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Wage & price controls
By Professor Leo Panitch
Canadian working people have now joined the ranks of workers in
other western capitalist countries who have been subjected to a
statutory incomes policy. The Liberal Government's "anti-inflation"
programme seeks to cut back on the bargaining freedom of unions.
The situation is a grave one, implying as it does a governmental
decision to use authoritarian measures to reverse the limited rights
Canadian working people have struggles for to improve their lot
in this unequal society. The Government is telling us, in the words
of crude power politics, that they are making us an offer we can't
refuse: "We'll put a few union leaders in jail for three years
and others will get the message", the Prime Minister mockingly
told a radio interviewer on October 26th. The message is indeed
clear: We are being asked to cut off our own heads or the government
will cut them off for us.
The questions that have to be answered in this situation are many.
What exactly is an incomes policy? Why has the government introduced
one at this time? What are the specific provisions of this Government's
incomes policy? What coercive powers is the government taking to
enforce this policy? Most important perhaps, what can unions and
working people do to protect themselves and defeat the policy?
Incomes Policy in the context of a capitalist economy is designed
to secure a lower rate of price inflation by reducing the rate of
increase in labour costs. It is, in other words, a policy of wage
restraint, based on the view that it is the push of labour costs
which leads corporations to raise their prices. Although it is often
presented -- and the Government's White Paper is no exception --
as an alternative to a policy of deflating the economy and creating
more unemployment, incomes policy has come increasingly to accompany
high rates of unemployment and cuts in government spending on social
service to induce deflation. At the same time as the wage restraint
legislation is going through the House of Commons, so is the Unemployment
Ensurance Bill, where the Government is redefining the normal rate
of unemployment as 5.67 rather than 4%. The incomes policy is not
designed to reduce our current high rate of unemployment, but is
based on a recognition of a fact -- evident thoughout western capitalist
countries -- that apart from the political dangers involved in relying
on unemployment alone to stop inflation, this will not be effective
on its own.
But it is not merely inflation that the wage restraint of an incomes
policy is designed to deal with. Governments introduce an incomes
policy when the collective industrial power of workers threatens
to redistribute the share of the national income from profits to
wages and salaries. This can be seen clearly in the Canadian case,
in terms of the Liberal Government's first attempt at an Incomes
policy in 1969-70. One of the Commissioners of the Prices and Incomes
Commission, George Haythorne, has explained why the attempt at an
incomes policy was made at that time: "From 1957 to 1963 the
share of Canada's national income going to profits and capital had
risen steadily. The situation was reversed in 1964 when labour's
share began to rise, a trend which continued until 1970. Given these
conditions ... action to stabilise the economy was clearly required."
("Prices and Incomes Policy: the Canadian Experience 1969-72";
International Labour Review, Vol. 108, No. 6, Dec. 1973)
Under the impact of the Trudeau Government's policies, especially
the creation of a great deal of unemployment in 1970-72, the trend
of increasing national income going to labour was indeed reversed.
The percentage of the national income accounted for by wages and
salaries fell from 72.8% in 1970 to 67.0% in the first half of 1974
(see Appendix Two). Since the middle of last year however, the picture
has changed. Labour's share increased to 69.4% by the end of 1974
and by the middle of this year rose to 70.8% while big business
profits and interest fell to 21.1% by the end of 1974 and to 20.1%
by the middle of this year. This shift, which has by no means yet
carried labour up to the share it has achieved in 1970, has taken
place because of an increase in the militancy of workers expressed
in high wage demands and increased strikes. It has taken place in
a context, however, where due to the world-wide capitalist recession,
and especially the recession in the United States, Canadian corporations
have convinced the Government, despite a higher rate of inflation
in other countries, they cannot raise their prices to protect their
profit margins if they are to remain competitive in the international
market. They have convinced the Government of a squeeze on profits,
which is not yet particularly marked, but which the Government is
apparently determined to prevent occuring. Hence its new policy
of wage restraint.
There is no doubt that a major attraction of an incomes policy is
that it promises price control as part of the package. Public opinion
polls in Canada as well as elsewhere show that workers are anxious
to get off the treadmill of wages chasing higher prices and that
many would in fact accept lower wage increases if prices were kept
stable. Yet there is generally a major misunderstanding of what
the prices aspect of this kind of policy entails. The policy operates
directly on wages but only indirectly on prices. That is, the guidelines
explicitly say that wages cannot rise above a certain figure. Prices
may rise to cover increased costs, whatever those may be.
