f ‘ te Skills and facilities developed to fulfill wartime needs must be used to maintain the Pacific Ceast shipbuilding industry as part of a program Of economic expansion in line with Canada’s maritime requirements By GARRY CULHANE HEN the war is over, we will find’ourselves in the midst of world conditions that will be extremely favorable for the rapid development and expansion of our many sided Canadian economy. This is also true of the development of a permanent shipbuilding and ship repairing industry of considerable proportions. However, while recognizing that world conditions will be favorable for such development, we will also, have to recognize that new world conditions and new international ‘relationships, will require an entirely new approach on the part of our industrialists, if full advantage of the situation is to be taken. When the demands of war and the early successes of Hitler’s U-boat attacks threatened to cut democracy ’s Atlantic lifeline to Britain, Canadian industry was given a desperately urgent task. At that time, Canada had no large scale ship- building industry, and the owners and operators of repair yards had neither the facilities, nor the experience to cope with the situation. The government found it necessary to found a crown company, Wartime Merchant Shipping Limit ed, and to draw upon the best talent in the country to organ- ize this company, put it on its feet and get it moving. Within the yards the whole question of efficiency, speed- ing up production, training workers and supervisory person- nel, improving techniques and the purchase of machine tools to facilitate the work was raised so Sharply by the workers themselves, through their trade unions, that the federal gov- in O ur ~—«S} ernment was finally compelled to appoint the Richards Com- mission. The recommendations of the Richards Commission, plus ac- tive imsistence, on the part of the workers, resulted in tre- mendous improvement in the output per man hour, Qur wartime shipbuilding program is a great achieve- ment. It is essentially an achievement of the Canadian people, financed from the pub- lie purse, organized, promoted, supplied with its materials, its _ plans and specifications, and guided through its early diffi- culties by the government through a crown company, made efficient and highly pro- ductive, through the insistence —of organized labor. ‘The operators need to re- call these facets to mind when they are thinking in terms of postwar plannine. Organized labor needs to recall these facts and raise them very Sharply when thinking - in terms of postwar planning. drastic curtailment, such as that envisaged by the shipyard operators in their recent public pronounce- ment in which they claim that, at best, there might be work for 6,000 people in’ the postwar period, would be disastrous. we: are the prospects for the future of the shipbuild- industry? We must first ex- amine the potentialities of the postwar world. The end of the war will leave the United Na- tions the gigantic, immediate task of providing food, clothing: and shelter for the war-shat- tered millions of European peo- ples. ipyards Coincident with this immedi- ate task will be the long term job of rebuilding the civilization of an entire continent. The truth of Maxim MLitvin- off’s oft repeated phrase, “Peace is indivisible,” has been driven home to us with devastating clarity during. the course of the war, but we have added to that lesson the knowledge that prosperity is also indivisible. Postwar prosperity of any one of the United Nations will de- pend on the prosperity of all. War has immensely increased the interdependence of nations. . The leaders of the United Na- tions have affirmed, and we should keep before us the fact, that there will be no postwar ~ prosperity of a lasting nature unless the United Nations par- ticipate in aggressive joint ac- tion to industrialize the back- ward nations of the world and raise their standards of living. These then, are the collosal tasks, the goals which the Unit- ed Nations have set themselves in the conferences of Moscow, Cairo and Teheran. Already some of the further essential preliminary steps towards the achievement of the perspectives of Teheran have been taken, in the conference of Gommon- wealth prime ministers at Lon- don, the Bretton Woods Confer- ence and the Dumbarton Qaks Conference. There is abund- ant. evidence, therefore, that we will emerge at the cessation of hostilities into a world with a very high degree of inter- national cooperaticn. DURING the war, Canada has tremendously enhanced her position as a great - world trader. In the postwar period there will be a demand for Ganadian goods, all of which means that there will be a continued and imereased demand for Ganadian exports. At the same time, the employment provided will fur_ nish us the means of raising’ our own standard of living, which will mean in turn an increasing demand for imports. Our position as a trading: na- tion if we are to enjoy any de- gree of postwar prosperity, must be based on an increased volume of exports certainly not less than our wartime figure of $2,970,000, and must be bal_ anced with a correspondingly high quota of imports. It seems logical to conclude from these facts that Canadians must think now in terms of es- tablishing our own merchant Marine, our own trans-oceanic transport services and interna- tional shipping agencies. Our shipbuilding industry is certain- ly in a position to build, service and maintain a fleet of some considerable size. It is also in a position to assist in the build- ing of units to replace the warZ time losses in the merchant fleets of the Allied nations. The present plans to build units of our own coastal fleets are but a mere drop in the bucket, compared to the plans we should have under way. There are, for instance, the questions of fast refrigerator ships for the fruit and meat trades, and fast freighters that can compete favorably with the fast merchant fleet Which the United States has already un- der way. Then there is the question of building trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacifie passenger liners for the CPR. Our shipyard operators can- not, I am convinced, cope with this situation without labor’s aid. From labor’s viewpoint, Garry C ulhane the approach of the Shiph ers and Ship Repairer Ass tion to this problem leay lot to be desired. (eee has been no cons; tion with labor and neo tempt at such consulta There has been no move tod the public into the confidence the association. We are infor through the press that a } was forwarded to Ottawa by association on the subjec} postwar shipbuilding, the | tents of which have just } made public. Shipyard operators need ¢ reminded again that they the administrators of an dustry of national importa The general public and 1: today expect a good deal n from an association of imp ant employers than schemes signed to “get around the Iz code” and to “beat the unio Organized labor, on the oj hand, must become alive to dynamies of the new we above all, labor must rea now that the fight for full | ployment- and an economy, abundance has already ci menced. : Job rationing, spreading work and all the other dod of an economy of scarcity m be thrown out the window. We want, and can have, if’ work and fight for it, an ec omy of abundance and full ; ployment. , The time has come now, the shipbuilding industry, labor to advance emphatic: and imperatively the dem: for an immediate conference tween authorities represer tives of gevernment, employ and organized labor to “ass the maintenance of industry the postwar, to explore question of subsidies, fo obt public pledges from the fede government with regzard to ; Sistance in the industry and < ting up machinery to obt: contracts abroad, Every union having memb: employed in the shipbuild: industry er engaged in the & Sidiary plants should advar these demands now, and bri pressure to bear on the fedei government and the employe for the immediate calling - such a conference. : These demands should also raised at the forthcoming n tional conventions of the Trad and Labor Congress and # Canadian Congress of Labor. Organized labor must tai the initiative and must take at once. Employers must | aproached and the yalue of jor cooperative action pointed out Labor will find many of tl employers keenly appreciatit of the need for involving tt public, government, manag: ment and labor in this who question. Now is the time i organize for labor’s declaratia of security.