Can expect | yesterday. But he refused to | se

PRICES GO UP, UP, UP

Price boosts predicted for butter, cheese

The daily press headlines tell the inflation story. Tea, taxes, food, utilities all going up. Match this with unemployment as high as during the depression of the 30’s.

deceuse of in- ers in Woodstock that price

TURKISH WORKERS FIGHT FOR RIGHTS

FRANKFURT — More than 400 delegates representing over one million . Turkish foreign workers in West Germany held the founding congress Feb. 26-27 of the Federation of Turkish Workers in West Germany, under the theme of ‘‘Defense of Basic Human Rights’.

The congress showed that Tur- kish workers have no freedom of:

BELL OPERATORS VOTE TO STRIKE

MONTREAL — Bell Canada operators, here, voted March 16, along with other members of the Communications Union of Canada in Toronto, Oshawa, Port Hope, and Peterborough, who had voted earlier, to endorse a strike man- date by the 8,000-member tele- phone operators’ union in Ontario and Quebec.

Votes still remain to be. taken in Quebec City, and Ottawa but the margin of support for astrike in all centres so far, is well over 90%. Union officials say a walkout is un- likely for several weeks.

DRIVERS BACK UP

_SALESMEN’S FIGHT

_ KITCHENER — A picket line set up by six striking salesmen for Kitchener Beverages Ltd., in- their fight for a first contract as members of the Canadian Brew- ery Workers union, closed the plant down when about 30 truck drivers and production workers in the same union refused to cross.

-AIB ABOLISHED BY

QUEBEC GOVERN- MENT

QUEBEC — The provincial government announced March 16 the abolition of its own so-called

‘Anti-Inflation Board’’ by. an...

movement, no chance to learn a trade, are denied insurance and unemployment benefits, and pay an average of 40% more in rents than West Germans while their housing lacks basic sanitary facilities. The federation said it would fight for human rights and the implementation by West Germany of the Helsinki Agreement. :

order-in-council, to force municipalities across the province, locked in strikes with their police forces, to abide by a 17.4% wage increase recommended by Finance Minister Jacques Parizeau. The municipalities offered 12.2% .say- ing they couldn’t break the law.

CP AIR DROPS 200 VANCOUVER — CP Air of Vancouver announed March 16 the layoff of about 200 flight at- tendants, maintenance and office personnel to recover profit losses in 1976. The company also announced its service to the public would be cut back: with fewer flights on many routes including the trans- continental.

JOURNAL UNIONS

CHARGE BAD FAITH

OTTAWA — After Ottawa Journal publisher L. A. Lalonde refused a Labor Ministry prop- osal to end the four-month-old lockout by the paper of its. or- ganized employees in several unions, the unions charged man- agement with bargaining in bad faith and have called on both fed- eral and provincial governments to withhold advertising from the paper. : A ‘meeting with the Ontario Labor Relations Board to discuss the charges has. been requested.

A hell of a way to run a railway!

Following Confederation in 1867, the real railroad-building era got under way. From then un- til the end of the last century the east to west continental railways became the links that bound Canada together from the Atlan- tic to the Pacific. Sir Allan McNab

’ who coined the phrase “‘railroads

are my politics’? expressed the thoughts of the capitalist tycoons of that day. Enormous subsidies, in both.cash and land grants, plus the fierce exploitation of immig- rant labor from both Europe and Asia, accumulated fabulous

- amounts of wealth in the hands of

a few rich exploiters. This be- came the foundation of banking and industrial capital in the hands of the ruling capitalist class in Canada and its foreign partners.

After the First World War a huge influx of immigrant settlers completed the settlement of the prairies. Business was booming during the mid-1920’s and up to the big depression in the fall of 1929. But the boom did not pre- vent the Great Norther Railway from falling in to bankruptcy which led to a government takeover and the creation of the

“Canadian National or CNR as we

know it. One of the reasons for the takeover was. over- capitalization. The nationaliza- tion meant that the country’s tax-payers became the guarantors of the huge interest.on all of the watered stock in the CNR,. which to this day has meant that this railway always ended up in the red regardless of how much surplus capital was produced in the course of its operation.

