Canada: ONTARIO: Christmas Cheer

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U.S. labor leaders could look across the border last week to see what happens in a long-drawn-out strike. A note of urgency had set in at Windsor. With one eye on union finances, leaders of 10,000 striking Ford of Canada workers called for rank-&-file support of their new settlement proposal: a Government-appointed arbitrator to give a decision in 24 hours on the key demands for a union shop and checkoff.

The proposal was thrashed out behind closed doors, while outside the sprawling Ford plant sullen strikers of the C.I.O.'s United Automobile Workers Union stomped into their fourth month of picket duty. They were the barometer of the union's holding power. Strikers in need got no cash from the union; they had to join the picket line for four hours a day to get food chits ($3 weekly for a single man, $5 for a couple, $13 for each child).

At first, few had picketed. But as the strike dragged on, savings vanished, war bonds were cashed. By last week the steadily mounting total of relief picketers reached 3,700, eating up $35,000 to $40,000 weekly in union funds.

For a union which started the strike with less than $50,000 in its till, the Ford local had fared well. The answer lay in substantial support from outside unions. Some of the biggest gifts came from U.S. unions (the River Rouge U.A.W. sent $11,000). Even the A.F. of L. (which in Canada has no quarrel with the C.I.O.) formed Ford strike fund committees to promote contributions.

But the strike leaders had other worries. Some 8,500 other U.A.W. workers had gone back to work after a month's sympathy strike. The Canadian Congress of Labor barred Dominion-wide sympathy walkouts. There was a developing union split over a previous refusal to accept arbitration. And many felt that even a well-organized, well-supported strike could drag on too long.

In the midst of this, the strikers last week got two lifts. A Leamington farmer donated 80 chickens to make sandwiches for pickets; Windsor's Red Cross, Junior Chamber of Commerce and newspaper representatives banded together for a new contribution: Christmas cheer for strikers' children.