Page Two
THE FISHERMAN
March 9, 1943
THE
FISHERMAN
Published  Every Tuesday by The Fisherman Publishing Society at 138 East Cordova Street, Vancouver, B.C.  Telephone MArine 1829. Subscription Rates: One Year, $1.50; Six Months, 80c. Make All Payments to: THE FISHERMAN PUBLISHING SOCIETY < Advertising Rates on Application.
Enact Labor Bill This Session
The delegation of the Canadian Manufacturers Association that interviewed the provincial cabinet last Friday is, according to press reports, "alarmed" at the nature of the proposed amendments to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Obviously, its alarm can only be directed at those sections of the government's bill which represent an advance in comparison with the old ICA Act. It is therefore timely and important for labor to clearly understand these sections.
There are three major improvements in the government's bill which the Canadian Manufacturers' Association clearly wishes to torpedo not only because of the effect these changes would have in British Columbia but because legislation affecting labor's rights of union organization and collective bargaining is now under discussion in other provinces, including Ontario and Manitoba.
FIRST, the new bill would repeal Section 5 of the old Act, under which only if a majority of the workers were members in a trade union on or before December 1938 was the right of collective bargaining through the officers of such trade union afforded to them.
SECOND. This section is replaced by a new clause which
reads in part as follows:
' "(1) It shall be lawful for employees to bargain collectively with their employer.
"(2) Collective bargaining shall be conducted on behalf of employees by bargaining representatives.
"(3) The employees may elect bargaining representatives by a majority vote of the employees affected, but if a majority of the employees affected are members of one trade union the trade union shall have the right to conduct the bargaining and, in that case, the officers of the trade union or such persons as the union may elect for the purpose shall be the bargaining representatives on behalf of all employees affected, whether members of the trade union or not. . . .
"(8) When the Minister is satisfied that bargaining representatives are duly constituted he shall notify the employer and the employees or union ,as the case may be, and the employer shall conduct collective bargaining with these representatives, and, where collective bargaining is desired by either employees or employer, if any employer or bargaining representatives refuse or delay for more than twenty-one days after notification pursuant to this sub-section to enter upon bargaining; the employer or bargaining representatives, as the case may be, shall be guilty of an offense against this Act."
THIRD. A new section is added to the old Act as follows: "It shall be unlawful for any employer to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any organization of employees or to contribute financial or other support to it: Provided that an employer shall not be prohibited from permitting any employee or representative of an organization of employees to confer with him during working hours or to attend to the business of the organization during working hours without the deduction of time so occupied in the computation of the time worked for the employer, and without the deduction of wages in respect thereof."
It was the fact that labor in the province was united as never before, that undoubtedly encouraged the government to bring forward its present bill. This unity was fully maintained by the delegation that interviewed the Minister of Labor last week and suggested a number of possible clarifications and improvements to the government's measure before it is finally passed by the House.
Now confronted by the high pressure campaign of the Manu facturers' Association to delay enactment of this legislation by endless discussion so that the session might be concluded and no bill passed, labor remains united and determined in its appeal to the government and to all members of the legislature: "Do not let any pretext lead to postponement of the govern-men's legislation. An amended ICA Act must be passed be fore this session concludes. Harmony in industry is impossible as long      some employers continue to deny even the ele mentary democratic right of labor to organize into unions of its own choosing. A united war effort, to say nothing of simple justice, requires that all attempts to stall or shuttle the bill into a blind alley be emphatically rejected."
The Name Is McMaster...
Bonus Payments -
Too Little And Too Late
By "NILGETTER"
What is there about the word "bonus" that makes so many peo--pie think of it as a gift from the gods? Whatever it is, our capitalist friends have made full use of it to cash in on the gullibility of the average person and line their own pockets.
They use it when they sell the housewife a one-cent bar of soap for a nickel and tell her that if she buys another five hundred bars and sends the wrappers to a certain place, she will get a 30c cup and saucer absolutely free as a "bonus" from a kind-hearted manufacturer.
Sometimes they weaken and give a "bonus" at times when the government might collect too much in excess profits tax if the same money were paid out in dividends. So when the fisherman finds that some of our leading cannery companies are paying a bonus on last season's fish, it behooves him to lean back on his bunk and figure it out.
