B.C. Labour At A Crossroads
Published on 18 Jan 2007 at 10:12 am.
WordPress database error: [Table './wordpress_solidarityc/wp_comments' is marked as crashed and should be repaired]
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '55' AND comment_approved = '1'
Filed under Uncategorized, Analysis, Leaflets and Posters, 2006 B.C. Fed Convention.
B.C. Labour At A Crossroads
The last four years have been a disaster for the British Columbia labour movement.
Meeting here four years ago this week, delegates were in a fury over the Campbell government’s attacks on unions, the poor, women, aboriginal people and students. More than that, we were collectively prepared to fight these attacks. The delegates at the 2002 Fed convention were so unified in their determination to beat back Campbell’s attacks that they actually forced the Fed leadership to amend the Action Plan to include escalating actions up to and including a general strike. But since then, we have seen nothing but an increasing series of setbacks, reversals and outright betrayals…
It started in 2002, with the unanimous adoption of a militant Action Plan, which was immediately discarded by the officers in defiance of the convention’s decision;
It deepened with the destruction of collaborative relations with the dozens of community coalitions that had sprung up across the province to resist Campbell; in some cases the labour bureaucracy moved in to take control of local coalitions, and where it could not take control, to break away from them;
It continued with most of the labour leadership’s throwing their support and resources into supporting Campbell’s biggest P3, the Olympics. Increasingly, labour’s traditional opposition to privatization and public-private partnerships has become in many cases little more than lip service, most clearly in the leadership’s refusal to fight to block the RAV line.
Finally, chickens started coming home to roost. Having betrayed our allies in the community, our leadership began applying the same methods to Fed members.
· our leadership withdrew support from the ferry workers in December 2003, forcing them to accept a disastrous binding arbitration where Vince Ready imposed a seven-year contract, a 0-0-0-0-2-2-3% increase, and in so doing imposed a contract on the BC Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union that paved the way for Campbell’s privatization of B.C. Ferries; (see note below)
· our leadership barged into the HEU strike four months later, swept aside the elected negotiating committee, and rammed through a deal cutting wages by 15%, firing thousands, and sealing the privatization of hospital support services, and prevented the HEU membership from voting on the deal;
· our leadership not only refused to mobilize support for the teachers during their brave strike in October 2005, it went to the media and publicly pressured the BCTF to return to work and accept Vince Ready’s bankrupt deal. Not only that, some affiliates even went so far as to actively discourage their own members from showing up at the big BCTF/CUPE strike rally;
· all of this led the way to last spring’s disastrous public sector settlements, where our leaderships lay down before the Liberals’ divide and rule campaign. They refused to form a common front, they refused to bargain together against the government, they refused to unite, and they allowed the Campbell government to ram through an unprecedented four-year strike ban in the public sector. This means, effectively, that our leadership has helped open the door to the next big wave of Liberal privatizations in health care, education, social services and infrastructure that will be hitting us between now and the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Going For The Gold
At the same time these betrayals have been taking place, a good chunk of the Federation leadership has been transforming itself from labour leaders to developers. The last 15 years has seen many different union leaders starting to use their members’ pension funds to build their own corporate empires. Concert Properties is the clearest example of this, where a union-controlled development fund has bankrolled itself off the pension savings of the members of 20 different unions and has grown to become the largest developer of rental properties in B.C., only to become indistinguishable from any other developer. This also means that a sizeable chunk of our leaders have made their separate peace with the Liberals. Concert Properties is union-controlled, but every single year since 2001 it has donated thousands of dollars to the B.C. Liberal Party, and the entire leadership of this Federation stands condemned for its continuing refusal to criticize this monstrous sellout.
We need to go back to our roots.
The last hundred years of B.C. labour is rich with lessons that still have meaning today. From Ginger Goodwin to the battle of Ballantyne Pier, from the post office occupation to the On To Ottawa Trek, from the Lenkurt Electric strike to the Canadian Farmworkers organizing campaign, working people have won nothing until they have unified, organized, and confronted their employers and the employers’ governments.
We have learned that we must be unified to win. The old slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” is something that we need to put into practice if the union movement is to be able to survive the 21st century. We can no longer stand by in silence if workers are under attack and their right to strike is being taken away from them. We must fight side by side with any union under attack, because it is our rights that are under attack as well.
We must break with the concept of the trade unionism as a technocracy of lawyers, arbitrators and business agents, and return to being a labour movement based on a permanently mobilized and active membership.
We must recreate a democratic and militant labour movement, one where there is genuine membership control over each union, where debates are open, unfettered and real, and where decisions taken by the membership are carried out and leaderships are actually accountable to their members.
Finally, and by no means least, we must rediscover the radical meaning of the B.C. Fed slogan “what we want for ourselves, we desire for all”. We must seek out alliances wherever we can with the poor and working poor where we can together fight side by side as equals for common goals.
To do this, we will need both to renew this Federation and to change its leadership.
From top to bottom.
(Note – This text has been slightly changed from the original. The paragraph dealing with the 2003 ferry workers strike has been reworded, as the original wording could be interpreted to blame the ferry workers for the Ready decision and the privatization of B.C. Ferries, which is not true, and not our position. The imposition of the Ready arbitration and the pressured return to work was what opened the door to the provincial government’s privatization of the ferry system by helping create a relationship of forces where they could implement the Coastal Ferries Act. This was the not the fault of the BC Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union membership. It was the fault of the leadership of the BC Federation of Labour.)
Solidarity Caucus
solidaritycaucus@shaw.ca
#17-1744 Kingsway, Vancouver, B.C. V5N 2S6
phone (604) 254-1421 fax (604) 872-5105
WordPress database error: [Table './wordpress_solidarityc/wp_comments' is marked as crashed and should be repaired]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '55' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date