'

= RATE Bie. Each day of the year, most of Trail’s' 3,000 smeltermen

climb the innumerable stairs that lead them to their shift “on abe hill.” At Kimberley over a thousand miners and millworkers Preduce the bulk of the concen- trates.

On each shift, the workers make more for Consolidated Min-

_ ing and Smelting Company than they make for themselves.

In 1947 each employee made an average of $7836 for the com- Pany, over and above wages and all other production costs.

Indications are that in 1948 €ach worker grossed around $10,-

_ 000. for CMS-CPR shareholders in Threadneedle Street, Wall Street, and St. James Street.

Some exploitation!

Yet the company wants more. The big boys in distant board rooms are fascinated, not by workers! families they never see, but by production charts and dividends. They’re planning pro- duction on a scale undreamed of, all to be exacted from the Same (or less) flesh, blood, Muscle and nerve tissue. Men With stop watches——“time-study” men—are practicing timing every Move of every worker.

Trail local 480 and Kimberley local 651 of the. fighting Inter- National Union of Mine, Mill and

ay Smelter Workers have been built

to fight off CMS. But the foreign- Controlled company tells the Workers, “Fight Communists in- _ Stead.”

The company has a new ally. Fat-salaried Canadian Congress of Labor bureaucrats have de- Clared a raiding war on Mine- Mill. In fact all companies can be thankful that with a million Workers waiting to be organized,

“L officers choose instead to

: eg a union whigh fought hte

Poss 40 years before the CCL Bos ee ;

You can talk to plenty of Workers in Trail and Kimberley

‘0 aren't quite sure of the details of the COL raids on their Union,

What they do know is that Mine-Mill, since winning bargain- ig rights in the war, has by Wage boosts partly salvaged liv- Bd Standards and can win more. _ They want to keep and extend ons with pay, shorter hours, Netter conditions, grievance pro-

i\ cedure,

ees why those who attend : eo On meetings spurned CCL estern director William Ma- be When he came with his €ars of Mine-Mill leaders. That’s why Mahoney follows the CCL pattern of knocking to- Sether an underground network to conspire from within the union. The Trail Times headline at the time said, “Local 480 Backs Murphy.” For all pro-company Propagandists try to make the issue center around Harvey Murphy (Mine-Mill’s regional di- rector) rathbr than around wages, ours, speedup, vacations, secur- Y, freedom, peace, and raiding. CMS fears the tried and tested leadership that has made Murphy nown to score of thousands of Workers in a lifetime of building Unions, A tireless character as-

_ Sassination campaign is waged a8ainst him and other Commun-—

id Even tory propagandist ae Hladun was brought to “Tail to say his rehearsed piece

_. Which runs like this: Murphy is

Ye foreign agent trained ito use °“ombs and guns to overthrow Society. Company agents and mis- Suideq elements in the union Spread more subtle lies.

Li trick is based on the fact j Murphy as a union officer ae by the policy of his union.

- ether or not. “Murphy” is sus-

ore is the boss way of saying ether or not Mine-Mill. policy

Sustained, a5. a ail president Billingsley, who ‘ce has become part of the BN

The war scare pays off .

== for Consolidated

slate that seeks to oust the present Mine-Mill district officers, ran into this himself. When he voiced the members’ stand against raiding, the Times edit- orially derided: “Mr. Billingsley iknows as well as we do that this ‘raiding of jurisdiction’ phrase is a product of Harvey Murphy's brain which is working overtime to evade the real issue—the CCL’s apparently honest and definitely laudable desire to rid the Can- adian labor movement of _ its Communists.”

At a time when it would take around $80 a week to maintain a Trail or Kimberley family in minimum standards of health and decency the Times says the real issue is getting rid of Commun- ists,

@

Trail and Kimberley are news across the nation right now.

Members> of the 12,000-strong Sudbury local, facing Internation- al Nickel, have already repelled the CCL. They worried a little when Trail and Kimberley failed to send delegates to Mine-Mill’s national conference at Port Col- borne. They’re more confident of gains since spokesmen for affected locals came to Kimber- ley to hammer out a common front against CMS and Inco.

The greeted the headlines in Mine-Mill’s international paper, The Union, reading: “Trail, Kim- berley Support Port Colborne De- cisions” (for wages and against raiding).

They don’t know that Kimber- ley local officers have led in blocking The Union from bring- ‘ing to Kimberley members the news from Sudbury and other mines, mills and smelters.

Across Canada, Mine-Mill mem- bers count on upset of CCL top brass plans to use Trail and Kimberley to get rid‘ of Mine- and undermine the union nation- Mill’s ‘present western leadership ally. ,

Cape Breton steelworkers, too, voted to back Mine-Mill’s battle for union rights, typifying the rising sentiment in raider Mil- lard’s own Steel union, where

men want a fight against steel

bosses, not against miners.

Workers in almost every CCL union see their freedom bound up in Mine-Mill’s freedom, They’re hearing, too, about the 84,000 unorganized steelworkers Millar could unionize with funds spent attacking Mine-Mill. :

@. Any worker might ask, “Who

the hell would work with Ma-—

honey to line up our locals any- way?”

Continent-wide experience gives the answer, “Men who place per- sonal or partisan gain ahead of the membership, plus the inevit-

able company agents, sometimes _

with the support of inexperienced unionists poisoned by red-bait- ing. : ;

ue the Kootenays this group includes a hodge-podge of right- wing CCF’ers who want: to make the union a political machine, some old-line party figures, Moral Re-armament men, die-hard com- pany union elements, personal opportunists and victims of cleri- calism as expressed through Catholic Action.

This small group, united only by hatred of militant and demo- cratic unionism, gains its strength from the full weight of company influence behind it.

On the other hand is the

majority, including ccF’ers who

1917

2.

you don’t have to be a socialist to

see that company portrayals of socialist ideas as are hokum. The preamble to Mine- *Mill’s constitution dates back to long before Ginger Goodwin (left) led the. } Trail strike—before the Soviet. revolution took place— Here’s what it says (in part):

1. We hold that there is a class | struggle in society . . . caused by economic conditions.

We affirm the economic condi- tion of the producer to be that he is exploited of the wealth which he produces, being allowed to retain bare- ly sufficient for his elementary ne- cessities, ;

3. We hold that the class struggle will continue until the produces is recognized as the sole master of his product. .

4. We assert that the working class, and it alone, can and must achieve its own emancipation.

5. We hold that an _ industrial union and the concerted political ac- tion of all wage workers is the only method of attaining this end.

“foreign-inspired”

f

By BRUCE MICKLEBURGH

helped build the union from the first, quite a few who still sup- port the old line parties, LPP members, many who _ identify themselves with no particular party, people of diverse religions including the vast majority of Catholic unionists.

This big group becomes strong

when it stands like one man

against the company and any who would try to restore the policies of company unionism,

e

Every member has an acid test by which to judge those who seek his vote. The test is—who fights for his needs?

Those needs are sharp. Living costs are above average, especi- ally in Kimberley where, for example, milk costs 23 cents and is going up. Each family needs wage boosts. |

The company’s not yet recon- ciled to the forty-hour week. Last annual report complains, “Reduc-

tion in hours caused many diffi-

culties and resulted in higher costs apart from the similar ef- fect due to wage rates. . .. This trend, which is becoming general, has serious implications, and it is important that these should be realized by industry, labor, and the public generally.”

Apart from the chiselling on hours, hundreds of miners re- sent sacrificing their Sundays to the system of six days on and two days off, ;

There’s been chiselling on contract, and other beefs too. \“Machines are more than men,” was the answer to a, miner's complaint about con- ditions,

The mine killed at least seven men last year. :

Bitter experience has taught thousands of workers to label as sucker-bait-the idea that time- study makes the job easier, Take a classic example, Ford local 600 (CIO United Auto Workers): was born in battle ‘against speedup. Since the red- baiters captured UAW offices things slipped back to the point

valuable |

' profit sharing,

Speedup is a major ‘threat. .

where local 600’s executive board resolved: “The most terrible ex- ploitation of Ford workers since the days they organized them- selves into a union, due to the breakneck standards of produc- tion - are once again with 2h Ree Be «

Ford workers are now com- pelled to stage stoppages in ef- fort to win back the 1941 under- standing that production stand- ards would be set not by the company’s time study men but by a union committee.

