I bi Harold J. Pritchett, district isident of the International odworkers of America, speak- ‘k declared: This is a premeditated attack }iabor. We knew about it for days before Hon. Ian Mac- @ozie made his blast about the ge fund kept in store by big Ssiness. my Ve knew, too, that the Van- @iver Sun had a special report “#>n the story for several weeks. | came to me for information, I told him to search the @>rds at Victoria. “ede did so, and the facts ) found there were handed r by. the Vancouver Sun to lan MacKenzie. But why in’t the Vancouver Sun publish pm?” -arvey Murphy, international resentative of the Internation- Jnion of Mine, Mill and Smel- ' Workers, returned to Vancou- from Trail this week to re- ‘t that “all company union ac- ties of this conspiracy are co- inated. They go to the goy- ‘ments, they organize - disrup- 1, and it would be foolish to that they are not meeting bh some success in the ship- ‘as and some in the metal ricating plants and in one -s:iter at Trail, Blaylock’s home +n. : *%in mining towns,’ declared irphy, “the operators follow jeadership of Blaylock, and pt his tactics. They meet with fF union but procrastinate, car- on interminable negotiations { place every obstacle in the y of union recognition.” Jespite protests in reactionary iyspapers that MacKenzie is “a Fble-rouser without peer,’ Ia- > leaders believe that his esti- Mite of a “slush fund” of $250,- = is conservative, and point out WAND STUDIO > “Anything With ‘a Camera” E. Hastings St. PAcific 7644 VANCOUVER, B.C. — ifn me msn OS Ca at New ‘Westminster this” (a3 . : private enterprise” — that across Canada the labor- breaking fund must run into hun- dreds of thousands more. “Labor has got to get togeth- er now to met this challenge,” emphasized Murphy. “It lives on division in the ranks of labor; it prospers on dissention. Wheth- er we are AFL, CCL or CIO, whether we belong to the CCF or the LPP, we must unify our ranks. “Labor's representations made to the War Labor Board inquiry have shown that practically all labor unions and progressive pol- itieal organizations haye made identical proposals. Both trade union congresses adopted similar legislation programs and both de- cided upon political action. But what we have not done is to really get together and press for enactment of those programs. We have yet to act unitedly to get the maximum support for their enactment, “The employers have not been idle, and red-baiting plays right into their hands. It provides am- munition for our sworn enemies and serves to weaken all of us in face of a vigorous offensive. When Edgett, Locke and Blay- lock go to work they do not dif- ferentiate between Daniel O- *Brien, of the CCL, who is a CCF supporter, or Harold Prit- chett, IWA president, who is a member of the LPP. ‘We must fight by organizing the unorganized and use our whole strength politically. Now is the time to dwell not on the things that divide, but on the things that unite. In all local unions we should create Politi- cal Action Committees to have one purpose: to elect to public office men and women who stand up for labor’s program and to defeat those who oppose it. “We can win, but we must unite to do it. The idea that you can have defeat for one section of jabor and victory for another is fatal. We are meeting a well- organized, well-financed attack. Ti will take all of us to defeat it. We are all the target. We can all lose.” UNEVERSAL NEWS STAND 138 EAST HASTINGS STREET Mail your Order for all PROGRESSIVE LITERATURE MOSCOW NEWS WEEKLY 16 East Hastings VANCOUVER, B. C. PAcific 8942 | Dock & Shi Greetings of the Season from the Local No. 2 NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C. pyard Workers Union Political Action Miners Ask prged by Murphy While monopoly interests in Canada continued this week th well-organized plans to protect Swvorkers who lived through the nineteen-thirties, this is syn- ymous with breadlines, relief camps, low wages, and the #2 shop—tlabor organizers uncovered more evidence of the minion-wide anti-labor plot, which is headed in-this province men like S. G. Blaylock and C. H. Loeke, K.C. For Higher Basic Rate KIMBERLEY, B.C.—Mem- bers of Mine, Mill and Smelter- Workers Union, Local 651, here will submit a brief soon to the National War Tabor Board asking for a basic wage of $7.25 per day plus full cost- of-living bonus and improved working conditions. “The brief, which covers 50 Pages, is almost completed,” states union organizer Harvey Murphy, “and will be sent to the board as soon as possible.” “The present basic rate is $3.50 a day with a complicated bonus system which leayes the worker with no idea of how much he has earned. “The purpose of the plan is to do away with the bonus system and establish a base rate of pay which can be used as a yard stick for similar basic rates in the industry across the country.” While members of Local 651 haye won union recognition from the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company as bargaining agent for 1,500 employees, ne= gotiations over the basic rate have failed. “There is one basic rate of 24.50 a day, called the payroll rate and including three bonus- es. Actually, the basic rate is $3.50, with 11 different kinds of bonuses —metal bonus, silver bonus, efficiency bonus, and many others,’ said Murphy. The brief will also ask time and a half for overtime, a proper vacation scheme, double time for all holidays and a shift bonus for second and third shift work- ers. Charge Attempt To Smash Union WINDSOR, ONT—A mass meeting of 10,000 workers, call- ed by Ford Local 200 of the United Auto Workers-CIO last week-end, charged that the Ford Motor Company, as part of a drive launched by the Canadian Manufacturers Association with the assistance of the provincial and federal authorities, was at- tempting to smash the union. Indignation has been aroused by the Ford’s refusal to put into effect the Regional War Board’s decision for vacations with pay and by the board’s inaction on the issue. President Roy England inform- ed the meeting he had been promised that the National War Labor Board would review the ease shortly. The company is also insisting on forcing anti-union amend- ments to the agreement with the Union. 