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Canada: This is Class War

By Eugene Plawiuk - Industrial Worker, September 2005.

It is time for the labour movement in Canada to grow a backbone and "Just Say No!" to working with or obeying Labour Relations Boards and their rulings.

In Alberta, recent rulings against unions include one that it's legal for Finning to outsource its work to the rat union CLAC plant. The fact that Jim Dinning, who hopes to replace Ralph as Premier of Alberta, sits on the Finning board probably influenced this decision against the Machinists whose members are having their jobs contracted out.

A disputes inquiry is being held into the Lakeside Packers strike, effectively ending the strike for 60 days, but with no guarantee of binding arbitration. The union requested binding arbitration and the Minister of Labour never responded. Lakeside Packers is owned by the world's biggest meat merchant, Tyson Foods. Tyson is happy. Their plant is operating. Supervisors are telling employees the union is powerless.

There is no fair or level playing field for workers in Alberta labour relations. The game is rigged in favour of the bosses. While unions have representatives on the Labour Relations Board, so do the bosses. In this case the government picked a management lawyer representing the anti-union Construction Industry Merit Shops as chair.

And now we have Telus (the B.C. phone company) getting support from the Canadian Industrial Labour Relations Board and the Supreme Court of British Columbia. If this isn't enough to ring the clarion bell of class war I don't know what will.

 

Sacred contracts

Unions in Canada believe the contract is sacred, they actually believe in contract law and abide by it. While the employers know contracts are made to be broken, and find a way around the contract any time they can.

The management rights clause - the recognition that capital dominates the workplace and is the owner of the means of production - solidified the AFL-CIO industrial unions as the handmaidens of capitalist production in the post-war era. Workers' power was now not a revolutionary power to overthrow the capitalist system, but a form of fixed capital to be bargained with for the crumbs from an expanding capitalist system.

The strength of the IWW was its refusal to give up the right to wobble the job - no contract was signed that gave up the right to walk off the job over grievances. The development of the management rights clause is key to the development of a whole industry of paid reps, service or insurance model unions, labour and employer lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, all functionaries of the state.

The growth of the labour law industry and labour relations boards necessitates  unions and management being part of the capitalist state. On the shop floor the post-WWII unions bargained away their members' rights for increased wages and benefits, while at the same time recognizing the state as arbitrator of the social contract.

Giving up the right to take direct action on the job, to 'wobble' the job, leads unions into the morass of labour relations games. Such clauses not only limit unions' abilities to represent their members but restrict workers from getting immediate satisfaction over their grievances. There is no level playing field for workers with collective agreements that allow for management rights and a grievance arbitration procedure.

There is no justice in the courts or the labour relations tribunals. They are there to make sure production is not disrupted by strikes - even short strikes that would resolve an immediate grievance on the shop floor.

They exist to limit, restrict and make illegal direct action by workers. And to have our unions sit on these boards, and play tripartite footsie with the bosses is what drives workers mad, as in angry. Because we always lose.

Business unions promise to make workers toe the line; they act as agents of Law and Order on the shop floor. What's good for GM is good for the CAW.

Only when workers strike and run their own strike committees can they take power over their lives. A case in point is the Lakeside Packers strike; workers were ready to strike, and were stopped not by a government order but by the capitulation of their well-paid UFCW Local 401 president Doug O'Halloran because he didn't want to go to jail.

Doug is a deal maker - he wants a contract, he's looking after the UFCW's best interests. He and the UFCW don't care about their members' interests. Whatever happens, they have a pool of dues-paying members to fatten their bank accounts.

You'd think with all their money and lawyers, O'Halloran would have the guts to challenge an unfair anti-worker ruling on behalf of the folks who pay his lucrative salary. Nope, not a chance.

You would think that the labour movement, that so-called house of labour, would organize their members to join mass pickets during strikes. Instead they make a token show on the picket line.

To really shut down Telus would take thousands of workers marching the picket line. And is this likely to happen? Nope. Most unions are lucky to mobilize two or three well-paid reps to attend the picket line.

The strike is the weapon of the class; it is the fundamental tool of class war. Even the bosses know this. For a strike can be the match that lights the prairie fire of the General Strike. When a union wins a strike it is a victory for all working people; when they lose it is a defeat for all working people.

A case in point is when UFCW struck Safeway in the early 1990s and accepted a roll-back in wages for new employees. UFCW is no small union; they are one of the largest private sector unions in Alberta and their acceptance of a roll back contract impacted the whole labour movement in the province.

