Nov. 21 rally can halt new Depression
THE United Electrical Workers' union has calculated that the average working class family in metropolitan Toronto will need a wage increase of $3.50 an hour in the coming year to keep pace with increased mortgage costs, inflation and the impact of the energy agreement.
Those among the hundreds of thousands now unemployed have little prospect of finding work, never mind winning an increase. For non-union workers, chances of even a modest gain are remote. For unionized workers, such a one-year gain would break all records — and leave the workers back where they started.
The economic crisis now shaking this country is crushing the hopes and dreams of the people who produce Canada's wealth. The Trudeau government's stubborn adherence to U.S. interest rates is reaping record profits for the banks while more than 100,000 families face foreclosure.
It is a fact that from 1972 to 1979, corporate profits rose 300 percent while average earnings rose only 111.7 percent. Real wages have been declining since late 1976. The Canadian Labor Congress declared last year that workers now are experiencing "the biggest and most prolonged drop in real earnings since the Depression years of the early 1930s."
It need not be this way. A government committed to policies of full employment and public control of the Canadian economy could put Canadians back to work and generate real improvement in wages and working conditions.
How can it be done? The Canadian Labor
Congress has shown the way with its call for a massive demonstration of protest-on Parliament Hill on Nov. 21. The CLC has issued the call to farmers, workers, trade unionists, consumer groups, church groups, students, small businessmen and anyone else suffering from the crumbling economy to march on Ottawa to demand a different direction.
Fishing industry workers have an especially big stake in this fight. Fishermen, unionized or not, will see a major share of their earnings siphoned straight into the coffers of the oil companies as a result of the energy pact. Bankers are growing fat on boat payments — if fishermen can earn enough money to make them.
Shoreworkers and tendermen are feeling the
same pressure. Last year's wage increase was slightly more than a third of what will be needed in 1982 for wage earners to keep pace.
The UFAWU already has undertaken to mount a special lobby to Ottawa in connection with the Nov. 21 protest. In the union delegation will be trawl fishermen, halibut fishermen and trollers, seiners and gillnetters, shoreworkers and tendermen. All will be going to Ottawa with a simple message: Interest rates and fuel prices must come down!
Every other industry organization should join in this crucial demonstration. If the gear groups, the associations and the co-ops can join with the union in any fight, it should be this one. This new depression can be stopped.
Fish and Ships
STEVESTON local member Harry Diamond, who owns the Papillon, tells us a story is going around the floats that speaks volumes about the fishing industry. It seems that a lawyer, a doctor and a fisherman are sitting around one day dreaming about what they would do if they won the lottery. Each one has a different plan for his million dollars.
The lawyer is committed to real estate. "I'm putting my money into land," he vows, "because I'll double my investment in under 10 years." The doctor figures the stocks are a better bet. "All my money will go into blue ribbon investments on the market," he says. "The return on a decent stock beats real estate speculation any day."
Then it's the fisherman's turn. "What are you going to do?" the doctor and lawyer ask.
"Well," says the fisherman, "I guess I'll just keep fishing until the money runs out."
Union members on Vancouver Island will see a new face on organizational rounds next month. Mike Darnell, now northern representative for the union in Prince Rupert, is being transferred south to take over organizational work in the
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north Vancouver Island area. This will free Frank Cox to concentrate on the south Island and west coast. In the north, Joy Thorkelson will take over Darnell's post as union representative and Ken Bedard will continue in his organizational duties. The changes were approved at a recent union General Executive Board meeting.
Some of the Polish freezer-trawlers that have been tied up in Vancouver for several months because their country is too broke to buy them fuel may soon be mobile again. Fishing News International reports that the Soviet Union has agreed to supply 70,000 metric tons of fuel for the Poles, 30,000 more than last year. Among the Vancouver vessels tied up waiting for fuel were the Delfin and the Mantra.
The UFAWU's Standing Committee on Navigational Aids and Safety is claiming another small victory in its long struggle to make the coast an easier place to work. Committee chairman Archie Kaario has been advised that a buoy has been placed at Allan Rocks, near the south end of Seymour Inlet, as the committee requested.
If current plans for LNG and coal ports in Prince Rupert go ahead, it is possible that millions of tons of B.C. resources will be exported in foreign-built ships crewed by non-Canadians. Tom McGrath, president of the Seaman's Local 400 of the CBRT, believes the project should be all-Canadian — Canadian vessels, Canadian crews. He's pressing the Social Credit government to adopt that position and already has the full support of Dave Barrett and the NDP.
Can it be done? McGrath is convinced and has shown us a recent clipping from an Australian newspaper that bears him out. Unions there — which enjoy the best deep-sea wages and working conditions in the world — are near victory in their
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Elias Stavrides photo
• B.C. Hydro directors got a taste of what they plan for residents of the province's interior last week when demonstrators burned some Hat Creek coal outside Hydro headquarters in Vancouver.
fight to have all oil transported to Australia moved in tankers registered and crewed in Australia. Just last month, they won agreement for shipment of coal under the same terms. Why should Canadians accept any less?
On Dec. 15, trade unionists around the world will gather in Paris for the first international labor congress ever called to deal specifically with the problem of the arms race. Sponsored by the massive French Confederation General de
Traivailleurs, the meeting will include more than 250 delegates from all the Scandinavian countries, most of the nations of Europe and from throughout the Socialist world. Chairman of the co-ordinating committee is Jimmy Milne of the Scottish Trade Union Congress.
Last week Ray Stevenson, a veteran of the Steelworkers and Mine, Mill before that, told the UFAWU general executive board of the importance of curbing the arms race for every worker.
The expenditures for arms are robbing every worker in the world of better pay and working conditions, he said, through aggravated inflation, unemployment and diversion of scientific researcb to war.
Stevenson, who spent several years working for the World Peace Council in Helsinki, reminded the unionists that peace is "not just a moral question.
"Trade unions cannot continue their activities and stand up before the members saying 'we will represent your interests' without coming up against the question of $75 billion worth of wealth being dedicated to the arms race."
The Paris congress is the first attempt to solve that problem within the trade union movement. If Stevenson's trip was successful, B.C.'s labor movement will be represented in Paris as well.
Is it a sign of things to come? Yet another former New England Fish Co. cannery has been converted into a sport-fishing resort, this one at Waterfall, Alaska on Prince of Wales Island east of Ketchikan. It joins Canfisco's Butedale, Bones Bay and other canneries in the ignominy of catering to well-heeled tourists in conditions that would have seemed like paradise to the workers who kept the cannery working until Nefco closed it 10 years ago. Now, the Seattle Times reports, each cannery cottage has a bath, heating, a wet bar and an $800 pull-chain toilet. A fleet of 21 sport boats will service the tourists. What of the commercial fishermen? The new owners hope to sell them ice.
4/THE FISHERMAN — OCTOBER 23, 1981
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