| What’s Wrong With Our Unions? |
The short answer to the question posed tonight, "What's wrong with our unions", could be put as follows:
Our unions are bureaucratic. They are not controlled by their members. Union bureaucrats, who form a privileged elite of the working class, dominate our unions. Under the control of the privileged bureaucracy, unions become less and less instruments of class struggle to advance the rights and material well-being of workers. More and more, our unions become instruments of social peace and class collaboration with the employers.
Bureaucratic control of the unions is not inevitable. Bureaucratic subordination of the class interests of working people is not inevitable. But these are tendencies inherent in the division of labour within capitalist society. Why? Because most workers are exhausted by their regular jobs, and do not have the time or energy to acquire the necessary leadership skills, and to wage the daily fight for democratic control of the unions. A full time apparatus is needed to run the unions and therein lies the danger of bureaucratic corruption of the union and its prime purpose, to struggle for workers and against the employers.
But bureaucratic tendencies can be counteracted. Measures and policies can be put in place that maximize rank and file control of the unions, measures that maximize the effectiveness of union struggles. We propose the following: Limit the pay of union officials. Make the leaders subject to recall. Increase the range of offices elected and increase the autonomy and representation of local bargaining units and occupational sectors.
At the same time, the present crisis of globalized capitalism gives the employers and the union bureaucracy less and less capacity to buy social peace. So they increasingly resort to repression. The challenge we face, as workers, to gain control of our unions and to use them to fight the attacks on our rights and benefits, is increasingly linked to the need to challenge the whole system.
We can do it. We have little choice but to try. To win, workers must create a conscious, radical, rank and file movement that fights on a clear class struggle programme to win the leadership, to democratize the unions, and to move forward in struggle. That*s what socialists see as our mission in the labour movement.
Now I'd like to move from the general to the particular the case of my own union, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation. The leadership of the OSSTF typifies what*s wrong with unions in Canada. OSSTF leaders cultivate an image for the union as a democratic, progressive and dynamic organization. But in practice, their behaviour is super-centralist, internally repressive and class collaborationist.
OSSTF is known for its leading role in the Ontario Days of Action and the 1997 province-wide teachers' political strike. It is also known for being part of Labour's retreat, and for the disastrous 'strategic voting' campaign in 1999.
OSSTF has 50,000 members. About 6,000 of us are substitute teachers, with an full time equivalency of about 2100.
My experience with OSSTF began in 1975, during the first big Metro Toronto teachers* strike. I organized a strike support committee at the Faculty of Education, University of Toronto.
In 1982, I approached OSSTF to organize substitute teachers at the former City of Toronto Board of Education. Margaret Wilson, then OSSTF President, later head of the Tory-created Ontario College of Teachers, refused. She cited a "conflict of interest". She wanted any laid off teachers to have priority access to substitute teaching assignments, so job security for us was out of the question.
In 1983 I helped to unionize substitute teachers into the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union (OPSEU). I helped to negotiate the first contract in 1984. I led the OPSEU drive to unionize substitute teachers at other school boards in Metro. But OSSTF and the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation (elementary school male teachers) launched competing drives. The result was a stalemate at most boards. But I did help organize two small units (Metro Schools for the Disabled, and the Metro French School Board).
After OPSEU ended its organizing campaign, OSSTF and OPSTF picked up several units. Often, they used school principals as recruiters.
In 1986, OSSTF conducted a raid on the secondary school substitute teachers members of OPSEU Local 595. Liz Barkley, then president of the North York District of OSSTF, later OSSTF provincial president, helped lead the raid. In an OLRB supervised vote, we defeated the raid.
For nearly 14 years I was president of OPSEU Local 595. I led the Toronto substitute teachers strike in October 1990, which achieved breakthrough gains in wages, benefits and job security. I was elected to the OPSEU Executive Board in 1991, and was re-elected to serve through 1997.
In the Fall of 1997, the Ontario Tory government amended the Education Act, which then assigned all substitute teachers to membership in the appropriate teachers' federation. Without a vote, without any consultation, OPSEU substitute teachers became members of OSSTF or the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. The Tories at the same time amalgamated the school boards in Metro into one mega-board, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).
We got a chilly reception on arrival in OSSTF, where substitute teachers are called "occasional teachers". Five O.T. unit presidents tried to gang up on the former downtown Toronto OPSEU local. But we fought successfully for a democratic constitution, and we won the first executive election in June 1998. We won the next 3 elections too.
In 1999, regular teacher contracts negotiated by OSSTF sold out substitute teachers interests, and harmed all teachers, by agreeing to an increased teacher workload that included more "on-call" coverage.
