Government attacks against worker rights and the social wage are threatening hard-earned gains and advances for workers in Canada on many fronts and in many incremental ways. In this two-part series, we will look some of these struggles and what is at stake, with Part 1 focusing on the teachers’ union in British Columbia, airline workers and the public pension. Part 2 takes a look at what must be done if we are to protect individual, public and social rights in Canada.
As governments and corporations intensify their attacks on workers’ rights and the social wage, a trend of growing resistance is sweeping across Canada.
Recent strikes include library workers in the city of Toronto, transit and university workers in Halifax, daycare workers across Quebec, teachers and students in British Columbia, as well as Air Canada workers who have staged a series of protests and strikes in the past year. The most spectacular strikes have been taking place in Quebec, where students are waging a massive campaign against rises in post-secondary tuition fees.
Provincial government workers are restive. Some 300,000 in British Columbia are bargaining a new collective agreement and saying “no” to the wage and services freeze that is being imposed on teachers. In Ontario, the response has been nothing if not angry to the recent Ontario budget that cut billions of dollars of spending from public services along with thousands of jobs.
The legitimacy of the rule of the capitalist 1 per cent and their governments is being increasingly put into question by Canadians. Still lagging, however, is the broad solidarity needed to push back the 1 per cent agenda.
Lessons
Important lessons flow from the current disputes. One is the need for mass action if employer/government attacks are to be turned back. The days of relying on good will or favourable court decisions are long past.
Students in Quebec are providing a spectacular example for the working-class movement to follow. For nearly eight weeks now, half of the province’s post-secondary students have been on strike to prevent the provincial government from hiking tuition fees by some 60 per cent over the next five years (Undergraduate fees per school year in Quebec are $2,500, less than half those in neighbouring Ontario). They have staged some of the largest protests in Quebec history (quite a feat considering the impressive history of social protest movements in the province). They have rallied significant support from the general population and have the government’s back to the wall.
Not nearly so encouraging, though instructive nonetheless, is the public pension situation. In 2009-10, pressure was building on Canada’s unions and their political party, the NDP, to launch a mass campaign to increase benefits to the Canada Pension Plan. This was fuelled, in part, by the growing practice of companies (cf Air Canada) to underfund their employee pension plans.
The federal government deflected the mounting pressure by promising to legislate increases to the public pension plan. Union and NDP leaders bought into the promise and decided protest action wasn’t needed. At the end of 2010, the government reneged on its promise, announcing instead a new plan to give tax breaks to employee/employer-funded pension plans that invest in financial markets.
Teachers in B.C. have learned first hand the dubious benefit of court appeals as substitutes for strikes or other mass action. An appeal by the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) of two anti-union and anti-education laws imposed in 2002 took more than eight years to wind its way through the courts. The B.C. Supreme Court finally ruled that Bills 27 and 28 violated some of the basic rights of teachers. In the new Bill 22, the government formally repealed bills 27 and 28… and then placed nearly identical language in the new law!
Hospital workers in B.C. have been similarly disappointed by the courts. In January 2002, the provincial government unrolled a privatization plan for hospital workers, Bill 29, that cut some 8,500 jobs of hospital support staff and other health-care providers. Five and a half years later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the law illegal. The Court’s remedy was individual financial compensation averaging $9,500 to those workers who lost their jobs.
In 2004, hospital workers went on strike against Bill 37, a law that imposed wage cuts and further privatization. The aim was to reverse the whole process set in motion with Bill 29. Workers across the province clamoured for a general strike to meet the government challenge and local unions took support action. But most union leaders turned their backs and the strike went down to defeat.
When AVEOS was created in 2007, workers at Air Canada rightly predicted that this was a move to shift heavy maintenance work to lower wage jurisdictions in other countries. Workers staged protests when the news broke.
Leaders of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and of provincial and federal federations of labour made speeches saying the decision would not be allowed to pass. But action was limited to an appeal to a federal court asking it to rule that the creation of AVEOS was in violation of the 1988 Air Canada Public Participation Act. That act was created to soften union opposition to the privatization of Air Canada. It directed Air Canada to maintain its maintenance work at three facilities — Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg (The Air Canada maintenance facility in Vancouver was not named in the 1988 law because Air Canada only acquired it in 2001 through the purchase of Canadian Airlines.)
In 2010, a federal judge accepted Air Canada’s word that it planned to keep maintenance work in the targeted cities. Conveniently, the judge declined to provide a precise interpretation of what constituted “maintenance work.”
If the IAM thought that AVEOS was being set up for an eventual downfall, it never said so publicly or acted accordingly. Incredibly, the IAM says Air Canada helped precipitate the “bankruptcy” of AVEOS by quietly directing work away from it once the dust settled after 2007.
The dismantling of Air Canada amounts to the looting of a former public enterprise. Today, that history goes unmentioned by all parties involved.
What road ahead for workers?
Private employers and, increasingly, federal and provincial governments are stepping up their attacks on jobs and public services. A more militant and co-ordinated response is needed by the union movement.
All indications show the desire of workers for just such a course. Last year, the Occupy movement was widely hailed. Strike activity is on the upswing. Air Canada workers are in a restive mood: rank-and-file strikes and protests have become commonplace and workers are increasingly voting down concession agreements negotiated by their leaders.
Working-class resistance has been strongest in Quebec. The NDP won a landslide victory in the province during the 2011 federal election and the mass student movement has mobilized hundreds of thousands in the streets. The pro-independence movement, which has a strong base of support in the working class, remains a potent political force.
The challenge before the unions is to act as a social movement on behalf of the entire working class and break from the mould of job trusts focused on looking after the narrow interests of their dues-paying members. A political challenge to the capitalist rulers is needed, not just on the shop floor but throughout society. The days of corporate rule over political and social life must be ended.
In the wake of the federal budget that attacked the OAS, newly elected leader of the NDP Tom Mulcair said the party would do “everything possible within the Parliamentary arena” to oppose the budget. But that’s not good enough. Yes, voices in Parliament are needed. But the current battles will be won in the streets and on the picket lines. This will open the door to broader political and economic change. That is where attention and solidarity must be directed.
Roger Annis is a retired aerospace worker in Vancouver, B.C. He can be reached at [email protected].
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