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| PE
} REORO — “Organization
fom work Ployed with support
Ve job €rs in plants who still
| initia’ S, is needed in order to
_¢ Militant fight-back
exert the maximum
n the Trudeau govern-
ake emergency meas-
€ate jobs for Canada’s
unemployed,” Ross
i ; director of organi-
April 4 4 public forum here

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wos = Communist leaders

elaborate program

Coming together from the At-
lantic to the Pacific, the mem-
bers of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of Can-
ada who met in plenary session
in Toronto over the week-end
debated at length the road
ahead to,the achievement of an
anti-monopoly coalition govern-
ment in our country, and furth-
er, to the establishment of a
socialist society, and at the same
time pin-pointed the main im-
mediate problems in Canada and
tasks facing the Canadian work-
ers.

William Kashtan, general sec-
retary, introduced the reworked
draft of the Party program, “The
Road to Socialism in Canada,’
which was then discussed sec-
tion by section for the best part
of two days in the three-day
session. The CC then endorsed
the draft program as submitted
by the central executive in prin-
ciple and_ instructed the execu-
tive to rework the draft in light
of the proposed amendments
and suggestions. The draft will
then be sent out to the party
membership as the draft of the
Central Committee for discus-
sion leading up to the coming
convention of the Party.

This convention, it was decid-
ed, will be held in Toronto on
Nov. 20-21-22 and will be the
21st (“50th anniversary”) con-
vention of the Communist Party
of Canada.

The Central Committee will
meet again on August 7-8-9 to
consider and adopt the main po-
licy resolution to be presented
for discussion before the 21st
convention, which will merge
with the discussion of the pro-
posed program.

The meeting also heard a re-
port of the Canadian fraternal
delegation to the 24th Congress
of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union and adopted reso-

lution on it (see report in this
issue) .
The meeting issued an urgent

call to the Canadian people to
kill the plot to continue the Pub-
lic Order Act or. introduce a va-
riation of this repressive legis-
lation at its expiration on April
30 (read resolution on page 3).

Very important resolutions
were adopted on the fight for
jobs, on the proposed U.S. oil
pipeline corridor through Can-
ada, and on the announced U.S.
decision to conduct nuclear
blasts on Amchitka with the
grave threat that carries to the
Canadian and other peoples.

These will be reported in our ®

next issue.

The Central Committee adopt- 1

ed a message of greeting to the
chairman of the Party, Tim Buck,
who while much improved in
health was not yet able to at-
tend the meeting.
Congratulations were extend-
ed and a gift was presented to
CC member political cartoonist
Avrom Yanovsky on his 60th

birthday.

“The litle one figures out wages
the big one Is for deductions!”

Fred Wright in Union Cartoons

Friendly, sunny Bulgaria isan ideal coun i
vacationing and many thousands of visitors seas oe =
bask on the shore of the Black Sea (as at Varna in the above seby
spend their holidays on the mountains or tour this nase i d
with its relics of thousands of years of history from the times ith
Thraceans and Alexander of Macedon, and of Spartacus aig led
the slaves against the power of Rome, down to the struggle i: ted
by Resende eration from the Turkish yoke in more recent Sie

n e historic t against i ic i
Georgi Dimitrov in a i wage eo eats nines Pr

The exceptionally reasonable rates for tour:
s and th
visas are not necessary for tourists are an added Pr peteG tt

(Information available from Balkan |
Eo Mitel n Imports, 1099 Gerrad. Street

ELEVEN MILLION ITALIAN WORKERS STRIKE

ROME—Leaders of Italy’s three major i i
estimated that 11 million Italian poe a, str
in the general strike they called in protest against Premier Emilio
Colombo’s housing program, which the trade unions call completel
inadequate. The workers are also demanding a number of peer

social and economic reforms.

The facts are that hourly
wages of construction. workers
have always been higher than
that of factory workers. They
have also gained faster than
others, in terms of wage increas-
es, during recent years. But
the conditions of work are en-

tirely different. They are con-

tract workers who do not get

paid unless they are on the job.

They enjoy few if any fringe

benefits enjoyed by most union-

ized factory workers. Even in -
the best of times, construction

workers are unemployed more

than one-half of their time on

account of weather, seasonal

slack and the chaotic ups and

downs in the industry, which

are all beyond the workers’ con-

trol.

As U.S. economist Victor Per-
lo stated: “It isn’t that construc-
tion workers’ wage rates are too
high. Other workers’ wage rates
are too low. It isn’t that con-
struction workers are causing in-
flation. Inflation and war are cut-
ting down construction and leav-
ing them with insufficient work
. . . Nixon’s first blow against
the building trades workers is
preliminary to an attempted ma-
jor blow against all workers, on
the grounds of fighting inflation.

_. . Nixon forecasts an increase
of 20% in corporate profits be-
fore taxes, going far above any
previous record. In contrast, he
predicts a rise in personal in-
come of only 8%.

“Allowing for increased con-
sumer prices and population —
this would signify a gain of only
2% for people — that is Nixon’s
idea of economic balance. And
now he is trying to take away
the 2% and convert it into a
minus through a wage freeze.”

se x

Here in Canada the same drive-
against construction labor is in
full swing on the eve of nego-
tiations of new union contracts.
The Toronto Globe and. Mail
paraphrased U.S. President Nix-
on editoriaily on April 14 when
it stated: “As wages rise, con-
struction is curtailed, and fewer
men are hired; those who are
hired work fewer hours; so that
the huge wage increases are il-
lusory. And in the meantime,
just in Toronto, there is a need
for some 30,000 new housing
units every year, and the need
is not being met.”

Another attempt to blame all
our woes on construction work-
ers’ supposedly high wages, in-

cluding the housing ‘shortage, is
the hypocritical attack on Lon-
don sheet metal workers who ob-
tained a 40% wage increase
spread over two years. The fede-
ral Prices and Incomes Commis-
sion, the Ontario labor minister,
and even sanctimonious” mee-
too” Robert Nixon, Ontario Libe-
ral leader, have directed all their
firepower in this direction.

But they are strangely silent
about land speculators and
money lenders who take 41.2%
of the cost of a house in the city
of Ottawa, as shown by a study
of the National Research Coun-
cil of Canada. Another 43.9%
goes into materials, while only
13.8% percent of the total cost
of the same house constitutes
labor costs. The balance, of 1.9%
of costs, is attributed to equip-
ment rental and waste materials.

As stated by David Archer,
president of the Ontario Federa-
tion of Labor, “a 1% increase
in the interest rates on a
$30,000 home with a $22,000
mortgage amortized over 40
years would cost the buyer
$6,000 — almost twice as much
as direct labor costs. In other
words, if the building tradesmen
were to double their wages, it

+
would only begin to equal the
1% increase in interest rates.
. .. AS a matter of fact, a car-
penter earning $4 an hour the
year round, and I don’t know any
carpenter who works the year
round, would not qualify for a
National Housing Act mort-
gage.”

As for the “big lie” about
construction workers’ wages
being responsible for the lack
of housing, this is further ex-
ploded by the fact that none of
the residential building trades-
men are unionized.

* * s

Building trades workers must
become better organized than
they now are. They need to de-
vise the kind of union structures
and inner-union democracy
where the membership control
union affairs. This is more than
ever necessary today when the
agents of both employers and
the governments are shopping
around for leaders who can be
“softened up” and made to co-
operate in the kind of anti-labor
scheme concocted by U.S. Presi-
dent Nixon, and greatly desired
in Canada by Trudeau and Co.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 1971—PAGE 5