CLC PLANS _ WOMEN’S MEET OTTAWA — About 400 dele- ' gates are expected to participate in a Canadian Labor Congress-spon- sored conference Jan. 12-14 on Equal Opportunity and Treatment for Women Workers here. Delegates will have the choice of workshops during the conference which will include: Public Sector Collective Bargaining, Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value, Private Sector Bargaining Issues Today, Occupational Health and Safety, Women and Unemployment, Part-Time Workers, Retirement, and Women and the Political Process. BRIDGE WORKERS’ STRIKE GOES ON HAMILTON — The strike by six bridge operators and four watchmen, members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada over the federal government’s contract offer of 6% total compensation continues as 18,000 members of the PSAC’s General Labor and Trades group conduct their strike vote. Results from the vote are ex- pected by mid-January with the GLTs seeking increases to bring them in line with workers in the in the private sector performing the same work. The bridge operators went out Dec. 21. MORE COPS ‘DEMAND _- ~ FOUR DAY WEEK > Pa CALGARY — The 800-member police force here announced Jan. 4 it is seeking a four day work week in the current set of negotiations, with city officials. Meanwhile Montreal’s 5,200- member policemen’s union is still ignoring legal threats and discipli- nary measures for continuing with the self-declared four-day work week of four days on duty .with three off, which they instituted New Year’s eve. ACADEMY HIT FOR UNION BUSTING TORONTO — The Medical Academy, Dec. 29 was ordered by the Ontario Labor Relations Board to pay the Communica- tions Workers of Canada for all pores reasonable organizational, bar-. gaining, legal and other expenses associated with organizing and trying to secure a contract for 18 employees of the telephone ans- wering service run by the Academy. The board decision on punish- ing the Academy for its union- busting act of closing the service down, also ordered the Academy to pay the workers’ legal ex- penses incurred from taking the case to the board. GUILD WINS AT GAZETTE MONTREAL — The News- paper Guild won certification Dec. 29 from the Quebec Labor De- partment as the bargaining agent for editorial workers at the city’s biggest English-language daily, the Gazette. : Reporters, photographers, lib- rarians and editorial workers not considered to be in management jobs, were covered for application for certification. RAIL TALKS RESUME - MONTREAL — With the ex- piry De. 31 of existing railway agreements between the 17- union, 100,000-member As- sociated Railway Unions (ARU) and -13 railway companies, con- tract negotiations were set to re- sume Jan. 4 following a Christmas recess Dec. 13. ARU chairman Ray Peers said nothing has been settled yet on ‘© major’ monetary ‘issues, and’ that the unions should know in about two or three weeks of talks whether or not there is a basis for settlement. LUNG CANCER | VICTIM DIES PORT HOPE — One week after successfully winning his claim from the Ontario Workmen’s Compensation Board for the lung cancer he contracted from expo- sure to radon gas and its by-pro- ducts during 29 years working for Eldorado Nuclear Ltd., Frank Hendrick, 63, died in a Toronto. hospital. He was the first worker in Canada to be awarded a work- related cancer claim resulting from above ground exposure to radon gas and its by-products. MOUNDSVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA — Two of the more than 160,000 Striking U.S. coal miners who have been out since their contract expired _ Dec. 6 for full restoration of health and welfare benefits taken away by the companies last summer. Other demands include the right to strike locally against a mine to enforce safety laws and expedite grievances, etter vacations, full time safety inspectors in every mine, and a wage increase over 40 months to $114.00 per day. EDITORIAL COMMENT Pierre, the fence mender There was a time when the Trudeau government won favor with a large number of Canadians by pulling some troops out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. . Ottawa’s current attitude seems to be: . if the imperialist countries don’t hang together, they'll hang separately. Hence the fence-mending project, vast military squandering, which robs the economy, and forces reduced living standards on working people. Canada was spending some $5-billion a year on the military even before its re-dedication to the world-wide military threat undertaken by imperialism. It was committed to boost that by 3% a year to please NATO. Now, to meet the de- mands of