STRIKERS CALL BOYCOTT

WINDSOR — About 600 mem- bers of United Auto Workers Local 2027 at Hiram Walker Distilleries here and another 120 UAW mem- bers in the company’s location at Winfield B.C. hit the bricks March

guaranteed employment clause in the current agreement and is try- ing to weaken the cost of living clause. The locals have called for a boycott of Hiram Walker pro- ducts. :

UE BLASTS TORY BUDGET TORONTO — The 20,000- member United Electrical work- ers union (UE) blasted the recent Tory Ontario budget in a wire to premier Davis March 8 as “‘a vici- ous attack on workers, employed and poor, and a bonanza for the rich.”’ Director of Organization Val Bjarnason de- nounced the 100% hike in OHIP premiums over the past two years as ‘“‘scandalous’’ in that it would cut into food and shelter budgets

for the poor. The UE called for '

replacement of the big business budget with a new one to put the 1/2 million Ontario jobless back to work.

PSAC REJECTS

ACTUARIAL REPORT OTTAWA — Andy Stewart, president of the Public Service Al- liance of Canada, March 9, totally rejected the credibility of a pension study by the Tomenson-Alexander Ltd. actuarial firm which was ta- bled that day in the House of Commons. He charged the firm de- liberately used wage and interest

“Indexed pensions for all Cana- dians is a necessity in periods of high inflation’, Stewart said, “and it is disturbing to think that the government ... has been in-

fluenced by the biased Tomenson-Alexander report. COAL MINERS

ON STRIKE

SPARWOOD B.C. — Some 1,250 members of Local 7292, Un- ited Mine Workers of America

un-

MONTREAL — Sixty members of Local 987 International Association

struck the Kaiser Resources Ltd., coal mine here March 16 over an issue of work practices.

PROTEST COP INTERFERENCE

OSHAWA — The Oshawa and District Labor Council last week called on the Ontario Federation of Labor to support active resis- tence to any police intervention in legal strikes. The resolution arose © from the current dispute involving workers at the Fleck Manufactur- ing Co. near London, where On-

- tario Provincial Police have been

acting like company police pkysi- cally attacking the strikers, and intimidating them with pre-strike “Jectures’’ on how they should conduct themselves on the picket line.

THIRD OFFER TO COAL STRIKERS

WASHINGTON — A narrow vote of 22-17 by the United Mine

Workers bargaining council to re- ~

commend a third tentative agree- ment in the 100 day U.S. coal strike makes it doubtful that 160,000 striking miners will buy the prop- osal. The miners have been milit- antly ignoring court orders under the strike-breaking Taft-Hartley law to return to work and are de- termined to secure the right to strike over unsettled grievances particularly relating to health and safety questions. The miners will vote on the new offer March 24.

OFL HITS

JOBLESS RATE

TORONTO — Cliff Pilkey, president of the 800,000-member Ontario Federation of Labor re- sponding to an official jobless rate in Canada of one million, called on both the federal and Ontario governments to “‘face up to the economic crisis they have to- gether engineered and embark on a policy of full employment be- fore the economy collapses en- tirely. He reiterated the OFL’s job-creating economic program demanding tax cuts for low and middle income earners, lowering of interest and mortgage rates, and large scale public investment in such areas as transport and housing. ;

i

of Machinists at Universal Wire and Cable are on the street for the second time in four months in a conflict over a new contract. This time the company locked them out Jan. 4 after a barrage of telegrams and letters to the workers homes failed to coax them to desert their negotia- tion committee and the union demands for a decent wage increase and better safety equipment. The company upped the ante on wages by 10 cents after 10 weeks of lockout, but the workers voted the cheap offer down. Picket sign in photo says: “Cost of Living 9.5%, company offer 6%. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 24, 1978—Page 4

EIDITORILAIL COMIMUENT

Government policy payoff: -amillion jobless workers

Statistics Canada, in what are gener- ally viewed as understated figures, ad- mitted, March 14, to 1,007,000 un- employed in Canada in February — up 16,000 in a month, and 9.5% of the labor force (8.3% when seasonally adjusted).

