[mobglob-discuss] FW: BC General Strike Betrayed By Union Bosses - Workers vow to continue illegal strike

Tue May 4 18:46:11 PDT 2004

http://www.marxist.com/canada/canada_gs_betrayed.html

General Strike Betrayed By Union Bosses - Workers vow to continue illegal
strike
43,000 hospital workers in British Columbia have been sold-out by their
union leaders. Despite the workers defying the government in an illegal
strike, mass wildcat strikes by other unions, and significant support from
the public, the labour bureaucracy has signed a deal containing a 15% wage
cut. This was done behind the backs of the workers and currently reports are
coming in of strikers vowing to stay on the lines in defiance of the
government and their "leaders".
Hospital ancillary workers, mainly women and members of immigrant
communities, represented by the Hospital Employees Union (HEU) have faced
the brunt of the attacks by the BC Liberal government. Their demands were no
contracting out and no wage cuts. However, under modern capitalism even
asking for the status-quo is a revolutionary act. 
Upon coming into power the BC Liberals, led by Gordon Campbell, instituted a
$2 billion tax cut with the majority going to the rich and corporations. To
finance this tax cut the workers were asked to sacrifice, and if asking did
not do the job then conditions would be imposed. The Liberals passed
legislation that ripped up the HEU's collective agreement by removing any
protection from contracting out ancillary hospital work to non-union firms.
This was despite the fact that Gordon Campbell had promised not to do this
in the HEU's own newsletter prior to the election. This act prompted mass
demonstrations, chants of "Liar, Liar!" and the call for illegal job action.

