Unions Narrowly Avert General Strike In B.C.,
Canada
In the week from April 25 to May 2, 2004, what began as a legal
strike by 43,000 hospital workers in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada
nearly developed into an illegal 'general strike' by upwards of
200,000 workers against the provincial government (which funds the
hospitals and the health-care system generally), and potentially
involving perhaps another 100,000 to 150,000 unionized workers. This
in a province of approximately 4 million people: B.C., Canada's
western-most province. In the Canadian 'federal' state system, the
ten provinces have various powers and responsibilities that would be
held by the central national government in a non-federal state
system. Responsibility for the provision of health-care is one of the
most important of these functions.
Since the right-wing Liberal Party government's accession to power
three years previously, one of its apparent goals has been to wreak
havoc on an already crisis-ridden, publicly funded, universally
accessible health-care system. Another, more widely known goal of
this government has been to brutally attack the share of social
wealth in the province held by the working class and the
marginalized, and at the same time to attack the power of the trade
unions (which had been supported by the previous New Democratic Party
government). One of the first things the new government did was to
tear up previously negotiated, binding contracts between both nurses
(actually, the B.C. Nurses Union) and hospital and other health-care
workers (actually, the Hospital Employees Union (HEU)) and their
government-funded employers. These were replaced by new,
government-dictated contracts, which contained significant
concessions for those employees concerned, concessions especially in
the area of job security. This proved telling of the government's
plans: to permanently eliminate thousands of health-care workers'
jobs in B.C. In fact, the real plan was to radically lower the labour
costs of the health-care system generally and to bring in private
delivery of various 'peripheral' services in the health-care system,
such as 'housekeeping' or cleaning, landscaping, and food services in
order to facilitate this reduction.
In the process, in the guise of "fighting rising health-care
costs" so as to prevent taxes from rising further, the health-care
system is being gutted, so much so that in a few years it will be in
such bad shape that there will undoubtedly be widespread public
demand for the option of private (i.e. corporate) provision of
health-care, right up to the establishment of fully private
hospitals. The result would be a two-tier system, the degraded public
one for the unprivileged masses, and a much superior one for the
wealthy minority.
The privatization of delivery of the above-mentioned 'peripheral'
services to the health-care system has involved the mass firing of
thousands of workers, and their replacement (in fewer numbers) by new
workers earning between 55 and 60% of those they are replacing, along
with significantly reduced benefits. In fact, the contract
stipulating these severely reduced levels of remuneration was agreed
to by both the new employers and a different union from the one which
has until now represented the workers holding those jobs. (This
'sweetheart' deal between a well known, large union (IWA --
previously the International Woodworkers of America, now the
Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers) has, needless to say, thrown the
'labour movement' in B.C into turmoil.) The result of this is
thousands of workers working for new private employers and
represented by a new union earning $9+ an hour doing work that
previously paid $17+ an hour, and with significantly reduced
benefits.
All of this has been part of the Liberal government's agenda since
coming to power in 2001. While the hospital workers' employers are
officially known as the Health Employers Association (HEA) of B.C.,
in reality, this organization is a puppet of the provincial
government, as the latter appoints all of the officials that comprise
it, and dictates to them their general strategy for "fighting
escalating expenses" as well as what the financial 'bottom line' is
as far as collective agreements with their employees is concerned. In
the negotiations between the HEA and the HEU preceding the strike,
the HEA refused to retreat from its demand for a general 15% wage
reduction for all HEU members and for no limit on the number of jobs
to be privatized. Naturally, the HEU membership let the union's
leadership know in no uncertain terms that they would have nothing to
do with any such contract. So, when the legally acceptable time for
strike action arose, there was no agreement in the offing, making
strike action inevitable. The union leadership knew that the
membership were ready for an all-out fight against the government, so
the call was for a full-scale strike, with only "essential" staffing
levels (as agreed upon by the HEU and HEA) maintained.
The strike began on Sunday, April 25, and ran for four days
legally, before the provincial government passed legislation making
it illegal. The legislation also unilaterally imposed a contract on
the hospital workers which was even more draconian than the HEA's
'final offer' to the HEU, as it not only forced on them the same 15%
across the board wage cut and no limits on outsourcing jobs to
private employers. This legislation - not the criminalizing of the
strike, but the terms of the contract - was widely condemned by the
mass media in B.C. as either a "serious miscalculation" or "sheer
political stupidity"; the reason being that it sent a bolt of anger
through much of the working class and certainly the whole of the
'labour movement' in the province. In effect, the legislation
galvanized large numbers of workers into a mood of not only mass
anger, but also into a mood to fight back, to engage in solidarity
action with the embattled health care workers. Suddenly 'public
opinion' swung sharply in favour of the workers, and against the
government.