I spoke publicly against the sell out. 43% of Toronto regular teachers voted against the deal. If I hadn*t already been targeted for elimination by the bureaucracy, I was targeted at that point. As Liz B. later privately revealed to a colleague, "OSSTF has plans for Barry".
Our 1999 substitute teachers contract, the first with the new TDSB, was a settlement that stayed close to the status quo. Not unusual in a first contract.
But the 2001 substitute teachers' contract was concessionary: it suspended the job security provisions, and it lost ground in relation to wage improvements achieved by the regular teachers. I was out-voted on the provincial takeover team by Earl Manners (OSSTF President) and Liz Barkley. But after ratification I exposed what had gone wrong. My purpose was to correct the errors in the next round of bargaining.
In the Fall of 2001, Liz and a small group of retired teachers with big pensions who, like her, became substitutes to retain their own membership in OSSTF, launched a factional guerilla war at bargaining unit meetings. They used parliamentary procedures to obstruct business. It looked like they wanted to divert attention from the bad contract they had supported. It seemed like they wanted to paralyse the unit, and to drive out militants from the executive and general meetings.
They failed. We exposed their disruptive antics. We won re-election. In fact, our team of 14 candidates won all the available positions. OSSTF senior staff ran the election from start to finish. But Liz and company wouldn't accept defeat in a democratic election, with our biggest voter turnout. They persisted with 24 disciplinary charges they laid against me at Judicial Council (J.C.) of OSSTF. The J.C. is an appointed provincial body. No substitute teacher has ever served on it.
The charges against me were vague, frivolous or vexatious.
The charges included: failing to have monthly executive meetings (because one January meeting was skipped); criticizing and intimidating members (the same members who ran in elections and were defeated); failing to elect a bargaining committee and failing to have the bargaining committee conduct a bargaining issues survey (when in fact two of the complainants were elected to the bargaining ctte in Feb. 2000, and the unit executive conducted the survey as it had done for years); seeking to amend executive minutes (which had been poorly written by Liz and were used as a vehicle for her polemics); speaking to motions while in the Chair at executive meetings (a common practice in the Toronto district of OSSTF); and failure to obtain part time paid leave for the unit President (paid leave is expressly provided in Article 25 of the contract). Clearly, these charges were not about protecting the union. This was simply a political purge.
In September 2002, the Judicial Council tossed out 16 of the 24 charges. After conducting a bizarre 2 week hearing in which it severely limited our evidence and discounted the testimony of our witnesses, the Judicial Council upheld 8 charges. The penalty the Judicial Council imposed was unprecedented and Draconian: removal from office, and banishment from holding any office in OSSTF for 18 months.
I applied to appeal the decision. I was not allowed to appeal on the merits of the decision. Only on the penalty. In other words, I was reduced to a 'mercy plea'. In another bizarre twist, Liz and company were allowed to be at the appeal hearing, and to seek a harsher penalty which they did.
The OSSTF Appeal Committee, an appointed body drawn from the Provincial Council, treated me with impatience and scarcely veiled hostility. It would not accept a petition from our members. Then it broke another precedent. Its November 2002 ruling increased the ban on me from 18 to 32 months.
My local union, known in OSSTF as the Toronto Occasional Teachers* Bargaining Unit (OTBU), obtained the services of labour lawyer Brian Shell earlier in 2002. He advised us on the internal judicial processes, and he prepared a bid for a court injunction.
Provincial and Toronto District OSSTF clamped down on our finances. After September 2002, they wouldn't allow any legal expenditures, even though substitute teacher members repeatedly voted to authorize such spending at general and executive meetings.
So, we demanded control of our own funds. We applied for Financial Self-Administration as per the D12 constitution. The treasurers of D12 and provincial OSSTF promised to turn over our funds and financial administration by Feb. 7, 2003. They reneged on that promise.
My removal from office took effect January 1, 2003. Three days later OSSTF Provincial Executive seized control of our local contract bargaining, which they*d stalled since Fall 2002. We didn't ask for provincial take over of bargaining. Moreover, provincial OSSTF just ignored the 4 members remaining on the local bargaining team. (Still, bargaining didn't resume until June. And at the second meeting in June, the OSSTF-appointed negotiator tried to 'wrap up' the talks and sell us out.)
In January, First V.P. Maureen Malmud was chosen by the local exec to be the Acting President. She and the executive hired me as an Administrative Assistant for the transition period. The provincial General Secretary objected to that, so I resigned the position, taking no pay for January-February.
