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The Lumber Barons Obstruct Production

the operator’s calculated provoca- tion. Only now that its very ex- istence is at stake has it been forced to strike.

Labor has pledged its energy and strength in the battle for pro- duction to defeat the Axis, which the union and its membership rec- ognize as labor's big job.

We realize that as industrial workers in one of the key war industries, we have become sol- diers in the great army of the United Nations. We realize that the outcome of this battle will de- termine the whole future course of humanity for years to come— whether we shall be driven into the terrible darkness that has ov- erwhelmed Europe or whether we shail lift that darkness and ad- vance into a new world of pros- perity and peace.

We realize that to win we must have total war, which in this day means total war for those in over- alls just as much as it does for these in uniform.

But how can the loggers con- centrate their full energies on their task when reactionary forces. who apparently hate labor more than they fear Hitler, ham- per their efforts to accomplish it in an organized wey.

A united effort depends on mu- tual respect and cooperation be- tween iabor and management Mutual respect in industrial rela- tions depends upon orderiy col- lective bargaining—a factor which cannot exist if labor is unorgan- ized cr denied its basic demo- cratic right.

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fied the powerful B.C. Log- gers and Lumber Manufac- turers’ Associations are openly defying the intent and spirit of Jabor legislation of both the pro- vincial and Dominion govern- ments, refusing toe sign agree- ments with their organized em- ployees and encouraging the Bp- erators in the Queen Charlotte Islands to refuse to sign an agreec- ment with the union of their em- ployees’ own choice. And this mind, even after a government arbitration board has proposed a signed agreement with the union in its award.

For two years the loggers of the Queen Charlotte Islands have patiently maintained spruce pro- duction because they knew the need for it in aircraft construc- tion plants. At the same time they

have endeavored to secure recog- nition of their union through the medium of a signed agreement, similar to thse in effect in practi- eally every other industry, The operators’ propsals for a memor- endum instead of an agreement is an insul{ to labor and would not be acceptable to any genuine trade union.

The operators claim they will recognize the union, but it is im- possible to believe they are act- ing in good faith when they re- fuse fo embody in it an agreement as is being done by thousands of companies in dozens of other in- dustries throughout Canada.

Lumber is virtually the only major industry in this province where collective agreements dealing with wages, hours and working conditions are not being adopted as a basis for improved understanding and greater coop- eration so essential today for in- creased war production.

Their claim that they are not opposed to collective bargaining while refusing to sign an agree- ment with the union only means that they approach the question with their tongues in their cheeks, haying decided beforehand that they have no intention of signing an agreement

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tAgE unions should stand on guard against fink union agreements. Every union should stand behind the IWA in its fight fer union recognition. There can be no real collective bargaining unless negotiated with represen- tatives of the union the workers freely choose to represent them.”

The operators’ action is a com- plete negation of the principles laid down in PC 2685 and is, in fact, a challenge to the entire trade union movement Every fiemocratic organization, whether it represents labor or not, should protest it because its spirit is more akin to the things against which we are fighting than the high purposes of the war.

It is not an issue confronting the TWA alone. If the operators are permitted to get away with their policy, the effect will be to weaken the whole structure of trade unionism in this province.

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HE QCI companies defy the provincial government, which at the last session of the legisla- ture introduced amendments to the ICA Act making the princi-

azis In Norway

UICIDES, desertions and insan-

ity are common occurrences among the Germans in Finnmark, the extreme northern section of Norway, a school teacher who escaped recently to London told the Norwegian Information Serv- ice.

We ascribed as causes for low German morale the 40 degrees below zero cold in the long wint- ers, the extremely long nights (Germans because of lack of vita- mins suffer from night-blindness), the bleak Scenery, heat and swarms of mosquitos in summer, plus the undeyiating hostility of the Norwegian and Lapp popula- tion. : :

Wo German is ever invited into

a Norwegian home. If a German tries to buy something in a store, the shopkeeper always tells him: “All sold out!”

The Russians described by tea- chers as “only a few miles away from the Norwegian frontier’— this would seem that Soviet troops must have penetrated Fin- land at this point—send over leaf- lets which are passes on which Germans and Austrians can sur- render.

Sometimes whole companies of Germans or Austrians going over to surrender have been caught by the SS elite guard. When they resist, they are shot down. Usu- ally though, the German desert- ers let themselves be tricked back by promises of retirement to la-

ples of collective bargaining binding upon all employers. They cynically refuse to abide by the recommendations of a govern- ment arbitration board which af- ter lengthy deliberations recom- mended the signing of a collec- tive agreement between the lum- ber operators and the IWA.

They refuse to deal with legit- imate unions—they want to play at “negotiations” with puppets. The open shop and the blacklist are the weapons they have used for years to hound every logger whe dares to speak up for him- self and his fellow workers. They insist that they intend to keep it that way.

In effect, they are saying—to hell with the government and damn the public. We've never be- fore had to be bothered with ne- gotiations about conditions for the men who work for us. We’re go- ing to keep on having things our own way—and no one can stop us.

The labor and progressive move- ment must let the King govern- ment know in unmistakable terms that it does not intend to allow the operators’ provocative action to go unchallenged, and that it will not countenance disruption of lumber production at this criti- cal stage of the war.

