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An unwarrented demand

PROBLEM that has_ seriously hampered British

_ Columbia’s development ever since the days of Con-
federation was reopened this week with the application of
the Railway Association of Canada for a 30 percent in-
crease in freight rates. If successful, the application will
mean an extension of the present highly discriminatory
rate structure, one of the major handicaps to the develop-
ment of manufacturing in this province: But more than
that, if the rail monopolies succeed, it will mean that the
pockets of Canadian workers and farmers will be further
tapped to add to the profits of the CPR, CNR and twenty-
one other secondary railway lines across the Dominion, and
this at a time when both war and peacetime profits are at
an all-time high in Canadian history.

The drive is being spearheaded by the CPR, which is
refusing to pay the miserable 10 cents an hour wage in-
crease granted by the National War Labor Board, unless
the government accedes to its demand for 30 percent higher
freight rates.

The railway monopolies have strangled the West, and
particularly its agricultural industry too long. There is not,
and never was even the slightest justification for charging
more to move-a ton of freight eastbound, than to move an
equal weight westbound. Yet the railways charge 68c per
hundred pounds to move such things as groceries and hard-
ware from Wancouver to Revelstoke; while over the same
distance, 379 miles, from the East, and for the same goods,
the charge is 57 cents. On a 100,000 pound carload the
Vancouver shipper pays $680 by comparison with $570 from
the East—or $110 extra for 379 miles. The current applica-
tion® would even extend this inequity, because on the 30
percent increase, the western freight rate boost would
amount to $204, while the eastern would be $171. In a
province whose workers and farmers are so dependent on
the export of the products of their toil, this gross discrimin-
ation must be eliminated. :

A 30 percent increase would further inflate the already
perilously mounting cost of living. It could only result in
still higher prices for consumer goods and seriously reduce
the already low farm prices. Already the governments of
B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have announced their in-
tention of jointly demanding a new deal, but in addition
determined and united opposition must be mobilized against
the increase in its entirety. Active support of the Labor-
Progressive Party both provincially and nationally will be
given to this campaign and, undoubtedly, it will be joined
by the trade unions, farm organizations, and consumers,
women’s and other popular organizations.

Resolutions should be forwarded to the Board of Trans-
port Commissioners, Ottawa, demanding that the railway
companies’ application be disallowed.—N.M.

_A national labor code

HE EYES of Canadian labor are turned toward Ot-

tawa where the Dominion-Provincial conference on la-
bor relations is in session. Powerful big business pressure
is being exerted to have the federal government nullify
labor’s wartime advances by reverting to pre-war policies.

There are few issues on which labor has been more
united than the demand for a national labor code. Both ma-
jor labor bodies—CCL and TLC—have repeatedly taken a
stand for legislation which would give the working class
movement its rightful place in the life of the nation. This
demand has also been supported by many public-spirited
organizations which realize that failure te establish labor’s
rights by law will create serious problems in industry.

During the war years the federal government estab-
lished PC 1003. This order marked a forward step but did
not go far enough. A new labor code will have to be an
improvement over PC 1003 and include among other things
provisions for union security and outlawing of unfair labor
practises.

Workers in this province have placed their position
clearly on record. At the B.C. Federation of Labor con-
‘vention, held less than two months ago, a resolution was
passed demanding a national labor code which would be
administered by the provinces. This position is backed by
all progressive citizens. The representatives of the pro-
vincial government at the conference should be urged to
Stand by that demand.—M.R.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

‘forts of

Labor needs real political action

By LESLIE MORRIS

UCH ado is made by some spokesmen of the CCF that their party is the “trie

‘labor party.”

This was very noticeable in some of the speeches of CCF’ers

during the debate on political action at the Canadian Congress of Labor convention.
Without regard for the specific origin of the CCF, and its later development as a single

membership club’ organization
which has steadfastly resisted
broad _ affiliations with demo-

cratic rights respecting policy

decisions, certain CCE spokes-
men try to counter LPP argu-
ments for united labor political
action with all sorts of one
Sided statements.

