Labour activist calls to 'Take Back CLC'

Peoples Voice Newspaper

For the first time since 2005, there will be a contest for the presidency when the Canadian Labour Congress meets May 5-9 in Montreal. Ken Georgetti, who has led the 3 million member federation for 15 years, will be challenged by Hassan Husseini, a negotiator for the Public Service Alliance of Canada and a member of Unifor local 2025.

A long‑time labour activist, Husseini has launched a campaign to "Take Back the CLC." A statement on his campaign website says, "As workers and unions, we are facing a massive and unprecedented right wing attack. Labour and employment standards, collective bargaining rights, and the right of workers to organize and be politically active, are all targets of right wing governments at the federal and provincial levels. The labour movement is in a fight for survival as a force for progressive social change in Canadian society.

"In recent years, grassroots activism has won real gains. There is much we can learn from these successful struggles such as that of the Quebec students, Idle No More, the Toronto Library workers, the Chicago teachers and others. As CLC President I will empower and support that kind of local activism. I will help build the local leadership it takes to challenge someone like Stephen Harper, and his corporate backers....

Full analysis of CLC on 2014 Federal Budget

Canadian Labour Congess

The 2014 Federal Budget lacks any vision about how to stop growing inequality and stimulate the economy.

The Conservative plan continues to focus on austerity measures to balance their budget by 2015, and rests their hopes for economic growth on no-strings attached corporate tax cuts. But this plan is not delivering the promised investments in R&D, machinery and training needed to create better paid and more secure jobs.

To compensate, this budget introduces a myriad of small, limited and targeted measured in R&D and training, proposes to create internships instead of good jobs, all paid for with more spending cuts, such as cuts to federal employees' sick benefits and increased costs to retirees benefits.

Overall, federal government spending will be lower in 2014-15 compared to this year, dragging down economic growth and job creation.

In the battle to stop EI attack, French-speaking communities rise up

Occupation of a New Brunswick Service Canada office

Special feature report,
Rebel Youth Magazine

As public pressure against the Harper Conservative government's recent Employment Insurance (EI) reforms continues this fall, labour and community activists move forward with one of the more dynamic and united union-led fightbacks Québec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have seen in recent years, this special feature of Rebel Youth magazine reports, which appears in the October 1st issue of People's Voice Newspaper.

While a protest movement against the EI cuts has developed over the past year in response to a "double round" of EI cuts effecting the whole country, they've spread like wild-fire especially across French-speaking Acadien and Québécois cities and towns, and even villages.

This is because the double round of attacks to EI by the Harper Tories after the 2012 federal budget is disproportionately impacting workers in seasonal industries. It is a reality linked with long-standing questions of the economic underdevelopment across Canada and social inequalities faced by the French-speaking national communities.

Time for labour offensive

Striking CAW workers in the airline industry

People's Voice Editorial

"Great minds think alike," as the old saying goes, or perhaps "necessity is the mother of invention." Difficult circumstances sometimes compel individuals or movements to take decisive action. The AFL-CIO is looking at new ways to help unorganized U.S. workers and community groups to join the "house of labour". This decision comes just after Canada's new Unifor union adopted a constitution and organizing strategies to establish "community chapters".

We recall another watershed moment in the annals of the North American labour movement. In 1935, in the depths of the worst economic crisis in capitalist history, embattled trade unions faced a choice: stick with traditional "craft union" tactics aimed at appeasing employers to protect a shrinking membership base, or launch militant struggles to organize millions of industrial workers. The latter option led to the emergence of the CIO in the U.S. and similar campaigns in Canada. Thanks in part to sweeping advances for socialism in Europe, this strategy led to major victories for working people within a generation.

Another salvo in the war on unions

Reprinted from The Morning Star
Tim Pelzer

The right-wing Conservative government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has launched yet another assault on working people in Canada with legislation that, if passed, will make it harder to organize trade unions and easier to decertify established ones.