Time study stop watches can tick away a sentence of prema- ture death.

And the fight against speedup, Many workers are convinced, ‘needs active locals run from the job up, not from the execu- tive down.” :

@ < +

Mahoney’s sly. His men are learning how to pull in their necks and coast with the issues —so long as they get control. A slate that includes Trail and Kim- berley officers has been entered against the present district lead- ership. It’s no secret that de- spite talk about “Murphy” the election is actually on policy.

And, especially in Kimberley, it’s impossible to hide everything associating this slate with poli- cies of company unionism. An example was a Kimberley resolu- tion voted down by district con- vention which proposed the fol- lowing alternative to struggle against the gold operators: “BE IT RESOLVED: That the B.C. District Union Board “use every recognized methed to... bring new life into the industry, ie., industrial plan- ning, joint production and any

other co-operative undertakings —

that may assist the members.” And in the final analysis, men must be judged not by talk but

by fight. On the job there’s a —

stir of dissatisfaction against the

Kimberley executive and any officers who follow the ~

Trail same policies, <

“They rule by clique and by gavel,” is a typical Kimberley miner’s comment. “They don’t

PACIFIC TRIBUNE.

want your story from the floor. But we're learning how to fight, how to get across union issues. You can hear the talk under- ground. The executive’s slick at leading you down a blind alley. But I'm getting steel in my back now. ; “We've got to get rid of 6 and 2. We've got to clean up griev- ances, elect our shop stewards in every department. We've got to run the union ourselves and fight along with the rest of Mine-Mill.”

Behind all is the war drive. ‘Consolidated workers have the evidence to see who is whipping up the hysteria.

Lead is 18% cents a pound—it was 64 cents in 1946. Then there’s zinc, heavy water, nitro- pills.

The war scare pays off—for Consolidated. And Consolidated Wants every ounce of energy it can get from the working force to make the biggest killing it can make. $

Nobody should think that di- rectors of such companies as CMS (and CPR which controls Consolidated) don’t have the power over governments and newspapers: directors ltike D. C. Coleman (CPR _ president who also holds key posts in 20 other huge companies and the Bank of Montreal), Ross McMaster (Steel Company of Canada presi- dent who has key posts in 15 cther companies and the Bank of Montreal) and a dozen others.

These economic titans teeter on the brink of depression hur-| ried by profiteering. They see the war drive as salvation. And they fear the influence of hund- reds of millions in the world who are building socialism, op- erating plants like Consolidated’s for themselves, for peace.

So the war drive. So the pro- duction drive. So the crackdown on labor. So the threats, the bribes and the winning over of spineless labor leaders who now also seek to win workers for the “anti-Communist” war ideal-

ogy. So CCL bureaucrats, com- |

mitted openly to the Atlantic war pact, seek to smash down Mine- Mill which insists the main job is to fight the boss.

And so the workers of Trail and Kimberley have a tough job on their hands.

But they can win. They can win because the truth is the op- posite of what the company says in its annual report, “Communi- — ties directly dependent on the company ‘have a population of over 25,000.” The truth is there are no communities dependent on _ the company—the company can- not live without the men and women who produce its wealth. |

Those men and women, if un- ited in their unions and aux- iliaries can be beat neither by company or by raiders.

“Drive out ommunists?” quer- ied one smelterman at the foot |

of the stairs. “Who'd be next?

Since when does the company

. Say who'll be in our union? I

remember the old days— and I don’t want to see fear come back. 2

“If we drive out anybody we'll drive out the raiders and seces- sionists and anybody else who. wants to do a job for the com- | pany.” : ao Fae - Trail — Kimberley — all across ©

Canada, thousands of workers :

are rallying to do that job.

Se MARCH 18, 1949 — PAGE 5 —