There is in other words a norm for wages, but no norm for prices
established in the policy. Rather than hold down prices and have
wages adjust themselves accordingly, the point of the policy is
to hold down wages and hope that prices adjust themselves accordingly.
The advantage to corporations is clear -- they know in advance that
their real profits won't decline due to the policy. Workers however
have to buy 'a pig in a poke' -- they have to accept a ceiling on
their increases to start with and then hope and pray that
this is enough to cover their increased costs.
Thus the policy is in principle unbalanced between prices
and wages. In practice, the situation is in fact much worse.
First of all, the policy does not apply to a number of key elements
in the cost of living even to the extent of keeping price rises
in line with cost rises. Basic food prices, energy prices, interest
rates are all exempt as is the cost of land, which in recent years
has greatly pushed up the cost of housing, under conditions of a
land speculators dream come true. Secondly, for even those prices
which are supposed to rise only in relation to costs, the ability
(and willingness) of the Government to make this stick is very limited.
Whereas wage bargaining takes place in public, prices increases
are decided behind the closed doors of boardrooms, and we only find
out about the occurrence after the fact. There are in addition
many means of fudging costs, especially for the 1500 large corporations
the Government is dealing with, who each can employ as many high
powered accountants for this purpose as will be available to the
Anti-Inflation Board. The American multinational corporations that
dominate the Canadian economy can easily increase the prices they
charge for intermediary goods to their Canadian subsidiaries and
thereby take their profits at home.
The Government has suggested that it will ease its price monitoring
task by asking that a limited number of price increases be notified
to the Government for examination before they take effect. We have
yet to be told what items this will cover or how the Anti-Inflation
Board, given its small size, will be able to investigate adequately
corporate intentions in this regard. What we may in fact expect
is indicated by the British experience where a similar notification
policy operated from July 1967 to June 1970. Despite the Government's
own estimate of 3 million price changes a year taking place
in Britain at the time, only 2,162 price change notifications were
received by the Government over the whole three year period, and
of these 1,807 were accepted as notified. This meant that out of
9 million price changes the Government price control machinery either
modified or rejected a grand total of 345 or 0.0004% (See Leo Panitch,
Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy: The Labour Party,
The Trade Unions and Incomes Policy, 1945-1974, MacMillan 1975).
If the British Labour Government's price control was as empty as
this, it is easy to imagine how "successful" price control
will be under our own Liberal Government with its close financial,
personal and ideological ties to big business.
The merely symbolic exercise in price control that the incomes policy
involves has grave implications for workers who are subjected to
the policy's wage guidelines. The 10% ceiling on increases is made
up of 8% to match rising prices and another 2% to match the growth
of output of the economy. There are two problems with this, the
first is that the 2% growth rate figure is a low estimate and runs
the risk that in actuality the economy will grow faster and the
excess growth will go to profit, which the guidelines specifically
allow for. More important, however, is the simple fact that at the
moment the rate of inflation in Canada is not 8% but 11.3%, and
if this situation doesn't change under the weak price controls,
workers real incomes even including the 2% for productivity
will fall by 1.3%, and they will get no share of the growth in output
of the economy. It is only those workers who can make a catch-up
case and obtain an additional 2% allowed by the guidelines, who
will keep their heads above water at all. Those workers who managed
to obtain real wage increases in the past, on the other hand, may
find their future increases cut by 2%, leaving them with
an 8% increase at best, including the productivity provision.
If the rate of inflation doesn't improve -- they will suffer a real
wage cut of over 3%.
