hime Ltt The {nco’s motto —c FT umour in is quiet as Inco workers enter the second week of their strike. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 6, 1978—Page 6 The current crisis of depressed mar- kets is a crisis of the capitalist world’s economy. It is a crisis that arises from a drive to maximize monopoly profits. Precisely because of this fact, the big producers in the metallurgical industry and base metal mining, as in other sec- tors of the economy, are operating within a framework of heavy cuts in both public and private investments. These cut- backs, in one or another sector, have a tendency to feed upon each other. They slow the economy down to a crawl and result in less and less spending on needed services of the people. At the same time, however, govern- ments are spending gigantic sums on ar- maments. This large-scale waste of pub- lic funds has grown larger than ever be- fore, along with subsidies granted to the private sector by governments to swell monopoly profits. This policy also serves as an inducement for price increases on goods and services to the people, along with usurious interest rates, unconscion- able rents and taxes. This price and profit inflation reduces the buying power of wages and salaries of all working people and undermines the domestic market. As these factors affect all capitatist countries, export markets. also suffer a decline. An 85-cent dollar does not blast our way into foreign mar- kets, but helps to increase the price of imports and further undermines living ’ standards. The resultis layoffs and grow- ing mass unemployment along with a worsening of inflation. The big steel and mining magnates — like Inco Metals Company Ltd., a sub- -sidiary of the U.S. multi-national Inter- national Nickel — try to meet the situa- tion by extremely hard-nosed decisions, aimed to intensify the exploitation of workers by means of large layoffs and, by speed-up of those who remain on the job. The aim of such corporate giants as Inco Metals Company, is to cut costs and raise profit margins, all at the expense of the working class and of all working people and their communities. This is the reason why 11,700 Inco Metals Company employees have been forced to strike. Never at any time during five months of negotiations did Inco Metals Company make a reasonable and responsible offer to the joint negotiating. committee of its employees at Sudbury and Port Colborne. Its treatment was shabby and insulting. It ought to be noted that this attitude = prevailed up until the very last day d mediation efforts which involved Ontario Labor Minister Robert Elgie anil Premier William Davis. At that time Inco offered a 10-cent-an-hour wage increa® of which six cents was to be deducted from cost-of-living allowance payal ‘ this November, thus leaving the m ficent sum of four-cents boost in b rate of wages. It is no credit to Ontario’ | Premier Davis that he would pass up this obvious insult in silence. It was definitely not helpful, for the e Pensions — Inco offered not 4% improvement in pension plan. — No across-the-boall crease (not a cent? 2 last minute media when it offered cents an hour). 7 comparisons betwe Algoma-Stelco _, (1) Pensions * 30 years service 9 * 35 years service $1 No age requirem * 40 years service * Algoma base rate ¥~ * Rolled their preset! COLA into their ‘ * 20c across-the- * 10c in 1979 * 10c in 1980 py * Also rolled-in of a calculated from y the end of their com * At Stelco $650 mo? e Wages A few (2) Wages (3) L.T.D. union’s district director, Stewart Cook to recommend acceptance of the Metals Company’ s insulting offer 0 trary to the union bargaining comt tee’s position of rejection. That pos | was one of abject surrender to this arT0oB_ ant multi-national corporation agains the interests of its workers as well as! -community at large. — Cooke’s position that ‘‘a reduction Inco’s inventories would not allevia the problem of a ‘world surplus in 1 kel,”’ and to go on from there to acc the Soviet Union of ‘‘dumping nickel world markets at $1.70 a pound,”’ | very much like an effort to play on poli cal prejudices, in order to build up straw man, as a means of taking the pres sure off the company. a Co-operation is the key when money Is in question SUDBURY — When it comes to class unity to promote common aims, you have to hand it to big business to show us how it is done. Inco Metals Co., and its local competition, Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd., recently exchanged nickel properties in the Onaping Falls area near © Sudbury, to increase efficiency of their operations. Under the terms of the agreement, Inco traded the upper section of the lower Coleman ore body for the com- monly known *‘Falconbridge bloc’’ near its Levack mine. The ‘‘Falconbridge ‘bloc’”’ also in- cludes the old Fecunis property, which Falconbridge closed in 1975 as part of its - cutback in operations. The Coleman body is near the Falconbridge Strathcona Mine. * cover ore in the lower Coleman An Inco spokesman said the compa! would start ore extraction from the “Fé conbridge bloc’’ in conjunction with erations at the Levack mine ‘‘vé soon.”’ In future, Falconbridge will from the Strathcona mine. So, when it comes to making money; co-operation is the key. There is a real lesson for labor here as well. Whe i comes to fighting big business to impro’ living standards and working condition? labor can only be successful when it united throughout its ranks. If capitalist firms can cooperate to advance co of interests, whether swapping property © price gouging the public to boost profit working people must also unite, to. $ vive and advance in our present day 8 iety.