OR FRONT

By WILLIAM KASHTAN

This past year has been a rather turbulent anq difficult one for the trade union movement.

The decline in membership which set in a few years ago still continues, a fact which anti-labor elements have seized upon to point to growing weaknesses and isolation of the trade union movement.

Jurisdictional squabbles and raiding continue to afflict the trade union move- ment ang this too is being seized upon by anti-labor elements to press more vigor- ously for legislation directed to curbing the democratic rights of the workers and their unions.

Injunctions are increasingly kéine made use of by employers in their drive to smash strikes and break unions.

* * *

As against these negative features the workers are learn- ing through bitter experience that to maintain their positions and advance them they need to strengthen their unity and soli- darity all down the line.

After much talk and little action the trade union move- ment is beginning to face up to the need to organize the un- organized, and to pay particular attention to the organization _ of the white co]lar workers.

A growing body of trade unions have expressed them- selves in favor of reduced hours of work with no reduction in take-home pay, and one or two have begun to fight for it.

There is now wider acceptance of the need for Canadian trade union autonomy. The movement for ang around it is bound to take on wider scope in the coming year.

Despite opposition in some trade union quarters the

- movement toward independent labor political action express- ed in affiliation to ang electoral support of the New Democra-

tic Party has begun to take on flesh and blood. i * * *

The year ahead promises to be even more turbulent and perhaps more difficult. But given the maximum of unity and solidarity, backed by militant policies, the trade union move- ment is in a position to move ahead and begin to curb the power of monoply.

Now that the government is establishing a National Ec- onomic Development Board the trade union movement ought to press to have its representatives on it and advance its own independent policies, policies directed to expanding the eco- nomy and strengthening the independence of the country, while opposing with might and main any effort by monopoly to curb its right to strike and to organize or to impose wage

restraints on the working class.

A united drive to increase wages and reduce hours of work, to organize the unorganized and advance labor’s politi-

cal aims

in what promises to be another election year, to

campaign against nuclear arms in Canada or for the armed

forces —

these ought to be at the centre of attention of the trade union movement in 1963.

Dief’s ‘Xmas surprise’ for civil servants

By FED. CIVIL SERVANT

On Dec. 10th, obviously caught up in the spirit of the holiday season, Prime Minister -Diefen- baker issued a sweeping state- ment that the infamous wage- freeze against civil servants was being lifted.

However much it was greeted with justifiable skepticism by the rank and file civil servant, it was a holiday gift that was wel- come and long overdue. But any hopes for satisfaction soon went the way of other Diefenbaker “Now You See and Now You Don’t’? promises.

The tinsel and fancy wrap once removed revealed further ex- amples of Tory sham, bankruptcy and blatant deception.

The brick took the form of many heavily exploited classifi- cations having failed to get any- thing at all. Such classifications as nursing orderlies, maids, nurs- ing aids, cleaners, clerks, typists, etc., ad infinitum, soon discover- ed that the only ones to receive: the Tory crumbs were the pro- fessional and key administrative classifications.

In effect ‘‘Scrooge’’ Diefen- baker split the civil servant ranks smack down the middle, buying off the higher echelon classifications for a grateful Tory vote, and leaving those least in-

clined to return a bankrupt Tory administration irregardless, out in the cold with empty pockets. —

The gravity of the deception

against Canada’s second class _

citizens was given further aid by their own opportunist right-wing leadership. Those paper-mouthed advocates of “good employee- employer relations at all costs,”’ soon revealed their reactionary colours ag betrayers of the rank and file civil servant.

Knowing in many cases as much as seven months ago, by their own admission, of the fur- ther injustice Diefenbaker was about to commit against their membership, they withheld this information, preventing any de- mand or plan from below for militant action.

This aiding and abetting by the reactionary civil servant repre- sentatives is inexcusable.

Many civil servants have drawn the appropriate lessons from this experience, and from the exper- iences of the rest of the labor movement, by increasingly voic- ing the demand that reactionary opportunist leadership be re- placed with progressive leader- ship, and that policies of endless compromise and capitulation be replaced with militant policies that rally the rank and file in the fight for their interests.

Once again is offered fresh proof that civil servants need and want have the right to strike and the right of collective bar- gaining, along with the rest of the labor movement.

ee

VETERAN LOGGERS ACT TO:

Rescind board's OK’ing overtime work

A demand for the Board of In- dustrial Relations to rescind its recently granted order extending overtime work was made last week in a leaflet widely circulat- ed in the woodworking industry by the Victory Square (Loggers) Club of the Communist Party.

The hardhitting leaflet stated: “The recent order of the B.C. Board of Industrial Relations, which will allow the logging operators to compel their crews to work 44 hours or more, with- out having to obtain a permit, turns back the clock 25 years!