There are some who believe that an incomes policy is designed to
benefit the worst-off people in our society. They could not be more
wrong. In its most general sense, the policy is designed not to
redistribute income but to freeze the present distribution of income,
since everyone is to get the same percentage increase whether their
income is high or low. In a society as unequal as Canada's this
means freezing a situation in which the top twenty percent
of income recipients get about 50% of the total income, while the
bottom 20% get only 2%, indeed the top 40% of individuals get 75%
of the annual national pie, leaving the rest of us, the majority
of the population with only the crumbs. (1971 data from Statistics
Canada, Perspectives Canada, 1975, Table 7.3 page 156) To be sure,
the Government provided a minor amendment to this freeze, allowing
those workers with incomes below $6,000 a year to get as much as
$600, while limiting those earning over $24,000 a year to a maximum
increase of $2,400. Under the heavy criticism the policy was faced
with when it was introduced, the Government said it would go further
and allow increases which would bring low paid workers up to $3.50
an hour (or $7,280 a year) even if this involved more than a 10%
increase. It is on this basis that the policy is supposed to benefit
the lowest paid. This gesture would be laughable if the situation
were not so sad. Apart from the simple observation that if the government
really intended to benefit the low paid, it would give them $2,400
and give those earning over $24,000 only $600 a few other points
should be made. First of all, the $600 (or $3.50 an hour) is not
a guarantee of this amount but rather "permission" to
get it. This is very nice until one remembers that workers earning
wages that low don't necessarily have the power to get an increase
that size. If you are poorly organized or unorganized, if you are
working in a low profit and low productivity industry, the government
may allow you to get a $6 million increase but that will do you
no good. The amazing part of this, is that the government is suggesting
to better paid workers that if they hold back on their increases,
the lower paid workers can move ahead. Nothing could be more ludicrous.
If workers in the higher paid industries accept the call to restrain
their increases, does the money saved in these industries become
transferred to workers in low paying jobs? Does the Government possess
the means to transfer profits from, say, the car industry to subsidize
low pay in, say, the textile industry? Even if the low paid workers
submitted larger claims than the rest and they were endorsed by
the board, the employers of the low paid would not be able to meet
these claims unless the industry in question was also a high profit
industry, which of course are not.
The situation is worse for public employees. The average annual
increase for members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada between
1967 and 1974 was only 7% a year, while the average increase for
all industries over this same period was 9%. This means that federal
public employees are already getting a smaller share of the national
income and the incomes policy is likely to exacerbate this situation.
For the operation of incomes policies in other countries has shown
that public employees are always the most strictly controlled, and
are chosen by the government to set an example for the rest of the
economy. Even in the case of its lowest paid workers, governments
do not act in fear of upsetting "comparability" with private
industry.
This is only one main way in which low paid workers obtain better
wages in the existing society, and governmental "permission"
to get higher increases has nothing to do with this. It is for low
paid workers to follow a breakthrough made by a stronger and better
organized group of workers. The incomes policy is designed to prevent
this. If better paid workers really want to help low paid workers
the way to do it is not to follow the government's advice, and restrain
their wage increases, but to fight the incomes policy and offer
low paid workers their experience in organizing effectively.
But if low paid workers are unlikely to do better under the incomes
policy, it is precisely those at the other end of the scale who
are likely to benefit most. Professional fees, executive salaries,
board of directors payments cannot be controlled because these people
set their own incomes. The Government's promise to restrain dividend
increases is worthless not only because the guidelines allow companies
to increase dividend payments to obtain capital on the stock market,
but also because dividend payments could be paid out to the owners
of corporations after the policy ends. A dividend payment may be
deferred in other words, but a wage increase foregone is gone forever.
What this suggests in practice is therefore much worse than the
freezing of the distribution of income that the guidelines offer
in theory. It suggests a redistribution of income toward the
rich and powerful. We might quote in this context a newspaper
report from Timmins, Ontario on June 28, 1974, during the last election
campaign:
"Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau maintained his onslaught
on Conservative prices and incomes restraint policies before a large
noon-hour crowd here yesterday.
"Mr. Trudeau said the proposed ninety day freeze, followed
by up to two years of controls, would take vast numbers of bureaucrats
to administer. Even then, it wouldn't work he said:
"You can't freeze executive salaries and dividends because
there are too many loopholes to squeeze through'.
"Mr. Trudeau said Conservative leader Robert Stanfield had
already said he would not freeze the prices of farm produce and
fish. He could not freeze the prices of U.S. imports or Arab oil,
and he admitted he would exempt housing prices.
'So what's he going to freeze?' Mr. Trudeau shouted, 'Your wages.
He's going to freeze your wages.' " (quoted in the Toronto
Star, October 28th, 1975)
The Government is backing up this wage restraint policy with considerable
legal powers. The Anti-Inflation Board (see Appendix One) will be
able to examine any agreement, concluded or pending, and decide
what the permissible increase is. If the Board can't get its report
accepted "voluntarily" by the parties, or if the Cabinet
decides to act against a wage claim even without a board report,
the Government's "Administrator" may make an order prohibiting
anyone from contravening the guidelines. He may require either an
employer or a group of workers to pay to the Government a fine equal
to the amount they received in excess of the guidelines and may
even apply an additional fine of up to 25% of this amount if he
feels the guidelines were contravened "knowingly". If
the order of the Administrator is not complied with by an employer,
a union, or an unofficial group of workers, they may be subject
to a fine, on summary conviction, of up to $10,000 and two years
imprisonment, or on conviction on indictment, to an unlimited fine
of not less than $10,000 and five years imprisonment.