67 Lonsdale North 523 Labor Personalities— 17 Charles Caron By CYNTHIA CARTER - ees pene penne: thirty-four-year old Charles Garon ast week elected secretary of the powerful Boil : a Bon cupbuuders. Union, has known what it Pecan Se 0 e working elass st i i i He eae g Struggle in almost every province in He's known the poverty of the prairie farmers, of the Ontario relief camp workers. He's stood in bread lines in Montreal and in Vancouver. He's ridden freights out of and into most of the big Canadian cities. With little to eat, with scarcely enough left of his coat to hold it together he’s been up against every- enemy of the unemployed—the February cold of a Saskatchewan blizzard, the_ bureaucracy of relief administration, the constant police persecution of all who sought to organize relief workers. Through it all, however, Caron has kept one aim in view—the organization of all workers, unemployed or in industry, so that they may collectively fight for decent wages and living con- ditions. Charles Caron was born in the French-Canadian farm= ing settlement of Gravel- bourg, Saskatchewan, in 1909. “Throughout the district conditions were bad,’ he re- ealls now when speaking of - his father’s farm, which, with his four brothers and one sis- ter he helped to work. “Tf there was a good crop, prices were low. If the crop was bad, prices were fair. So the farmers were always in pov- erty.” He received his education at schools supported by the ‘Roman Catholic church in Glavelbourg and St. Boniface and then enrolled in a Re- gina institution which opti- mistically referred to itself as the “Success Business Col- lege.” When he finished his course his measure of suc- cess was represented by a job in the Gravelbourg Bank, where he was in charge of savings accounts and was paid $55 per month. Deciding that there was, from the working man’s angle, no _money in banking, Caron quit the job when he was 18 and trav- elled—by the boxear route—to Capiscaping, Ontario, and thence to Quebec. In Montreal he hired on with a construction com- pany to build bridges in Bermuda. Pay in the sunny Bermuda islands was high. It was sharp disillusionment, therefore, when he returned to Montreal in 1931 to find Canada in the grip of the depression, to find bread Jines and soup kitchens, unemployed riots, and no jobs at any price. e ||) ee unemployed were fed two miserable meals a day—after they had managed to get on relief by having their “handout” card signed by an archbishop of the Catholic Church. They slept in an old warehouse, and many of them begged on the streets during the day. Caron began to listen to talk of an organized unemployed movement. He attended meet- ings, some planned and some which seemed to break out spon- taneously whenever angry workers gathered together. He tried to catch a freight out of Montreal, but the yards were well guarded. With an English friend he set out to walk to a neighboring town. In the midst of a blizzard his half-starved. companion dropped in his tracks. Caron flagged a car in which, despite rigid police regulations, they were given a ride to On- tario. His next stop was a works project camp in Kenora, Ontario. At harvest time he went to the prairies, where he worked in the wheat fields until he was fired for talking organization to the boys. On his next freight trip he was stopped at Nipigon and with other unemployed organizers was sent to a relief camp at Squaw Lake where, provided with no clothing other than what they came in, the men were forced to work in tem- peratures of 30 to 40 below zero. Organization went on, and a strike was called. Police rounded up the leaders and dumped them on a forsaken road “100 miles from nowhere” and Caron, who had developed acute bronchitis, was thrown in the back of a car and once more told to move on. He did. He travelled by freight to British Columbia, where, at a Lytton relief camp, he managed to make contact with un- employed leaders on the west coast. He came to Vancouver and at once was active in the organized unemployed struggle. He became provincial organizer for the Relief Workers Council and within a year (by 1934) he joined the Young Communist League. He worked directly in the youth movement until 1937, and from then until 1939 he worked at sawmills and logging camps throughout the province. In 1940 and part of 1941, working as kitchen help in the general hospital, he was active in the Civic Employees Union. He joined the Labor-Progressive Party shortly after it was formed and is a member of West End branch. Caron started to work in the shipyards in March, 1942, From the first he was an active member of the Boilermakers Union, presently becoming a shop steward and later chairman of the welders sublocal. ae “The union is now entering a period of reorganization on the basis of the proposed setting up of a federation of shipyard unions,” says Caron. Z “Because of this the executive members will face the new year with added responsibilities, but { feel sure that with the united membership behind them they will be able to work con- structively in the new federation not only towards consolidating the forces of each separate union in united efforts to improve conditions, but also to press for the continuance and expansion of our shipbuilding industry in the post-war years.”