In response to the government's "back-to-work" legislation and
concomitant imposition of an intolerable contract, the HEU leadership
chose to defy the legislation, risking both criminal charges for
contempt of court and potential fines (as have occurred in previous
strikes legislated to an end). It can certainly be argued, however,
that the HEU leadership chose this 'radical' option only in order to
maintain its control over the strike, by maintaining its credibility
with the general membership of the union, who were obviously in no
mood to end the strike. The HEU chose to rename the strike a
"protest" and the picket lines became "protest lines". HEU spokesman
Chris Allnut, addressing a strikers' rally at Vancouver General
Hospital was quoted as saying "You are to respect the protest lines
until we decide that you should go back to work" (Vancouver Sun,
April 30, 2004, p. A1); needless to say, the "we" here referred to
the HEU leadership.
It was in this context that the B.C. Federation of Labour (the
umbrella group comprising most of the major trade unions in the
province) came up with a plan to escalate the hospital workers'
strike to a mass strike involving workers in a myriad of different
sectors of the economy. The day after the legislation, as many as
20,000 public sector workers belonging to the Canadian Union of
Public Employees (CUPE) walked off the job and picketed their
workplaces, affecting a range of public services, including municipal
halls, libraries, schools, recreation facilities, garbage services,
airports, water treatment plants, public works yards, and, in one
city, bus service. As well, at least 800 B.C. Hydro (electricity)
workers across the province staged a wildcat strike in solidarity
with the hospital workers; in fact, the wildcat began on Thursday
when a number of Hydro workers at dams in northern B.C. got the ball
rolling.
The B.C. F.L.'s 'action plan', which was conveniently leaked to
the media, described how the escalation of job action would develop
to most all public sector workers, as well as significant numbers of
workers in the wood and paper products industries, and tourism
(hotels and cruise ship facilities). The leaked document outlining
this plan of escalating strike action was published in the Vancouver
Sun newspaper on Saturday, May 1 - May Day. Obviously the plan was to
scare the government into backing off and killing the legislation
passed on Thursday. But the plan was a miscalculation, as the
government was hell bent on seeing its agenda through to its
conclusion come hell or high water. Instead, news of this plan of
action for the 'labour movement' emboldened thousands of rank and
file workers, who genuinely believed that their union leaders were
going to lead a mass, 'general' strike in a no-holds barred showdown
with the provincial government, something many of them had been
looking forward to for a long time. Here was the perfect opportunity
for it, as 'public opinion' was solidly on 'our' side.
Saturday's May Day parade and rally in Vancouver was the largest
in decades, as upwards of 10,000 people joined in, even though the
BCFL steered the events clear of focusing on the hospital workers
strike or their own 'action plan' for mass strike for the coming
week. Rumours circulated at the rally amongst certain militant union
members that the BCFL leadership was looking to quash the strike by
setting up secret 'closed door' meetings with the government. The
rumours proved fatefully true, as late Sunday news began to appear
that the HEU, with the help of the BCFL leadership, had reached a
deal with the government to end the strike. And when workers woke up
Monday morning looking forward to a week (or more) of militant
industrial action and political protest against the government, there
was shock and disgust felt just as widely and just as deeply as their
had been anger on Thursday and Friday. Only this time the object of
that disgust was not the government, but the union leadership, which
had signed a deal giving the government everything it had passed in
its "back-to-work" legislation, except for one small concession: the
15% wage cut would not be retroactive to April 1, but would rather
take effect May 1, the day before what came quickly to be known as
"Black Sunday".
This 'betrayal' by the union bosses was so blatant that it
probably did more to disillusion workers about unions than anything
else that has happened in B.C. for a long, long time. (I use the word
"betrayal" in "scare quotes" because only someone who was once your
ally in a fight can betray you, whereas the historical evidence
clearly establishes that, when the stakes are sufficiently high, the
unions and their functionaries - the ones who manage the unions - are
not allies of the rank and file membership.) Not only were hospital
workers given a deal by their union leaders virtually identical with
the one the government forced on them by way of legislation, but the
union membership affected by the deal were not even offered the
opportunity to vote on this 'agreement'. While there apparently was
sporadic unwillingness to return to work on Monday by some HEU and
CUPE members, this writer is unaware of any self-organized wildcat
actions. Apparently the shock workers felt was stronger than the
anger, as there was a surprising lack of resistance to the
union-government screwing over they had endured. However, a group of
a few dozen HEU members did stage an ongoing protest outside HEU
headquarters for the following week. Further, a grassroots-organized
protest against the union's 'betrayal' was held on the following
Saturday, where several hundred angry hospital workers and their
supporters marched and spoke out against their 'leaders' in the HEU
and BCFL. This writer attended that rally and distributed the
following leaflet (slightly modified).
Wage Slave X
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