"Strikes Are Inevitable"

Into the oval, colonial-style conference room in Ottawa's Parliament Building strode nine determined members of the Canadian Congress of Labor's potent Wage Committee. Before bustling, bumbling Labor Minister, Humphrey Mitchell, they laid a demand that the Government relax its vise-tight wage control. The C.C.L.'s potent argument: the wave of strikes which threatens Canada.

C.C.L. Silby Barrett presented Labor's four demands: 1) permit the National War Labor Board to approve a 20% hike in take-home pay for a 40-hour week; 2) abolish the system allocating wage control to the War Labor Board, supervision of working conditions to the Government conciliation service; 3) establish industrywide, instead of individual plant, bargaining; 4) order Government-sponsored negotiations in strikes already under way. Added Barrett meaningly: "If these proposals do not receive consideration, strikes are inevitable. There is danger of strikes in steel, automobile, electrical, hard-rock mining, chemical and packinghouse industries."

Note of Cheer. In his friendliest, let's-be-reasonable manner, "Hump" Mitchell turned the delegation down. Removal of wage control, he said, would breach the Government's anti-inflation barrier. Hump shifted his spectacles to his nose's tip, wagged a warning forefinger: "If you give effect to this [strike] policy, you will be endangering the organizations you represent." On that note the interview ended.

But there was no end to strikes. British Columbia's 37,000 still striking wood-workers were joined by 700 seamen of the Canada Steamship Lines. They struck when the City of Montreal sailed with a non-union crew. Slated for June 3 is a strike by some 4,000 other members of the A.F.L. Canadian Seamen's Union, who want an eight-hour day. (Present working day: 12 hours.) Ready to go out also were 6,000 A.F.L. textile workers in Quebec. Only the last-minute appointment of an inquiry commissioner averted a walkout by 10,000 C.I.O. rubber workers in 14 Ontario plants for a 20-c--an-hour raise and a 40-hour week.

Chrysler workers in the Windsor and Chatham plants voted to take a strike ballot on the company's refusal to grant a $2-a-day increase and a 40-hour week. But in eastern Ontario 2,000 dairy farmers, representing 40,000 producers, threatened to call a milk strike on June 15 if their prices were not raised $3 per 100 lbs. There was only one note of cheer. The two-month-old strike of 400 National Brewery employes in Montreal finally ended last week. The strikers went back to work, though they had been granted none of their demands.

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