| Activists Launch Workers’ Solidarity Coalition in Canada |
A very disturbing pattern of union concessions to the employers' agenda
is
tightening its grip on the labour movement across Canada. Even unions
with a
'progressive' reputation have recently reached contract settlements
that
erode or utterly abandon job security, wage protection, health
benefits, and
severance pay, while sacrificing the interests of new hires.
Increasingly union bureaucrats are teaming up with management. Both in
the
public and private sectors, they are working together to impose bad
deals on
workers, and to cripple or crush workers' resistance to the corporate
agenda
by curtailing union democracy and local autonomy.
When union bureaucrats refuse to advance legitimate grievances, when
they
turn a blind eye to employer discrimination and unsafe working
conditions,
when they seize control of local bargaining units to remove
democratically
elected local leaders—and then give away decades of hard-won union
gains—they show which side they have chosen.
Workers know that it is we who built our unions, and that it is the
rank and
file who must reclaim the unions to fight for all workers' needs—for
the
unionized and non-union, employed and unemployed.
In 1991 over 20 labour and community organizations joined together to
launch
a Workers' Solidarity Coalition in Toronto. Its initial purpose was to
organize support for key public sector strikes involving postal workers
and
federal public service employees. Those were strikes that challenged a
major
government initiative to attack both labour and public services.
Workers
were relatively successful in resisting concessions in that round.
Now the stakes are higher. The global neoliberal agenda is more
extensive,
more intensive, and it is relentless. And increasingly, union
bureaucrats
are caving in to it, and turning their fire on union members who dare
to
resist concessions. That is why we need Workers' Solidarity more than
ever.
We need a cross-union formation, in alliance with community-based
groups and
local activists, to resist concessions, to support struggles for union
democracy, and to turn our unions into fighting organizations. Call it
rank-and-file militancy, class-struggle unionism, workers'
democracy—call it
whatever you will. We need it, and we need it now.
The idea of launching a coalition to advance workers' solidarity and
union
democracy has been endorsed in principle by the Metropolitan Hotel
Workers'
Support Committee, the Toronto Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus
(within
the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation), the Ontario
Coalition
Against Poverty, and militants in the Service Employees' International
Union, the Canadian Auto Workers' Union, the Canadian Union of Public
Employees, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and the Ontario
Nurses'
Association.
A formal call for such a formation is being issued by the initiators,
who
are working to enlist more labour and progressive community
rank-and-file
organizations and activists. A public conference to officially launch
the
project is slated for this Fall.
Are you interested in endorsing such a call and participating in the
organizing committee? Please respond to this appeal today. Leave a
message
at (416) 588-9090, and/or e-mail barryaw@look.ca.
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