At one moment in the de-
velopment of the CCE the et
its Qntario ‘labor sec-
tion’ to achieve unity for the
defence of A. E. Smith led to
the expulsion, arbitrarily and
without proper debate, of that
entire section. That was per-
haps the first big bureaucratic
action, fully-fledged and signifi-
cant for the future, taken by
that tightly-crystallized petty-
bourgeois leadership which dom-
inates the CCE.

Even the history of the ‘CCE
political arm’ struggle in the
Canadian Congress of Labor is
not without its interest from
this Same angle, for it is ob-
vious that while the CCF lead-
ers are anxious for endorsation
of the CCE as a party, it is
not at all anxious to gain out-
right affiliations by unions to
the CCF.

Thus in the historic, CCL de-
bate the other day, no earnest
plea was made for such affilia-
tion. On the contrary, union de-
legates were told time and again
that despite the recommendation
of a previous CCl convention,
there was no obligation upon
any union to affiliate to the
CCE.

e =

ASIC here are two points.

Firstly, the CCE leadership
is not a working-class party
leadership, but that of a middle-
class liberalism which eschews
the class struggle and looks
upon the forces of labor only as
a means for achieving its petty
bourgeois nationalization heaven
without benefit of socialism at
all.

Secondly, such an ambitious
political aim requires mass sup-
port but not control by the
masses, hence the overweening

desire to get endorsements
which do not have attached to
them any conditions which

would lead to transformation of
the present party by the inter-
vention of working-class dele
gates, which would surely come
about if mass affiliations were
permitted.

@

KE CCE leadership will never

permit its party to develop
on a federated, democratic basis
that would permit the growth
of the instinctive leaning of the
workers toward socialism. That
is why the CCF is not, and can-
not be, a broad, all inclusive,
democratic labor party united on
the issues of struggle, within
which would be thrashed out the
larger theoretical questions of
the socialist perspective; and
that is because the CCL -leader-
ship is a thoroughly established,
classically developing social de-
mocratic leadership of the true
‘Huropean’ type, which performs
the function of infecting the
labor movement with those petty
bourgeois reformist illusions
which are the hallmarks of op-
portunism.

Whenever the CCF, as part of
its demagogy, poses as the “only
true voice of labor,” the “real
labor party,’ it would be well
for progressive workers to re-
member these points. Qn the
other hand, the advocates of in-
dependent labor political action
are thoSe who wish to see the
development of ‘working-class
polities, free from the stifling
control of petty bourgeois liber-
alism. That sort of action will be
class action, and as such bound
to search out progressive alli-
ances and face up to the ques-
tion of anti-monopoly govern=
ments—-of people’s coalitions as
the transition to socialism.

@
ie iS that sort of development
for which the EPP is striv-
ing, thus, there are two roads
ahead for labor, just as there
have been in PHurope—the road
of social-democratie tragedy and
betrayal, and the road of strug-

gle for socialism.

The tide of history favors
people’s political action, led and
inspired by the labor movement,
directed against monopoly and
taking up the practical strug-
gles against capitalism. :

it is in their efforts to oppose
such highly effective political
action fhat the CCE tries toe
cramp and limit the trade unions
within the straitjacket of the
middle class liberalism of the
Coldwell type — the liberalism
which tells Stelco strikers, in
effect, that they deserved to go
through what they have done
for 81 days because the CCE
was not given control of the
Dominion parliament!

The fight for independent.
united political action on the
elass issues, and on the wider

popular democratic questions, is
in reality the fight to liberate
the labor movement from the
imposed domination of oppor
tunists who, far from challeng—
ing capitalist rule, actually up-
hold \ts basie tenets. and by
so doing, always blunt the
struggle of the people for peace
and security. :

ERIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1946

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