OF Re aig i east

cnsane * ad

Wage parity: a ‘dangerous dream’?

By RAE MURPHY

F YOU, ARE a Canadian steelworker, you are con-

Saeed to be the most productive steelworker in the world. For your efficiency you are paid about

16 cents an hour less than your American brother.

If you are a Canadian auto worker, your wage aver- age is 41 cents less than ‘your fellow worker in De- treit. Moreover, you can watch the automobile which you built being shipped across the border and being sold for several hundred dollars cheaper than you are entitled to buy it.

For example, a model that is produced in Canada by Chrysler, the Valiant 200, retails in Canada at slightly higher than $3,000. When it is shipped to the USA it is called the Dodge Dart and it costs about $2,400. —

It is quite natural then that you are demanding and are prepared to fight for wage parity.

When ithe recently signed auto pact was being foisted on the Canadian people, it appeared that one of the irresistible effects of the pact would be to eliminate the wage differential between the Canadian autoworker and his American brother. After all, the pact meant that automobile production between Can- ada and the United States would be integrated— completed vehicles or any component parts would move freely across the border and the industry would be completely rationalized. -

The old argument that Canadian workers would have to suffer with less wages would of course evaporate. After all, there was now no small Canadian market and a large American market, there was just one great, efficient, happy and equal market.

The auto pact was lauded to the point of being referred to as a “free trade agreement” — no more old-fashioned borders for us. There are a few hitches, of course, like if your name isn’t Henry Ford don’t try and drive across the river to Detroit to buy your next car, there is no “free trade” agreement for the likes of us.

if you’re heading into negotiations with parity on your mind you'll also find that the border is some- thing mcre than a customs clerk’s optical illusion.

According to Canadian management. the demand for wage parity amounts to a greater curse on the Canadian economy than the 40-hour week and holiday pay. They’re even editorializing on the danger.

“Parity of wages — dangerous dream,” says an

a *

editorial in the Toronio Star. Canadian productivity, it claims, is on an average 25 percent below American. standards. Even in cases such as the stee] and auto industry where this is not true by any standards, ihe Star says that workers should not demand parity because it would cause a great wage disparity in Canadian industry. i

“We doubt if any responsible labor leader would want the Canadian labor movement thus divided into princes and paupers,” the Star adds.

They have a point. If 16 cents an hour is going to make every steel worker a prince, better everybody should be a pauper. 2

The Star is not alone in this nonsense. In the annual report to shareholders, the president of Massey- Ferguson, A. H. Thornborough stated that the drive toward wage parity “raises questions about the future of Canadian production facilities in relation to com- petitors located within the concentrated U.S. market.” Which means simply that Massey-Ferguson intends to blackmail its workers in accepting substandard wages.

We are caught in a web. If it is-true, as the Star says, that we are less productive than Americans, wouldn’t this be because our secondary industry has been dwarfed and stunted by the conscious pattern of trade between our two countries? How do we extricate ourselves from this treadmill? Neither the Star nor the president of Massey-Ferguson provide the answers, except to imply that Canadians must

accept a lower standard of living for ever.

The intention of the policy towards continentaliza- tion as illustrated by the auto pact is to guarantee Our existence as a cheap labor area, as well as a reservoir of natural resources for the American indus- trial complex. Now when Canadian workers demand wage parity with Americans the bosses act like the young man who killed his mother and father, then begged for compassion because he was an orphan.

It’s not a case of dividing the workers, as the Star suggests, into “princes. and paupers.” This division has already existed too long in this world. It’s simply” a demand for more of the fruits of labor. And that demand is irresistible.

HEN 20,000 __ production workers of the Interna-

tional Nickel Company use their organized strength day in and day out to produce $7,000 per man in annual profits for the company, the law and order of the House of Morgan reigns supreme in the Nickel City. But as soon as the men who dig the rock and keep the wheels turn- ing for this United State mono- poly use the same organized strength to defend their rights to be treated as human beings, all hell breaks loose.

The workers are painted as lJawbreakers and villains who are out to destroy and do harm for no apparent good reason. At- torney-General Arthur Wishart

rushes 300 provincial police to .

Copper Cliff and Sudbury to sev that law and order is maintain- ed. Richard J. Needham of the Toronto Globe and Mail laments that the police who pick up boot- Jeggers, bookies and prostitutes allow trade unionists to do as they please.

Yes, Mr. Needham, it’s a sad day indeed for some people when the organized strength of the workers challenge the omni- potent and untrammeled power of a giant like Inco. Of course, it all depends on whose side you are on. You ‘see, this business of “law and order” is a relative and not at all an absolute concept. Perhaps we can explain this so it becomes a bit clearer for pre- judiced minds like yours, by quoting what an American writ- er, John Dos Passos, once wrote:

“Wars and panics on the stock

‘exchange, machine-gun fire and

arson, bankruptcy, war loans, starvation, lice, cholera and typhus: good: growing weather for the House of Morgan.”

All of these things are still with us, the hallmarks of bour- geois law and order, as we see all too clearly today in the case of Vietnam. It would even be possible to quote American ad- mirals and generals to substan- tiate how the U.S. Marines oper- ate to enforce Jaw, order and

freedom for the American and international bankers.

It is not difficult to see the extent of exploitation of the Sudbury miners when one sees the fabulous assets accumulated by Inco, whose net assets are now more than 20 times greater

LABOR SCENE | by | BRUCE MAGNUSON

than the total assessed property value of all of Sudbury.

In the reorganization of great- er Sudbury, the Ontario govern- ‘ment allowed Inco’s own com- pany town of Copper Cliff to re- main outside the enlarged muni- cipality in order to allow it to escape paying its proper share of civic taxes.

te = =

‘class

While hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth pours forth from Inco’s mines and smelters and refineries, the citizens of Sudbury pay 20 percent more taxes than any municipality in Ontario and receive the most primitive and inferior type of civic services. The huge areas of mining property outside city limits escape municipal assess- ment.

No community in Canada pro- duces more wealth per capita of production. Yet, no community js poorer than Sudbury.

The criminal policy of inter- nal union raiding carried out by collaborationist, — right- wing union leaders under the cover of red-baiting and cold war propaganda, has served for years to keep workers divided while grievances piled up and the company enjoyed’a field day of profiteering and abuse. It is this situation which forms the basis of the accumulated resent- ment that has now found expres- sion in united actions for the

first time in several years to put an end to the unsavory prac-

tices of this profit-hungry slave

empire.

Once people discover that by = acting together in unity their —

power is stronger than the pow- er of the company, they will re-

fuse to accept the brutal rule. 5

and exploitation of -absenteé owners whose only interest Jies

n pillaging the resources in this” ‘

country and extracting every last ounce of profit for the: in- ternational bankers.

The day of domination by this American empire is drawing nearer to its end. Its nei profit

for 1965 was reported at $144,- : 000,000, more than $8 million

1964.

Instead of responding to In- co's call for police to provoke he workers, the Ontario govern- ment ought to expropriate this mammoth corporation and oper-

over

ate it as a public enterprise in

the interest of the people an the community.

August 5, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4