Conservative Member of Parliament Blaine Calkins has introduced Bill C-525 that, under the guise of giving workers a choice of whether to join a union, will remove the automatic card-check certification in the federally-regulated sector (telecommunications, banking, transportation, etc.). For decades, union certification under the Canada Labor Code has allowed a majority (50 percent +1) of the members of a workforce to sign membership cards and pay $5 to certify a union. In its place, Bill C-525 will require that 45 percent of a bargaining unit sign union cards followed by a Labor Board-supervised secret-ballot vote. More than 50 percent of the bargaining unit must vote in favor of establishing a union, instead of 50 percent of those who vote. Those who don't vote or could not vote are counted as negative votes. No provincial labor code has this type of provision.

"There are good reasons why the card-check model has been practiced in federally regulated sectors," according to Dave Cole, president of the Energy, Communications, and Paperworkers' Union of Canada.

"For one," he said, "it can be difficult to organize votes for bargaining units spread across the country and transport sector employees are regularly in different places. More importantly, the card-check process protects workers from intimidation. It's widely understood - confirmed by many academic studies - that secret-ballot workplace votes reduce union certification as they give employers an opportunity to intimidate employees through compulsory anti-union meetings and implicit threats of job loss."

Bill C-525 will also allow a minority to constantly threaten a union with decertification. If 45 percent of a union bargaining unit asks for decertification, a Labor Board supervised vote will be held. More than 50 percent of the bargaining unit must vote in favor of the union as its continued bargaining unit, instead of a majority of those voting. Those who don't want to vote or could not vote are effectively deemed to have voted against unionization.

"Bill C-525 needs to be seen in the context of the government's low-wage strategy. It's the latest step in the Conservatives' bid to reduce workers' power to the benefit of the business class", asserted Cole.

The president of the Canadian Auto Workers, Ken Lewenza, pointed out, "If this same distorted standard of democracy were applied to federal Members of Parliament, there would not be a single Conservative member sitting in the House of Commons today. There is no MP in Canada who was elected by over 50 percent of the voting-age adults in their riding. Why on earth should this test apply to unions, but not MPs?"

Blaine Calkins did not respond to email requests for an interview about Bill C-525.

Bill C-525 is currently being scrutinized by parliamentary committees and then will be voted on later this fall. The Harper Conservative government holds a majority of seats in Parliament and has enough votes to pass the bill.

Critics charge that Merit Canada, an employer lobby group which is pushing to end unionization in the construction field, is behind Bill C-525. Merit is believed to have strong ties to the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office.

Bill C-525, part of a larger crackdown on unions, comes on the heels of another Conservative anti-union effort which was defeated in a 49-33 vote in the Senate on June 26. Bill C-377 would have required that unions make public all donations over $5,000 to groups and individuals as well as salaries over $100,000. Unions would have had to submit 24 different detailed statements of expenses and offer this information on a website. Failure to do so would have lead to a $1,000 fine each day. Sixteen Conservative senators voted against Bill C-377 while six abstained. Critics charged that Bill C-377 was designed to tie unions in red tape and was discriminatory because it did not apply to business.

The forthcoming Conservative Party convention will debate a series of resolutions that would effectively eliminate unions' financial security. One proposal explicitly calls for U.S.-style "right to work" legislation to allow optional union membership.

Support struggles that advance the rights of working people

Labour Day 2013 message, Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

We are living in the Canadian and global environment where the main corporate thrust is the destruction of the welfare state and the achievements of generations. First in the cross‑hairs are the trade unions, collective bargaining, social programs, equity and environmental protection.

The main features of labour relations in Canada today are intimidation, legislated agreements, lock‑outs and removal of the right to strike. Harper's conservatives have used back‑to‑work legislation five times in two years. A new feature is the legislated imposition of the terms of arbitrated "agreements". Unions are also being bludgeoned by onerous and undemocratic financial accounting requirements designed to fuel a media attack, to paint unions as expropriators of workers' wages for non‑worker campaigns. Cuts to public services, healthcare, immigrants' rights and Employment Insurance impact working people from coast to coast.            

