housing,

By MARION TAGGART

HAMILTON — Representing
45,000 affiliates, the Hamilton and
District Labor Council March 17,
Called upon the federal govern-
Ment to: immediately end the
Wage control program, reduce in-
come tax on incomes below
$20,000 per year, and launch a
Massive housing program to
create housing at prices workers
can afford.

The resolution passed by the
delegates and addressed to the
prime minister also condemned
the federal government for deny-
ing ‘“‘thousands of legitimate Un-

‘employment Insurance Commis-

sion claimants their benefits in-
Stead of putting full concentration

. On putting Canada back to
work.”

The resolution condemned “‘in
no uncertain terms’’ the federal
government’s lack of ‘‘concern
over the more than one million
people out of work in our coun-
try,”’ and went on to condemn
“an economic system which cyn-

A modern instrument of class
collaboration, among many
others, is the technique of so-
called co-determination. This par-
ticular gimmick is most widely
used in West Germany to pacify ,
and; to integrate workers into the
Mechanism of state and
monopoly capitalist exploitation.
The question has arisen as to
whether such psychological gim-
mickry may not be used to pacify
Canadian workers and to bring
about collaboration between
labor and monopoly capital in this
country in the interest of
maximum monopoly profits: __

My fellow labor columnist,
Jack Phillips of Vancouver, in a
Story carried in the Pacific
Tribune and also in the Canadian
Tribune a couple of weeks ago,
Teported that the International
Woodworkers of America in B.C.
has rejected the concept of co-
determination and worker direc-
tors as presently practiced in
West Germany. The rejection fol-
lows careful study by the IWA. °

A further story on this subject
by Phillips, and carried elsewhere
in this issue of the Canadian
Tribune in abreviated form,
makes informative reading in face
of what appears as a systematic
and planned campaign here in
Canada to promote and sell the
West German concept as part of a

. plot to undermine the trade union

Movement in this country.
Tripartism Conference
Qn April 15-16-17 a conference
to discuss such class col-
laborationist concepts as *‘Co-
determination’, ‘‘ Workers’ Con-
trol’? and ‘‘Tripartism’’ will be
held in Toronto.
The sponsors of this study of
Modern trends in the gimmickry
of class collaboration include, be-
Sides the Centre for Labor
Studies at the Humber College
and the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute also, the Labor Council
of Metropolitan Toronto.

~ Hamilton labor demands decent

tax cuts, end to AIB

ically refuses to provide all Cana-
dians with jobs at decent wages

‘while spending millions cutting

workers off from legitimate un-
employment insurance benefits.”

Speaking on the council de-
‘mand for a massive housing prog-
ram, Don Stewart, Local 105, In-
ternational Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers (IBEW), called the

Ontario Tory government’s plan .

to scrap the Home Ownership
Made Easy (HOME) plan in favor
of promoting the federally as-
sisted AHOP plan ‘‘a gimmick”’
by which only about 1000 people
across the province would bene-
fit.
Exposed Sell-Out

He also exposed the massive
sell-out the Tory government
plans of its 23,000 acres presently
set aside for housing, to
speculators and developers for
about $185 million. Stewart pre-
dicted the developers and land
speculators could end up with 1.5
or 2 billion in their pockets by the
time they’re through with the de-
al.

He pointed out that building
more housing would create jobs
and relieve the unemployment
crisis. He called for a fight to win
mass public housing and rather
than the government selling off
the land it presently owns, all av-

ailable land suitable for housing:

should be taken over by the gov-
ernment for this purpose.

In other business the council’s
legislative committee was called
upon to reiterate and update its
position opposing the Ontario
Tory government’s proposed
banning of non-retumable con-

.tainers and to convene a meeting

of unions in the glass and metal
container industries to discuss
possible action to save jobs in this
area.

Sam Hammond, Graphic Arts
International Union (GAIU), said
neither glass nor metal containers
were responsible for creating pol-
lution. ‘‘All they do is add to the
volume of garbage’’, he said ‘‘and
that only becomes a problem be-
cause this province and munici-

pality has a garbage disposal sys-

Co-determination — a form

of class collaboration

Among the participants in this
gathering, billed as “‘a conference
to examine current trends in in-
dustrial democracy’, will be
guests from Sweden and West
Germany, as well as senior of-
ficials of labor. government, uni-
versities and business from across
Canada.

In plenary sessions and work-
shops, participants will examine
in depth the various possible rela-
tionships (sic!) between labor,
government and business.

This approach would indicate
an ideological offensive to do a
brainwashing job on labor. With
big business out to squeeze the
maximum of monopoly profits out
of labor in productive activity,
while governments funnel the
whole country’s wealth and re-
sources in the same direction,
what other relationship can there
be between big business and gov-
ernment on the one hand, and
labor on the other hand, except an
antagonistic one?

Yet certain academics and
members of the bourgeois intel-
ligentsia are forever blaming labor
for this condition in our capitalist
society, and looking for ways of
accomodation and compromise at
the expense of labor.

