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B.C. LUMBER WORKER

1st Issue, April

5 inning

Outlines Program

Resolution adopted at the re- cent IWA District Convention regarding measures to alleviate unemployment, when forwarded to the Premier of Alberta, elicited from him a detailed outline of public works in progress or contemplated.

Premier Manning’s statement on the subject is here published. Dear Mr. Mitchell:

I wish to acknowledge receipt of your letter of March 7th in which you forwarded to me a copy of a resolution which was passed at your Annual District Convention and dealing with the matter of unemployment.

I have noted the contents of the unemployment program out- lined in the resolution and 1 would like to advise you in re- spect to what is being done by the Alberta Government during the year ahead concerning con- struction of schools, University facilities, road building, dyking and flood control work and hos- pitals, as referred to in that order in the latter part of the resolution.

The references in the resolu- tion to lower rental type housing and slum clearance programs are matters, which in our opinion, come entirely under the jurisdic- tion of the Government of Can- ada and the Alberta Government does not plan any projects in respect to these two latter pro- grams referred to in the resolu- tion,

In regard to the construction of educational facilities during the coming year, the Alberta Government will allocate. over $14,000,000 under The School Building Assistance Act, to as- sist school boards throughout the province in carrying out new construction and an additional $5,600,000 for University and educational buildings coming directly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education.

The Alberta Government’s road building program this year will eall for an expenditure of an estimated $62,000,000 and well over $3,000,000 has been provided for the expansion of irrigation facilities, drainage and flood con- trol. The construction ‘ program planned at provincial hospitals and institutions this year will cost well over $5,600,000 and a further $500,000 will be made available to hospital boards throughout the province to assist these boards in carrying out their own construction programs.

I believe this brief outline of the provisions being made by the Aberta Government for this new construction of various types in this province this year will be of interest to the members of your Local.

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“INTEREST in the welfare of their fellow man” brought these people together at the Eighth Annual Labour Institute on Race Rela- tions, March 23rd. The Institute was sponsored jointly by the Vancouver & District Labour Council and the B.C. Federation of Labour.

Reuther Attacks Double Standard

Profit-sharing demand of the UAW is making employ- ers talk about wages in relation to profits instead of in relation to prices “and that is why they are screaming”, International President Walter Reuther told the 200 dele- gates to the Canadian Economic Conference of the United Automobile Workers, held in Windsor, Ont., last month.

“Shelter” Lost

Employers are screaming as never before, the UAW President said, “because for the first time they can’t hide behind the con- sumers”. Until now, he pointed out, employers have blamed every price increase on wage increases while picturing themselves as fighting for the consumer when they fought the unions’ demands. Now the UAW is asking for the workers what the employers long have had, and the game is up.

Double Standard +

“This is the old ‘double stand- ard’,” he recalled, “the same as it was with pensions and the guar- anteed annual wage. We didn’t win all we wanted on pensions and the SUB, but we won the basic foundation and now we are putting a little meat on it. We aren’t asking for the same share of profits as Mr. Curtice (Har- low H. Curtice, president of Gen- eral Motors) gets, but we are asking that all those who make the profits possible share in them.”

Fresh from a two-day appear- ance before a U.S. Senate com- mittee investigating prices and monopoly practices in industry, Reuther gave a dramatic example of the imbalance between the re- turn won by work and capital.

Striking Contrast Said he: “If you take an aver-

age GM worker and begin with January 1947 and take him on through the 11 years 1947 to 1957 inclusive at 50 weeks times 40 hours a week for every year, you find that that worker gets $46,000 total for those years. If you take a shareholder who bought 1,004 shares in GM in January 1947 for $52,000, you find that he re- ceived $96,000 in dividends and with three stock splits he got $189,000 in capital gains, for a total of $284,000.”

If, instead of $52,000, the share- holder had invested $9,000 in GM in January 1947, he would have made the same as the worker.

“By investing $9,000, the share- holder could have lain on the beach at Miami for those 11 years and made as much money as the GM worker back in the shop working 40 hours a week 50 weeks every year,” Reuther said.

“They Didn’t Believe It”

The U.S. senators didn’t believe him when he first gave that testi- mony. “And, you know, I don’t blame them,” he added. “I had trouble believing it myself and long ago I quit having trouble believing things about GM!”

Monopolies and dominant cor- porations, he said, have taken a disproportionate share of the wealth through rigged prices.

Union Seminar Favors PAC

NIAGARA FALLS—The weight of opinion at the Union Staff Seminar conducted here by CLC Political Education Director Howard Conquergood was heavily in favor of union participation in politics.

About 70 union staff members

attending the week-long sessions

heard strong support for the CCF party as the political arm of labor, emanate from representatives and officers of the Ontario

Federation of Labor and the Uni

ited Steelworkers of America.

; By

DISTRICT PRESIDENT Joe Morris, at the rostrum during the 21st

Annual meeting of Local 1-80, IWA, Duncan, March 16th. Group, from left, Robert Bouchard, Local Recording Secretary; Ed Linder, Local Financial Secretary; and Joe Morris.

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They Turned Back The Clock —

Adoption of so-called right-to-work laws—sometimes called Yoluntary unionism in Guatemala—has “turned back the clock a hundred years and brought about a system of peonage, star- vation wages and suffering,” reports a Los Angeles attorney who returned from a business trip to that country. After over- throw of a dictator in 1944, he says, unions developed to a point similar in the United States today. Wages were boosted to the highest point in Guatamala history. In ’54 a new regime passed a right-to-work law. As unions were weakened wages sank 35 per cent while living costs kept going up. Today, an unskilled worker gets 50 cents an hour, while living costs compare with

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Lock-out Charged By ACWA

MONTREAL (CPA) — An official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (CLC) has charged that the company-union Hyde Park Clothes Limited here has locked out 500 of its employees, after obtaining an injunction prohibiting certification ceedings for the ACWA, The injunction was. described as a “distortion of basie demo- cxatic rights” by ACWA spokes- man Hyman Reiff. A majority of the employees want the Amal- gamated to bargain for them, he said.

The ACWA has been trying to organize the plant for some time. At present, a company union has

pro-

a contract. The shop e was formed in 1945, we?

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