Victoria labor asks

Unemployment parley

of VICTORIA, B.C—Vietoria Labor Council, whose 69 affiliat-

the eae represent a total of 13,170 workers, has called on

confer Vincial government to convene a provincial-municipal
ence on unemployment immediately.

The critical unemployment situation in this city was ag-

Paygted last week by the vir-
ual Shutdown of Yarrows
Shipyard,

ai ey 100 men were
Be , and on Friday anoth-
ee arene handed their pink
Rea Oupled with other re-
: lee these have reduc-
a € work force from its
x of 1,150 in August, 1957,
4 skeleton staff of 140.
nen Wallace, general man-
Es ae Yarrows, blamed lack
ae contracts for the
ot ayoffs. He said the
tok ny appealed to Ottawa
highs oe program ot
tases Ing for national de-
ee Minister George
eine asn’t done a thing to
» charged Ernest Orchin,

‘Use B.C.

Steel’ drive

A :
ing a enen against dump-
reign steel on the
Stee] arket and for use of

Bee auced by a small but °

In

couver steel industry in Van-

1s being conducted by

Cal 3302 of z
th EZ
Workerg eve: e United Steel

he
del local has already sent

is ae to interview min-
Bhd ‘is a: MLA’s in Victoria
ounci] Circularizing municipal
ene a school boards
Unemp) hem to relieve the
Using poe situation “by
Sible. ‘C. steel wherever pos-
oe statement issued by
the aes points out that
asic aes has “pleaded for a
(ae industry for half
or the a and is concerned
steel j Rec growth of the
7 oe ustry established here
emplo -war years which now
..-YS nearly 500 workers.
Bee ess steel workers
and 1 the principle of fair
Scale gical competition on a
an, Pee ene to Canadian
aaa standards. The
4 eee living and wages
the aS is far removed from
- Saaieaoee wages of the
Biss €rs in the countries
i" Ping steel in B.C.,” he
Ys,
geiating that provincial tax-
an have subsidized the
aia tetd for almost 10 years,
reg ler declares it is the
_ Ponsibility of government
= industry at all levels to
“ae “this unnecessary un-
; Ployment situation” by us-
48 B.C. steel.

business agent for Machinists, .

Fitters and Helpers Local 3.
“JT wrote him two months ago
and interviewed him recently.

“Both times he promised to
look into the situation, but he
hasn’t done 4a thing so far.
More than 100 of our local’s
300 members are now unem-
ployed, with no jobs in sight.
The situation is becoming des-
perate.”

Victoria Labor Council had
planned a mass meeting on un-
employment, to be staged in
cooperation with B.C. Federa-
tion of Labor, but decided at
its last meeting to “freeze” this
plan until after it had made
its appeal to the government.

WILL ‘RECESSION’ RECEDE?

What is economic
outlook for 1958?

TORONTO—All economists,

including the most faithful defenders of capitalism, now

admit that we are in a “recession.” With almost 800,000, Canadians registered as seeking jobs,
it is no longer possible to argue that nothing is happening to the economy. »

But the argument now is.that the return of a f

corner. True, we are going throug
will come soon — before the end of 1958 in

Some like J. Wilson Berry,
president of Guaranty Trust
Company are saying that
“Canada may have a recession
extending over most of the
year”. However, Berry cheer-

fully assures us that it will
be “the most prosperous Tre-
cession ever experienced.”

Here are some of the fac-
tors which need to be looked
at carefully:

ea

Jobless

workers are
shown (top) at an unemployed

auto

rally in Windsor’s market
building and (bottom) Carles
Brooks, president of United
Auto Workers’ Chrysler Lo-
cal 444, is seen addressing the
rally.

There is a steady, and

quite rapid development of
automation, and of similar
new technological processes
which are permanently wip-
ing out jobs. There is’ a con-
certed drive on the part of
employers to cut labor costs.

A part of the present un-
employment is the direct re-
sult of this. It is hard to prove
exactly how much _ because
over-all statistics are lacking,
but we all know examples of
this trend.

To just cite one that came
to this writer’s attention re-
cently. The use of paper nap-
kins in railway cafe cars has
wiped out the jobs of 50 wo-
men working in the CPR’s
linen room in Montreal. There
are hundreds of such things
happening all over the coun-
try.

For some years the Cana-

dian economy received a
shot in the arm from heavy
inflows of U.S: capital. The
Bank of Nova Scotia Monthly
letter for last July forsaw

Proposed New Haven
closing stirs storm

Widespread public protest has followed the Bennett gov-
ernment’s announcement of severe cutbacks in provincial civil
service staffs. This protest is particularly sharp over the pro-
jected move to close down the New Haven Borstal and transfer
the 40 or more resident now: in that institution to the Haney

prison.

In the rehabilitation of ju-
venile offenders the principle
applied in Borstal is based upon
an honor system and the cul-
tivation of a sense of social
responsibility. In Borstal there
are no prison bars, no armed
guards, none of the punitive or
medieval features of a prison.
The doors are always open
and the inmate can come or go
as he wishes.

In the opinion of Borstal of-
ficials and of the John. Howard
Society, the results have been
highly commendable during
the ten years of Borstal’s ef-
forts to combat juvenile delin-
quency. ;

An official of the John How-
ard Society interviewed by
the Pacific Tribune stated that

the closing down of New Hav-
en would be a “regrettable and
retrograde step, eliminating a
small civilized _ institution
which is carrying on a very
worthwhile task; that of trans-
forming young people who
have been led astray, into good
citizens; without the stigma of
prison.”

Labor opinion on the pro-
posed civil service cutback
and the closing of Borstal was
more direct: “If the Bennett
government wants to econom-
ize, let it begin by trimming
its own financial extravagance
not by adding to unemploy-
ment, or destroying the one
worthwhile effort (Borstal) to
save scores of youngsters from
a life of crime.”

ull, booming prosperity is just around the
h a recession like that which began in 1953,
the opinion of many top-business “experts.”

but the upturn

“the possibility that there
may be considerable ebbing in
capital expenditures next year
after the relatively much
bigger wave which this coun-
try has been enjoying.”

Since that time the import
of capital from the-U.S. has
dropped off from the high
levels of last spring.

On the other hand we are
beginning to feel the effects
of this splurge of U.S. in-
vestment in the form of a
much heavier draining off
of dividends to the United
States—$402 million in 1956,
as compared to $356 million
in 1955.

In contrast to 1953 there

is a distinct weakening in
the world market demand for
primary products—for natural
resources of the kind Canada
exports in such quantity. This
is already hitting hard at
Canadian production of base
metals, petroleum, and for-
estry products, while at the
same time there is no signi-
ficant improvement. in our
wheat exports which have
been in serious difficulties for
some years.

4 This time, unlike 1953, the

“recession” is not confined
to North America. There is a
slowdown in western Europe
as well. As Business Week
said last September: “Many
economists fe el as queasy
about the international eco-
nomic outlook as they do
about business prospects in
the U.S. There’s a feeling that
the world boom of the past
five years has run out of

steam.”

It will be remembered that

in 1953 and 1954 a big fac-
tor in helping the economy
to pull up again was the tre-
mendous extension of consum-
er credit, including install-
ment buying and personal
borrowing.

For all these reasons, those
who talk about the economy
passing through another “shal-
low valley” like 1953-54 seem
to be whistling in the dark or
deliberately concealing some
very disturbing facts.

February 7, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3