The labour union is one of humanity’s finest creations. When they operate as they should, our unions are fundamental to the democratic experiment, extending our self-rule, however flawed and partial it may be, from electoral politics to the economy, and they have served as important self-defense structures for working people. At their best, unions are built on the foundation of solidarity, on love and respect in action. Think of solidarity as the working class’s Golden Rule.
“What we desire for ourselves, we desire for all,” has long been our proud rallying cry, and when we have followed that expansive ethical injunction, we have made important progress in human decency and solidarity. Canadian unions have fought hard for better pay, shorter hours, safety on the job, public education and healthcare, and pensions to insure a dignified old age for workers. And we have fought to make those social goods available to all, not just to current union members.
We have also fought for racial and gender justice, and for environmental wisdom in a time of climate crisis. On those fronts, which essentially, if belatedly, extend our conception of solidarity to include people of colour, women, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants and refugees, and even the living systems that support all life on the planet, our record is not flawless. But, thanks to the tireless struggles of justice and environmental wisdom activists, many of them rank and file members of unions and many others active in the independent women’s movement, anti-racist organizations, gay liberation and environmental campaigns, we have made significant progress over the decades. But much more remains to be done.
These are not new issues. From the beginnings of labour organizing in North America, we have faced not only hostile employers and brutal, state sponsored strike breaking but also tough internal fights about how expansively we understand who we mean when we say “us.” We have seen our unions divided by racism, sexism and other systems of oppression, and we have not always been successful in identifying these wedge issues for the movement wreckers they are.
Organized labour has too often betrayed its best instincts and traditions to rally behind racist and sexist initiatives. With honuorable exceptions like the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, many early trade unions in both the US and Canada actively promoted racist immigration policies like Canada’s shameful Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. And union support was strong for the racist internment of people of Japanese ancestry in both the US and Canada, with The Fisherman, the newspaper of unionized fish workers in BC leading the charge here. And the CCF party, precursor to the NDP and strongly associated with labour, editorialized in favor of Japanese internment.
And when, after World War II, the women workers who had helped win the war were pressured out of their jobs to make room for returning veterans, organized labour did little to prevent what was, in effect, a government mandated mass layoff. During the post WWII economic boom, many unions remained de facto racially and sexually segregated, thus excluding workers of colour and women from the benefits of union membership.
We have, more recently, seen workers pitted against environmentalists , with workers encouraged to view environmentalists as the “tree hugging opposition” out to hurt honest working people by promoting public policies that value the spotted owl or the polar bear over the interests of labour. This false dichotomy between the interests of labour and the interest of the environment is a classic case of the false consciousness that tempts workers to vote and to act in ways that are against our long-term interests.
Despite the fact that workers, just like everyone else on the planet, are already experiencing serious harms due to human driven climate change, we have too often been encouraged to oppose the environmental reforms necessary to reduce those harms. This is both short sighted and ethically flawed, just as labour support for anti-immigrant and anti-woman policies has been in the past. To be fair, organized labour has made some progress on building the blue/green alliances and support for a Green New Deal that will adequately address the climate crisis without making working people suffer the brunt of necessary new policies.
The recent contest for the leadership of the BC NDP provides a classic example of the kind of short-sighted false consciousness that has too often marred our movement in the past. The candidacy of Anjali Appadurai, (a veteran of both environmental organizing and a run as a candidate of the Federal NDP ) to succeed retiring BC premier John Horgan, seemed like an opportunity to renew the provincial party and critically examine the party’s less than stellar record on climate change.
At the very least, the young activist’s challenge to party establishment favourite David Eby promised a vigorous debate within the provincial party on its relationship to environmentalists and to other grass roots justice movements. Had she won and ascended to the premiership, this young woman of colour, a savvy activist with strong links to the grassroots movements that the NDP in my province desperately needs to improve its standing with after the centrist Horgan years, would arguably have been the most progressive NDP member to ever lead a provincial government.
And although the NDP has not revealed how many new members joined the party in the run up to the leadership race, rumours abound that the Appadurai campaign significantly out-organized the Eby team, creating at the very least the preconditions for a meaningful debate on environmental and other social justice issues within the party, and perhaps even for a fresh new leader untainted by the compromises of the Horgan years.
But that internal debate and possible policy renewal was made much less likely when the party’s executive ruled last week that the Appadurai candidacy was flawed by collusion with third parties, in particular Dogwood BC, an environmental organization that supported her. So, the challenger was disqualified, creating the ugly impression of back-room party insiders precluding debate and essentially declaring Eby the new leader without ever having to face Appadurai and the new members she brought into the BC NDP. The impression of a sexist, racist establishment intervening to keep a woman of colour with good environmental and social justice credentials out of the running was hard to avoid.
A suggestion that the Eby campaign has itself benefited from a third-party intervention by a United Steelworkers local got short shrift. Elizabeth Cull, the party’s Chief Electoral Officer, ruled that a leaflet on the letterhead of local 1-1937 of the Steelworkers calling on members to join the NDP and vote for Eby was not evidence of collusion between USW and the Eby campaign. Ms. Cull said: “The CEO has not been able to determine which organization distributed the Leaflet to its members. Mr. Lunny’s statement regarding the provenance of the Leaflet – that it was “maybe” issued by one of the 60+ autonomous USW locals in BC – is the best information available.”
Zak Vescera, labour reporter for The Tyee online, was recently able to obtain better information, including the originals of both pages of the document Cull references. Those originals, Vescera , told me on October 27, seem to support the notion that the leaflet urging local members to join the NDP to support Eby’s candidacy was endorsed by United Steelworkers local 1-1937 leadership. If the Chief Electoral Officer’s finding does not represent a double standard down at NDP headquarters, it is hard to see why it doesn’t.
Appadurai, to her credit, has pledged to stay active in the BC NDP and continue her efforts to get the party to adopt more progressive positions on climate change issues as well as the broad array of policy and practice reforms she advocated during her run for the leadership. Thoughtful trade unionists should give her arguments a fair hearing, and we should join her in calling on the NDP in British Columbia to return to its radical roots. We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Labour was wrong when it supported racist policies and sexist exclusions in the past, and we will be wrong again if we fail to recognize and support important new critical voices among the young and the marginalized. After all, what we desire for ourselves, we desire for all, and that dream of equal justice cannot be realized on a devastated planet.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