On March 9, the OSSTF annual convention voted to amend the OSSTF constitution to make it easier to put a bargaining unit in trusteeship. Our delegates warned that this amendment was designed to cripple and usurp, in the first place, the Toronto OTBU.
On March 27-28, Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Coo heard our injunction motion, which sought to restore me to elected office. His decision stated that we made "a strong prima facie case" that OSSTF had broken its rules and denied me due process. We would likely win at a full trial. At the same time Coo denied the injunction motion, observing that the bargaining unit was functioning so smoothly there was no clear emergency to justify an injunction. Go to trial, he said. (Judges are not known for being concerned about the cost of going to trial.)
On April 23, within a couple of weeks of Justice Coo's decision that the OTBU was in good shape, the OSSTF Provincial Executive imposed Trusteeship on the OTBU. To this date, we've been given no written reasons for the Trusteeship, which takes all authority away from the elected local executive. P.E. reps told a meeting they convened of Toronto substitute teachers that "divisions" within the OTBU "may impede representation of members". Almost every local union could be put in trusteeship on that basis.
Our local executive filed a complaint at the OLRB against the trusteeship on May 23. OSSTF*s lawyer argued that the OLRB has no jurisdiction in the matter, despite the fact that OSSTF Bylaw 24 (amended in March) states that any member can go to the OLRB to challenge trusteeship!
In fact, this week the OLRB ruled it has jurisdiction, dismissing the OSSTF objection to our application for a Hearing. In addition, OSSTF has been ordered to provide information about the reasons for the Trusteeship to OTBU members.
Meanwhile, legal expenses continue to mount. We paid Brian Shell over $30,000 in 2002-2003, of which $21,000 came out of my pocket. Shell wants another $30,000. He said he would do no further work without payment in full. But he did agree to propose a Mediation process to OSSTF, if we paid him $2400 in advance. We did. OSSTF agreed to the mediator we proposed, Rick McDowell (former Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board). The mediation will occur on September 4. Mediation is not binding, but it could produce a voluntary agreement covering all outstanding issues.
If the mediation effort fails, we proceed to a full trial at Ontario Superior Court, which would likely cost over $100,000. At court, the winner takes all. The loser pays all -- on top of all accumulated costs of the two parties to date.
So, given the bureaucrats* huge resources, why would OSSTF leaders be interested in a mediated settlement? I think they want to:
1. Eliminate the risk of losing in court, including the risks posed to the OSSTF disciplinary process should they lose.
2. Put a stop to the ongoing political protest actions we've held.
(Protests were held at 60 Mobile Drive (OSSTF head office), on April 30; also in May at the site of a Provincial Council meeting, and in June at the D12 regular teachers' AGM. In addition, leaflets and petitions are frequently distributed at Toronto Labour Council, at union rallies, and at other events.)
It is clear that our protest actions had an effect on OSSTF leaders. We need to continue to give them an incentive to resolve all the issues in dispute.
Our next action will take place on Friday, August 22, 8:30 a.m., at the Crowne Plaza Don Valley Hotel, site of the annual OSSTF Leadership Conference.
We also invite you to join our contingent on the Labour Day Parade, Monday, Sept. 1.
What do we aim to win?
Since, by law, we cannot leave OSSTF, what we want is democracy inside OSSTF. We want our rights and local autonomy restored. We want justice on all the issues in dispute: removal of president from office, seizure of funds and local bargaining rights, refusal to pay outstanding members' claims, imposition of Trusteeship, ongoing interference with our Health and Safety reps, our delegates to Labour Council, and exclusion of militants from OSSTF training work shops.
What does the OSSTF leadership want?
Their policy is clear and public. They want to dissolve substitute teacher units into the full time teacher bargaining units. They want to continue to reap our dues money without having to suffer our autonomous structure and our advocacy of our needs. They want to be able to sacrifice our interests, as they've done in the past, and to do so with total impunity in the future.
But we*re not about to let them. We are fighting back. To win, we need your help.
At stake is union democracy. The well being of union democracy is an indivisible thing. An injury to one is an injury to all. The lack of union democracy, and the lack of a program to advance workers' interests against the employers and against global capitalism, is exactly what*s wrong with our unions.
The solution is active solidarity. Solidarity in campaigns that defend unions and defend activists under attack. Solidarity in building a rank and file movement that will challenge the union bureaucracy and oppose the destructive and oppressive capitalist system they defend. Socialists strive to lead that effort. If you agree, if you want to fix what*s wrong with our unions, we invite you to join us.
Presentation by Barry Weisleder July 24, 2003
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