The Ontario Federation of Labour has published important documents and program that seeks a COMMON FRONT with an inclusive fight back program. The CLC "Worker to Worker" campaign, while not as pro‑active as the OFL, still provides potential for those who wish to develop more. The Quebec students impressed the country and the world with their strength, and the 175,000 Quebec construction workers flexed muscle in their recent strike. Working people are not passive pawns, and their as yet un‑coordinated struggles are crying out for form and leadership.

This Labour Day weekend will witness an event that has been over a year in construction and that has the potential to significantly influence the course of Canadian Labour.

Of course this is the product of the CAW‑CEP merger negotiations, the founding convention of the "new union", UNIFOR.

This is not only the largest merger in at least several decades but could prove to be the most unique and significant. It has been certainly the most transparent, the most vertically inclusive and the most talked about outside the membership of the two parent unions. It is not assimilation or a shelter for a battered smaller union finding safety within a larger one. It is not a McCarthyite raid like the Steel‑Mine Mill of the past and neither is it an offshore spin‑off of relations or decisions made in U.S.‑based international headquarters.

Both parent unions, CAW and CEP, are Canadian unions born into diversity and struggle and shaped by these conditions. Both have been on the cutting edge of social unionism and militant struggle, both have experienced retreat and concessionary bargaining, usually concurrent with each other in the thrust and parry of class struggle. It is absolutely logical that these two private sector unions mirror every strength and weakness, every hope and challenge, every potential and every danger that faces Canadian workers in this period of neo‑liberal offensive, super exploitation, ecological disaster and imperialist war. Both of these unions have had to contend with the global mobility of capital, free trade agreements, de‑industrialization, and the general crisis of capitalism and the cyclical recessions of the last decade.

In the publications of the Communist Party over the years there have been both compliments and criticisms of labour as Canadian workers wrestle with the double-backed demons of compliance and concession, and as they also resist and struggle heroically. If social consciousness is a reflection of social being, why would not, in a collective sense, the realities of reformism and class struggle be bound together in the consciousness of our class and its institutions? After all is this not the proving ground?

The Preamble of the draft Unifor Constitution reflects determination and the anger of the oppressed. Some on the left may mourn the lack of a socialist agenda but the Preamble identifies the enemy, recognizes the global nature of the struggle and includes the struggle for peace and ecology. In this world where every foothold has to be fought for, the Communist Party recognizes the potential for militant struggle, the possibility for a new quality and an elevation of class consciousness. This is infinitely better than the "conversation" Ken Georgetti wants to have at the cocktail level with the Harper Tories.

The very security of unions and union membership is under attack as provincial and federal governments prepare to destroy the Rand Formula, dues check‑off and the closed shop. In the face of this onslaught, labour has not closed ranks. There have been too many defeats.

The tendency to bend under pressure, like CAW's recent acceptance of a permanent two‑tier wage agreement at GM Oshawa, must and can be checked and reversed. Ford and Chrysler will definitely want parity and they probably won't wait until the next round of negotiations. Of course the CAW is not alone and unfortunately concessionary bargaining has become common in the private sector since the late 1970s. Pattern bargaining is no use when the pattern is concessionary. The strength of labour is in unity not stratification, in universal rules not anarchy, in unity not competition.

Unifor, for the first time since the struggles of the Workers Unity League in the 1930s, seeks to find the way to organize the unemployed, the youth, precarious workers, indigenous people and immigrants. Skeptics may dismiss this as public relations or media hype for another self‑serving business union merger. Skepticism is not what is needed on Labour Day 2013.

Unions and social advances were not built by skeptics. They were built through resolute struggle, by determined optimists, hard headed perhaps, but optimists. Left activists, Communists and militants. Workers and farmers.

Our objective cannot be simply to regain what we've lost. The struggle now is for what we dreamt about but never achieved, for what the welfare state was supposed to introduce, the next step we didn't manage to take. The present corporate offensive is the result of not defending the socialist alternative hard enough. The value of Unifor is the fact that major labour forces have declared their unwillingness to fold up and take orders, to refuse the role of labour‑brokers.

