Zero

Hour
in the

W oods_

and

Mills

By TOM McEWEN

Across British Columbia, in
every lumbercamp and mill,
35,000 workers of the LWA
quit work on May 15, in one
of the greatest demonstra-

“85 ee ne ea eer tions of workingclass unity
: AM., May en cone camps C on a ew, ose : s : i
= Eleven ike SUueele 3S Co where TMT aey copter in the history of organized
orner = NW mat joht is. ° e ° e
ig ie ee labor. They fight for a just cause, which will
wert a re) wiih tne
mine

S TYUART RESEARCH LTD

radio, wants to
hired voice of the
publicity campaign

ceiling off lumber price

boss loggers are a gro

The main theme of Stuart’s
misrepresentations in the daily
press and on the radio, are the
amount of “wages lost” and the
homes« that could be built if
Gnly the lumber workers would
end the strike and get back to
work! “To end of the fourth
day, $1,044,000” wages lost; “to
€nd of fourth day so many mil-
lion board feet—so many five-
Eeom low-rental homes lost”?
ete etc. If ever the adage, fig-
ures don’t lie, but liars figure”
applied, it does in the case of
Stuart Research Ltd.

The lie re the loss of board
feet and the number of houses
{i would build, according to Stu-
art Research as a result of the
strike, was promptly nailed by
the Building Contractors Asso-
Ciation (who cannot be accused

on behalf of the boss loggers is two-fold: (a) to
€ Ss, thereby adding to its already swollen excess profits, an
dispute between the International Woodworkers of America and the boss loggers
ie up of christian philanthropists, anxious and willing to give th
oIty purpese by a union leadership, who refuses to permit them to grant this wa

of union sympathies), who
charged that as a result of the
Statement of the lumber opera-
tors of B.C., a great portion of
B-C. lumber must be bootlegged
on the black market, Pointing
out that lumber couldn’t be se-
eured for the construction of
low-cost homes before the strike,
the Building Contractors Associ-

ation welcomed the strike,
which among other things,
might haye the effect of re
leasing lumber for low-rental —

home construction and focussing
governmental attention upon the
disposition of B.C. lumber pro-

ducts.

Clearly Stuart Research, while
they may not fully appreciate
it as yet, are doing a good job
of “keeping the record straight’

UTE UT ETT

® Feature Section

SEE...
@ IMPLEMENT

TRUSTS

Page: = as 10
@ 4L.P.P. OPEN

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Page 242 a. 12

I -, if one is to judge from its high-pressure
keep the record straight.”

- the record of the lumber
operators.
: .)

1

In the present struggle there
is no question of the ability of
the boss loggers to pay the
wage increases asked by the
IWA. The H. R. MacMillan mon-
opoly alone, in 1944, made a net
profit of over $31 million. There
is not a lumber operation in
British Columbia of any size
whatever, which has not had to
pay excess profits taxes during
the war yearS—a preity accur-
ate barometer of the profits
rolied up-Of course Stuart Re-
search dces not catalogue the
profits of the boss loggers in
its daily dish of misinforma-
tion. But it is also important
that it doesn’t deny the exist-
ence of Such profits. Nor does
Stuart cite the fact that the
wage demands of the IWA
could be met out of excess pro-
fits without touching the main
reserves of the operators.

Wor does Stuart Research go
into the question of increased
living costs and the scuttling
of price controls which give
momentum to' rising price in-
dexes. Naturally it wouldn’t,
since it is but the Charley Mc-
Carthy for the monopoly inter-
ests whose main concern is to
blow the roof off price controls

in order to enhance their swol-
jen profit sheets. But these in-
ereased prices are~- vitally im-
portant to the members of the
IWA and to every working man,
woman and child throughout
Canada. Prices of food, clothing,
shelter . . . on all the essen-
tials of life are skyrocketing
Gaily. The worker’s dollar is al-
ready cut-. .. almost in half,
and the end is by no means in

Sight. The wage increases de-
manded by the IWA will barely
equalize the increased living
costs of the last three months.
The boss loggers’ offer (read
bribe) of “$1.00 per day” falls
far short of this equalization.
The IWA wage struggle syn-
echronizes with the needs and

demands of €very wage earner
-in Canada, primarily because
every wage earner feels the dis-
astrous effects of the release of
price controls upon his family
budget.

H. R. MacMillan and others
of his ilk make a great to-do
about democracy. On the subject
of union security, these gentle-
men insist that they cannot ac-
cept a proposition that ‘“com-=
pels” a man to join a union un-
less he chooses. From there on
they go into a diatribe re “dic-
tatorship~” Stuart Research
Ltd. doesn’t tell the public it

triumph in spite of the stalling of the lumber operators.

advertising campaign in the commercial press and on the
t Stuart Research Ltd. speaks for ‘7147 British Columbia lumber operators” . . . the
organized boss loggers—one of the most powerfully concentrated monopolies in Canada. The objective
“sitdown’ on lumber production as a means of forcing the
d (b) to distort, misrepresent and falsify the issues involved in the
and sawmill barons. To give the public the impession that the
e lumber workers an extra dollar a day, but thwarted in this
ge increase.

is attempting to mislead, of the
open-shop regime of terror and
blacklist against union men
that prevailed in the camps and
milis of B.C. up until a few
short years ago. They do not’
mention the Black Agency .. .
the Hicks Agency ... the flock
of hired Pinkertons and stools,
which the boss loggers main-
tained for years, in order to de
prive a Canadian worker of the
privilege and right ef working
in the logging camps and mills
of B.C. if he happened to be a
union man?

Mr. MacMillan writes his em-
ployees a touching letter on the
issue of union security, and pre—
tends to oppose union security
on the grounds that it inter-
feres with the “democratic
rights of workers’? Mr. Mac-
Millan forgets the years after
World War 1, when AFT. unions,
the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW), the One Big
Union (OBU), were hounded
and driven from camp to camp,
and finally out of the industry
entirely, because they dared try
to organize against vermin-in-
fested bunkhouses and wunsani-
tary camps; because they de-

‘manded decent food in place of

hog-wash; because they

Continued on Page 10
See ZERO HOUR

de-