Mainly for

Conducteg by WINNIE

oe eee SE A ane

WILLIAMS

All letters, ‘articles, etc., for or concerning this page should be addressed to Winnie Williams, Pa- cific Tribune, 650 Howe St., Vancouver, B.C.

Domestic service probl

ems show

need for building strong union

“When a domestic worker is sick—who should pay for the doctor? Should she come under the family doctor of her employer, or is she obliged to call in her own?

“What is to be done about the worker who is denied by the mistress to eat eggs— except on Sunday? And she can’t buy her own at the store, because it might embarrass

realy she works for.” fallin at about the accidents — Seg off ladders, bad cuts, burns wend Scalds the. household bd who has to wait on the and has no time to sit down o ae her ewn meal.” €se, and many others—lon; Oe (10-14), Goon: eee ome: Bie | 8s low as $20 a month, poor ikea or simply not ‘enough to ae. = are the problems which Blo y face the Home Service Em- vees Union, Locai 211, ae moet in September of 1945 Bee affiliate of the Trades and the Teonstess of Canada (AFL), ing ome Service Union is hav- ditions uphill’ battle to better con- th oe for the women ‘who work €r women’s homes.

the Onditions improved during, the war, but as Olive Wilkinson, “eat hard-working presi- “Edad “Before the war Wages worked for very low CN eae the employers were hon ey were going to get a Sehold worker very cheap sure © war. We are just as they and determined to see that on don’t and that wages and nditions improve.”

ie ar ecitically the union is seek- ‘ oe esides the things named

» legislation t¢ bring house-

ee cs under the Minimum

ee the Hours of Work,

dee ‘oOrkmen's Compenkation. Tr ; pe

ae is the legislation other or-

zed labor has gained,” said

Whaleburgers’ added to menus

BE NDON — British scientists bilitic menting with the possi- €S of whale meat as a staple

Um; . Wort. 00d. Research culinary Tkers are a

hold

oe Most palatable methods of es whale meat for the

Medical science maintains € whale meat proteins sur- nN health value for children Obtained for land animals. pleburgers” may soon be add- © relieve the ‘austerity’ of SSed British housewives.

Pass j Ose

“Wh

eq

hara:

Raffle winners

i iners in the Central Burnaby Pacing we held in aid of the Apri, 4. pune drive on Friday, Prize 5, are as follows: . First 1615’ ticket No. 306, Geo. Carr,

West 8rd; 2nd _ prize, ticket 1042, Wally Chutsky, 2469 Ave.; 3rd prize, ticket No. » Mrs. Parker, 3002 Laurel St., Westminster.

Montreal women launch

price control

MONTREAL, Que.—Bitt

campaign

erly resentful over the King

rgovernment’s brazen lifting of the price and rent control lids,

housewives’ and consumers rallied here last Friday to plan positive action to fight Ottawa’s ill-considered move. At a

public protest rally called by sev-{ eral leading consumers’ and wo- men’s groups, over 300 angry, de- termined women demanded the im-| mediate re-institution of controls by Federal authorities.

Lois Frost, local radio commen- tator and housewife criticized Ca- nadian women for sitting back and taking things, such as price in-' creases, much too easy. “This de-!' featism,” warned Mrs. Frost, “is,

Olive, ‘and we demand to be in- cluded.”

’ One thing the union feels would solve many conflicts in housework is a training plan, similar .to the one being formed in Britain under government auspices to supply ‘university trained” girls to help run Britain’s homes. The idea is to make domestic employment an attractive career for girls and also to increase British women’s know- ledge of housecraft and homemak- ing.

Girls will take courses in cook- ing, child care, laundry, budgeting and even emergency household re- pairs. The institute will then see to it that its graduates are given every consideration by their em- ployers, and will lay down certain conditions, such as wages, hours, days off, comfortable quarters, and so on which employers will be re- quired to abide by.

During the war years the trade unions made the slogan, “Equal Pay for Equal Work,” one of their main points. Women realized, some of them for the first time, that if they were to have better working conditions and higher wages, the trade union was the answer.

At the end of the war, mass lay- ors lwok piace and woumen, who had contributed so much to the winning of the war, were the first to go. Promises or ‘Jobs tor All failed to materialize and possibili- ties of jobs for women are narrow- ing down. One of the main . fields left is housework, To add further insult to injury, is the 1947 income tax regulations—aimed to discour- age married women from working, even though most of them are forced to, to.add to the family income.

For the most part women and girls in service feel helpless and alone, due to the nature of their

- ‘work. The trade union movement, lready testing out”

however, has’ proved that this iso- lation can be overcome. For in- stance, teachers in isolated rural areas have been organized for years.

The main benefits will be de- rived, not only from the one local union, but also from the strength gained from afliliation with thous- ands of “workers affiliated to the Trades and Labor Congress. In this way, the union hopes to steadily win something better for a class of workers who certainly have bet- ter things coming to them.

