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Organized labour fronts for the Ontario Liberal Party
February 27, 2011 - 6:35pm
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There was a time when trade union "political action" involved actually trying to bring about some kind of progressive change in society.
When organized labour decided to participate in political campaigns, it was always to oppose the bosses' political agenda and demand improvements for working people and their families; things like defending civil liberties and the right to strike, increasing the minimum wage and social benefits, making post-secondary education and decent housing affordable and available, expanding public transit systems, eliminating regressive consumption taxes and user fees, improving democracy and accountability, opposing the privatization of public services and utilities, etc.
That was then. This is now.
Now we have a coalition of teachers' unions, nursing associations and building and construction trades' councils, calling itself "Working Families", paying big bucks to run a TV ad campaign in support of the status quo in Ontario.
The advertisement, which debuts on tonight's Oscar telecast on CTV, is 30 seconds of mostly soft-focus headshots of "typical" Ontarians with soft background music and following nauseating paean to life in today's Ontario:
The message is clear: Vote for the ruling Liberal Party in the next election to keep the Conservative Party, under Tim Hudak out. "The broader labour movement will be under attack if we're not successful in stopping Hudak from getting elected," explained the business manager and secretary treasurer of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario.
This coalition ran similar campaigns in the last two provincial elections, and not surprisingly it has been accused by the Conservatives of being a front for the Liberal Party.
I wish that were true, because it would mean that millions of dollars of working families' union dues were not being contributed, in effect, to the Liberal Party's re-election campaign.
You can watch this steaming pile of dung HERE.
I went and sent this organization a email through contact us. I said so we should vote NDP right as the only party that stands up for workers' rights, as opposed to doing lip service. I also made mention of the liberal federal cousins who said it all to me.
The Hall of Shame (from the so-called Working Families website)
I knew somebody had to be voting Liberal in Ontario, a long time bastion for political conservatism. And they are not even true to their political roots because conservative governments here used to be popular for their policies for public ownership of utilities. Not the Liberals though. They've always been a free market party ready to pawn off the moneymakers to rich friends of the party since the Tories Adam Beck days.
They'll get more of the same in Ontario either way. It's so difficult to tell the two parties apart in this day and age. Where there were a few significant differences 20 or 25 years ago there are none today.
To be fair though, the last time the NDP governed in Ontario didn't exactly stand up for the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers.
I'm not supporting the Liberals or endorsing strategic voting, but I can see why this kind of stuff happens. The NDP moves closer and closer to the Liberal party because some eggheads in head office think that being a hair left of the Liberals is a sure-fire winning strategy. In government, they sometimes listen more to corporate interests than their supporters. At that point, the only real reason to vote for them is "lesser of the evils" - and I've even had NDP supporters insist that I vote NDP over one of thesmaller parties for this reason. And once people realize that they have no representation and can at best vote for lesser of the evils, you can't blame them for voting for Gore instead of Nader.
I don't think this is an improvement, but I really think working class and organized labour political action should be a hell of a lot more than outsourcing it to NDP or uncritical support for the NDP and just mobilizing people to vote NDP - especially after some of the stuff I've seen in Manitoba.
I live in Ontario and the last time I checked, Bob Rae is in his "natural home" the liberal party of Canada, so please don't use Bob Rae the big time Liberal as a weapon against the NDP. Personally and in what I have seen here, I''ll be voting and working for the NDP.
And I'm sure you voted for Bob Rae when he was elected NDP premier of Ontario, too.
Fact is, whether the NDP is/was his "natural home" he was enthusiastically and uncritically supported by millions of NDPers. Surely that tells you something about the party?
Really? I know a lot of NDP activists that sat out the 1995 election. Most of them are now back in their 'natural home' the NDP while Rae is back in his. So please let's not pretend that just because someone is a partisan supporter that it is mindless.
MGEU is one of the worst culprits, often giving a pass to the NDP in situations where it would be fighting mad fi the exact same thing was done by a Liberal or Conservative government.
I've long believed that labour unions need to cut formal ties to the NDP and take what I call the "Greenpeace" approach to politics. Basically, their only concern should be advancing the interests of the working class regardless of who is in office. Of course, union people who decide to run for public office would still likely run under the NDP banner, just as Greenpeace people who make the switch often run under the NDP or Green banners even though there are no formal connections. I know Greenpeace applauded approaches taken by the Charest government even though it is by and large, quite right wing. If a PC government in Manitoba raised social assistance rates and implemented pro-rated benefits for part-time workers, would the MFL applaud that move? I know I certainly would.