The Klein government then used this as an excuse to bring in wage roll backs for public sector workers. He also had the NDP government in Ontario as an example of another provincial government trying to get public sector unions to accept roll backs.

Another case is when UFCW led workers out on strike at Gainers. Instead of occupying the plant and demanding it be put under workers and farmers control (it was originally owned by the Alberta government before it was sold off at a fire sale price). Even the leadership of the Alberta Federation of Labour at the time called for workers to occupy the plant. Instead, UFCW came to a sweetheart arrangement to sacrifice Gainers in Edmonton and a plant in Burlington if owner Maple Leaf Foods would open a new plant and hire its members in Brandon, Manitoba.

All this was done under the leadership of Doug O'Halloran who speaks not in the interests of the workers but in the interests of UFCW Inc. Now he cries crocodile tears when the government halts the Lakeside Packers strike, a strike he really didn't want. For O'Halloran and UFCW the strike is the threat they use to get a collective agreement. It's all about the collective agreement and the Rand formula, it's never about what's best for workers. No matter how bad or good the contract is, it is always good for UFCW Inc.

If the local labour councils, the Federations of Labour as well as the CLC are the so-called house of labour, then it is a dilapidated slum. The leadership is terrified of losing their jobs. They suffer bureaucratic senility. They will always prefer the backroom deal with the bosses or the government to the idea that this is class war and that the purpose of unions is to overthrow capitalism.

They oppose plant occupations because they are illegal; they oppose wildcat strikes because they're illegal too. But isn't that why we have high-priced labour lawyers, to get us out of jail? Nope, that can't be the real reason. The reason is that these actions are taken by the rank and file 'out of the control' of the paid reps and leadership. And if such ideas spread, it might lead to, horror of horrors, a General Strike.

Even the most militant leader or leadership in the labour movement accepts their role in upholding Law, Order and Good Government. And once they do, it will always be the workers who get screwed.

The reason is simple: workers who do take strike action soon realize they have given up all to win the fight. Not so their leadership who see it as just another moment in collective bargaining. This is why workers on the line are always more militant than their union leadership.

Professional union reps and paid hacks are not capable of challenging the bosses or their government cause well they are paid not to. They can't organize the workers who pay their salaries, because they are out of touch with the rank and file. Or worse yet they are opposed to rank-and-file control because it threatens their job security.

They promote local officers to political positions in their unions, offering them careers and lucrative jobs as reps, as long as they toe the line. They take the best and brightest activists and put them into the union machinery to become another cog in the wheel.

If workers organize themselves, the first to attempt to squash them aren't the politicians, cops or lawyers, it's their own union leadership, fearful for their jobs.

 

Taking back the unions

The only way this can change is if members mobilize to take back their unions for themselves - to eliminate full-time representatives who earn $100,000 salaries off the backs of part-time workers who get $8.50 an hour. Replace these reps and business agents with elected rank-and-file reps who serve staggered two-year terms with their pay and benefits no more than the highest-paid worker on the job.

Rank-and-File strike committees should be directly elected by members and be the only ones allowed to negotiate with the bosses. Union locals need democratically elected executives and committees of members, and the right to make their own decisions.

Locals must not give up the right to strike in collective agreements - we need to reinforce this basic right with a clause that states that members of the local will not cross other workers' picket lines.

Unions should not participate in Labour Relations Boards, arbitration or Industrial Relations. Any action taken by the state - whether it is an injunction or attempts at arrest - should be met with mass action, not only by the union affected but by all unions in the region. Fines must not be paid.

Union locals need to form flying picket squads of all members, to make sure that all strikes or lock outs are kept short and effective, based on the principle of An Injury to One is and Injury to All, and The Longer the Picket Line, the Shorter the Strike.

All grievances must be solved as quickly as possible on the shop floor, or in the institution where they occur by a meeting of the union steward and management. The union has the right to use any and all tactics to solve their grievances, including the sit down strike, rotating strike, wildcat strike, and plant occupation. Use of the standard strike tactic will be reserved as a weapon of last resort. If it is applied, the union will mobilize for sympathy strikes, hot cargoing and building a call for a general strike.

These are just a few suggestions on how we can take back our unions from the labour hacks and well-paid bureaucrats who see the labour movement not as a class struggle but as their career opportunity. A career they make off our backs.

A longer version of this article can be found at http://plawiuk.blogspot.com