The Communist Party salutes working people and their institutions, and pledges our support to any new working class formations that advance the rights of working people, and struggles against capitalist domination. We have no other reason to exist.

CLC One Minute Message Contest

Which way forward for the NDP?

People's Voice Editorial

The New Democratic Party's retreat towards "qualified support" for the Canada‑European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is raising serious concerns within the trade union movement, and rightly so. As OFL President Sid Ryan wrote recently, "this particular trade deal is being negotiated in secret and in the interest of multinational corporations. A number of affiliates have invested significant resources into campaigning against CETA and have been working alongside coalition partners to raise public concern."

The OFL President is not alone in his objections. Many trade unions and social justice movements - the backbone of the NDP's voter base across Canada - have campaigned hard to block CETA for years. The abject turnaround by Thomas Mulcair has shocked many of these organizations, which traditionally count on the NDP to represent their views on Parliament Hill.

Sadly, the NDP's change of course did not surprise observers who have followed its trajectory in recent years. Sensing a possible victory in the 2015 federal election, the party which claims to be the voice of "ordinary Canadians" is bending over backwards to reach out to big capital. This trend pre-dates Thomas Mulcair; recall Jack Layton's January 2009 speech to the Toronto Board of Trade urging workers to take pay cuts to save jobs, or his moves to water down the NDP's anti-war positions.

When labour activists gather at the Canadian Labour Congress conference this month, there should be no illusions about a Mulcair NDP government. Only massive pressure by trade unions and all people's movements can compel political parties to put people's needs ahead of corporate greed. Leaving the political struggle to the NDP caucus in Ottawa will not achieve this goal.

Canadian Labour Congress join CFS, MPs and other voices in supports Cuban Five

Following Resolution GR-39 "Solidarity with Cubans on Trial," The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has agreed joined with a number of other Canadian organizations calling for Justice for the Cuban Five.

The CLC's resolution, passed at their 2011 convention, calls to "express our solidarity with the Cuban 5; and write to the United States' (US) President Obama asking him to allow visitation rights for the families of the Cuban 5 and urging him to immediately release the Cuban 5." Their letter is reprinted below.

The CLC joins with a number of other voices in support of the Five, from Canada. On Dec. 12th 2007, forty Bloc Québécois deputies and sixteen NDP Members of Parliament in Canada sent a letter to Canada's Foreign Minister speaking out in favour of the Cuban Five.

Shortly before he died in August, Jack Layton, leader of the NDP spoke at a solidarity event for the Cuban Five and said: "Hundreds of thousands of Canadians go to Cuba, but are not sufficiently aware of what faces the Cuban Five and their families. [...] This is the beginning of a campaign, and our Party will be part of it. How moved I am by your stories."

In addition to the labour movement the Canadian Federation of Students has called for the Five's immediate release. In a 2008 letter their National Chairperson wrote that "The ruling of the United Nations and Amnesty International confirms that the case of the Cuban 5 is a highly political trial that was thoroughly unfair and unjust. As such, we urge you to act immediately to allow visitation rights to the family of the Cuban Five and to release them from jail without delay."

Dear President Obama,

On behalf of 3.3 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), I am writing to protest the continued imprisonment of the Cuban 5 and to ask you to intervene so as to procure their release from prison and be allowed to return to their families in Cuba.

Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez, and René Gonzalez have been imprisoned since 1998. René Gonzalez was released from prison last October but must carry out three years supervised probation in Miami. He was recently denied permission on humanitarian grounds to return to his country for at least two weeks to see his dying brother, Roberto.

These men were charged with multiple offences including conspiracy to commit espionage. In truth, they were in the United States unarmed and never posed a threat of any kind to U.S. national security.

They were in the United States to monitor the activities of Cuban exiles who, operating from bases in Miami, were planning violent actions against innocent people in Cuba. In fact they were trying to prevent more brutal acts against their country and save innocent lives. The continued incarceration of these Cuban patriots is morally indefensible.

I urge you to exercise the power of your office and grant a pardon to the Cuban Five, allowing them to return to their families in Cuba.

Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour Congress.