LIVING COSTS

EARNINGS

(Average weekly)

British Columbia
Vancouver
Victoria

$75.04 x 52 weeks: $3,902.08
$72.24 x 52 weeks: $3,756.48

....---- $65.42 x 52 weeks: $3,401.84

Comparing the average weekly wages and salaries projected
into a yearly earning, with the family budget, the income of a
worker falls SHORT each year by:

British Columbia
Vancouver
Victoria

Weekly earnings in some other Canadian cities are: Sault.

$ 521.92
$ 667.52
$1,022-16

St. Marie $88.91, Sarnia $87.65, Hamilton $74.63, Fort William
$72.53, Toronto $71.53, Emonton $67.06, Montreal $66.99 and
Calgary $66.16. Vancouver is tenth in the listing, Victoria is

seventeenth.

Founder plans to buy
closed Burnaby plant

BURNABY, B.C. — The founder and former president of
Industrial Engineering Ltd., Ray Pitrie, will buy back the plant
from the U.S.-controlled Outboard Marine Corporation of Can-
“ada, which purchased it in 1956 and announced last week that
it was moving i.s operation east to Peterborough, Ontario:

Pitrie ran the Burnaby plant
successfully for several years,
first as.a private concern and
later as a cooperative venture.
His 500. employees, who ‘had
bought some 1,000 shares at $1
a share, made a capital gain
of 2,200 percent when the plant
was sold two years ago.

Pitrie hopes to build up an-
other ~employee-owned busi-
ness but vhis time he will not
make chain saws. The plant
will be used to manufacture
59-pound car-top boats, surf
boards, lightweight life rings
and other plastic marine equip-
ment.

Price for the factory and
foundry on Government Roau
is expected to be more than
$1,000,000.

Forum posiponed

The LPP Forum Committee
this week announced that the
Labor Forum scheduled to be
held Sunday, April 13 in Pen-
der Auditorium has been post-
poned until further notice.

Profiteering by
food chains hit ,

As every housewife knows,
the price of Sirloin steak has
risen steadily over the past
10 years. But what most house-
wives © don’t know, although
farmers have long complain-
ed, is that the price paid to
producers has remained the
same.

The profits from high beef
prices paid by consumers are
going to the packing houses
and food chain stores, not to

‘producers.

This was the evidence given
to the royal commission on
price spreads sitting in Van-
couver this week by the B.C.
Federation of Agriculture. Cit-
ing figures from a major food
chain’s newspaper advertise-
ments, the BCFA said sirloin
steak prices to consumers had
risen 60 percent over 10 years
without any change in the price
paid to producers.

OTTAWA — “For many months there has been a general all-out attack ©

SMEAR CAMPAIGN
CLC hits back

at big busines

Canada by powerful employer interests with the support of a large section of the pre 3

a statement issued here by the executive council of the Canadian Labor Congress: coo’ |
“Employers from the United States who dictate the activities of their subsidiatY 4

panies in Canada are also contributing to this anti-union drive. i

“Reasearch has _ revealed
that leading dailies in nearly
every large centre are devot-
ing a great deal of editorial
space to an unfair and com-
pletely biased attack on la-
bor which is also appearing
in smaller publications through-
out the nation.

“There has been a very de-
liberate attempt to import into
Canada the findings of inves-
tigations in the U.S., without
the s.ightest vestige of evi-
dence that anything of this
nature exists in the Canadian
labor movement. This has then
been made the basis for efforts
to obtain restrictive legislation
which would hamsiring the
democratic labor movement
and defeat the purpose of true
collective bargaining ...

“In British. Columbia, ‘the
Select Committee on Labor
was recently set up to enquire
into increasing unemployment.

“Employers’ groups have
now used this as a vehicle for
proposing right-to-work laws
and wage-cut legislation, rath-
er than suggesting methods
for alleviating unemployment

“Wide circulation is being
given to nebulous suggestions
that organized labor has. at-
tained a strength beyond that
of employers.

“This is, on its very face,
absurd.

“Canada operates under a
private enterprise system and
in such a system those who
control the methods of pro-
duction are inevitably the

’ dominant group.

“Attempts to smear work-
ers’ organizations are serving
to move the spotlight from
employers at a time when
hundreds of thousands’ of
workers are being laid off or
discharged.

“mployment is provided by

employers and it is ridiculous
that at a time when they are
laying workers off they should
be talking about ‘the right to
work.’ :

“Suggestions are also being

made, without any factual

support, that workers. are
somehow responsible’ for to-
day’s depressed economic con-
ditions.

“The CLC would welcome a
complete, impartial investiga-
tion into the entire relation-
ship of wages, prices and prof-

its. Workers are CO
as well as wage earner
have as much interest *
one in prices. fs
“Tt s time that Cam#
learned the truth of
the responsibility fF
conditions lies.”

CRA urges council

fight B.C

Civic Reform Association this week urged Vanco
Council to oppose the B.C. Telephone Company’s 4P

Tel hike

for a rate increase when it comes before the Board of a
port Commissioners at a hearing in this ci y May 20.

“I should like. to draw to
your attention that many pub-
lic bodies, including munici-
pal councils, are opposing this
application,” CRA president
Effie Jones said in a letter
to council.

“By far the largest number
of the 457,000 telephone sub-
scribers live in the Vancou-
ver area, and it is in their
interests that Vancouver City
Council should act,

“In this period of economic
decline and large scale un-
employment, strong action
must be taken to stop the
sharp rise in prices which are
taking place all along the line
and which are adding to infla-
tion pressures and lowering
living standards.”

Mrs. Jones drew attention

‘clear tests. An inju®

to the swollen profits off
Telephone, pointing Oe
in the past year total Re
the company have | ine
by nearly $40 million 7%

Continued = |

C

H. TESTS
i"
Health Organization, a8 igh
ed Bertrand Russell, D™ st?

C. Pauling and others Ht yf

a
ne

thet
tio? oo

straining the U.S. atom

aah
i
ope is

ing legal bars to, fu

Commission fi
sought in the Federal © oi)
Court. Similar action ® got
initiated in British 2P©  —
courts. “—-

|

B.C. Telephone Company, whose total assets ‘
end of 1957 were $173,017,261 compared to $133,54
in 1956 (an increase of nearly $40 million in one y& A
now applying to the Board of Transport Commis pe
for a 15 percent boost in phone rates. A hearing ™
held in Vancouver May 20.

B.C. Telephone Company: e iss!
As a telephone subscriber, I strongly protest ag'
your application for an increase in phone rates, Ww
I think is entirely unjustified.

CLIP THIS TO YOUR PHONE BILE |

the |
61)

el
at) li

Signature

AG
April 11, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—P4”

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