“Tt torpedoes the 40-hour week, established for many years in this and other industries, and at a time when labor is campaign-

- ing for a shorter statutory work-

ing week to meet rising unem- ployment. Longer hours have never resolved the problem of take-home pay!”’

The leaflet then pointed out ~

that the extension of hours would:

e Strengthen the employer’s hand. in compelling employees to abandon the established 8-hour day and the right to refuse (ex- cept in cases of emergency) to work overtime;

® Make the hours of work clause established in the union’s collective agreement meaning-

less and useless;

® Increase the accident danger in an extremely hazardous _in- dustry; :

e Set back labor’s present battle for establishment of the 35-hour week.

There was no need to put up with this kind of thing, it stated, and added that ‘‘no one wants to work hevond the normal working

order

hours today when hundreds of our brothers are without employ- ment.

“What we need is not extension, but the reduction of hours!’’

The leaflet closed with an ap- peal to write to all MLA’s and also to the Board of Industrial Relations.

working

Ease world tensions

Cont’d from pg. 1 constructive endeavor this earth.”

Khrushchev said in his message to German Democratic Republic leader Walter Ulbricht that a German peace treaty and normal-

on

ization of the Berlin situation are.

“completely necessary and not to be postponed.”’

Also, in a message to Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the Soviet leader said the settlement of the Cuban crisis was a moral and political victory and recalled that the United States had as- sumed a commitment not to at- tack Cuba and to restrain its allies in the Western Hemisphere from doing so.

In a New Year’s message to > Canadians, Governor - General

Vanier said ‘‘The tensions of the world in recent years make us mindful as never before of the necessity for understanding among nations.”

COLD WAR IN TRADE

The Japanese Foreign Min- ister told a press conférence in Tokyo recently that both NATO and the U.S. had put pressure on Japan to stop the export to the Soviet Union of large-diameter pipes for oil lines.

Obviously the hand of the North Atlantic Treaty Organ- ization reaches into the Pac- ific as well, when. fighting the cold war is concerned.

Boundary settlements highlight China year-end ©

By BERT WHYTE PT Correspondent

PEKING — Signing of the Sino- Mongolian boundary treaty and reaching agreement in principle on the Sino-Pakistan border highlighted political activities in Peking during the last week of 1962, while the arrival of Ceylo- nese Premier Bandaranaike, spokesman for the Colombo con- ference ushered in the New Year

2 Year and rais- ed hopes that the Sino-Indian border dispute will be resolv- ed in the near future.

Both Mongo- lian Premier Tsedenbal who paid a whirl- wind three- Sait visit to Peking to sign the treaty, and Premier Chou En-lai hailed the final fix- ing of the Mongolian-Chinese boundary line stretching over 2,400 miles as a contribution to

the further development of friend- ly relations between the two ‘countries. At a mass rally of 10,000 people in the Great Hall of the People Premier Tsedenbal outlined Mongolia’s stand on key questions of our time:

“To save mankind once and for all from the fearful catas- trophe of thermonuclear war and to cast away war ag a means for settling international disputes, the Soviet Union and other social- ist countries have been unswerv- ingly and perserveringly carry- ing out a peace policy aimed at preventing world war, ensuring peaceful coexistence between countries and different social systems and the realization of general and complete disarma- ment.

“This can be seen in the case of the recent crisis in the Carib- bean region. When the frantic U.S. imperialists, attempting to strangle the Cuban revolution by force, had decided, with swords

— Algemeen Tandelsblad, Amsterdam

“Of course independence — but they must first learn to stand on their own feet.”

' Jan. 4, 1963—PACIFIC PRIBUNE—Page 2

- tries

in hand, to attack free socialist

Cuba, thus posing the direct threat of world thermonuclear war, the leaders of the Soviet

Union, in co-operation with the leaders of the Republic of Cuba

- and relying on the ardent sup-

port of the peoples of the world, took resolute and flexible action and removed the catastrophic danger then hovering over all mankind.

“This outcome of the Carib- bean region event is a great vic- tory for the peace policy of the whole socialist camp, for the policy of peaceful coexistence.

“The development of the Cuban event shows once again that it is possible and necessary to make wise compromises in our policies after objectively consi- dering the whole situation and the specific condition in inter- national life.”’

On the Sino-Indian border dis- pute Premier Tsedenbal said:

“We welcome and support the initiative taken by China of unilaterally ceasing fire and with drawing its frontier guards. We deem that the boundary question which hag led to the extremely undesirable deterioration in the relations between the two coun- should be settled only by peaceful mean—that is, through negotiations .. .”’

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

This week the PT brings its readers a_ special two-page supplement dealing with the views of the Canadian Com- munists on the differences in the world Communist move- ment. .

This important statement in the form of a letter to the membership by the National Executive Committee deals with a vital subject on which we felt all our readers should be informed. .

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