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EDITORIAL__

Doctors escalate threats

It is evident that many doctors in Ontario,
the latest province where the elitists are
“rebelling”, have the good sense to delay any
anti-public action.

Incited by the Ontario Medical Association
hierarchy, intent on keeping doctors in an
income heaven 25% above the next group,
lawyers (1971 figures), the greediest have
been more than eager to desert medical
profession ethics and claw for more dollars.

OMA sanctions to frustrate and incon-
venience patients requiring medical cate
have been applied, but frankly, a number of
doctors don’t relish bargaining in human
misery. They should speak out and join with
the agonizing public.

But the elitist OMA is adamant. They want
fees for Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan
(OHIP) services beyond the 34% boost over
turee years handed to them on a platter by
the Tory Ontario health minister, Larry
Grossman. (Quite different treatment than
that reserved by reactionary governments for
hospital workers who are jailed or fined for
striking.)

Refusals of free telephone advice to sick
people, and of telephone renewal of pres-
criptions, are to be followed by rotating walk-
outs by doctors — more correctly lockouts.
The idea, obviously, is to make suffering
people suffer enough that the government
must take’ compassion and give the doctors all
they want. Their other threat, and some have
done so, is to opt out of the medicare system,
and try to wreck it, as long as they get their
cash.

In 1971, physicians’ net incomes were 5.7
times those of the average industrial wage —
the difference between $7,438 and $42,397
being $34,957, according to Globe and Mail
writer Orland French.

In 1979, with the industrial composite
wage at $14,850 (many workers don’t make
anywhere near that even today!) and phy-
sicians getting $60,885, the gap was $46,035.

The current average doctor's income is

‘Free’ advice?

Gerald Bouey, who gets $104,500 a year as
governor of the Bank of Canada, evidently
gets part of that for telling Canadian workers
they've got to lower their living standards to
make the economy work right. He’s in har-
mony with the big business prime minister
who says wages have to be chopped to save
the monopoly system. Considering what the
system is doing to workers the increasingly
sharp demands for jobs, wages to beat infla-
tion, and no cutbacks in services are the best
reply to these parasites.

Flashbacks

WITCHHUNT VICTIM

His friends and associates have described him as an
“intensely humane” man. “You cannot”, the late Dr.
Herbert Norman told a newspaperman, “dismiss
men’s arguments because they are shabbily dressed,
eat with the fingers, or think in a manner entirely
strange to you... you have to remember that the
fellow in beggar’s robes could be right.”

For this philosophy, he was pilloried and accused of
being a “communist spy” by the Washington McCar-
thyites. For this he was driven to take his own life,
“murdered by slander”, as Alistair Stewart, Winnipeg
CCF MP told a hushed House of Commons.

He was a scholar-diplomat and earned the hatred of
General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean war.
For this the hatchetmen went to work as far back as
1950 and 1951 with a trial by innuendo and FBI-
trained “witnesses”. Tribune,

April 15, 1957
PACIFIC TRIBUNE— APRIL 16, 1982— Page 4

given as $80,000, while the average industrial
wage (1981) is $18,580.

The same tactics are in use in Manitoba,
and have previously harassed British Colum-
bia. It’s just possible that the medical profes-
sion bosses are overestimating the patience
and gullibility of the public.

They should be reminded that other socie-
ties have faced sabotage and desertion by
doctors and have raised up a new and dedi-
cated medical profession, concerned with the
well-being of their fellow humans.

For working people being held to ransom
through payroll deductions, taxes and extra
billing, to be faced with withdrawal of services
unless extortionate demands are met, it’s
about time to meet the challenge. Doctors
need to know that they are not simply bully-
ing sick men, women and children who can’t
fight back; it has to become the business of the
labor movement to defend its members. It
has to become its business to press hard for
government action to contrain doctors, curb
their greed, and elicit proper services, as a
requirement for continuing to practice. '

WHAT DID You orperate )
ON THAT Parent FoR? /

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Heed Nicaragua invasion alert

Nicaragua's intense and convincing con-~

cern that U.S. military forces are moving to-
ward invasion of its territory deserves serious
attention:

Carlos Nunez, state council chairman, re-
vealled in March that U.S. troops and heli-
copters from the Panama Canal Zone were
carrying out war games in Costa Rica “in di-
rect proximity to the borders of Nicaragua.”
On the opposite border, attacks from Hon-
duras involve U.S.-sponsored remnants of
the forces of former dictator Somoza. These
facts, and attacks on Nicaraguan patrol boats
by boats from Honduras and EF] Salvador,
which head of state Daniel Ortega reported
to the UN, are on record.

Also on record is Reagan’s destabilization
project, beginning with a $19-million budget
for the CIA, and reflected in terrorist de-
struction inside Nicaragua. These and the
belicose threats by Haig and Reagan caused
Nicaragua to declare a state of emergency,
and more recently to cancel its traditional
10-day easter holiday in the interests of pre-
paredness. ;

Washington justifies its intervention plans
by its slander that Nicaragua is fuelling El
Salvador’s liberation struggle. But all U.S.
“proof” has turned out to be faked, a miser-
able propagand failure. .

Nicaragua’s calls for reassurance that it will
not find itself singlehandedly defending its

CROW’S NEST STRIKE

Fourteen hundred miners at Bellevue, Blairemore
and Coleman are maintaining a stubborn strike which
has lasted for weeks against attempts of coal operators
to smash their union as a preliminary to worstening
conditions.

Armed police have been brought into the strike
district in large numbers are stationed in strategic posi-
tions ready to attack.

Hunger stalks among the strikers. They were work-
ing only part time before the strike, eking out their
wages in municipal relief. Militant farmers have ex-
pressed a willingness to ship them food but transporta-
tion expenses are lacking.

The union has appealed io all Canadian workers to

aid the Crow’s Nest Pass strikers with food, tents and

other material help and to prevent evictions.
The Worker,
April 16, 1932

independence against the giant U.S. war
machine or its proxies, deserve firm re-
sponses.

In line with mediation efforts by Mexico’s
president and foreign minister, Canada
should make this’a high profile issue. It
should state loudly enough to be heard that it
stands firmly in opposition to U.S. or U.S.-in-
spired military intervention in Nicaragua,
whatever the pretext.

Profiteer of the week

You remember Irwin Toy. Last fall and pre-Christmas
they battled their workers’ contract and equal pay de-
mands, used scabs and police to thwart the union. Re-
ward? An after-tax profit of $4,363,000 on Atari electronic
games, etc. That was for the year ended Jan. 31, 1982, a
nice jump from $2,026,000 a year earlier..

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN

Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O’‘CONNOR

Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,

Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186

‘Subscription Rate: Canada $14 one year; $8 for six months.
All other countries: $15 one year.

Second class mail registration number 1560

‘EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE’

During the World War (1914-1918) the wages of the |
American miner advanced a little over 36%, but rela-
tively he was growing poorer for the cost of living
during the same period rose by 85%.

A year after the armistice, miners demanded a wage
increase of 65%, minimum 6-hour day, a five-day week
and the nationalization of the industry. The strike that
followed was broken by governmental use of injunc-
tion and Woodrow Wilson’s threat of force. It was one
of the most vivid demonstrations of what Karl Marx
meant when he described the State as the “executive
committee of the ruling class as a whole”.

During the same period the great steel strike was
beaten, railroadmen were coerced. Then followed the _
“trade depression” under which the capitalist class is
once more reducing workers’ living standards.

The Worker, —

April 14, 1922