The leaders however vacillated and did nothing despite the fact that the
very existence of the union was in jeopardy if all its work was contracted
out. One year ago the HEU leadership attempted to broker a deal outside the
normal contract cycle in order to lessen the effect of contracting out. They
recommended to the membership a contract with a 15% wage cut and a cap of
"only" 5000 jobs contracted out. The workers correctly rejected this deal by
57% due to opposition to the wage cut and the belief that it was impossible
to believe anything this government said. Having been defeated in their
attempt at moderation the HEU leadership was forced to take the road of
militancy. The HEU's contract expired April 1, 2004, setting the stage for a
confrontation with the government.
Canadian capitalism is at a crossroads. Federal, Provincial, and Municipal
governments are all following the dictates of their corporate masters and
are attempting to cut back on public expenditure (read: jobs and services).
In Canada 17.5% of the population are public employees, compared with 14.6%
in the USA and 12.6% in Britain (down 7% in a decade). Assuming relatively
constant wages, this puts the Canadian capitalists at a disadvantage when it
comes to keeping their profits. They are faced with the choice of attacking
public sector workers or seeing their international market share shrink. It
is the capitalist system that forces the government to act this way - if
they try to keep people happy the economy suffers; if they attempt to
improve competitiveness they incite revolt. The BC Liberals have chosen
class war and the health workers have answered their challenge.
The strike begins
On April 24, the HEU pulled its workers and set up pickets at all of the
hospitals in British Columbia. Essential service workers were allowed to
cross, however elective surgeries and diagnostic tests were cancelled as
nurses respected the picket lines. The employer was insisting on a contract
with 100 pages of roll-backs including a 15% wage cut and no barriers to
contracting out. At this point 6000 jobs had been lost to multinational
firms such as Sodexo and Aramark which pay their workers $10/hr compared
with the union wage of $18. They justified this by saying, "Why should a
hospital cleaner get any more than other cleaners on minimum wage?", the
union members asked back, "Have you ever tried to clean a SARS ward?"
Everybody was expecting the workers to be legislated back to work. Despite
its "progressive" reputation and labour laws, Canadian governments have been
resorting to a nasty little tactic. When the workers are on strike in a key
industry, and the resolve of the workers is such that it is only a matter of
time until they win, governments have passed emergency legislation to remove
the right to strike and enforce a contract or arbitration on the workers.
Unions that defy the legislation face fines and imprisonment. 
The Campbell Liberal government has used back-to-work legislation more often
than any government in history and has even earned a rebuke from the ILO for
its undemocratic behaviour. This tactic is especially useful when a
government wants to impose cutbacks. We recently saw 20,000 Newfoundland
public employees legislated back after over 3 weeks on strike in the largest
strike in the history of the province. Even though this act prompted the
largest demonstration ever in Newfoundland, the leaders hung their heads and
said "we must respect the law". We wonder where we would be today if the
pioneers of the labour movement had held the same position when even forming
a union was illegal. This time the movement had learnt that legislation can
be defied. The first to defy legislation were workers at the University of
British Columbia who went on 2 days of illegal strike in March 2003 and
gained concessions. Next the ferry workers illegally shut down the system
and forced the government to compromise. Both sides knew that the HEU strike
would be make or break for both sides.
Workers defy legislation
As expected the BC Liberals legislated the workers on April 28. After an
all-night sitting Bill 37 was passed at 5am the following morning. The bill
passed was pure spite aimed at teaching the workers a lesson for rejecting
the previous deal. It removed the right to strike and imposed a contract on
the workers. The contract contained a 15% wage rollback, no limits on
contracting out. The wage cut was retroactive to April 1, so the workers
would also have to pay back the money they were "overpaid"! In response
Chris Allnutt for the HEU declared the workers would stay out until they had
a fair settlement. Finally a lead had been given and the workers answered
the call enthusiastically. Spontaneously, 800 hydroelectric dam workers
walked off the job in sympathy. Workers across the province had been waiting
for the opportunity to oppose the Liberals and this was it. Barry O'Neill of
CUPE BC declared that CUPE's planned one-day walkout (see previous article:
Canada: CUPE BC One-Day Walkout - Full marks for effort - method has
problems.
<http://www.marxist.ca/Documents/Labour/CUPE_BC_One-Day_Walkout.htm> ) would
be called for Monday, May 3. Many CUPE locals could not wait for Monday and
20,000 workers struck Friday, April 30 closing down some schools and
municipal services. Other wildcats were reported in CEP and IWA pulp, paper,
and saw mills - for the first time spreading the strike to the private
sector. Even the flow of beer was endangered as Molson and Labatt
distribution centres were picketed! "GENERAL STRIKE! GENERAL STRIKE!" was
the popular chant on the pickets. The stage was set for a massive May Day
demonstration.
Vancouver has no real tradition of May Day which is normally put on by
immigrant groups and the left. Last weekend 6000 marched in a very militant
parade. While this may sound small by European standards, one must take into
consideration the fact that most of the workers were still on picket lines.
Jim Sinclair of the BC Federation of Labour (BC Fed) attempted to walk a
fine line between denouncing the Liberals and not getting people too riled
up. He spoke of the need for discipline, workers must follow the leaders.
While most workers were enthused by the spontaneous walkouts the labour
bureaucracy was clearly afraid of losing control. Every time a chant of
"General Strike" was begun the speakers attempted to drown it out and
discourage it. An acceptable chant initiated from the stage was "We wont
back down!". 
In the event of no deal a mass walkout was being planned for Monday, May 3
with escalating action throughout the week. In addition to 43,000 HEU
strikers, 70,000 CUPE municipal, schools and university workers were to go
