aim is Md to weaken and, if pos- a le, to break up the workers’ Tganizations. This was the pur- Pose of a lockout of construc- ea workers in sensitive areas, ch as in hospital and school “onstruction, while at the same Me. permitting certain work to fhm to the extent possible in . th Circumstances on dams and 4 €r similar heavy industriaf nstruction. ° oy plot has now thickened sim 18 no longer, if it ever was thy ply an economic struggle be- =a B.C. construction work- by and their employers, backed sity Bennett Government; a ation which made it a poli- issue, as well, within that ne: a The issue is now clearly a Ocratic issue of far-reaching ° Political importance to all Cana- a ‘ from one end of Canada to fore er. It is a challenge by the Sate of monopoly and the €, who are panic-stricken crate pared to abandon demo- ends. Means to achieve their Neo-fascist, Trend cd failure by ofganized T and all democratic Cana- to react forcefully against W310) Resse Raids on B.C. unions show neo-fascist peril this drift into neo-fascist me- _ thods of dealing with the work- ers’ economic organizations will obviously encourage much wider application of these oppressive methods into other areas of our society. Nor is it something which can be seen in the context of prob- lems within any single province, in this case British Columbia. The employment of the fede- ral police force (RCMP) for strikebreaking or any other form of anti-labor purpose in B.C. cannot take place without in- volvement of federal authority, which speaks and acts for the ruling class of this country, and Serves as its co-ordinating ap- paratus through the state power and all of its organs. The deepening crisis in our society, with its chronic infla- tion, mass unemployment, rising living costs and taxes upor the ordinary wage and salary earn- er, is the result of a highly monopolized control by a small number of economic robber barons who bleed the country white for their own private gains. For them, nothing must . ‘be allowed to stand in the way of their own selfish aims. For them, our federal and provincial treasuries aré sources of fat subsidies, while hard working people and middle income busi- . nesses in both town and coun- tryside pay the required taxes. e: & * Two weeks ago I stated in ‘this column that there was a need for all-Canada solidarity and a common strategy and tac- tics on the part of organized labor to. break the anti-labor conspiracy that has been mount- — ed by monopoly and govern- ments across this country to re- duce the real income and living standards of labor and to en- hance monopoly profits. I referred to the fact. that at its recent bi-ennial Convention. held in the City of Ottawa, the ‘Canadian Labor Congress pledg- ed itself to a campaign to ex- pose the real causes of inflation and its consequences. I emphasized in that column that this would be the propitious moment for the CLC to speak up when negotiations for new contracts are reaching a show- down stage in B.C., Quebec and elsewhere. Indeed, now when a new di- mension of broad democratic rights have been added as an urgent matter of concern to all Canadians of good will and democratic spirit, it would ap- pear that an emergency consul- tative conference of labor lead- ers and others who are concern- ed about current developments in Canada would be most useful. Recent RCMP raids on union offices of construction workers unions in B.C. have introduced a new element into the struggle between trade unions on one hand, and the bosses and their governments in this country, on the other hand. That is the broad democratic rights issue involved when. the state aban- dons democratic practices and proceeds to use openly . neo- fascist coersive measures to im- pose the rule of monopoly capital. Political Struggle In this situation it has become clear that organized labor has to go beyond the pure economic struggle and enter into social and political struggle, including the defense of civil liberties. Organized labor today, ought to become the sponsors of a broad civil rights movement in Canada at this time, open to all democratic Canadians and their organizations, formed for the purpose: of defending and ex- tending Canadian democracy. Indeed, this is an essential pre-requisite for keeping the door open to basic social changes in the interests of peace, democracy, economic and social justice, free from capital- ist exploitation of man by man. The watchword must be: No neo-fascist police state in Can- ada! _ Day care is essential Of all the social services cal- tal Y neglected by the provin- ; 8Qvern: i Press ment, none is as i as the need for more stat Care centres, according to a tig et adopted by the Onta- Bxec €deration of Labor at an June 16° Council meeting on won 2971 there were 1,110,000 force nN in the Ontario work labor’ Which is 34% of the total force. Of this number With ..CF 62% were married a 300,000 ‘having children The 13 years of age. Und Te are over@7,000 children bt the age of five with physi- of acuities in Ontario capable Children, MO dating 28,000 bore? Statistics tell an im- ial p tory: They describe a Nituder soolem of profound mag- Work; -2€y mean thousands of cult ene mothers face the diffi- ad ho tional decision of where Careg mad their children will be Mean + i While they work, They are Den at thousands of women Cap falized by the lack of day Mother ilities. Not only the but 4° are burdened unfairly It ig sands of children. for ,S Clear that the demand Nurseries is justified both in the lowest economic terms, and in the most compel- ling human terms. The major block to the estab- lishment of new day care pro- grams to meet the ever-growing demand for services is the lack of capital funds. The operating cost of day care is shared by all three