Recently released statistics in
the USA reveal the folly of those
government and political figures,
in Canada, who would tie our
_ €conomic recovery to the

‘thealth”’ of the U.S. economy.

- Statistics released by the Bureau

of Labor Statistics (USA) show.

Official unemployment standing at
6.4%. These figures are hotly dis-

puted as covering up the real state

of affairs by labor and Black lead-
ers as well as leaders in the

Latin-American communities in
the USA.

Dr. Markley Roberts, an AFL-
CIO economist, points out that
the official figures are deliberately
misleading in arbitrarily elimiziat-
ing people: from the unemploy-
ment roles by technical reasons

-although the facts are, these
people are without jobs or can
only get partial employment.

Dr. Roberts’ calculations show
that actual unemployment is 9.0%
not 6.4% or in actual numbers
nine million-Americans are out of
work and not 6.3 million as of-
ficially stated.

_The leader of the Congres-
sional Black Caucus, Rep. Parren
J. Mitchell, reports unemploy-
ment among Black teenagers as
standing at 37.3%. Rep. Mitchell
said reactionary officials in Con-
gress use the false BLS figures to
justify cutbacks of aid to cities
and for ‘scuttling proposed tax
‘cuts.

U.S. jobless statistics
‘deliberately misleading’

Hispanic leader, Raoul

Yzaguierre, asked how BLS~

figures could show a decline from
9.5% to 8.7% among Spanish ori-
gin workers when the actual
figures show a decline in the work
force from 4,189,000 to 4,095
Spanish origin workers. Barbara
Job, a BLS statistician, admitted
this was a’ statistical contradic-
tion. Migrant workers, thousands
of whom are of Spanish origin are
completely left out of the
unemployment figures. :

The true state of affairs show

that the U.S. economy is anything -

but healthy. Some Canadian
sources, particularly ‘the Com-
munist Party of Canada have in-
sisted that government policies
which merely wait for a recovery
in the U.S. economy, act against
the better interests of Canadian
workers.

Policies which show a subser-
vient Canadian economy nar-
rowly tied to exports to the U.S.,
while at the same time allowing
continuing U.S. takeovers of our

natural resources and allowing

U.S. branch plants in Canada to
runaway, are a betrayal of the
Canadian people, the CPC points
out. It is argued that, independent
economic initiatives based on
public ownership of energy and
natural resources and diversi-
fication of trade, including trade
with the socialist and developing
countries, is asurer way forward.

cause they: haven't

EDITORIAL
COMIMIEINT

Jobs plans, real and fake

“There’s no use trying,” Alice said:
one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,”
said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I”
always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”’

— Through the Looking-Glass

Plans for creating jobs have blossomed
out in the past few weeks like election
posters at the call to the ballot box. The
three major parties in parliament have
all had a go at it. The worker, if he is
obedient, will read, hear and watch only
the capitalist media, and be lured to be-
lieve that all possible is being done to
solve the depression-type mass unem-
ployment. :

“Solutions” such as tax cuts on low in-
comes, low-cost house building, exten-
sion of transit systems, etc. are fine and
welcome. They are part of the answer.
But they will not carry families very far.
They will not alter significantly the fact
of 20% dead production capacity. They
will not stem the tide of inflation. On a
larger scale, they will not build an indust-
rially secure, independent Canada,
which can guarantee the future of its
people.

Yet, the Liberal and Tory politicians in
Ottawa who vie for the (lucrative) honor

of serving the corporate, monopolies.

which own Canada, want us to believe
the impossible, that these big business
parties want to solve workers’ problems.
The New Democratic Party seems not to
have looked beyond a short-term patch-
ing up of the mess in the capitalist
system. |

Are we expected to believe that Jean
Chretien’s grand plan, which turned out
to be a two-bit stunt, will get a million-
and-a-half workers off the jobless rolls,
and stabilize the country. economically
and politically? Even he claims only that
his plan will mean 50,000 jobs over two

years. Well, great! That leaves how many
jobless? But wait. They aren’t even real
jobs. Employers can get their half-price
workers (the government subsidizing the
employer with our tax dollars) by offer-
ing three months’ work. The worker will
be out.on the street again, but the boss
will ‘have his profit.

The crisis calls for a fundamental re-
structuring of the economy. Many work-
ers readily see that\the status quo is no
good. To argue as Trudeau seems to,
that Canada’s resources cannot be
mobilized to end unemployment, is to
say that capitalism cannot provide use-
ful, creative work for all who need it,
cannot create jobs for the young genera-
tion, except dead-end ones.

_ True, historically capitalism is obso-
lete, but the government can, under
mass pressure, be compelled to bring in
policies to create jobs and protect living
standards.

That is the goal of the Communist Par-
ty’s six-point program to put Canada
back to work. That program has been
placed before the federal-provincial
economic summit meeting. That meet-
ing should be high-pressured by workers
to take up the Communist program. Its
difference is that it provides for im-
mediate and long-range measures to
open jobs, slash inflation, limit arms
spending, enact public ownership, re-
direct profits, and end the authoritarian |
rule of the monopoly corporations.

To get Canada into orward gear,
working-class and trade union unity
around a genuine, realizable program
for employment is primary. Attempts to
make us believe the impossible — that
the Tories and Liberals have changed
their stripes and will solve the job crisis
with their gimmicks — deserve only con-
tempt. .

Sick system hits at youth

Young people have a special know-

-ledge of what the capitalist system

means. Young men and women finishing

school, getting trapped in dead-end jobs, -

unemployed, being denied benefits be-

worked before. —
young people trying to cope with the
garbage dump of capitalist “culture” —
are well aware that something is wrong.
Sometimes they think that “something”
is themselves.

No, the system is wrong. It’s an exploi-
ter of human beings, a sacrificer of
human worth for the sake of profits and
the power of the numerically small cor-
porate elite.

A recent headline reads: More teens
trying suicide. Another tells of Metro
Toronto’s welfare rolls rising by 2,370 in
two months — not just youth, but youth
is a favorite target of the system. The
minister of unemployment, as he is now
known, J.S.G. Cullen, tells college
graduates not to expect jobs in their spe-
cialty. :

What answers has the system for
youth? It tries to lose them in its cultural
cesspool. Or it tries to lure them into
selling their minds and bodies to the
military. Thus a recent conference of

so-called defence associations, was given
ample press space for its strident alarms
about a concocted Soviet “threat”. Just by
coincidence, a big capitalist paper, on the
same day, published an article on the
glories of belonging to Canada’s expand-
ing military might, dictated by NATO.

Is that all Canadian capitalism has for
the youth —a place in a military build-up
that threatens humanity’s hope — politi-
cal and military détente?

Ted Harvey, of the national youth ad-
visory group, lied recently that the
causes of youth unemployment “can be
found in every industrialized country in
the world.” Any visitor to a socialist coun-
try can spike that lie. :

The kind of help Canadian young
people need — besides a genuine jobs
and training program — is help in break-
ing loose from the capitalist brain-
washers, and realizing it is not the youth
but the system that is awry. :

Together with the labor movement,

long in the experience of struggle, to-

gether with the Young Communist
League, with its strong campaign for
youth rights and youth jobs, the young

_ people of this country will play their role

in bringing about fundamental. change
in society.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 3, 1978—Page 3