These are harsh penalties to go with a harsh and unjust policy,
but they do not guarantee that the policy will in fact work. This
is because wage restraint affects workers not as individuals but
in their collective capacity as members of unions.. When the Government
increases taxation, the worker faces the state on his own, as the
increased taxes are collected by deduction from his pay slip, or
indirectly via a sales tax added to the price of goods in the shops.
Similarly when the government increases interest rates, the individual
worker and his family are on their own in paying more for credit
or higher mortgage payments. Incomes policy, however, only operates
by acting on workers collectively, in that it seeks to modify
the wage bargaining behaviour of their whole group, as expressed
through their union. Thus the union is the direct object of an incomes
policy.
In this situation there are distinct limits to what legal sanctions
can achieve. A large strike in defiance of the law is always difficult
to deal with, and fining or jailing strike leaders does not guarantee
the end of a strike nor prevent the emergence of sympathy strikes.
Moreover, the whole field of collective bargaining, even that of
the top 1,500 employers in the country, is very difficult to police,
and if no one pays attention to the policy, if workers don't police
themselves, the laws against breaking the policy will be as generally
effective as laws against jay-walking, unless the government either
vastly expands its administrative and police machinery or begins
to deny Canadians basic political freedoms such as the right to
free association, free speech, and even the slightest resemblance
of free collective bargaining. In other words, in order for legal
sanctions to operate effectively, at least mass worker acquiescence
in the policy is required, and for this to be created an invaluable
ally is the union itself, which can legitimate the policy in the
eyes of its workers. This is why almost all attempts at incomes
policy, including the present one, have involved in the first instance
an attempt to get voluntary union cooperation. This is why, even
though the Canadian labour movement rejected such a voluntary policy
in 1969, and again in Turner's "consensus" talks earlier
this year, and yet again when this policy was announced, the Government
is still trying to get union cooperation.
The Government strives for union co-operation because it wants the
unions to be the agent of control, applying the policy to its own
members. The Government seeks to get unions to do this by appealing
to a common interest between workers and employers, by stressing
an ideology of harmony between labour and capital. But in a society
such as ours there is no fundamental harmony between labour and
capital; there is an underlying conflict between employers and workers
which lies at the heart of every wage negotiation. The union is
created to be the representative of workers in that conflict, but
what an incomes policy seeks to do is to get the union to put the
wage restraint policy to union members, and to thereby administer
the government's and employers' incomes policy for them.
When the government is successful in getting union cooperation,
incomes policy can work in terms of wage restraint for a time. The
American incomes policy reduced first-year wage agreements from
13.5% on the quarter before the policy was introduced in August
1971, to 6.4% by the end of 1972. This helped bring the wage and
salary portion of the U.S. national income down from 74.5% in 1971
to 72.5% in 1973 while the percentage going to big business rose
from 14.6% to 16.2%. Similarly in Britain in the 1960's, the incomes
policy reduced the rate of wage increases by about 1% a year from
what they otherwise would have been. This wage restraint was seen
as well in the number of agreements that were not only reduced but
which were delayed by government interference and board investigations.
The underlying conflict that exists between employers and employees
does not go away under an incomes policy, however; indeed that conflict
is intensified. And it is always unions, the direct object of the
policy, who first begin to bear the brunt of workers' dissatisfaction
with their position. This is inevitable since workers can do little
about the political system, in an immediate sense, but can have
a real and immediate influence on their unions. The discontent that
boils up in the unions due to wage restraint is just beginning to
be seen now in the United States. It has been seen very clearly
in Britain, where the only periods in which union membership has
fallen since 1945 was during the two periods when unions cooperated
in an incomes policy, in 1948-1950 and 1966-67, the latter period
falling by 2%. Together with this effect on membership, British
unions experienced increased unofficial strikes and the defeat of
union leaders who went along with the policy at union conferences.
This led to a new and more militant union leadership which not only
verbally opposed the incomes policy but led their membership in
strike action against it and in the process reversed the wage losses
experienced earlier. This led to a tremendous increase in union
membership, and finally defeated the incomes policy. (It should
be noted in this connection that no parliamentary government in
the west that has introduced a compulsory wage freeze has been re-elected
in the subsequent election, although the emptiness of these purely
electoral victories was usually seen when the parties that won these
elections themselves turned around and introduced incomes policies
under pressure from business groups.)