With  last  season's catch all bought and paid for, one wonders why it should be good business for the canners to hand out, unasked for, another sop to the fishermen, especially after the way these canners, during price negotiations, protested their inability to pay one iota more. We will be told probably, and possibly truthfully, that the companies have only just discovered
how much they really could have paid. That sounds fine but experience tells us that canners are tough, and there is no known instance when the knowledge of a well put-over bargain has melted their hearts to the extent that they dripped extra shekels into the loser's pockets, unless, of course, the fishermen involved indulged in some effectively persuasive action.
Not all companies are paying a bonus and, of course, those which are, are not paying all their fishermen. Perhaps it is in this point that we should look for the joker.
So far as we know only a number of the sockeye gillnetters are the beneficiaries. Now that Japanese peon labor is out of the industry and many gillnetters are feeling more independent as a result of a fair mortgage-raising season last year, we are inclined to suspect that there is already quite a little competition between the canners to get good fishermen j for themselves for the coming season.
Could it be that they are attempting to buy next season's fishermen with money that should have been paid for last season's catch? But think what you may, the fact remains they could have paid more for last year's sockeye and possibly for some, if not all, other varieties. But for a little competition for fishermen, we might never have known that It could be paid for sockeye even.
By R. S. GORDON T">- H. McMASTER, president of the Steel Company of Canada (Stelco), during February spread himself through the nation's press with a buttery advertisement which purported to be a message of "inspiration" for a people engaged in war.
The ad reprinted a statement, originally published in Hamilton and signed by a conveniently anonymous "Committee of the Independent Majority of the Steel-workers of the Steel Company of Canada." In the statement, this fictitious "Majority" has gathered together just about all the stupid lies ever invented about the labor movement.
In a letter, accompanying the statement McMaster also says the statement had originally been published by "a committee representing a majority of the steelworkers at our Hamilton Works." He was reprinting it in full-page ads across the country, he went on, "because we feel that it may prove an inspiration to the fighting people of Canada as an acknowledgement of the loyalty and steadfastness of our workers," and so that "true Canadians in every part of the country may read it and take courage."
McMaster ended, "Never will an enemy beat this kind of fighting spirit," and assured the world that he had had absolutely nothing to do with the publication of the so-called "Majority" statement. *    * *
lyyicMASTER'S ad, which has brought expressions of disgust from many cities where it was published, has in certain respects served some useful purposes that the steel magnate, I am sure, didn't have in mind.
First, it has awakened Canadians to the fact that a big push is underway to smear and destroy the democratic trade union movement and replace it by company-inspired, company-controlled "fink unions," with collective bargaining torpedoed and the right of free association buried six feet under.
Second, it has brought to public notice what' is already known: that McMaster is one of the- group of powerful industrialists connected with the all-out company union offensive.
Third, it gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the deception behind which reactionary interests are marshalling the attack on labor, which bodes nothing but ill for war production and national unity.
Let us examine McMaster's pious protestations. He says he knew nothing of the writing, financing or publishing of the statement supposed to have come from his workers. But he does claim knowledge that the committee that signed it represented a majority of his employees. And if he is as innocent as he pretends to be—pray, how does he happen to know whom the committee represents?
On the other hand, it can be said categorically that the committee that signed the statement does NOT represent any kind of majority at Stelco, and the proof follows.
Canadian Tribune Reporter,
Reveals What's Behind The Company Union Drive
T^OR some years there has been a plant council at Stelco. When the United Steelworkers organized the plant and asked for a contract, McMaster's management replied that the council represented the workers and the company would deal with nobody else. Even as recently as last month Vice-President H. G. Hilton wrote in a letter to the Toronto Globe and Mail that Tom McClure, president of the plant council, "and his colleagues represent all employees and sections of the plant."
Here's the joker. The Tom Mc-Lure referred to is the same McClure who is president of the Stelco local of the United Steelworkers union. And "his colleagues" on the plant council are practically all leaders of the union as well.
That fact proves to tne hiit that the steel union speaks for •the majority of Stelco employees. For in a recent election to the plant council, McClure and his colleagues were put up as union candidates for eight of the 11 positions on the council. Everyone of them was elected. In short, by vote of the whole plant, the workers chose the union men as their representatives.
The company, nevertheless, still stuck to its refusal to recognize any group but the plant council. Then came the second joker.
The plant council made request, along with the union, for a board of conciliation on the union's demand for recognition. On top of that, the council served an official demand on the company that it recognize the United Steelworkers and negotiate a collective contract with it!
