Review

Settle the crisis’ on the waterfront!

Pagans scabbery and use of goons on the Northland Navigation Company docks by the Seafarers’ International Union has created a serious situation. This ° is no jurisdictional dispute. At stake are the most fundamental rights of labor, and working con- ditions and standards which the trades union fought hard to es- tablish.

Trouble started when the Nation- al Association of Marine Engineers (CLC), which hold certification for Northland Navigation ship engin- eers and which had just won a conciliation award which both com- pany and union had agreed to ac- cept, was raided by the SIU. Ac- cording to affidavits attested to by no less than five engineers, com- pany officials assisted the SIU in the membership raid, and the com- pany withdrew its offer to sign a union contract.

Faced with the refusal of the company to bargain collectively NAME voted to strike and subse- quently established its union picket line. The International Longshore- men’s Union respected the NAME picket line and was arbitrarily locked-out in violation of their col- lective agreement with Northland covering stevedoring. Northland then proceeded to obtain court in- junctions, and unsuccessfully at- tempted to work their docks with scabs provided by the SIU and protected by imported goons.

Movement of freight to and from the Northland docks has come to

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Editor — TOM McEWEN Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE

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a complete standstill. Labor has united behind the longshoremen and engineers to protect their jobs and trade union rights. It is quite evident that company efforts to work scabs on their docks is not going to work despite Bill 43. Labor has shown it is not going to be straightjacketed. It has shown that unity and solidarity can win,

The pressing need now is for action to break the present impasse; to get the men back their jobs and get the ships moving again. The government has a responsibility to get the company to settle its dis- pute with the NAME; to get the ILWU longshoremen back on their jobs in accordance with their col- lective agreement.

This is what’s required to get the freight rolling and the ships sailing again. Unless the company is com-

_ pelled to settle quickly, this dispute

could have serious and wide reper- cussions.

ANADIAN workers want a share in the “prosperity” that Prime Minister Diefenbaker and his cab- inet members have been talking about and they want it in the form of higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions.

True, the Tories greatly exagger- ate the improvement in Canada’s economy under their rule. Jobless lines still extend across the land. Nevertheless industrial production is going up.

If production is going up and the prices of goods manufactured in this country are not going down, then profits must be going up also.

That is the workers’ justification for pushing up wages. But as soon as workers go on strike for wage increases the employers, and their

government stooges, proceed to deny their own stories about “pros- perity.”

The Chamber of Commerce and other employers’ organizations have always argued that there should be no wage increases until productivity is rising.

Now that productivity is rising (a fact admitted by everyone) are the employers in favor of increased wages? They are not!

‘Prosperity’ and wage

Instead they try to fri people with stories to the effect higher pane would “wreak economy” and “wipe out our exp? market.” ;

No sensible worker will these bed-time stories.

Any increase in produc means an increase in the m lists’ bank balances. The worke Canada are fighting to ensure it also reflects itself withow in an increase in workers’s

That is. what the 27,000 woodworkers who struck. this. are fighting for. In negotia Hd they proved beyond the shade a doubt that the lumber batt could well afford to pay the 20 4 cent wage increase the IWA™ seeking. But the employers i held to their position that sue pay hike was out of the questid

In the struggle which lies —and it may be a long and one—the people of B.C. shi throw their full support b the striking woodworkers.

Tom McEwen!

T seems that somewhere Ontario during the

Royal tour,

different” to the visit,

current Prince Philip un- burdened himself of some pointed ~ truths about Ontario liquor laws. It is _said the Prince described these asinine stupidities as “an- . tiquated,” or words to that effect. Hard on the heels of the Prince comes a matronly-looking madam on TV. Some big yakyak in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union tells us that Prince Philip just “had no right” to criticize. Just before the Royal tour got under way one Canadian lass, Joyce Davidson, got bounced from her TV. program for publicly declaring herself somewhat “in-

Now note. the contrast. One woman is crudely penalized by corporate officialdom because she doesn’t conform to current bour- geois hysteria. Then along comes our WCTU Donna Quixote, girded for battle as always to lay “John Barleycorn” low, loudly protest- ing that Prince Philip has “no right” to voice such opinions on matters which are outside his competence to judge!

Without pursuing this delicate matter further, other than to say that the Prince scored a bulls- eye in his brief estimation of Tory Ontario’s archaic liquor laws, let us also respectfully sub- mit that “he ain’t seen nothing yet” until he gives the B.C. edi- tion a similar “once-over.”

If Ontario’s are “antiquated” ours go back to Noah in terms of its watery content, and back be- -yond the dawn of history in its definitions of whom, where, and how a quart of diluted Capilano ~ water is to be consumed without running afoul of the statutes.

For instance the real Canadians, our Indian people can drink a glass of beer in a beer parlor, but ° are prohibited from slaking their thirst anywhere else. They can’t

so as to ensure that the flow of

‘situation well calculated to cause

’ for a quiet pint of “arf-an’ ~arf”

even buy a case of watery suds or a mickey of diluted water for home consuynption, and anyo else attempting to be a good sam — aritan in helping them over this legal hurdle, faces a stiff fine OF a stretch in the hoosegow, or both, :

When too much “law” gets int the beer, as it did in the 19 Prince Rupert “riot,” our law- makers always have a ready sol- ution—a royal commission; the finest invention for doing nothing about anything except preserve the status quo—and keep the revenues rolling in from high purchase prices and penalty re- turns.

Our liquor laws have a threé- pronged objective; to enhance the profits by watering down the commodity sold; to extend sale and to so fix the rules of con- sumption with racial, domesti catering and inebriate penalties,

revenue steadily increases, A

a visiting Prince or a Lond dock worker a nostalgic yearning

and the right to express an op inion on liquor law insanity!

aud

July 10, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGI