UNITY — SOLIDARITY — LABOR DAY 1985

STAR WARS — NO!

his Labor Day has special meaning for

working people in all parts of Canada.

Despite all of the promises of Prime Minister
Mulroney, unemployment remains at an all time
high while living standards continue to decline,
poverty grows and the future of our youth
becomes grimmer.

The Wilson budget was an unbridled attack on
working people. Its aim was to make the
corporations stronger and the rich richer at the
expense of workers, farmers, small business
owners, pensioners, children.

At the same time the corporations and multi-
nationals have undertaken a direct attack on the
living standards and rights of workers. They
continue their efforts to force concessions from
workers. They provoke strikes and use strike
breakers to try to smash these strikes and unions.
They impose lockouts. They oppose a policy of
full employment so as to use unemployment
against the working people to drive wages down.

By their actions they show that state monopoly
capitalism is not working for the people. Its main
aim is profits, maximum profits, not the well-be
ing of the people.

What is needed are new economic and social
policies which place the interests of the people
first. Instead of pursuing policies of high un-

employment, we need a policy of full employ-.

ment. Instead of lay offs and closing down of
plants, we need a reduction of hours work with
no reduction in take-home pay. Instead of
giveaways to the corporations we need a vast all
Canada public investment program in socially
useful projects to create jobs and build a truly
independent Canada.

Instead of taking away the hard-won gains of
working people through taxes and de-indexation
of social programs which protect the people to
some degree, we need to further extend programs
for the people.

Labor Bill of Rights
Instead of undermining trade union rights we
need a Labor Bill of Rights to be included in the
Canadian Constitution, one which spells out the
right to a job, the right to housing, to education

and to health, the right to organize and bargain
freely, the untrammeled right to strike.

The anti-people budget which is supported by
the corporations can be defeated provided there
is unity and solidarity in labor’s ranks, combined
with consistent efforts to unite its allies around a
common program.

The Communist Party of Canada welcomes the

call of the Canadian Labour Congress to a
conference of all those who participated in the
Mulroney economic summit so as to undertake a
wide-ranging campaign against the budget.

United mass people’s action outside of parlia-
ment can defeat the Tory majority inside parlia-
ment. The government was forced to retreat on
de-indexation of pensions. It can be forced to
abandon its anti-people budget.

Labor Day is being held this year in conditions
of a growing threat of a nuclear holocaust, a
direct result of the aggressive aims of U.S.
imperialism. The new dangers with U.S. deploy-
ment of Euromissiles in western Europe has been
taken to a new stage with the U.S. Government
decision to proceed with Star Wars and to twist
Canada’s arm and the arm of other NATO
countries to get them involved in this dangerous
program. And now, when the international peace
movement has forced the U.S. administration to
negotiate in Geneva and participate in a summit
meeting of U.S. President Reagan and Mikail
Gorbachov of the USSR, the Reaganites have
opened up their box of dirty tricks to either
prevent or undermine the summit.

Great efforts will be required to prevent
President Reagan and the military-industrial
complex from escalating an arms race which
could become uncontrollable, and instead to
pressure the USA to sit down to negotiate with the
Soviet Union, on the basis of equality and equal
security.

Stop Nuclear Testing

The Communist Party of Canada welcomes the
opposition of the New Democratic Party and the

Central Executive Committee,
Communist Party of Canada

JOBS — YES!

Liberal group in parliament to Star Wars. It
welcomes the position taken by the CLC and by

ment in Star Wars. ;

It welcomes the Soviet Union’s unilateral
decision to stop nuclear testing from August 6
(Hiroshima Day) to January 1, 1986, and longer
if the USA follows suit. Were the U.S. to respond
positively this could open the door to arms
control and eventually to complete destruction of
all nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately President Reagan’s response is
to accelerate the arms race.

In this time of decision the Communist Party of
Canada calls on the Mulroney government to say
no to Canada’s involvement in the U.S. Star
Wars program and to support the Soviet Union’s
moratorium on nuclear testing and urge the U.S.
Government to act likewise. This would open the
door to disarmament. This would at the same
time, be a major step toward an independent
foreign policy for Canada, a blow for peace, a
blow for Canada’s security.

It is all the more important to take such steps
when Canada’s sovereignty and independence
are at stake due to the dangerous course of U.S.
military strategy including pressures to support a
policy of free or freer trade.

Such a policy could lead to even greater
unemployment, to the destruction of Canadian
history. Canada needs a policy of extensive trade
with all countries based on mutual interest. It
needs multi-lateral trade with the world not
bilateral trade with the crisis-prone U.S.

On this Labor Day workers need to strengthen
the bonds of unity and solidarity not only in our
own country but on a world-wide scale.

The cause of the workers and people in South
Africa fighting apartheid, of the workers and
people in Chile fighting for democracy, of the
workers and working people of Nicaragua
fighting for their chosen course, are the causes of
workers in Canada.

Labor Day like May Day must become a day of
international working-class solidarity, to defend
the vital economic interests of the working class,
the cause of peace and social progress.

the peace movements against Canadian involve- }

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1985 e 5

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