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Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING ‘COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288
Tom McEwen .. Editor

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Se wee eee eres

_ Urge Bill 39 amendments

To British Columbia Federation of Labor (CCL) has

Submitted to Premier Hart and members of his cabi-

net a number of proposed amendments to Bill 39. Of-
ficials of the Vancouver, New Westminster and District
Trades and Labor Council are also scheduled to meet with
members of the Cabinet and submit similar proposals.

, The BCFL proposals include the elimination of fines of
union members and officials for so-called illegal strike ac-
tivities; the elimination of government-supervised strike
votes; an elective representative Board under the Act, and
the deletion of clauses which provide a loop-hole for the
‘growth and promotion of company unionism. Proposals also
cover such union issues as the check-off, the expediting of
conciliation proceedings, and measures giving a greater
guarantee of union security and democratic interpretation.

It is not without significance that while the representa-
tives of the BCFL (CCL) and the AFL will interview gov-
ernment leaders separately on the pressing issues of Bill 39,
the propésals for amendment of this unworkable and un-
popular statute are very similar on all basic questions of un-
ion rights and privileges,

In spite of the widespread opposition to Bill 39 by the
entire trade union movement of B.C. and among other sec-
tions of the public, including the Liberal Party itself, the
new Minister of Labor Gordon Wismer has announced thai
his policy will be “to enforce the law according to the Act
+ ++ and to proceed with prosecutions.” All of which reminds
us of one of Dickens’ inimitable characters, a Mr. Bumble,
Rink observed under similar circumstances “the law is a

’ass.”

Wismer’s invitation to the two central labor bodies of
the AFL and CCL to submit three or four names of men from
whom the government could choose as labor representatives
on a Labor Relations Board to implement the ICA is hardly
in keeping with the threat of continued persecutions under
Bill 39. British Columbia labor can hardly become a party
to its own execution. .

If, however, the Minister is desirious of restoring good
labor relations in B.C.—something that has been wiped out
by Bill 39, all he and Premier Hart have to do is to give
assurances that an amended labor code, commensurate with
the desires, dignity and rights of organized labor shall re-
place Bill 39 at the earliest possible opportunity.

Meanwhile leaders of the CCL and AFL unions should
get together and work out a common program of action to

ing their proposed amendments for a democratic labor
code into every union and to the public generally. In this
_ Way they will not only strengthen the daily fight against

Bill 39 and win support for its victims before the courts, but
will rally the support needed to relegate Bill 39 and its spon-
day.

It should not be forgotten that while the Anscomb-Hart
government has screened its prosecution and intimidation of
trade unionists under Bill 39 because it “is the law,” they
have never seen fit to prosecute those forces who quietly
strangled British Columbia’s
ever been taken against the hard-rock mine operators who
daily blow holes in the statutory 44-hour week. It would
seem that the Coalition’s anxiety to enforce Bill 39 stems
from a CMA-inspired concern for profits rather than for the
restoration of sound democratic labor relations,

_ __ Labor will continue to fight the application of this in-
_iquitous law while it fights for its ultimate amendment to
conform to democratic principles,

Adding to Vishinsky’s Seateles

U.S. army has just been issued: a pamphlet prepared for its
_ troops all over the world. It was written by American military

commanders to “post” the army on “geo-political” developments, a
fancy name for military aims. The phrase is taken straight from
Hitler’s “geo-political science,” whereby his “experts” sought to
rationalize the Nazi plan for world domination. :

This time the U.S. army is being told in plain terms that the
Soviet Union is the target of U.S. military strategy. In order to des-
cribe that strategy the Soviet, Union is said to be in a position to
strike westward in Europe, eastward to China or across the North
Polar region to North America, which is where Canada comes in as
a U.S. military base. a,

When Vishinsky spoke in the U.N, Assembly on September 18
to warn against warmongering by the U.S., he was able to compile
a weighty list of examples from the U.S. press and political utter-
ances.

Today, less than a month later, he can add new names to his

The U.S. army, Secretary of Commerce Harriman, James Byrnes,

former Secretary of State, not to speak of Colonel George Drew and -

Chief Justice Wendell B. Farris, have all given further proof in the
past few days of the correctness of Vishinsky’s charges.

_ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1947

*

‘Health Act’, nor has any steps —

OnE TA TR

S we see it

HTM! nm i m7: By Ton McEwen

bott is reported to have

told a delegation of 12
members of the Ottawa Con-
sSumers’ Association this
week that :“the government can-
not and will not re-impose price
controls.”

That ought to be good news
for the grafting profiteers who
are cleaning up millions in pro-
fits as a result of inflationary
prices. :

In our elementary school phys-
ics we were taught that every-
thing that went up must come
down. Big Business profits for
the last two years seem to be
raising hell with that theory.

Along with Abbott’s assurances
to big business that price con-
trol is now a very dead duck,
across which the King govern-
ment has decided to _ write
“Requiescat im pace,’ we
now have a spate of
Taftian music with lyrics to
suit. “It’s a great system,” says
John Paine, ‘with its eatless,
wasteless, drinkless, eggless,
meatless, chickenless program al-
ready in effect, and more and
more politicians talking about
less and less. But you can still
bet your 47c dolar on a sure
thing—nary a one of them will
add a “less” to the sacred word
profit.

