In the February issue of the Union of The Electors, we carried an article by Mrs. Gilberté Côté-Mercier, entitled "The dictatorship of unions". In this article it was shown how the unions have grown so powerful and tyrannical that a man can lose his means of livelihood if he refuses to join their ranks, and institutions are powerless in the face of the union oppositions, to give the man employment, no matter how earnestly they may wish to do so.
Another example of the extremes to which union despotism has gone is demonstrated in a recent report carried by the Montreal Gazette of February 14th. In this case an individual was forbiden the right to take up lodgings in a certain hotel!
Joseph Stern, a Montreal seaman, was tried by a comittee of the Seafarers Union in September of 1957 and was found guilty and fined $200. He was also suspended.
Stern's crime: he had frequented a Montreal hotel which the Union had interdicted to all its members because it had previously refused to rent rooms to members of the S.I.U.
How far does a union's power extend? To the point that it can tell a member where he is to sleep and eat? Where he is to spend his spare time? It is bad enough that these organizations have the power to deprive a man of his means of livelihood, but that it should reach down into the intimate details of a man's life is going just a little too far.
It is high time that the members of these organizations realised what a price in individual freedom and liberty of initiative they are paying for a few very temporary and doubtful gains, such as a hike in wages (soon cancelled out by the rising cost of living) or a few less hours of work per week.
The meek acceptance by citizens of such conditions is a sorry commentary on the willingness of individuals to allow themselves to be fed about by the noses like so many oxen!
Eudore Leclerc, one of our active members from Ottawa, wrote as follows: "I found a job recently working for a company. The employer forgot to ask if I was a union member. A week later an inspector from the union passed and asked if I were a member. I said I wasn't. Less than half an hour later I was out of a job. I found this very curious. I had asked the inspector if there was anything good in the union. He answered me, "If you don't find anything good, don't join." I replied: "Far from defending the interests of the workers you are leading them to Communism". The following day I went to the Union offices to join, since I needed the job and this was the only way to get It. I was refused admission on the pretext that there were too many union men without jobs, and they got priority. You can guess that I didn't miss the chance to remark: "What's the good of your union if your members are out of work?"
... during the years of the existence of the United Nations, the Soviet Union has enslaved some 650,000,000 additional persons, about a quarter of the human race. When the U.N. began, the Soviet held 200,000,000 persons in captivity. Now they hold 850,000,000." (Checklist on the U.N. by Karl Hess) quoted in The Key, Summer Ed.