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EDITORIAL__

Doctors escalate threats

It is evident that many doctors in Ontario, the latest province where the elitists are “rebelling”, have the good sense to delay any anti-public action.

Incited by the Ontario Medical Association hierarchy, intent on keeping doctors in an income heaven 25% above the next group, lawyers (1971 figures), the greediest have been more than eager to desert medical profession ethics and claw for more dollars.

OMA sanctions to frustrate and incon- venience patients requiring medical cate have been applied, but frankly, a number of doctors don’t relish bargaining in human misery. They should speak out and join with the agonizing public.

But the elitist OMA is adamant. They want fees for Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (OHIP) services beyond the 34% boost over turee years handed to them on a platter by the Tory Ontario health minister, Larry Grossman. (Quite different treatment than that reserved by reactionary governments for hospital workers who are jailed or fined for striking.)

Refusals of free telephone advice to sick people, and of telephone renewal of pres- criptions, are to be followed by rotating walk- outs by doctors — more correctly lockouts. The idea, obviously, is to make suffering people suffer enough that the government must take’ compassion and give the doctors all they want. Their other threat, and some have done so, is to opt out of the medicare system, and try to wreck it, as long as they get their cash.

In 1971, physicians’ net incomes were 5.7 times those of the average industrial wage — the difference between $7,438 and $42,397 being $34,957, according to Globe and Mail writer Orland French.

In 1979, with the industrial composite wage at $14,850 (many workers don’t make anywhere near that even today!) and phy- sicians getting $60,885, the gap was $46,035.

The current average doctor's income is

‘Free’ advice?

Gerald Bouey, who gets $104,500 a year as governor of the Bank of Canada, evidently gets part of that for telling Canadian workers they've got to lower their living standards to make the economy work right. He’s in har- mony with the big business prime minister who says wages have to be chopped to save the monopoly system. Considering what the system is doing to workers the increasingly sharp demands for jobs, wages to beat infla- tion, and no cutbacks in services are the best reply to these parasites.

Flashbacks

WITCHHUNT VICTIM

His friends and associates have described him as an “intensely humane” man. “You cannot”, the late Dr. Herbert Norman told a newspaperman, “dismiss men’s arguments because they are shabbily dressed, eat with the fingers, or think in a manner entirely strange to you... you have to remember that the fellow in beggar’s robes could be right.”

For this philosophy, he was pilloried and accused of being a “communist spy” by the Washington McCar- thyites. For this he was driven to take his own life, “murdered by slander”, as Alistair Stewart, Winnipeg CCF MP told a hushed House of Commons.

He was a scholar-diplomat and earned the hatred of General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean war. For this the hatchetmen went to work as far back as 1950 and 1951 with a trial by innuendo and FBI- trained “witnesses”. Tribune,

April 15, 1957 PACIFIC TRIBUNE— APRIL 16, 1982— Page 4

given as $80,000, while the average industrial wage (1981) is $18,580.

The same tactics are in use in Manitoba, and have previously harassed British Colum- bia. It’s just possible that the medical profes- sion bosses are overestimating the patience and gullibility of the public.

They should be reminded that other socie- ties have faced sabotage and desertion by doctors and have raised up a new and dedi- cated medical profession, concerned with the well-being of their fellow humans.

For working people being held to ransom through payroll deductions, taxes and extra billing, to be faced with withdrawal of services unless extortionate demands are met, it’s about time to meet the challenge. Doctors need to know that they are not simply bully- ing sick men, women and children who can’t fight back; it has to become the business of the labor movement to defend its members. It has to become its business to press hard for government action to contrain doctors, curb their greed, and elicit proper services, as a requirement for continuing to practice. '

WHAT DID You orperate ) ON THAT Parent FoR? /

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Heed Nicaragua invasion alert

Nicaragua's intense and convincing con-~

cern that U.S. military forces are moving to- ward invasion of its territory deserves serious attention:

Carlos Nunez, state council chairman, re- vealled in March that U.S. troops and heli- copters from the Panama Canal Zone were carrying out war games in Costa Rica “in di- rect proximity to the borders of Nicaragua.” On the opposite border, attacks from Hon- duras involve U.S.-sponsored remnants of the forces of former dictator Somoza. These facts, and attacks on Nicaraguan patrol boats by boats from Honduras and EF] Salvador, which head of state Daniel Ortega reported to the UN, are on record.

Also on record is Reagan’s destabilization project, beginning with a $19-million budget for the CIA, and reflected in terrorist de- struction inside Nicaragua. These and the belicose threats by Haig and Reagan caused Nicaragua to declare a state of emergency, and more recently to cancel its traditional 10-day easter holiday in the interests of pre- paredness. ;

Washington justifies its intervention plans by its slander that Nicaragua is fuelling El Salvador’s liberation struggle. But all U.S. “proof” has turned out to be faked, a miser- able propagand failure. .

Nicaragua’s calls for reassurance that it will not find itself singlehandedly defending its

CROW’S NEST STRIKE

Fourteen hundred miners at Bellevue, Blairemore and Coleman are maintaining a stubborn strike which has lasted for weeks against attempts of coal operators to smash their union as a preliminary to worstening conditions.

Armed police have been brought into the strike district in large numbers are stationed in strategic posi- tions ready to attack.

Hunger stalks among the strikers. They were work- ing only part time before the strike, eking out their wages in municipal relief. Militant farmers have ex- pressed a willingness to ship them food but transporta- tion expenses are lacking.

The union has appealed io all Canadian workers to

aid the Crow’s Nest Pass strikers with food, tents and

other material help and to prevent evictions. The Worker, April 16, 1932

independence against the giant U.S. war machine or its proxies, deserve firm re- sponses.

In line with mediation efforts by Mexico’s president and foreign minister, Canada should make this’a high profile issue. It should state loudly enough to be heard that it stands firmly in opposition to U.S. or U.S.-in- spired military intervention in Nicaragua, whatever the pretext.

Profiteer of the week

You remember Irwin Toy. Last fall and pre-Christmas they battled their workers’ contract and equal pay de- mands, used scabs and police to thwart the union. Re- ward? An after-tax profit of $4,363,000 on Atari electronic games, etc. That was for the year ended Jan. 31, 1982, a nice jump from $2,026,000 a year earlier..

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‘EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE’

During the World War (1914-1918) the wages of the | American miner advanced a little over 36%, but rela- tively he was growing poorer for the cost of living during the same period rose by 85%.

A year after the armistice, miners demanded a wage increase of 65%, minimum 6-hour day, a five-day week and the nationalization of the industry. The strike that followed was broken by governmental use of injunc- tion and Woodrow Wilson’s threat of force. It was one of the most vivid demonstrations of what Karl Marx meant when he described the State as the “executive committee of the ruling class as a whole”.

During the same period the great steel strike was beaten, railroadmen were coerced. Then followed the _ “trade depression” under which the capitalist class is once more reducing workers’ living standards.

The Worker, —

April 14, 1922