The implications of this experience eleswhere is suggestive for
the threat that Canadian workers now face. Unions and workers must
be made aware -- and bring this point home to their employers --
that wage demands and agreements above the guidelines are not of
themselves illegal. The exceptions allowed for in the policy --
higher wages to hold workers or attract new ones, the comparability
clause, the exception for fringe increases for health and safety,
or the elimination of 'restrictive practices' -- all leave the Board
and the Government with a large task of interpretation in any particular
case. This must be played to the hilt, not in the sense of going
to the Board "cap in hand" for special consideration,
but in the sense of realizing how difficult is will be for the Government
to prove that anyone "knowingly" ignored the guidelines
in most cases. Similarly, unions should give as little cooperation
to the Board as possible. Under the voluntary incomes policy of
1969-72, the unions officially opposed the policy, but cooperated
with the Prices and Incomes Commission on the 15 wage cases it examined.
As the Commission itself noted, this permitted it to examine more
cases than it otherwise could have done.
The Canadian Labour Congress has refused to endorse the incomes
policy or anyone on the Board, and has put forward a ten point programme
which calls for cheaper housing, higher old age pensions, full employment
policies, regulation of oil and gas prices and supervision of corporations,
to ensure that the money saved on wage restraint is in fact invested
to create jobs. This shows the CLC's concern but it does not go
far enough and implies that with a few changes the CLC might endorse
wage restraint. Donald MacDonald, the Minister of Finance, has suggested
the union leadership is opposing the policy in public but supporting
it in private. This kind of statement may be designed to split the
labour movement and certainly there is little evidence of this yet
apart from Joe Morris' statement at first that the law would be
obeyed and that the CLC's special fund established to fight the
policy would not be used for strike support. This statement seems
to have been retracted, but the danger remains, partly because some
union leaders and especially some misguided New Democrats seem to
believe that with a few touches the incomes policy can be changed
from a capitalist policy to a socialist one. A little rent control
here, a bit more price control there, and we will have turned one
of the ugly sisters into Cinderella. What must be understood, however,
is that an incomes policy has nothing to do with equality or economic
planning nor, simply because the Government intervenes in the economy,
does this mean that its action is somehow 'socialist'. The incomes
policy does not seek to replace the capitalist market economy, it
rather puts a lid on the market, primarily the labour market in
order to back with the strength of the state the employers' resistance
to wage demands.
If the Canadian labour movement does not undertake a militant response
to the incomes policy; if it does not mobilize itself to take solidary
action against the application of the policy to any one group of
workers; if the CLC limits itself to some sort of vague educational
campaign which politely criticizes the policy and does not lead
demonstrations, withdraw from government boards, and provide aid
to strikers against the policy, Canadian workers will not only suffer
a loss of real wages, they will find their union organizations seriously
disrupted and weakened by the policy. The capitalists have embarked
on a policy of political con-frontation with Canadian workers and
unprecedented restraints on their freedoms. The labour movement
will have to respond politically as well with tactics and
strategies that are also new and unconventional. If the confrontation
is not met, we shall all lose.
Appendix One: Anti-Inflation Review Board
The Anti -Inflation Review Board-is the front line in the government's
program to control inflation. The Board has two purposes. One is
to sell the program to Canadian workers. Secondly, and much more
importantly, this Board decides whether a wage increase or a price
increase violates the government's program. When the Board finds
a violation it tries to get voluntary compliance from the violator.
If this fails the case is turned over to, the "Administrator"
for legal action. The critical point to be aware of is that this
Board has the power to determine which wage or price increases will
be reviewed, and consequently on whom the "Administrator's"
power to fine and jail can be brought to bear. Therefore, it has
a lot of discretion. How it is likely to use this power can be
seen from the characteristics of its members.
The Anti-Inflation Review Board is highly "inflated" with
business connections and corporate power. The Board members between
them have held eleven corporate directorships. Jean-Luc Pepin, Board
Chairman, appropriately enough headed the list with six of these
influential positions. They were:
- Power Corporation of Canada Ltd;
- Canada Steamship Lines;
- Celanese Canada Ltd.;
- Collins Radio Co. of Canada Ltd.;
- Westinghouse Canada Ltd.;
- Bombardier Ltd.
