350,000 jobs

in peril — CLC

A six-member delegation from
the Canadian Labor Congress is
presently in Geneva to protest
against a General Agreement on
Tariff and Trade which could cost
some 350,000 Canadian jobs, per-
haps even wipe out our entire
manufacturing industry in this
country. The delegation consists
of spokesmen for the textile,
paper, garment, shoe, appliance
and electronics industries.

This is the first time the Cana-
dian government has allowed
labor leaders to have a formal
input into GATT negotiations.
The decision was reported as one
made by prime minister Trudeau
following representations to the
government by the CLC.

Sam Fox, Canadian
vice-president of the Amalga-
mated Clothing and Textile
Workers is quoted by the press as
saying, ‘‘What happens in these
world trade talks will shape our
economy for the next 10 years.”’

lan Reilly, director of the shoe
division of the Retail Clerks
Union, says imports already have
70% of the shoe market. ‘‘We are
down to 12,000 jobs now, from
30,000 only 10 years ago.”’

John Fitzpatrick, Toronto di-
rector of the Steelworkers union,
estimates Canadian firms have
only 40% of the appliance market
of stoves, refrigerators, freezers,
washers and dryers.

The electronics industries have
suffered a job loss of 14,000 in the
first months of 1977, and are down
from 187,000 workers 10 years
ago to only 110,000 now. The
tariff is only about 15% now for
imports, while Canadian firms
have difficulty exporting because
of non-tariff barriers erected. by
other countries.

ae. ee

The General Agreement on
Tariff and Trade (GATT) dates
back to 1947, at which time it was
initiated by the the all-powerful
American monopolies in world
capitalist trade. The purpose was
to remove all barriers to their con-
trol of the capitalist world’s mar-
kets. But the world has changed
since then, as new rivals have ap-
peared on the capitalist world
markets, particularly West Ger-
many and Japan. The attempts to
regulate the capitalist world’s
free-for-all game of trade have
proved more difficult each time
the agreement has come up for
renewal. The present so-called
Tokyo Round — the seventh such
in 31 years — started in 1973 and
has proved to be the most dif-
ficult.

Late last October, the federal
government announced a move
toward a three-year freeze on tex-
tile imports to Canada to protect
the country’s weak clothing in-
dustry. The fact is that various
items are already commg into
Canada from areas like Hong
Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
These countries have been built
up by U.S. imperialism as part of
its overall global strategy.

There is the continuing struggle
by the underdeveloped and newly
liberated countries to establish a
“*new international economic or-
der’’, based on getting a better
deal for their raw materials — one

may call it parity — with what
they buy from old and highly de-
veloped imperialist countries.
These countries have begun to
export some manufactured goods
of their own. The struggle for a
new international economic order
has the support of the socialist
countries and progressive forces
throughout the world.

All of this indicates an ex-
tremely complex situation. It has
been further complicated by the
capitalist world’s crisis which is
leading toward some form of pro-
tectionism in all capitalist coun-
tries. In Canada this position has
found an echo also in the trade
union leadership circles. Last
March 12 the Toronto Globe and
Mail quoted Joe Morris, then
president of the CLC as saying:
“‘We used to preach the gospel
that we could survive in the world
of total free trade. We have now
concluded free trade won’t
work.”

Nevertheless, the Canadian
trade union movement has not
gone as far toward a protectionist
position as the AFL-CIO, its
counterpart in the U:.S. At last
month’s CLC convention in
Quebec City a paper on the
GATT negotiations referred to
planning for full employment as
an essential precondition for
liberalized trade, and that the
issue of jobs must be paramount
in the current Geneva tariff and
trade talks. It stated the labor
movement should have a direct
input in these talks and should
have access to information
needed to guarantee that the in-
terests of Canada and Canadian
workers are protected. It was crit-
ical of policy in the Geneva nego-
tiations and stated: ‘‘Canada
could end up trading something
real — lower tariffs in imports
— for something illusory —
lower non-tariff barriers.”

In Canada the conditions are
éven more entangled by U.S. con-
trol over key parts of the Cana-
dian economy, by means of U.S.
branch plants and a stranglehold
on natural resources. In many in-
stances the U.S. branch plants
are closing down and moving out,
either to the USA or to Hong
Kong, Taiwan or South Korea. In
this way U.S. imperialism is seek-
ing to place the cost of the crisis
on the working people generally
and on Canada’s working people
in particular. In these circum-
stances, and considering the U.S.
domination over the capitalist
world market, the struggle to de-
fend and develop manufacturing
industry and the jobs of workers
is an essential part of the struggle
for Canadian independence and
against being loaded down with
the main burden of the capitalist
crisis.

— +

Here it must be added, that the
Communist Party does not.con-
sider it as its task, nor the task of
the trade union movement to re-
solve the contradictions of cap-
italism at the expense of the work-
ing class, its jobs and living stan-
dards. For this reason, wherever
aplant or industry is threatened as
a consequence of GATT agree-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 26, 1978—Page 4

ments or low-cost imported man-
ufactured goods, the government
must be compelled to defend the
industry and the jobs and living
standards of workers. And
where, despite everything, nega-
tive results accrue, the govern-
ment must be compelled to as-
sume responsibility in the way of
full compensation to the workers
affected, including the guarantee
of other work at trade union rates
of pay.