The issue in this dispute is clearly Industrial Feudalism or Industrial Democracy. Upon this issue not only the Queen Char- lotte Island loggers, but the en- tire labor movement and the peo- ple of British Columbia must take a definite stand. The Queen Char- lotte Island loggers must have support of the trade union move- ment and all progressive people in their struggle to secure thoge things for which this war is be- ing fought, including Industrial Democracy. Do these things now:

® Wire Minister of Labor Humphrey Mitchell demanding the government enforce the prin-

ciples of PC 2685 and the Harper ~

Arbitration Board award.

@ Have your organization en- dorse the union’s demand for genuine collective bargaining and signed agreements and publicize that endorsation.

@ Help the loggers’ strike by sending a contribution to the Queen Charlotte Island Strike Fund, in care of IWA-CIO Local 1-71, 204 Holden Building, Van- couver, B.C.

eserting

bor battalions in pleasanter coun- iry much farther south.

But other Norwegian sources say that any deserters who let themselves be sent to Kirkenes stay there, in concentration camps exposed to Soviet bombing, and the men are fed little and worked much, in terrible weather and without adequate clothing, so that they soon “die like flies.”

The German’s one consolation is drunkeness, and when they are wild with alcoholic stimulation, they sometimes murder the civili- aus, sometimes murder each oth- er, and sometimes sink into gloom and kill themselves.

“They find their only escape is beneath the soil they came to conquer,” said the teacher.

Labor Personalities—7

Ferqus McKean

By CYNTHIA CARTER

cE YOU thumb back through old copies of the B.C. | News and the Advocate you'll find that one name frequently—Fergus McKean. And if you read the repor speeches he has made you'll find that the essence 0. every one of them is a considered analysis of the fronting the Canadian working people and a call for to unite to achieve them. ~ MeKean was not one of those who awoke late to the menace of fascism. When Hitler advanced over a divided working class and was placed in power by a German ruling class which saw in him the instrument of its imperialistic ambi- tions, he was already warning that unless fascism were destroyed in Germany it must inevitably threaten the peace of the world. “Labor must present a united front—the peoples of the world must unite against fascism,” he told a May Day rally in 1938. Yet little more than two years later he was one of a hundred Canadians, whose word and action had been dedicated to the struggle against fascism, interned at : Kananaskis. And here he became the spokesman fo who had expressed the anti-fascist convictions of the ma of the Canadian people. : _ Later, in Petawawa internment camp, he conducted ¢ in Canadian geography and its effect on the political ment of the Dominion. ’ Fergus McKean is a Canadian with an intense love of” country. Long a student of its economic and political develo ment, he likes nothing better than to talk on the subj: Canada's past, present and future, whether it is with o the scores of people he talks with every day in his office before a class of students. ’

HORTLY after the town of Pictou was founded in McKeans migrated from Scotland to Nova Scotia.

was born there in 190], a fourth-ceneration Canadian, a tended Pictou Academy, the éldest secondary school in

When he was 15 McKean left high school and went te as a rivet heater in the shipyards at Halifax:.In 1920 he on as signalman on the governor-general’s private y

His next berth was on a freighter running from St. Johns, Newfoundland. After that he shipped co on a vessel making the trans-Atlantic crossing to British on an oil tanker running between Montreal and New Orleai a@ passeneger ship to the West Indies, and a freighter to ossik, USSR.

When his part in a strike on a deepsea cable } Halifax cost him his job, McKean set one for eae He harvested in Manitoba in 1922, on the same land his fathi in 1870, had helped to survey. In the harvest fields h part in a second strike—and again lost his job.

In 1923 he came to British Columbia and worked as a wright at Barnet Mill, Burnaby. When the Lumberwor dustrial Union was formed in 1931 he was among the take out a card. And when the workers went on strik three wage cuts and introduction of the ‘speedup syster chairman of the strike committee he was fired and blackli:

The year 1932 was an important one for McKean, for year his activity in the unemployed movement earned ] popsition of secretary of the Central Executive Commi Burnably Unemployed Council and that year also he 1 a member of the Communist Party. Soon he was the section organizer in Burnaby.

Blacklisted and unable to get a job at his trade—he organizer for the Lumberworkers Industrial Union for a McKean signed on as a seaman on the Prince Rober running between Vancouver and Prince Rupert, in 19 joined the Seafarers Industrial Union. Within a few we union struck in sympathy with locked out Vancouver 1 men. The seamen elected him chairman of their six mittee, chairman of the central strike relief commi following the Ballantyne Pier riot, organizer for the strike committee. a

In 1936 McKean was elected as provincial organizer fo Communist Party, a position he held until 1938, when he elected as the party’s provincial secretary. Then, in June & the Communist Party was declared an illegal organizatio McKean was arrested and interned under Section 21 Defense of Canada Regulations.

Upon his return to Vancouver in October, 1942, he was pointed secretary of the Communist-Labor Total War C : and with the formation of the new Labor-Progressive Pa August this year he was the logical and unanimous choice position of party leader in British Columbia. .

Now, with the growing maturity of the labor mov the realization within the trade unions of the need for po action, the general recognition that labor must exert its” strength to secure victory and fashion the post-war ful Canada after its own aspirations, McKean is also logicall of the men who can best represent the working peop parliament. And when it was announced not long a the Labor-Progressive Party would nominate a candidat contest Vancouver Center constituency at the next fed election the first name to be suggested was that of McKean,