By E. R. FAY Mn WAINWRIGHT, Alta. i) hee ternational - ion Agreement in force ic. (herefore no raise in Beccan farmers face a Rot eae crisis similar to Bah, dirty Thirties, when in ee Pile-up of grain the hi oa Out of the mar- atents Rt sold in 1932 for May th ushel in Edmonton. 8 ha € price in the United te oatoPped 22 to 31 in Be Ports and we are bien ght for floor prices. Be. ers had expected tt the eet 22 cents a bushel 5 rms of the IWA in +s Period, aaa although ag- B th Y a number of coun- t tified €reement has not » SO no-one is bound

ofh'® 0 { bys @Bteement ran out in Ih5.g (8 Continued yearly Mand ¢ and 1966-67 crop fly 3) “Ally came to an end if Unt of 67. Apparently on f th ua b Ne Kennedy round 8 no ne worked out at Alor jocment was reach- teem wy 31, 1967 and the ent was not renewed © Tatification of the

e sed onetime the U.S. f eae of ond the coming hor gic *68 of planning ily ye POSe of 750 million Mtg, Heat out of the Mien Pt Current crop and " domes, June 1, 1967. wf ilion fue disappearance of A fo Tae els leaves a car- B" busher® 20> 1968 of 550 feet thay’ Of 140 million AB exo ot Of 1967, Heteq 5 S in 1966-67 were E Whi’ 207740° million i eommercial ex- : Vicinity of 430 T Vey crease of 28 per- a Previous year.

Ny Vo er for restructuring ; bin 5 eS Unions in Canada i auto. 9 question the de- Romy that can be

© Canadian sec- ational unions. therwise. For the the ideas being ad: meting discussions on the m8 the interna- ipa Picture, vine i being advanced Thy va trade departments

nite ae unions would ¥ Getto ding to industry tp nes, 1 Ecreement along Vey thy One carryin Pyttot pers this ee Maat 8eo4; ON unless the NN take ons of the inter- tne Went) Part,

; Y the Canadian

ayy Dus ‘horigt have the neces- © conduct mean-

Ugg M respect to

)

4 lige; y hos tin Slons

ty 4 8

to SS well

son thiePlement ants ie Thy, ise out ot estion which

ead an CY enjoyed

Re thy ions. Te the li ould be made Pies then .°Y: If it is not Uch authority

There was a parallel decrease in the volume of concessional. sales under Public Law 480, from 531 to 310 million bushels. This is attributed to the Food for Free-

dom Act passed last fall which -

prevented concessional sales to Yugoslavia and the United Arab Republic which had taken 100 million bushels the year before, and lower shipments to India arising as a result of the Interna- tional Consortium approach to the problem of India’s deficit, which was a drop of 221 million bushels from 1965-66. ~

Parity price for wheat in the U.S. is $2.61 per bushel. The U.S. Loan payments to 822,000 parti- cipating farmers will be at the rate of $1.36 per bushel on the 1966-67 crop, that is the differ- ence between the loan rate of $1.25 and the parity price per bushel.

As there is no price agreement in effect the U.S. took the stand that it was not bound by the Kennedy Round or the IWA and accordingly dropped prices as mentioned before with the deter- mination to sell 750 million bushels in the crop year 1967-68.

Improved crop yields in Eu- rope, Japan ‘and Australia, as well as the U.S., although the

’ Canadian crop is down from last

year, have led to a buyers mar- ket replacing a sellers market with the consequence that Can- ada has as of Oct. 4, 1967, 387.8 million bushels as compared to 286.9 for the same period in 1966.

The bakers usually use No. 3 and 4 Northern for the bulk of the bread sold with some small quantities of No. 1 and No. 2. The good harvest weather has raised the quality of Canadian wheat higher than usual this year and in consequence it is harder to sell the two highest

grades. U.S. hard spring wheat makes

good bread and although lower in quality than Canadian No. 1 and No. 2 bakers will use plenty of it. With 2,000 million bushels to dispose of, a target of 750 million to be sold and less to be given away and no hard and fast price agreement in effect, the U.S. Department of Agricul- ture is determined to keep it on a competative basis for at least one year according to Clifford G. Pulvermacher, director of pro- curement and sales, U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture. : December futures in Minnea- polis are given as $1.6914 as of Oct. 25,.1967-in the Free Press Weekly. Minneapolis compares to Fort William for Canada and that price is 2644 cents lower than the Canadian pegged price. What is really behind all this

drive to sell wheat by the U.S.? |

The answer is the Vietnam war and Johnson’s guidelines to sell as much of U.S. products as pos- sible and save U.S. costs on such things as storage of food and grains thus releasing more funds to wage the dirty war.