Stelco insists the plant council represents the workers. How, then, can it refuse the council's request that the steel union be recognized as the bargaining agent of the workers? The answer is: the company hasn't got a leg to stand on, and that is why McMaster has had to trim his sails. And that too accounts for the mischievous ads in the nation's press, and the fact that it has been necessary to drag out a new animal in the fight against the legitimate union, the new zoo piece being the ridiculous "Independent Majority of the Steelworkers of the Steel Company of Canada.
l» yicMASTER is anxious to assure us that the original statement of his homeless, hapless, nameless "Majority" was financed by the workers themselves. That puts too much of a strain on our credulity.
Does he expect anyone to believe that his underpaid workers, with a basic rate below 55 cents an hour, have money to throw around on expensive newspaper ads? And does he expect us to believe, fur-there, that the workers who elected union representatives 'to the plant council would turn around and contribute hard-earned money for a campaign to smear their own cause ? •
McMaster has the finesse of a bull in a china shop. And we hope he will not be offended if his efforts to paint Stelco's relations with the pin-point "Majority" as purely platonic are looked on with suspicion by adults who know the facts of life.
As for the full-page ads McMaster himself ran in numerous papers, it is worthwhile noting that they must have cost him a considerable pile of hard cash. Perhaps his employees will be interested to know why he can't meet their modest request for proper wages, but can put plenty of money down the drain in newspaper displays that not only heap cheap insults on them but impugn their patriotism.
*     • •
J^OW for the statement of the gopher-hole    "Majority" that McMaster    reprinted    across the country.
To begin with, it is headed: 'St'rking In Wartime Is a Dirty Business." It then proceeds (1) to "prove" the Stelco steel union does not represent a majority, and (2) make it appear that the steel union is arranging a strike at Stelco in which it will force our omnipresent "Majority" to stop work.
Point number one comes with ill grace from a group that gives no names, no references, no credentials except the blessings of McMaster. Furthermore, we have already shown it to be a tissue of lies.
Equally false is point number two. The organized labor movement, in this country is committed, pub-
licly and officially, to a wartime no-strike policy. But lest our ill-starred "Majority" seek to deal in generalities, let us confine ourselves strictly to the Hamilton Stelco plant.
The fact is that the Stelco local of the United Steelworkers has followed a no-strike policy in the face of intense pressure and the company's violation of the workers' most elementary rights. The fact is that the Stelco steel union, during the recent crisis in the industry, refused to be stampeded, and served as a model of steadfastness despite the company's attitude. It is the sheerest calumny and deceit to talk, as the insidious "Majority" ad does, about "the steel union's projected strike," at Stelco.
The Stelco steel union did take a strike vote. Yes. But everybody knows that that was required by the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act when the union made application for a conciliation board.
In order to apply for a conciliation board the union first had to take a strike vote in accordance with a stupid and vicious government ruling that Ottawa fortunately revoked on Jan. 19. Up to Jan. 19 not even our "Majority," with its skill at falsification and wriggling, could have bluffed a conciliation board into being without taking a strike vote.
It is with this kind of threadbare slander that McMaster is fighting legitimate organization; it is this kind of company union propaganda that, with a reckless expenditure of money which could be used for more worthwhile purposes, he spreads across the country; it is with this kind of anti-labor nonsense that he buys his way into the press so "that it may prove an inspiration to the fighting people of Canada."
What a farce! The "fighting people of Canada" are sacrificing for a free world. Yet this man pretends he is giving them inspiration by denying to thousands the most elementary form of freedom.
One of the first things Hitler did when he seized power was to destroy the German trade unions. During a struggle to defeat Hitler-ism, McMaster would refuse trade unions in Canada even the right to be born!
Woe to this country's hopes for victory and future security if McMaster's black banner of reaction is ever allowed to fly from our masthead!
(This is the first of two articles by R. S. Gordon.)
Perhaps after all we are laying a little too much blame on the canners for even the most kindly of them could hardly be expected to pay up back money to independent fishermen with whom he had kept no accounts. Neither can we blame them for setting the price low enough that they will not lose when they sell the canned product.
After three years of a war where food supply is so vital it should not be too much to expect that government organization has arrived at a point where they, could tell us the price of the fish before or ,when we catch it instead of several month after it is commandeered. Otherwise we can only expect this chaos to continue, with the fisherman at the mercy of the companies who will always play safe, according to their whims pay a bonus if they feel like doing so and to whom they care, with no hope at all for the independent trollers and gillnetters.