out, plus 40,000 teachers, Stelco Steelworkers, and the recently privatized
BC Rail amongst others. In total this would represent over 30% of unionized
workers in the province - the revolution would start Monday morning, 6
o'clock. All the right wing pundits (both outside and within the labour
movement) continuously warned, "Don't go too far or you'll scare away public
support" and they said this before the strike, before the illegal strike,
before the solidarity strikes, and before the general strike. But the best
the corporate press could do was print the complaints of a right wing couple
living across the street from the hospital who said they were sick of
hearing car horns honking in support of the workers at all times of the day.
The workers were solid.
The anatomy of a sell-out
With the chants of "We wont back down" ringing in their ears the labour
bureaucracy started working on a compromise that would avoid the
confrontation that they feared so much. The first evidence of the betrayal
came from the Provincial New Democratic Party's new leader Carole James (see
article for background: British Columbia NDP: Bureaucracy maintains
stranglehold - Left builds support for future battles
<http://www.marxist.com/canada/bcndp_elections.html> ). She said that while
she wanted Bill 37 to be repealed the government should "at least address
the issues of retroactivity and a cap on contracting out". The right wing of
the movement feared that a general strike would hurt them electorally so
they wanted it nipped in the bud with a face saving formula. Secret talks
began between the government and the union bosses with there being 2 main
barriers - the right wing of the BC Liberals who want to teach the workers a
lesson, and secondly the workers themselves not keen on being sacrificed at
the altar of electoral expediency and reverence for the bourgeois state. One
can be sure that the threat of $470,000 per day fines for illegal strikes
weighed heavily on the minds of the labour leaders when they eyed their
$100,000+ paycheques, expense accounts, and courtesy cars. 
The hotheads in cabinet were won over to the reality of what could be a
historic working class movement and eventually the deal was presented by a
dishevelled looking Jim Sinclair at 11pm Sunday, May 2. All he could say was
that it was a good deal for patients! The strike was called off by the
leaders of the BC Fed, HEU and CUPE without a vote or any form of
consultation with the workers. The new deal removes the retroactivity
component and caps contracting out to an additional 600 workers over 2 years
(in addition to the 6000 already fired). The imposed contract saves $200,000
for the government off 43,000 workers - the same amount as the tax cut given
to the 8000 richest British Columbians.The 15% wage cut remains so this deal
is in fact worse than the one the workers rejected by 57% which would have
had a cap of 5000 fired. The response from the workers was swift; the
following scene played out on TV:
Sandra Giesbrecht, picket captain Royal Jubilee Hospital, speaking to
picketers,
"So I have to know what my members want to do,"
(Response from crowd, "STAY-OUT! STAY-OUT! GENERAL-STRIKE! GENERAL-STRIKE!")
"I don't think we want to be sold down the river by anybody like Jim
Sinclair who sat on a fence for 2 years and did nothing for us. And I say
this to the BC Fed, the HEU, and any other union leaders who are listening -
we have the fortitude to stay out as long as it takes"
(Cheers!)
We are hearing reports of similar statements from hospitals across the
province and strikers are fanning out to contact each other to bolster the
lines. When HEU president Fred Muzin told Surrey hospital workers to remove
the pickets he was apparently told to "f--- off".
Crisis of leadership
Leon Trotsky explained that the crisis of modern society has been reduced to
the crisis of working class leadership. Carole James, Jim Sinclair, and the
other parliamentary cretinists in the leadership of the NDP and the Unions
fear the workers far more than they fear the capitalists. In fact, even on a
narrow electoral scheme a movement like the health workers can galvanize the
working class and give the NDP a massive election victory. This is only on
the condition that the NDP backs the workers 110% and adopts a socialist
program that can solve the crisis in healthcare. 
Over the course of one week we saw a revolution in the class-consciousness
of workers in British Columbia. Imagine the impact of 40,000 health workers
campaigning to defeat the Liberal government they hate. The logic of this
movement was a general strike that would bring down the government. Pundits
were already talking of a snap election to decide the issue; this happened
after the British miners strike in 1974 and Labour kicked out the Tories. 
It is not clear that the bureaucrats have the intelligence to think this
far, but the last thing they would want is to be brought to power under
conditions of working class mobilization. As soon as you accept capitalism
you accept defeat. Under conditions of capitalist crisis all governments are
forced to attack the workers, be they social-democratic or neo-liberal. A
mobilized labour movement would not let their leaders betray them so easily
and would prepare the way for new convulsions. A "leader" like Carole James
would not last long under such conditions. Our position would have been to
call for the creation of extended strike committees based on hospitals with
representatives from local work places and community groups to spread the
strike and provide democratic leadership, thereby preventing the betrayal. 
Capitalism is demonstrably incapable of guaranteeing the status quo for
workers, even in an apparently rich country like Canada. If workers want to
improve their standing they must break with capitalism and join the fight
for socialism. The last few days have shown how important leadership is to
success or failure, so we cannot leave the movement at the mercy of class
betrayers. Over the last week the workers put in enough sacrifice and
courage to overthrow this rotten government and make the first steps on the
road to overthrow capitalism. The battle is set back but not yet over and
the workers may even turn this around despite the betrayal. The small forces
of Marxism in Canada, around the paper L'Humanité <http://www.marxist.ca/> ,
are working to ensure the movement has the leadership it needs to achieve
victory. We call on all those who burn at the betrayal and want justice for
working people to join us.
May 2, 2004
L'Humanité Editorial Board
lhumanite at newyouth.com 
http://www.marxist.com/canada/canada_gs_betrayed.html 

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