Anyone who dreams that a lower price wheat will not be sold is just not thinking straight. On a world scale it is possible that even less wheat will be sold by the exporting countries this: year.

Canada is already feeling the pinch of the U.S. drive and the final result may be the perman- ent loss of at least some markets to the U.S. Japan may be one ex- ample. The U.S. has been buying large quantities of Japanese war materials and with the huge

amount of wheat on hand will ©

put the pressure on to have Japan buy U.S. wheat and thus save on currency and gold re- serves.

Great Britain also may buy more U.S. wheat since Britain for the last 12 years has been buying the cheapest wheat it can

find no matter who may get hurt. President Paul Babby of the Farmers Union of Alberta is very mistaken when he says that lower prices doesn’t sell more wheat. :

Canada is selling less right now and for the past four months. Canadian farmers

Farmers face price, sale crisis

should now organize mass de- mands for parity prices and rally the farmers unions to sup-

port the demand for an end to the U.S. criminal war of agegres- sion on Vietnam and for the im- mediate ratification of the Wheat Agreement.

a A

2 i

France Nouvelles

What the devil! Another escalation! .

that the Canadian sections of the internationals did participate in making the decision in the CLC that a new party, now called the New Democratic Party, would be established by the old CCF in co-operation with the CLC. This was an independent act taken by the Canadian sections. Similar independence is to be observed in the positions taken by the CLC and some Provincial Fed- erations on the war in Vietnam which differs from the positions of the Internationals.

Both of these instances serve to emphasize that autonomy is exercised on concrete questions which the unions concerned are united around and ready to act on, Restructuring appears to be shaping up as another such con- crete instance.

A number of individual unions have over the years secured a measure of autonomy within their international organizations as the need for assuming inde- pendent positions by the Cana- dian organizations as the need for assuming independent posi- tions by the Canadian sections have arisen. The Mine and Smel- terworkers was one example of this. The Steelworkers is anoth- er. So is the UE. There are others. In all cases of this nature the steps taken were the result of consultation and negotiation be-

tween the Canadian sections and their respective parent bodies.

However, there have been oth- er instances in which the parent bodies have refused to accede to the demands of the Canadian memberships for the right to exercise their own independent judgments or solutions on mat- ters directly affecting Canadians. Arising from struggles around this important principle of the right to exercise an independent judgment or solution there have been instances of expulsions or secessions.

In both the instances of expul- sions or secessions the result has invariably been the emerg- ence of two unions on the given industry with the inevitable union rivalries and raiding Jead- ing to a weakening of the bar- gaining power of both unions.

Without presuming to judge the correctness or incorrectness of any particular expulsion or secession the question has to be put: do present-day conditions warrant either expulsions or se- cessions as instruments to be used in inter-union struggles for the protection of the sovereign rights of Canadian workers and to secure autonomy for the Can- adian sections of the interna- tional unions? :

The answer to this question can be found in examining the

conditions obtaining today. To- day, the working class is faced by a whole new set of conditions brought into being by the revo- lutionary changes in the produc- tion process being introduced at a fairly rapid rate. The workers are faced also by a new set of employers brought into existence

as a prelude for the rapid intro--

duction of the new production techniques which require huge capital resources. This new set of employers are the powerful holding companies, international in scope, which make binding decisions on company policies (companies they control) in re- spect to production, marketing and wages.

A glaring example of the pow- er thus exercised is to be seen in the recent decision taken by the British-based Hawker-Sid- dley Group.to close the Sydney, N.S., Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation’s steel plant. An- other example was the recent de- cision taken by an international cartel in Brussels to cut zinc pro- duction in Canada by ten per- cent,

This new stage of monopoly ownership, in which individual holding companies control scores of different and sometimes un- related companies, has given rise

‘to the pressing need for regroup-

ing union strength in order to

November 17; -+967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5

strengthen the bargaining power of the organized workers. ‘This regrouping is already beginning to take place. It is expressed in the formation of bargaining alli- ances, amalgamations and merg- ers.

In other words the workers are already taking steps to ex- press in newer and higher forms their determination to unite their strength. Unity is in the very air being breathed by the working class on the job and in their union meetings and conventions. The highest expression of this determination to unite their strength is the resolution to seek out new structural forms on the national level.

The heart-warming demonstra- tion by the delegates to the B.C. Federation of Labor in welcom- ing former Mine-Mill officers and members to. the convention as an important part of the Steel- workers delegation was a living expression of the workers’ deter- mination that unity of the trade union movement will be won.

In these conditions, autonomy of the Canadian sections of the international unions can be se- cured while preventing bureau- cratic expulsions or resorting to secessions to establish Canadian

unions,