As Olive concluded her inter- view with the P.T.. “Every household worker who is not in a union is a detriment to other organized labor. Nothing is on alone. So girls, join the union. Let our voice be heard. We have

been forgotten long enough.”

MIM AD A

THREE DAYS

“ONE OF THE BEST...1

St PRIZE

ALL SEATS eS

3 SHOWS DAILY — 2.80; 6.30 and 9.00 P.M.

ARTKINO PRESENTS

ONE 7 FLOWER’

N EXCELLENT COLOR”

nl Ly RI

PRODUCED IN USSR

TICKETS ON SALE — KELLY’S, SEYMOUR STREET Matinee, 50; Evenings, 50c, 7c, 90c (tax included)

MAY 5—6—7

es w

\)

RESERVED

Just ducky

With three and a half acres, a little creek, and lots of initiative; WRCNS veterans Ger- trude .Nunn of Vancouver (left) and Elizabeth

Wimperly of Toronto, started a duck ranch in Burnaby last fall. With DVA credits and a course in animal husbandry at the UBC the ex-WRCNS got going. Already they have a forty-five bird flock, and have set themselves the objective of a 400-bird a month

market turnover.

‘Austerity’ on display

gowns not in salons

A fashion. note from Britain says that “the salons of the big London dressmakers have been crowded by buyers and journalists, from Britain and overseas, who came to see

the 1947 spring and summer collections of clothes.

evening gowns were more luxur- ious than we have seen since be- fore World War II. Norman Hart- nell showed a gown in gold tis- sue with a skirt showing six separate drapings; the effect was something like a harem.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Jones of Bill- ingsgate, had her own private

ASTOR CAFE 1222 Broad Street

(Opposite Colonist) VICTORIA

Ph. B2311 Specializing in . Sea Foods — Steaks — Chops

F RIDAY, APRIL 25, 1947

The

showing of spring and summer designs. Her dress is also like ‘tissue’, but not ‘gold tissue’. It is only of very poor quality, a tissue thin cotton, the only type of cloth which Mrs. Jones is able to buy from the few dollars that can be spared after food and shel- ter has been bought for herself and family.

In fact, this is a ‘tissue’ wear- ing family, if the truth were to leak out. (And tissue, we might add, at the risk of laboring a point, is not very adequate even

in spring, when it extends even to coats.) Mrs. Jones’ dress is in style

in still another way. It also has, but not just six—a multitude of separate drapings. This comes, the fashion experts might per-

unhealthy and dreadfully danger- ous. We must. do something about it at once.”

Lea Roback, popular organizer for the CIO United Electrical Workers’ Union declared: “What is the use in getting educational material from the government about the nutritional value of milk when the majority of us can’t af- ford to buy it.”

One of the few men in the au- dience was Rev. K. C. Bolton, who, pointed out that three out of every four members of his parish being married, were forced to live with relatives, because they could not afford the high rentals being asked.

Several women: spoke from the floor of the meeting, pointing out their own particular difficulties as the result of rising living costs. They were unanimous in their de- termination to rally Montreal's women to an all-out fight against rising living costs by calling for price controls on all essential con- sumer goods.

House regarded fd for men only’

(Excerpt from “Women M.P.’s in Britain,” Oct., 1945, by Hanna. Sheehy-Skeffington.)

Two stories are told of the first. woman elected to parliament in: Great Britain. Countess: Markievicz,. a prisoner undergoing’a life sen- tence after 1916, when summoned to take her seat replied from Hollo- way Jail that she was already His:

Majesty’s guest there and declined to attend. ~ es :

Lady Astor, a good feminist, though in other respects a support- er of the privileged classes, nar-} rates in her memoirs that no male M.P. spoke to her for two years: So shocked was the House that: hitherto exclusive male club at woman’s sacriligious entry! The: only trace of Constance Markievicz. in the House of Commons was the.

appearance of a peg to han ; hat on! who

Where it belongs

Representative Helen Gaha- gan Douglas (D. Cal.) carried a basket of groceries onto the floor of the House. She told her | colleagues that last June, under OPA, she had paid $10.08 for the same selection, The cost today—$15.02.

3 Nios aoe. AS ese

‘TI want to place basket where squarely in the publican Party!” no takers,

this food the Re- were

t '

haps say, from: the fact th

Jones does not wash uecn thin dress in: Lux (even if she could get it). This could be the} answer, but I don’t say it is. The answer is that no matter what kind of washing you give the kind of dress Mrs. Jones wears, it will shrink into Separate drapings. | The only fortunate part about the whole thing is that this year even, Mrs. Jones is in style.

1

t

To draw a parallel; the hone effect was something like a harem | (scarem). It should also be noted | that while the ladies who haunt! the big dress salons are not af-i fected by the enforced economic ‘austerity’ of Britons, the Mrs. | Joneses have little choice than to | stick to the patch-work ‘tissues’ of poverty. }

PACIFIC - TRIBUNE—PAGE 7

| ae

JUL TT TTT