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Social Credit and labour problems by Louis Even We hear much today of conflict between
employers and employees: negotiations, arbitration, attempts at
conciliation, walk-outs and strikes.
Because solar energy and the machine have lifted many of the
burdens from man's back and multiplied his productive power many times,
one might reasonably expect abundance and harmony to be the very
character of this Power Age. Instead, we find almost perpetual strife
and unrest in much of the field of labour and industry; and when
contracts are signed, they are usually for only a short term, many for
only one year. Security and stability — the guarantee of a steadily
increasing living standard — which should go hand-in-hand with the
tremendous increase in our productive ability, are nowhere to be found.
Instead, we find the fear of strikes, the degradation of inadequate
income, and only too often the spectre of unemployment. The problem: labour or Finance? It is our opinion that never can the labour
unions, nor other organizations, satisfactorily solve the so-called
`labour' problems within the framework and rules of our present
financial system. The most skilled leaders, the best-managed unions, can
never make two plus two equal five.
And, after all, are the so-called `labour' problems really
labour problems? Or are they rather consumers problems? Are they
concerned with the worker as a worker? Or as a consumer? Training of apprentices, adaptation to new
techniques of production, co-ordination of processes between various
departments involved in the finished product — these and similar
questions would truly be work problems. But
what concerns the workmen today is whether his wages are adequate to
procure for him the requirements of life and the support of his family.
And is this not a problem common to all consumers today, whether wage
earners, farmers, or whatever? However, in our country at present,
two-thirds of our population is dependant on wages. And if economic
insecurity affects much of our population, it is most keenly felt by
these individuals and their families who have nothing but the wages of
the bread-earner to live on, when conditions over which they have no
control threaten that single source of income. But, as long as wages are the subject of
complaint, it is as a consumer, and not as a worker, that the employee
is complaining. And if his demands go further, if he desires to have a
say in what is done in the plant, he is even there voicing an aspiration
common to every human being. One does not like to have to act blindly
under the dictates of another. But there, also, the financial system,
concentrating the means of production in the hands of fewer and fewer
men, is an obstacle to the enfranchisement of the worker. Social
Credit principles The whole objective and purpose of the
Social Credit financial and economic proposals is to put at the service
of free men the resources that Almighty God has so richly bestowed on
us, and the abundance resulting from the application of technological
development upon these God-given resources. Social Creditors maintain
that the implementation of the financial proposals of Social Credit
would solve, or help to solve, quickly and without dislocation, the
so-called `labour' problems. To appreciate this question, one must bear
in mind that: 1.
Social
Credit would finance all new production with new cash credits, and not
out of savings. This would allow any competent and responsible people (workers,
technicians, and so on), either individually or in free association, to
undertake a program of production answering the needs of consumers.
Today, one must first have the dollars. Under Social Credit, the dollars
would come as production develops. This would help the escape from the
situation of automatons suffered by hundreds of thousands of capable,
but moneyless, men of today. 2.
Social Credit would distribute, and adequately, all production answering
the needs of the population: a)
Through its periodic dividend to all, whether employed or not, without
abolishing the reward for the labour still necessitated to produce; and
the dividends would increase as human effort is displaced by the
power-driven machine. b)
By an adjusted price, so that the total purchasing power will pay for
the total production. This would mean lower prices for the buyer,
through a discount on all sale prices, such discount being compensated
to the seller. The national market being thus adequately
financed to consume the national production, or such imports as would
replace our exported surplus, the consumers' demand would be stabilized
as are his wants, and this would mean a stabilization of labour. Today
labour has to suffer from markets, at home and abroad, depending not on
human needs but on the movements of money. Workers today have to be ready to move from
east to west, or from west to east, northwards today and southwards
tomorrow — Finance ever the master instead of the servant. Inflationary
spiral The workers' wages do not, and cannot, meet
the prices of goods. All wages are included in prices, but other
elements are also included in prices. Industry does not distribute to
individuals all the money it has to write into the cost. And when
workers feel their purchasing power insufficient, they claim a raise in
their wages. But every raise in wages necessarily means a raise in the
price of their finished product when it comes on the market. The increase in wages may do some good for
those who get it — but only until the higher price of their product
will have called for a raise in the wages of the other producers, and
these in turn raise the price of other goods. In a few months, the cost
of living will again be out of reach, and new complaints will be heard.
That is one of the reasons why the contracts of labour are signed for
such short periods. Dividends
for all The dividend to all would not add to prices.
It would not be paid by industry. It would be money based on production,
not on employment, and put directly into the consumers' pockets without
first going through (and adding to the costs of) production. And with the dividend going to all, the
worker would have, in addition to his wages if he is employed, his
dividend, his wife's dividend, and the dividend for each of his children. Wages to some, plus dividends to all, plus
the discount on prices, would combine to make all goods available to the
buying public, with a share guaranteed to each. This share, guaranteed
to each and all, would increase with the growth of production.
The dividend being attached to the
individual, and being dependent upon the amount of production, the worry
for the morrow would cease to cloud the life of the worker, and, for
that matter, the life of any Canadian. No one can seriously fear that
tomorrow, or in ten years, or in fifty years, production will fail in
Canada. The contrary is true. There will be more tomorrow than today.
Fear should be banished. It would be banished with the removal of
artificial financial limitations which often prevent the flow of
production to the consumer's table. Financial restrictions which do not
reflect the true facts of production and abundance would be removed in
an economy of dividends to all, geared to the productive potential
rather than crippled by a lack of money. Christian
principles must prevail Today the worker often does not know what
production he is contributing to, and he does not know what or whom it
is for. He is without responsibility as to the kind of production which
comes out of his work. He is no more than a cog in the machine. This is
de-personalization. And de-personalization is anti-Christian. The worker is made to do things for which
nobody is asking. He is made to work on programs intended to kill fellow
men, often fellow Christians, when governments decide — often contrary
to his wishes — to go into war. That kind of production must be paid for,
although it brings nothing into the larder nor into the wardrobe. It
contributes to raise the cost of living. If we have to make bread and
bombs in order to buy bread, then the people pay for their bread with
the cost of the bread plus the cost of the bombs. And this is the fruit of the financial
system. When purchasing power distributed in the production of
consumable goods cannot buy those goods, unemployment begins. And you
hear everyone (the union leaders first) howl for public projects and `programs',
for war contracts, for things which no housewife will want. All this
must be paid for in some way, along with the price of things the
housewife wants. Only Social Credit offers a remedy. By
balancing the purchasing power at all times with the prices of goods
offered for sale, there is no need to turn to the production of
non-consumable goods to buy consumable goods. The present financial system brings to
labour fleeting security and `prosperity' only as a by-product of war
and destruction. The application of common sense Social Credit
principles of money would bring to labour in peacetime the freedom, the
security, and the abundance resulting from a full and continuous total
distribution of Canada's vast productive machine. Social Credit principles would restore the
dignity of the individual in labour. Social Credit stands for the
application of Christian principles in every aspect of Canadian life. Louis Even This article was published in the March-April, 2004 issue of “Michael”.
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