the U.S. Pentagon and its NATO wing, Canada is handing out $2.34-billion for fighter aircraft, $1.5- billion for patrol frigates, and $360- million for tanks and armored personnel carriers. | (Yet we can predict federal-provincial snarling over the bones of the electorate at their forthcoming conference — re- fusing to raise to a human level such things as mothers’ allowances, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, etc. “Where is the money to come from?” they'll cry.) Military spending should be cut 50% right now. That’s what any government of the people of Canada would do. Buta government committed to the rule of the corporations, a government in the poc- ket of the U.S. Pentagon, will do so only under great-pressure from the working people. Trudeau’s tour of North American Air Defence (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado Springs, USA, recalls to mind the nes demands for withdrawal from this farce of a “defence” scheme. Not only should NORAD be scrapped, but the Canadian Government should state unalterable opposition to produc- tion and deployment of the neutron de- population weapon. Canada _ should never agree to its distribution among NATO forces. The Canadian Govern- ment should refuse complicity in thus menacing the people of Europe and the world. It is escalation of the arms race in the most anti-human way. — To sway the Canadian Government toward a program of disarmament, and to end its spree of squandering on ar- maments requires that painful pressure be exerted by the people of Canada. The labor movement, as a cohesive majority should be in the. forefront, united with the peace forces, in a campaign of pro- test, directed to the government the de- fence department and to each and every Member of Parliament. It is such a grassroots effort which can compel government policies for an end to all nuclear testing, for cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Whatdoes NDP wantto be? Stephen Lewis made his final speech in the Ontario Legislature as Ontario New Democratic Party leader, on December 16, 1977. He continues as member for Scarborough West. In effect, Lewis put a question before every NDP member, supporter and vot- er. What is more, he put a large question before the labor movement which keeps the NDP afloat financially and in terms of credibility. Some workers faced and answered the question at the last Ontario election, when Lewis showed his distain for the labor movement. In his swan song in the legislature he exposed his attraction to the role of “respectable” parliamenta- rian committed to “motherhood” issues, ‘and avoidance of the major issues. In the genteel Queen’s Park exchange, after laudatory speeches by Tory Pre- mier Davis and Liberal leader Smith, Lewis combined theatrical “attacks” on the government with praise for the dedi- cated representatives of the corporate elite. Working people cannot easily erase from their minds the spreading layoffs, like those in Sudbury, Marmora, Toron- to, due to Ontario Tory and Ottawa Lib- eral policies. Nor can they forget it is the Davis government on a rampage of cut- backs of all social benefits. -Yet the Stephen Lewis response to the eulogies was: “... let me say that I love you all, indiscriminately and across every party line.” Silly drivel? But could the jobless, the poor, the thousands harassed by gov- ernment departments bring themselves to embrace their class enemy? The Tory and Liberal friends of INCO, Falcon- bridge, Massey Ferguson and the rest must welcome the collaboration of the outgoing NDP. head, the workers may well question what such leadership since 1970 had meant to them. What is important is what the NDP intends to be. “I think we have to realize,” said NDP member for Toronto-Downsview, Odoardo Di Santo, “that we cannot be a party of everybody, without relinquish- ing some of the basic premises on which the NDP was founded.” Being “respect- able” to some groups in society “de-em- phasized our links with the labor move- ment,” and the NDP has frequently taken “contradictory stands,” he said in an article in an NDP publication. NDP members themselves will decide on their leadership. But it is of concern to the labor movement to know whether the NDP has decided to be a small “I” liberal party, or to make a serious chal- lenge to monopoly capitalism, which has shown its ability to make workers pay for the system’s. crisis. Where is the Ontario NDP going — up a blind alley or in the direction of genuine anti-ménopoly policies to serve the working people of the province?. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 13, 1978—Page 3