In the meantime, the second continental railway, the Grand Trunk Canadian Pacific, thrived on political patronage and be- came the epi-centre of an empire of transportation facilities and other subsidiary operations in many directions, including mining operations and shipping, etc. Dur- ing the big depression of the 1930s, the ruling class advanced the idea of railroad amalgamation. This meant that the CPR would swallow up the CNR in the in- terest of centralization and grea- ter monopoly: profits at the ex- pense of the workers on the rail- ways and the national interest. But the Canadian people, particu- larly the struggle of the working people against this kind of bet-

rayal of the people and the coun- —

try, opposed and defeated the CPR take-over of that day.

* ok *

After the Second World War,

monopoly’s drive for maximum _

profits brought about rationaliza- tion. Technological changes in the railway industry were brought about at the expense of employees and the public at large. In the decade of the 1950s this

resulted in a 28% decline in the ©

labor force on the railways.

By the 1960s we entered a new era— the era of the dismantling of railway lines and the undermining of the existence of whole com- munities. The dismantling _ of branch lines began with the so- called ‘‘uneconomical’’ ones. In’ this way some 3,800 miles of branch tracks were tom up or abandoned. Fully 90% of these were in the prairie provinces.

* ok

“While huge government. sub- sidies were added to the profits accumulated from exploitation of labor in the industry, railway

workers, farmers, entire com--

munities as well as the public at large, became the victims rather than the beneficiaries of rationali- zation. The country’s transporta- tion system became a funnel through which tremendous for- tunes were amassed in the hands of the capitalist class, i.e. the mono- polies.

Instead of the means of trans- portation being seen as a neces- sary public service essential to the

country’s economy, profitability instead of public service became the essential factor. The scramble

for maximum monopoly profits .

turned the whole public purpose of the transportation industry up- side down. :

_ This meant ‘that Canadian monopoly capital had travelled around in a circle from railroad building to railway dismantling. The ‘‘user must pay”’ policy, as now determined by the mono- polies in our modem Canadian society, seeks to bring about a private monopoly of the means of transportation while seeking more public funds for more and ever-more rationalization and higher monopolies profits.

* kK *

A Bill (C-33) now.before parli- ament is, in essence, a series of amendments to the National Transportation Act of 1967.

Under this bill the door is opened to many changes. The elimination of long-haul and short-haul rate differentials is a bow to monopoly interests of western Canada who have com- plained long and bitterly about rates charged on the shipment of

steel from eastern Canada. At the

same time the government seeks

to remove an $11-million subsidy on flour and grain moving east by rail from the prairies. This latter move will mean higher costs for eastern Canadian farmers buying feed grain from the west.

The bill now before parliament also provides that, where gov- emment policy requires a depar- ture from the objective of com- mercial viability, any additional costs must be assumed by the gov- ernment.

Obviously, what this points to is the need for a publicly-owned and controlled transportation sys- tem, fully integrated to include rail, road, air, water and pipelines — as long advocated by the “Communist Party of Canada.

a

But the government is moving in the opposite direction. Trans- port Minister Otto Lang has told the CN management to decide which profit centres — rail, trucks, hotels — make enough money to be attractive to private investors. These profit centres could then be tumed into sub- sidiaries with some shares sold to private investors.

‘‘For the CN to sell off profit- making operations to make money for stockholders instead of to offset the cost of essential ser- vices is just ludicrous”’ says Na- tional Farmers Union president, Roy Atkinson. Selling off parts of the CN to private investors “‘does not give Canada a national rail system to be used as an instru- ment for social and economic de- velopment,’’ said Atkinson.

Jack Wynter, Legislative Di- rector of the Canadian Brother- hood of Railway, Transport and General Workers, has called for nationalization of the Canadian Pacific.

“CP Rail’s main purpose is to maximize profits. But if Canada decides that it is in the national interest to develop a modern pas- senger service network, it will be necessary to sacrifice profits for social objective. There is no role for private enterprise in such a system. (To be continued next week.)

BOYCOTT J. P. STEVENS

The Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers are conducting a boycott against the No. 1 anti-union employer in North America. The union is asking consumers to boycott the following J. P. Stevens products: Stevens, Twist Twil, Academy, Lady Consort, Stevetex, Fine Arts, Beauti-Blend, Utica, Tastemaker, Simtex, Fruit of the Loom and Big Mama. Pictured above a demonstration out- side the company’s stockholder meeting in New York.

i : PACIFIC TRIBUNE=MARCH 25,-1977—Page 5