Responsibility must therefore be shared by the British government which sets the prices and our own government which commandeers the fish. As things are, the fisherman stands to break even or lose, while the canner stands to break even or win.
We always expect the prices to be too little but there is no reasqn why they should be too late.
'You Have The Floor'
This page is open to all readers, organized and unorganized. The Editorial Board requests all letters be signed. Signatures will be published unless otherwise stated. Letters should not be more than ''00 words in length. Letters to the editor do .not necessarily reflect the policy oi
The Fisherman.
Write Now fro Your Elected Servants
Brother Fishermen,—This means you! Have you written lately to your Member of Parliament, to your member in the Legislative Assembly and the guys you didn't vote for on the City Council? If not, why not? As fishermen, we are supposed to be British subjects and as such we have the privilege to vote for at least one, and in some cases all three of those enumerated above.
Now if we helped to send the guys there it is quite conceivable that the^ may want to know what you and I want done about a lot of things that are ^ealt with in those august assemblies. Of special interest to fishermen are the various amendments to the fishery regulations, the salmon problem at Hells' Gate, the various ceilings without a floor under them, the restrictions on political beliefs, the question of the restoration of the Ukrainian halls and properties, the lifting of the ban on the Communist party, and no doubt you can think of a few grievances of your own. Well, I think it is only reasonable to suppose that our elected representatives are interested to know what we think about those things and would be glad to have a letter from us every once in a while. You know it quickens a fellow up to have the boss come around once in a while, so it is safe to say it would have a good effect on our hired hands to let them know that we are still here and watching their performance.
Fraternally yours, Vancouver, B.C. OLD SALT.
Praises Members For Russian Aid
Editor, The Fisherman: I was pleased to note that the secretary of the Fishermen's Union rendered a little assistance to the Woodworker's Union to help plead their case for recognition of their union in the Charlotte Islands. That was real co-operation practiced and not only preached.
My purpose in writing is to congratulate the Fishermen and Cannery Workers' Union for their generous response to the Aid-To-Russia drive. The results were just splendid and the union members have every cause to be justly proud of their organizations. Keep up the good work. The common people have now got a clearer and better understanding of Russia. Here is a little incident which may prove the change of public opinion. In Duncan, Vancouver Island, and the district, the quota to the Aid-To-Russia fund was over-subscribed five times according to the latest report. As some people are aware, Duncan was always considered to be the most conservative and reactionary place in the whole of British Columbia. At the last provincial election certain elements did all in their power to stop the re-election of Sam Guthrie to the legislature. Sam Guthrie, MLA, was always friendly to the Soviet Union and of course this did not suit some of these tory die-hards with a pro-fascist streak all down their spines.
OLD UNION MAN. Northlands, B.C.
Dollars At Stake, Not Rotting Fish
Editor, The Fisherman: I admire the letter on sunken nets written by Chas. C. Kean in answer to Mr. Ole Martin's plea against throwing back cod caught in dogfish nets to rot. Ole Martin is right, but did he stop to think how Mr. Dogfish Net gets so many cod in his net that he wants to put them on the market? It is not the rotten fish but the "dollar"' that this holler is all about, and some don't care how they get it. If Ole Martin was going to rob a bank, he would not go into a wood shed to do it; and if dogfish net fishermen would keep away from the cod reefs they wouldn't have so many cod to throw back to rot.
Just a few years back, when catching herring for the saltery, fishermen were getting a few blue-backs in the seines amongst herring, ranging from a half lb. to one lb. each. Bluebacks being out of season until they weighed three pounds, for which the whole Gulf fleet was waiting, right away some seine boat fishermen wanted a permit to sell these bluebacks, and said it was a shame to throw these bluebacks back to «rot when he could get a few dollars for them. Now this is where the shoe pinched the "dollar" not the "rotten fish."' At times there was a scarcity of herring, but schools of blueback that could be caught by the scow load, and this is what Mr. Seine Boatowner was waiting for. Had it been allowed there wouldn't have been a blueback left in the Gulf for the Gulf trolling fleet after all their waiting. Thanks to the old B.C. Trollers headquarters at Na-naimo, they put a stop to this.
DAVID ROGERS.
Quathiaski Cove, B.C.