The same government agency, one

day later, announced a jump in the cost of living in February of 0.7%, with an inflation rate over 12 months, of 8.7%. Main causes of the increase were basic needs like food, housing, transportation, clothing as well as cars and in some pro- vinces, car licenses. ; _ Needs that cost $100 in 1971, and reached $155.40 in Feb. 1977, now cost us $168.90! The government may try to convince us inflation’s not rising as fast anymore — but $168.90 for $100 worth of goods?

_ Workers have a right to quote the old saying: figures don’t. lie but liars can figure. And it’s a safe bet the government is figuring how, despite its shabby record

of anti-labor laws, anti-labor lawlessness, and plain scabbing and splitting, it can’ put icing over that festered mess and appeal for worker support.

Self-respecting workers will shun such a confidence game, as they do the Tories who come to power only when they do the bidding of big business better than the Liberal “competition”.

The mass unemployment policies — which the Liberals actively carry for- ward, and Tories would aggravate further, is the sum and substance of what these instruments of the corporations in-

tend for working-class families.

Trudeau’s thinly disguised election” junkets at taxpayers’ expense are a sharp - reminder that working people need un- breakable unity in their unions, on the economic front — but from now until they elect their own representatives to parliament, they need strong political unity to break the power of the big busi- ness parties.

Neutron or human rights?

The concept of governments refrain- ing from developing new weapons of mass annihilation is clearly in the in- terests of the majority of the human race, for whom such weapons contribute no- thing but the threat of death and suffer- ing. In the case of weapons which cause malformation and malfunction in. suc- ceeding generations the argumentiseven stronger.

One would expect that the first coun-

try to propose such an international agreement of prohibition, particularly when that country shows a clear ten- dency away from such development it- self, would be hailed everywhere.

Such acclaim might certainly be ex- pected from governments such as those of Canada and the USA, which speak often of human values and human rights. Surely being free of the threat of the neutron bomb, whose specialty is kill- ing and poisoning people without harm- ing real estate, should rank high among such human rights.

Why then was there no rush of accep- tance on the part of Washington when Soviet leader Brezhnev called upon Pres- ident Carter for a mutual moratorium on neutron weapons? The proposal is only a specific application of a concept introduced by the Soviet Union at the United Nations some time ago.

More recently 31 leading Soviet scien- tists, including several Nobel Prize win- ners, have appealed to the U.S. president to prohibit the development of the neut- ron bomb.

Without doubt this initiative will be welcomed by millions of people throughout the world. How difficult for those millions to understand Western governments’ failure to back up their fine words about human rights with sup- port for this fundamental right!

Thewelcome Soviet proposalis in keep- ing with Moscow’s oft-repeated prefer-

ence for turning its defence spending as soon as possible to peaceful needs. (As for any suggestion that the USSR is un- able to develop a neutron bomb, that ignores the history of the past 30 years.) The Soviet anti-neutron initiative should be greeted, and echoed, by Canada’s government and Canada’s scientists, as well as by our people.

The real Carter

Human rights crusader President Car- _ ter has invoked the notorious Taft- Hartley Act to force striking U.S. coal miners back into death-trap pits at an ultimate cost of lives and mourning families. Is this human rights, USA style, enforced by federal marshals? What ever became of concern for families, and for human life and human dignity? Are the same profit dollars which take prece- dence over human life in the U.S. mines, really behind the peanut man’s pious crusade on a world scale?

Win at Belgrade

The long drawn-out campaign to mis- represent the Belgrade Conference and the input of various countries goes on in angry complaints by the USA and its: helpers, who were unable to make 4 shambles of the conference-with the false

_ cry of “human rights”.

The Toronto Globe and Mail, edito- rially, even changed the name of the Helsinki meeting from Conference on Security and Cooperation, to Confer- ence on Human Rights and Security, on the assumption the brainwashing had al- ready been completed.

The conference was a success for reasons the USA abhors — it stuck to real human needs and not the fake anti- Soviet clamor meant to prepare the cli- mate for military and profit build-ups.