AFL calls for boycott
against Dominion Glass

By K. CARIOU

EDMONTON — A boycott of
Dominion Glass products has

been launched by the Alberta.

Federation of Labor, to support
325 members of the United Glass
and Ceramic Workers Local 201,
on strike for several months in
Medicine Hat. The AFL charges
that the company is hiding behind
the AIB and is refusing to
negotiate seriously. Police and
dogs have been used to bring
scabs into the plant. :

The AFL appealed for the sup-
port of the delegates at the Dec.
21 meeting of the Edmonton and
District Labor Council. Delegates
were told not to return bottles
with the Domglass mark, a ‘‘D”’
inside a diamond, to bottle de-
pots. This will create a shortage of
glass, forcing the company to re-
sume bargaining. .

During a discussion on civic
politics, several delegates em-
phasized the crucial necessity for
united action against attempts by
local right-wing forces to domi-
nate next fall’s elections. Warren
Carragata, AFL public relations
director, and the Labor Council

As we enter this new year of
1977 there ought to be no illusions
about the need for massive strug-
gles on both the economic and
political fronts to get rid of both
inflation and growing unemploy-
ment. As my fellow columnist,
George Harris, writes in the U.E.
News of Dec. 20, 1976:

“The anti-inflation program
was never anything other than
one of the biggest frauds of all
time, through which the govern-
ment and big business transferred
the consequences of the big busi-
ness economic crisis to the Cana-
dian people, and in particular the
working class. Massive and grow-

ing unemployment is an integral’

part of the program of govern-
ment and business to make labor
carry the main burden of
economic crisis ...

‘“‘The issue of an independent
and united Canada has taken on
new dimensions in recent weeks
with the people of Quebec deci-
sively kicking out the corrupt
Bourassa Liberal government,
and electing the Parti Quebecois
with its longer term aim of
separatism. The election of the
‘Parti Quebecois certainly need
not mean the breaking up of
Canada, provided the Canadian
people as a whole, and the Cana-
dian working class in particular,
demonstrate understanding of the
real character of our country, and

support the legitimate aims and _

aspirations of the people of
Quebec ... A united Canada is
essential if there is to be an inde-
pendent Canada. And it is crucial
to the interests of the Canadian
working class as a whole that
Canada be both independent and
united. There are powerful forces
who are and will continue trying
to take us in an opposite direction

Tasks Facing Labor
The coming to the fore of the
national question in Canada, on

- Ewasiuk called on affiliates to.

delegate to the NDP Metro Coun-
cil, reported that an NDP sub-
committee will probably recom-

mend next month that the party ;

help build sucha progressive coal-
ition. The executive secretary of
the Labor Council, Ed Ewasiuk

2 Control Prices an

ee & E
52 Sct LOCAL 402 ii :

dProfits/
les

called for unity between the }.-

Council, the Edmonton Voter’s
Association, the NDP, and other

interested groups. Doug Tomlin- '

son, of the Hotel and Restaurant
Workers, also spoke for unity,
and said that a straight NDP slate,
which some right-wing and ultra-
left elements in the party are push-
ing for, would be a disaster. A
report on the question will be pre-
sented at the January meeting of
the Council.

Delegates heard a report from
the Edmonton Peace Council on
its work over the past year. Ed

cooperate in the Stockholm Ap-
peal campaign, which has been

extended until April. Some local f

unions such as the Hotel and Re-
staurant Workers, have been very
active in collecting signatures on
the peace appeal. The delegates
expressed their appreciation of
the Peace Council’s work.

The SFL has paused to evaluate
the results of October 14 and their
convention. It has pledged itself to
renewed determination to engage
in militant action until controls are
defeated.

Nationalization cure
— for economic crisis”

top of the sharpening class con-
frontation, has certainly added a
new dimension to the tasks facing
organized labor in 1977. In the
battles for a new economic policy
of full employment without in-
flation, for a united and indepen-
dent Canada, and for victory of
détente to make world peace sec-
ure, the trade union movement
has clear goals to aim at, and to
mobilize its forces to achieve.
One important consideration
must be that the class interests of
the working people of both En-
glish and French Canada are the
same, and that the class enemy of
both is monopoly capital and the
capitalist politicians who act as
agents for monopoly.

The crisis of Canadian Confed-
eration arises out of monopoly’s
schemes to divide and rule. It is
because of it’s refusal to recog-
nize the two-nation character of
our Confederal state that the
crisis has continued to smolder
for more than a century. What is
called for now is a new constitu-
tion brought into being by negoti-
ations between the two national
communities as equals. Such a
constitution has to be based
squarely upon the recognition of
Canada as a two-nation state, and
set out the conditions upon which
these two equal partners can and
will unite in order to make separa-
tion both unnecessary and un-
desirable.

Crisis of the System

The trade union movement has
to express a clear position on this
crucial issue, a position rooted in
the common class interests of the
working people of both French
and English Canada. This has be-
come even more important now in
view of the overall crisis of the
capitalist system as a whole, with
all the economic and social issues
coming to the fore as a con-
sequence.

Solving economic and social

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 14, 1977—Page 8

discrimination by monopoly capi-
tal against the French Canadian
working people is a Vital element
in the struggle for a united
Canada.