tevels of government: 50% federal, 30% provincial, and 20% by the municipality or region. Bill 110; an Act to amend the Day Nurseries Act, does not permit - the granting of the 80% cost sharing to any group other than a municipality. The net result of the govern- ment’s lack of concern has left mothers with a choice of expen- sive private facilities if they can find them, or. the risk of leaving their children with irres- ponsible and often unreliable neighbors. The OFL recommends to the government of Ontario: They provide a network of day care centres throughout the province in much the same way as hospitals and schools are regarded as essential social re- quirements. w» They amend Bill 110 to provide non-profit private indus- triat day care centres witli the same 80% cost sharing arrange- ment now granted only muni- cipalities. s* They promote the estab- lishing of day care centres at places of work. In new plants every effort should be made to have facilities planned and built in. # They establish a program to provide more training facil- ities for day care supervisory staff. They encourage the saving of capital expenditure by the more imaginative use of existing buildings, such as empty class- rooms, churches, apartment space and other neighborhood facilities. w They abolish the means test and make day care avail- able to all working mothers re- gardless of means. Decline in farms continues The decline in the number of farmers in the U.S. has slowed to about 47,000 a year, com- pared to 106,000 a year through- out most of the 1960's, says U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. Hire Canadian curator, __ artists tell Gallery — artists protest hiring of American for gallery y WHAT ARE You DOING ON AHOLIDAY/ ARENT You REMEMBERING WHAT DAY if 1S 2 A storm has blown up over the announcement by W. J. Withrow, director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, appointing Dr. Richard J. Wattenmaker as chief curator. An angry delegation. of paint- ers, poets, actors, musicians, publishers — people from most facets of the arts—demonstrated at the gallery on June 23, not to question the qualifications of Dr. Wattenmaker (who has an impressive record as director and lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University Gallery) but to demand: Why not a Canadian? The reason, according to Ro- bert Steiner, president of the gallery’s board of trustees, is that “nobody in Canada was available with the training and the expertise and the interna- tional connections.” The artists think differently. The gallery was “lucky,” said Steiner, to find someone. with connections in the overseas mar- ket, who would hear about good acquisitions for the gallery. The previous chief curator, Mario Amaya, another Amer- ican, showed little enthusiasm for the development of Canadian art. Back in New York, he said he was glad to be out of the “backwoods”; and in a U.S. art journal he described Canadians (with a smear of chauvinism) as “Nanooks” of the north. Illustrative of the Amaya per- iod was inadequate funds for promotion of a Tom Thomson exhibit, excellently organized by Joan Murray, the gallery’s cura- tor of Canadian art. Other kinds of exhibits met no such barriers. A leaflet issued by a new body, tentatively calling itself the Committee to Strengthen Canadian Culture, demanded public disclosure of the criteria, advertising methods and _ loca- tions, and method of final deci- sion in the appointment. Painter Graham Coughtry said pointedly he thinks the ap- pointment wrong “mostly from the point of view that the state of Canadian art, especially in Toronto, needs a certain kind of nurturing by someone who has some feeling of the background and development of Canadian art.” In a letter to John Boyle of Canadian Artists’ Representa- tion, an organization promoting pS Ua tet ssa b> AWAT.C WHAT TM DOING — REMEMBERING? —— Canadian artists’ interests, gal- lery director Withrow tried condescension. : “I am currently looking for a Canadian to take the post of curator of contemporary art” (a lesser post), he wrote. “I whole- heartedly agree with you that in this case the person must be a Canadian even though we may have to lower our standards.” The opinion on standards’ was Withrow’s, not Boyle’s. Response of the Gallery pro- test meeting to this insult was that we must not accept US. criteria for our standards in art. In similar spirit, Gale Garnett,. Toronto columnist and member of Actors’ Equity ticked off such art leaders as Mr. Withrow, urg- ing that we free ourselves of people ‘whose sole claim to artistic involvement is financial.” Tribune cartoonist, Avrom Yanovsky, a member of the pro- test committee said afterward: “The main tenet of the Art Gallery meeting was that this protest at the hiring of an Amer- ican is only’ the spark for an overall Canadian movement among artists, writers, theatre workers, publishers, musicians, — dancers to defend Canadian cul- ture from U.S. domination, and ° to end the kow-towing to Ame- rican infiuence.” - A. permanent committee head- ed by leading art workers is bemg set up to unite their . groups and to work among such other large groups of Canadians as trade unions. Workers should quit overtime MANCHESTER — The British Communist Party has issued a four-page folder dealing with what it calls the “overtime disease.” “It is a condemnation of all of us in the working-class move- ment that we tolerate a position where workers still seek over- time as a ‘solution’ to their economic problems,” the publi- cation says and adds: “This deep-rooted disease must be driven out once and for all. It is an obstacle to the de- velopment of the real struggle we have to wage, the fight for socialist society.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1972—PAGE 5