* * *

It remains to be seen whether

the current government policy to
involve labor leaders in the &
GATT negotiations is a part ofthe £
‘‘consultative mechanisms’’,

spoken of by Labor Minister John
Munro on March 17 as a substitute
for the term “‘tripartism’’ because
it has become a
people use for their own biases,”
or something with some more
substance in view of the diffi-
culties the government finds itself
in.

Be this as it may, there is aneed
to take heed of a recent report by
the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe with re-
spect to East-West trade. This
report stated that the overall prob-
lem of growing deficits in
East-West trade and growing
debts abroad ‘‘has brought to the
fore the issue of financing trade
and repaying debts.”’ The slug-
gish performance in East-West
trade was compensated for by
vigorous trade among Communist
states and their exports to the
Third World, which went up by
an estimated 28% in 1977,
two-and-a-half times greater than
in 1976. Another thing is, that
these countries have no trade
wars and no crisis.

A meaningful policy to pursue
in these circumstances would
seem obvious, namely to put an
end to efforts to rekindle cold war
politics, and to push much harder
for détente, disarmament ‘and
world peace as the surest and only
way to open doors wide to an ex-
pansion of trade with the socialist
sector of the world on the basis on
mutual enefit, equality and peace-
ful coexistence.

“buzzword ©

Striking TTU members were joined by supporters on the picket line in

Brampton. They are striking for their first union contract.

Thomson chain won't
bargain with newsmen

BRAMPTON Toronto
Typographical Union (TTU)
president Jim Buller and
Brampton Labor Council presi-
dent Terry Gorman knocked on
Ontario premier -William Davis’
door, May 13, to demand he in-
tervene on behalf of 12 employees
in their battle with the Brampton
Daily Times for a first contract
recognizing their union. Symboli-
cally perhaps, Bill wasn’t home.

About 30 pickets, representing
members of TTU local 91, and
supporters from the United Auto
Workers, the United Electrical
workers, and both the Brampton
and Metro Toronto labor coun-
cils, demonstrated outside the of-
fices of the Daily Times, then,
with: placards proclaiming their
demands, marched to Davis’ re-
sidence. While they picketted and
marched, the demonstrators were
under the watchful eye, and cam-
era of an agent for the Daily
Times, apparently recording the
event for posterity.

The Daily Times is one of the
130 newspapers owned - by the

Government policy will
cost more jobs says UE

TORONTO — C.S. Jackson,
president of the 25,000-member
United Electrical workers, in a
letter May 17, ripped into federal
Industry, Trade and-Commerce
Minister Jack Horner for a state-
ment he made in the Commons,
which could result in even more
unemployment than what Cana-
dians are currently suffering.

Jackson was referring ‘to fed-
eral government plans to work
out a new duty remission agree-
ment on imports of components
for certain appliances. It would
mean that many jobs would be
lost in Canadian plants which
produce the components, since
most domestic manufacture of
appliance components is done m
branch plants of U.S. corpora-
tions, the UE leader said.

These branch plants would

close down if U.S.-made parts
could be bought duty free, the
union statement declared.

_ “Increased foreign content in
Canadian manufactured products
means export of unemployment
..., Jackson told Horner, “‘and

‘will weaken our balance of pay-

ments with the U.S.

“Rather than expanding the
Canadian manufacturing indus-
try, we will lose more jobs at a
time of record unemployment.”’

The UE statement noted it was
high time for Ottawa to ‘‘take
positive action to ensure a Cana-
dian market for Canadian re-
source materials through man-
ufacture by limiting, instead of
expanding, entry of foreign man-
ufactured goods, particulary from
U.S. parents of Canadian branch
plants.”’

Thomson chain, which was able -

to squeeze an after tax profit, last ~

year, of $47-million out of its
employees.

Management made its last offer
April 28, and as TTU president
Jim Buller pointed out, “‘the offer
was so repugnant, that even the
Labor Ministry mediator, Ray Il-
ling, refused to present the pro-
posal to the union and attempted
to have the issue reconsidered.”

The company’s wage offer
even withheld increases for three
of the 12 editorial and news staff
seeking a first contract.

Thomson is not noted for lead-
ing the industry in high wages.
The Daily Times printers, already
TTU members under a separate
agreement aren’t thrilled by the
fact they earn $2.40 an hour less
than union printers at another or-
ganized Brampton shop.

- Local labor has offered its sup-
port to the Daily Times workers.
The Brampton and District Labor
Council has condemned the
Thomson stance in negotiations,
and local unions in the electrical
and auto industries have received
information and leaflets on the
issue.

Buller said an all out campaign

- is under way to pressure all

MPP’s in the legislature to callon _—
the government to intervene on

behalf of the workers fighting to —
win union security. He linked the

union’s fight with that of the ~
UAW in Centralia, near London,
where the strikers at the Fleck
Co., have been on the bricks for
11 weeks fighting for the same

right.

citizens of Brampton to boycott

‘the Daily Times and to ask their

local merchants to stop advertis-
ing in the paper. Also it is urging
Brampton voters to press their
MPP, which in this case happens"
to be premier Davis, to intervene
in the dispute to get Thomson
negotiators back to the table and
help the 12 Daily Times workers
get their union recognized by the _
company and a first agreement
signed. :

The union has called on the