The wide discrepancy in
economic forecasts for Canada by
such economic agencies as the
Economic Council of Canada and
the Conference Board of Canada,
operating from the same building
on Ottawa’s River Rd. is, in all
likelihood, no accident. If any-
thing, it perhaps illustrates some
serious disagreement in the ranks
of the Canadian bourgeoisie as to
the path forward in present condi-
tions of world-wide crisis of the
private profit system.

The time has come to force the
scrapping of the wage controls
program, to embark upon new
economic policies of full em-
ployment, 30 hours work at 40
hours pay to get-away from pri-
vate ownership and its extension
through so-called privatization,
and to accept the urgent necessity,
of building an economy based on
public ownership. Everywhere
one looks one can find ample evi-
dence of increasing decay and
corruption. Billions are being
wasted on means of destruction,
corporate subsidies and outright
bribery in many cases. Austerity
and restraint is meant for working
people. a

The CLC ought to place some
new demands for curbs on mono-
poly profiteering and price man-
ipulations, while demanding a
federal budget of tax cuts for the
working people, along with the
campaign to remove the fraudul-
ant wage controls program. Final-
ly, it ought to be obvious that only

a program of increasingly exten- .

sive nationalization of industry,
resources and financial institu-
tions, and their placing under
democratic control, will make
country-wide economic planning
a realistic possibility.

(LABOR ™ BRIEF

Q.T.F. HEAD URGES
PRICE CONTROLS
MONTREAL — Yvon Char-

bonneau, president of the Quebec

Teachers Federation called on the
Parti Quebecois government Jan.

3, to withdraw from the federal

anti inflation program and replace
it with a provincial board to con-
trol prices alone. -

He explained that since wage
controls had not been applied to
recent salary increases for
teachers, nurses, and public ser-
vice employees, workers in the pri-
vate sector should get the same
exemption.

AIB SLASHES

CUPE CONTRACT

TRURO, N.S. — The Anti-
Inflation Board rolled back to
20% a 29% wage increase
negotiated in a two-year contract
covering 1,902 highways workers
employed by the provincial gov-
ernment.

The average hourly wage for
the workers, members of CUPE,
would have gone to $5.01 at the
end of the contract, if they hadn’t
been robbed by the wage-cutting
AIB.

BELL WORKERS
TAKE STRIKE VOTE

’ TORONTO — Bell Canada’s

13,000 installers and tradesmen
began taking a strike vote this week
after negotiations for a first con-
tract broke down between Bell and
the Communications Workers of
Canada. '

Bell wants an agreement that
would have two years to run in a
three-year term dated from the be-
ginning of 1976. The union wants a
one-year contract.

Union president Fred Pomeroy
said Jan. 4, the result of the mail
ballot will be known by Jan. 29.

TRAWLERMEN
REFUSE TO SAIL

ST. JOHN’S — About 1,000
trawlermen, members of the
Newfoundland Fishermen, Food
and Allied Workers Union, who
man 65 to 70 draggers throughout
the province have refused to sail
until progress is made toward
negotiating a new contract to re-
place one that expired on Oct. 31.

Business Agent Dave MacKin-
non said the union had tried con-
sistently but unsuccessfully dur-
ing December to get negotiations
started.

“The fact is, they (manage-
ment) are not meeting with us,”’

FRASER PROBABLE |
NEW UAW LEADER

DETROIT — United Auto”
Workers president Leonard
Woodcock, due to retire this May »
said recently that other candi-
dates have bowed out of the
UAW’s presidential election,
leaving the way clear for Douglas
Fraser to step into the $47,000 4
year post at the forthcoming
UAW convention later this yeat
in Los Angeles.
Fraser, a UAW vice-president,
heads the union’s Chrysler Corp:
and skilled trades departments,
and was narrowly defeated by
Woodcock in 1970 when Wood-
cock succeeded the late Waltef
Reuther for the post. -

STELCO RIPS OFF
WORKERS’ BONUS

HAMILTON — The United
Steelworkers at Stelco’s Hilton”
Works plant here protested Jan. 53
the company’s decision to withhold
about $400,000 in bonus payments
as punishment for 3,700 workers.
who exercised their right to protest
wage controls Oct. 14. q

Local 1005 president Walter
Valchuck said the workers stand t0
lose two-thirds of their quarterly
bonuses due Jan. 14. Depending of
job classification from $40 to $220
will be ripped off Stelco workers:

205 LAID OFF
AT ELECTROHOME ©

of indefinite layoffs to 205 work:
ers at its electronics plant here,
effective Feb. 25, March 2 ané
March 4. The plant employes ab-
out 450 hourly rated workers;
members of the Internationa
Brotherhood of Electrical Wor
ers.

WAGES DISPUTE
CLOSES SCHOOLS —

MOOSE. JAW — Schools in
Moose Jaw public school syste!
closed at 4 p.m. Jan 5, when sel
vices were withdrawn by mainté
nance and caretaker staff, cleric _
workers and teachers’ aides, over
contract dispute. —
The employees, who describ
the planned walkout as a study ses
sion, are members of Local 55 6
the Canadian Union of Pub
Employees.
Negotiations broke off Dec. 9
when a settlement on the wages
sue could not be reached. :

We

WITHHOLD ALL
WAGE INCREASES

he charged.
HAT MEANS.| CAN'T
BUY MY NEW CAR?
C sory! =

\y

AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING
WITH THE MONEY You SAVE:

WITH-HoLD ALL

DIAGE INCREASES