Abbott’s latest ukase stands in
sharp contrast to the promises
of the government he represents
—to “assurances” given to house-

are Minister Ab-

- wives and other consumer. or-

ganizations that their pleas for
the retention of price controls
would be “given careful consid-
eration.” The whole sorry pic-
ture of governmental subterfuge

and capitulation is now exposed |
in one brief sentence, “We will

not reimpose price controls.’

Now we can watch profits go
up—and living standards go down

* —at an accelerated’ pace.

RITISH Columbia labor should
give consideration to the se-
lection of a suitable trophy for
the corniest joke of the year, in
the opinion of this writer the
award should :be given to Fin-
ance Minister Anscomb. Address-
ing the Oak Bay Progressive-
Conservatives Monday last. the
Minister is reported to have
cracked:

“Agitation against Bill 39 is
being created by forces outside
British Columbia. I feel confident
that labor itself in B.C. is satis-
fied with Bill, 39.”

If the tories must have this
sort of CMA soothing syrup to
keep up their drooping morale,
Anscomb seems to be a good
cheer-leader. If on the other hand
Anscomb is quoted correctly, and,
as the medical boys would say,
‘of sound mind’,
then he is in-
deed remote
from political
sentiment in B.
C. Sixty thous- |
and trade un- |
ionists who are BE
affected by this |
fascist legisla -
tion and who
see their unions
and their mem-
bers haled into Esse d
courts, intimi- Tom McEwen
dated and persecuted by a gov-
ernment of Anscombs, can hardly
be said to be “satisfied with Bill
39,”

Any suggestions from our
readers for a suitable award. in
recognition of superb ministerial
chicanery will be welcome.

N pee aie es away in the back
page sections of the daily
press one will find current news
items like the following: Athens,
Sep. 13: Fourteen communists
sentenced to death by court-mar-
tial were shot Tuesday in Salon-
ika. Athens, Oct. 21: Forty-one
persons were reported executed

“Glorious Greece, the last bastion of democracy in the

Mediterranean.” (Winston Churchill)

in the last 24-hours for helping
guerilla forces. Athens, Oct. 28:
Ten persons, including two wo-
men, said to be communists were
executed for opposing govern-
ment decrees. And so on,

All this is taking place in the
Greece lauded by Churchill as
the “last European bastion of
democracy”; in the Greece of the
Truman Doctrine and the Mar
shall Plan. The people who are
being shot are the people who
crushed Hitler. The people who
help in the shooting are YOU:
and I because we remain silent.

@
RS shipyard workers built a
lot of fine ships during the
war years. We had to smack
down Hitler, and building ships

‘was’ one of the prime ways of

doing it. Came the: peace—and
the disposal of a lot of fine ships
at bargain prices. The King gov-
ernment couldn’t stay in the
Merchant Marine. business in
peace time. To do so might have
cut into the profits of “private
enterprise,” which would never
do! So the ships were sold—at
bargain rates, to the boys of
the “old school tie.”

The W,'R. Carpenter Shipping
Co. bought two of these Van
couver-built ships, the ‘Levuka’
and ™‘Latoka.’ Like the CPR, the
above company prefers registery
in Asia, in the case of the Car-
penter Co., in Suva. It solves
the labor problem. Two Fiji sea-
men can be shipped on for the
wage of one British or Canadian
Seaman. Ships at bargain prices;
registery to assure labor at bar-
gain prices—what a setup!

Act two of the story. Ten days
ago the ‘Levuka’ docked in Van-.
couver with a crew of British
‘seamen’, who had been signed —
on, not by a seaman’s union, but
by the Canadian High Commis-
sioner’s official apparatus. The
‘seamen’ were immigrants under -
the new Canadian ‘selective’ im-
migration policy. The boys got
a good pep talk in the Old Land
about the great “opportunities”
in Canada, lot of jobs, good pay,
work anywhere, great country!

Fifty-five men of all ratings
shipped on from Glasgow. On ar-
rival in Vancouver they were
paid off at the rate of $50.00 per
month and ‘board (the boys call
it slops, and the ‘Levuka’ has
already the reputation of being
more than a mite sloppy with
‘Loard’). The articles provide no
clause for repatriation for ‘sear
men’ who are propagandized into
signing on as “immigrants.”

Some of these seamen have al
ready secured jobs, others are ©
left to shift for themselves. The
200-percent British owners are
waiting for a crew of Fiji sear
men to work their craft across
other seas. If they pay off 4
British seamen as a prospective
immigrant at $50.00 per month
and inferior food, one shudders
to think what they will hand out
to the Fiji boys.

The absence of a federal policy
on immigration is now beginning
to take shape. Whether it is the
importation of DP’s to work in
Quebec textile factories for $9.00
for a 48-hour week, or to work @
ship across the Seven Seas, it
helps the exploiters of labor by-
pass union standards and intro-
duce a 1947 brand of slave labor-
The case of the ‘Levuka’ is not
only the concern of the Cané-
dian Seamen’s Union, but thé
business of every Canadian wb
seeks to maintain CanadiaP ~
standards of life—which seems
to be most people outside of thé
King government and the profit-
eering monopolists. ;

PACIFIC .TRIBUNE—PAGE 5