But the adversary relationship
that arises out of exploitation of
man by man in our society cannot
be exorcised any more than the
class struggle can be by-passed or
ignored, No matter what is done
to pretendit is not there, itis a fact
of life in our society. Sooner or
later it asserts itself, and the fet-
ters which keep our society from

going forward will burst asunder.

in one way or another.
B.C. Labor Fightback

It would appear that organized
labor in British Columbia is better
aware of the facts of life than labor
in Ontario. The Victoria Labor
Council, when faced with the
proposition to be a sponsor for a
series of seminars on CO-

determination, turned the idea
down by a vote of 3 to 1. The
Vancouver Labor Council has
discussed ways and means of or-
ganizing unemployed workers
and has adopted a 7-point prog-
ram to place before the govern-
ment in B.C. and Ottawa to pro-
vide workers with a job or in-
come.

Before the trade union move-
ment can acquire a meaningful
role in determining economic and
social policy, monopoly power
must be restricted and the rights
of trade unions expanded. A grea-
ter say by labor in running the
economy at the factory level and
in the country as a whole will only
be possible when collective bar-
gaining is fully restored. Nay, it
must not only be restored; it must
be enlarged in scope to include
questions such as economic and
social policy, technological
change, investment policy, safe-
ty, health, the moving of plants,
manpower training and man-
power planning.

Under capitalism only this kind
of economic and industrial demo-
cracy has any meaning for the
working-class and the trade union
movement. The battle to enlarge
collective bargaining must go side
by side with the political fight for
democratic nationalization and
expropriation of the huge

-monopolies, who are now sub-

verting democracy, robbing the
people and putting the country
into a state of chaos and eventual
catastrophe.

This is not a time for class col-
laboration but for class struggle to
win full employment without in-
flation. It is not the time for an
alliance between labor and big
business, but a time for an alliance
betWeen labor and all democratic
forces against big business and its
governments to secure demo-
cratic rights and against bureauc-
ratic centralization to. serve
monopoly capital. Te

QUEBEC — The banner reads “‘Against Wage Cuts — Common
Front of Mill Workers”. Last week the 500 striking mill workers at
four companies, all members of the. Confederation of National
Trade Unions, voted to ignore Quebec Superior Court injunctions
ordering them to end their two month protest against an AIB wage
roll-back of. negotiated agreements with Ogilvy Flour Mills, Robin
Hood, Maple Leaf Mills, and Phenix Mills Ltd.

tem which was suitable in 1910
instead of the kind of system that
should exist in a modern indust-
rial society like ours.”’
1910 Mentality

The Ontario government with
its 1910 mentality, Hammond
said, was ‘‘playing games with the
people trying to convince them
they are concerned and doing
something about pollution.’’ He
said the media has whipped up
such a frenzied campaign against
disposable containers, the gov-
ernment has used the banning of
them as a vote-getting issue,
meanwhile workers in the glass
and container industry are being
thrown onto the street. If workers
were going to be put on the
streets, he said, then labor had

POSTAL WORKERS
PROTEST BLAIS

ST. JOHN — Eight off-duty
postal workers, members of the
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
demanded the resignation of
Postmaster General Jean-Jacques
Blais March 30, unless he was pre-
pared to abide by the collective
agreement between the union and
the government.

The 8 protestors demonstrated
in front of the New Brunswick
Museum where Blais came to un-.
veil a new stamp.

SENATE SEAT
FOR MAHONEY?

TORONTO — Speculation
that Steelworkers Canadian Di-
rector William Mahoney was
considering accepting. a Senate
appointment as an ‘‘Inde-
pendent’’, grew last week as he
announced he had the support of
both his fellow union officers and
in the Canadian Labor Congress,
for the position. .

Organized labor’s traditional
position has been to urge abolition
of the senate, but Mahoney noted
‘*the consensus is that the Senate
is not likely to be abolished in the
foreseeable future.

‘‘better start thinking about put-
ting our workers on the street in
front of Queen’s Park, in a few
demonstrations because it is no
longer a joke.” ;

A surprise appearance by fed-
eral Labor Minister John Munro
to push the Pan-Am games which
the city is considering hosting in
1978 managed to tear the CHML
(Hamilton radio station) reporter
away from the magazine he’d
been reading all night and send
him scurrying away to interview
Munro.

The delegates responded to
Munro’s unannounced appear-
ance by calling for adjournment
amidst general applause, leaving
the Labor Minister no alternative
but to go home.

| COURTS IGNORED
|IN ANTI AIB FIGHT

' QUEBEC — About 500 mem-
bers of the Confederation of Na-
tional Trade unions, employed by

| Ogilvy Flour Mills, Robin Hood

| Multi-Foods, Maple Leaf Mills,
| and Phenix Mills, are ignoring
injunctions granted to the com-
panies last week ordering them to
end a strike protest against an

AIB wage roll back of a
negotiated settlement.

The workers have been out

since Feb. 4.

CLC UNVEILS
; MARITIME
POLICY

OTTAWA — The Canadian
| Labor Congress executive coun-
cil adopted a 15 point policy
statement March 23 compiling the
'concems expressed at a special
conference of fishing industry
unions in mid-January. The CLC
called on the federal government
to initiate talks with the U.S. to
establish a joint martime commis-
sion for both Atlantic and Pacific
oceans to develop long term
policies enhancing the ecology
and general environment within
; the 200 mile zones, in the interests
,Of workers in the fishing and
maritime industries in Canada
and the U.S.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 8, 1977—Page 5