Incidentally Power, the biggest Canadian Corporate Conglomerate,
seems to have other ties with the Liberal government. Between 1968
and 1972 this powerful corporation received $10 million in federal
grants (Ottawa Journal, May 17, 1973). Pepin, who joined
the Board of Power after losing a safe Liberal seat in 1972, is
just part of the close connection between the Liberal Party and
the business world. As a past Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce
he was undoubtedly a useful asset in the board room.
William Ladyman, the "Labour" representative on the board
is also no stranger to the board. A retired member of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a past vice-president of the
CLC, he was reported by the Financial Post to have "a
foot in the management camp" when he joined the Board of Directors
of Polymer in 1966. Since then he got the other foot in by becoming
a consultant to Great-West Life Assurance Co.; a director of Ontario
Housing Corporation; Member of the Economic Council of Canada and
Governor of Queensway General Hospital. By joining the Anti-Inflation
Review Board, Ladyman is ignoring the CLC's and other labour leaders'
condemnation of the government's program as only controlling wages.
His acceptance of a position on the Anti-Inflation Review Board
incicates that he has come all the way over to the management camp.
Other board members, Jack Biddell and Harold Renouf, have enough
expertise between them to know that it is impossible to monitor
prices, as both are accountants. Renouf is a past governor of the
Canadian Tax Foundation, as well as a director of Associated Accounting
Firms International, based in New York. Jack Biddell, President
of Clarkson Gordon Ltd., an accounting firm, may have no mechanism
to control prices but he has formed some novel ideas about controlling
wages. Earlier this year he suggested the government "encourage
company and regionally oriented unions" and discourage industry-wide
bargaining as a way of clamping down on the power of big unions.
(Maclean's pp. 29-31, April, 1975). While the logic of Biddell's
argument is unclear, his anti-union sentiments are plain as day.
The remaining members of the Board are Claude Castonguay and Beryl
Plumptre.
Both have a long standing association with the Liberal Party. During
1970-73, Castonguay was the Quebec Minister of Health and Social
Affairs and was number two man in Bourassa's cabinet. During this
period, he was the chief architect of the Quebec Pension Plan. He
devised the machinery to channel pension funds into grandiose Liberal
Party projects such as the James Bay Development. After leaving
provincial politics in 1973, Castonguay re-entered the business
world as a Corporate Consultant and picked up a directorship in
I.M.A.S.C.O. Ltd. Beryl Plumptre's alliance with the Liberal Party
goes back to the 1950's. Through her connections with the Pearson
government she was appointed to numerous public positions. These
included director of the Canadian Welfare Council. She also became
President and Director of the Government sponsored Consumers Association
of Canada, (created by the Department of Consumer and Corporate
Affairs). On the basis of that job, she became Chairperson of the
Prices Review Board with a salary of $40,000 a year.
These are the people who the government has chosen to sell Canadians
the virtues of restraint. That the product to be sold is wage restraint
is clear. The final insult is that people like Pepin will be paid
$54,000 a year to tell workers earning $10,000 a year to "bite
the bullet" and do their part to create the "just society"
in Canada.
Canadian Workers must demand that the CLC and its component unions
stay off the Anti-Inflation Review Board. The token representation
of labour on such boards is not designed to facilitate the expression
of workers intended to separate rank and file, and the heady world
of the hope that they will confuse their own "success"
with the success of the labour movement as a whole. Indeed, workers
must press the CLC to withdraw its representatives from the other
"public" boards on which they sit. The Government is much
more likely to listen to the patter of workers feet on the pavement
than the measured tones of Labour spokespersons in comfortable boardrooms.
Leo Panitch is active in the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action.
He teaches at Carleton University in the Political Science Department.
He is about to have a book published on incomes policy in Britain.
The book, titled Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy: The
Labour Party, the Trade Unions and Incomes Policy, will be released
in February 1976 by Cambridge Press in England.
The Ottawa Committee for Labour Action is a group of activists in
Ottawa doing sup-port and educational work with trade unions. The
Committee can be contacted at:
P.O. Box 4257, Station 'E', Ottawa, Ontario.
Copies of this article are available in pamphlet form from:
New Hogtown Press
12 Hart House Circle University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario
This pamphlet was originally produced for the Ottawa Committee
for Labour Action with the help of: Graham Deline, Don Swartz, Rosemary
Warskett, Ken Young.
Published in Volume 1, Number 1 of The
Red Menace, February 1976.
(CX5121)
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