Did they sit out the 1990 election? Or were they just mindless partisans who bought a pig in a poke and later suffered buyers' remorse?
It's not just Bob Rae though. This was an entire NDP government, and not the only one in Canada to play this kind of game.
Look, if the NDP wants to get people's support, they need to actually earn it rather than being the lesser of the evils and hoping they'll one day replace the Liberals. Trying to play the lesser of the evils game when you're in third place is like trying to run out the clock when you're two touchdowns behind.
Sure, and there was nobody governing in Ottawa then. Brian Baloney didn't slash $4 billion from annual transfers to the biggest provincial economy. And Petersen's "unforseen" budget deficit of $2-$3billion a year? No need to mention that when climbing on the NDP.
No one running tight money policies at the Bank of Canada and driving the recession either. It's easy to chime in with anti-NDP rhetoric from the shadows. No need to vote against the neoliberal old line party agenda radiating from Ottawa like shards of broken glass. Not when we're running down the NDP and with the quiet implication that provincial NDP government is exactly the same as federal government, which is an absurdity all on its own.
Mind you, from this distance, it looks to me like the Ontario NDP has, to a large extent, turned its back on the Third Way first under Hampton and now Horvath. Hopefully a strong showing for the NDP here will take some wind out of the sails of the Blairites.
I did like the sound of these ads:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/953382--attack-ads-paint-hudak-as-bay-street-stooge?bn=1
This is along the lines of what the CAW under Hargrove claimed to be doing, no?
You know, I think there might be some Blairites in the ONDP planning to bomb a Middle Eastern country and bail out some banks to the tune of billions of dollars. Sneaky monkeys. :rollyeyes: And besides, we all know it's the Manitoba NDP writing the script for Layton and company.
No one knew, in 1990, that Rae would be a total sellout in office. Therefore, it's not fair to say that voting NDP with Rae as leader meant knowingly voting for a traitor to the party's principles.
Besides, in that year, there wasn't a real alternative to the NDP's left in Ontario. It couldn't have served any purpose to vote CP or Marxist-Leninist. Those parties didn't nominate enough candidates to have formed government even if it had been worth electing them.
And what good would it have done to sit out the 1990 election anyway? Clearly the NDP wouldn't have moved further left if only it had lost that year.
I think just about anyone unfortunate enough to become Premier of Ontario in 1990 would have gotten called a sell-out. The process of Ontario adjusting to free trade guaranteed it.
So when Harper and Ford use "austerity" to make poor and working class people pay for a recession it's bad but when the NDP does the same thing under Bob Rae it's forgiven/overlooked/NAFTA or Mulroney's fault (looking at Fidel and Doug's comments)? Weird. I think that it's time NDPers stop trying to blame "Rae the Liberal" (as if he was not elected and supported by membership and caucus) and do some soul searching about why their party has a tendency to stab poor and working class people in the back almost every time they grip power. Then they can complain about which party unions may or may not be supporting in an election.
Maybe Peterson just threw the election, then. Figured it was better to lose then instead of getting tarred-and-feathered later.
No I voted for an NDP candidate here in the North. And very many of us have safe drinking water since the first NDP government. Too bad about Walkerton though. God damned Tories are full of shit. Same with the Liberals. They're twice as full of shit.
Not exactly, I don't think. They adopted a "strategic voting" approach, which supposedly meant defeating a particular party (Conservatives) rather than electing a particular party (NDP).
Québec is quite different. Maybe because there was no explicitly social democratic or labour-allied party here when the big union centrals were being formed, the formal alliances are lacking. For example, the CSN, largest of the centrals, has never campaigned on behalf of a particular party. The FTQ, which regroups the CLC-affiliated unions, is condemning the Harper government (like everyone else does here) and the Charest government, but it doesn't give PQ governments a pass either, nor do I see it blessing any particular party. Here is a letter attacking Harpocon policies and values, but not advocating any other party. Here is a statement from the FTQ president blasting a prominent PQ MNA for siding with the government against the "double the benefits" campaign of the union movement regarding the QPP/CPP. [Sad to say, this PQ member looked a lot better when he ran for the Bloc federally in 2004 - and I supported him!]
In short, I agree with A24's suggested approach. Support of workers (or anyone else) must be earned and re-earned. Constantly.