The Canadian National Newspaper: Canadian Labour Congress Convention reveals a stagnant course of bureaucratized egomania over passionate labour movement activism

Canadian Labour Congress Convention reveals a stagnant course of bureaucratized egomania over passionate labour movement activism

In the lengthening shadows of economic recession, debilitating labour concessions, and a global food crisis, the 25th Constitutional Convention of the Canadian Labour Congress convened, and was marked mostly by platitudes, policies and plans devoid of action. Over 1800 delegates assembled in Toronto, representing 31 international unions, 14 national unions, 7 provincial unions, 12 provincial labour federations and 130 municipal labour councils. But the presence of hundreds of empty chairs in the hall was a glaring reminder, throughout the May 26-30 gathering, of labour’s deepening disarray.

The major absentee was the huge delegation of the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), the umbrella organization of the provincial public service unions including the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union. NUPGE delegates were not seated due to a dispute over an attempt by the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) to raid the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, a NUPGE affiliate. Rather than punish the raiders, CLC officials suspended the complainant for withholding a portion of its dues to the CLC to cover the cost of repelling the raid.

This was symptomatic of a much larger malaise – bureaucratic inaction in the face of declining wages and living standards, disappearing manufacturing jobs, shrinking union density, and shrivelling union democracy.

On the eve of the Convention, about 200 delegates responded to the call of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council to discuss its widely circulated “Action Agenda: To Build Labour Power in the 21st Century.” The document proposes a number of progressive reforms (card-check union certification, restriction of temporary agencies, adequate funding of labour councils), offers some vague sentiments (on peace, fair trade, minimum wage and organizing) – all set in a context of Canadian nationalism and illusions of a more ‘green’ capitalist economy.

But the weakness of the “Action Agenda” is not limited to its political perspective. Just as bad is its proponents’ reliance upon the good will of the existing labour leadership. This was reflected in their failure to mount an election challenge to CLC President Ken Georgetti or to any member of his out-going executive – all of whom were re-elected by acclamation.

At the 2005 CLC Convention in Montreal, Communications Energy and Paperworkers’ activist Carol Wall ran against Georgetti. On a shoe-string budget and a robust reform agenda, she garnered 38 per cent of the delegates’ votes. Her campaign inspired hope in many that a cross-union, rank and file, left opposition movement would arise. Unfortunately, in the absence of a clear, militant programme and a commitment to challenge the current labour leadership from the bottom up, such a movement did not materialize. This year’s Action Agenda group did not even purport to offer the needed political alternative or direction, and thus it had almost no discernable impact on the convention.

Since labour bureaucrats specialize in denial and damage control, this CLC gathering was another showcase for their dubious talents. Instead of dealing with internal raiding and pro-management sweet-heart deals, they talked about “rogue unions” operating outside the CLC (i.e. the tiny, pro-employer Christian Labour Association of Canada), and in very general terms, they targeted the right wing business agenda of governments and employers.

A number of high-powered speakers addressed the convention, including Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives top economist Armine Yalnizyan, David Suzuki Foundation speaker Dale Marshall, and Saskatchewan NDP Leader Lorne Calvert, who spoke on the topic of a needed universal public drug plan, Pharmacare.

A number of policy papers lambasted the corporate agenda and its consequences, including: the growing income gap, the denial of equality to women, the lack of justice for aboriginal peoples, and the severe threat posed to humanity’s future by environmental destruction.

In one shining moment, delegates rose to applaud, many moved to tears, as the CLC bestowed its Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity to Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Eighty-five and frail, Morgentaler accepted the award and thanked unions for standing with him in the long struggle to secure for women the right to choose abortion.

The CLC reaffirmed its support for the New Democratic Party, but failed to address the weakness of NDP economic and environmental policies, or the major obstacle to electing an NDP federal government which stems from the party’s estrangement from the Quebec labour movement and the national aspirations of Quebecois workers.

The seemingly most radical resolution adopted at the convention was one demanding nationalization of the oil industry, although it was couched in terms of the need to regulate fuel prices and restrict the sale of energy resources abroad.

A heated discussion on CLC structure (including the problems of union raiding and inadequate funding of small labour councils) produced only a special task force which may suggest changes as to how the CLC functions.

Official CLC evening forums on Human Rights, Women, Youth and International Solidarity showcased good speakers and interesting information, but were divorced from any strategy – thus reduced to a kind of ‘show and tell’ exercise.

Indeed, absent from all of the progressive adopted policy papers and resolutions was any active connection to actual social struggles now occurring (such as aboriginal land-claim protests, or the fight against job loss in the auto sector, or the effort to provide sanctuary in Canada for U.S. war resisters, or the growing global campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid).

Missing, moreover, was a strategy to establish a workers’ government that would put human needs and a sustainable environment before private profits.

On the positive side of the ledger, a significant minority of delegates demonstrated their interest in exemplary struggles and in radical ideas.

Over a hundred packed an evening forum organized by the Canadian Peace Alliance to hear Clarence Thomas, a leading member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco. On May 1, 2008, 25,000 members of the ILWU took strike action against the Iraq war, shutting down thirty ports on the U.S. west coast. Another fifty delegates met at a Labour for Palestine forum to hear Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions representative Manawel Abdul Al, and President of the Haitian Workers’ Federation Paul Loulou Chery, describe struggles against foreign occupation and for workers’ rights in their homelands.

Delegates bought over 150 copies of Socialist Action newspaper during the convention, along with a small number of SA booklets and one subscription to the paper. But the idea of a class struggle caucus in the CLC and across its major affiliates is still the music of the future.

Today, "concessions bargaining" is the norm in the face of employer aggressiveness. In the de-regulated private sector (where, for example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) swept aside the U.S.-Canada Auto Pact rules that tied market access to investment levels), major industrial unions like the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) now lobby government to subsidize the auto giants in order to attract investment. This perspective undermines workers’ independence from management, and weakens arguments against speed-up and wage/benefit concessions demanded in the interest of ‘global competitiveness’.

Likewise, in telecommunications, in steel, in food and retail, similar pressures are bearing down on workers to agree to forced overtime, reduced pensions and a two-tier wage structure. While Steelworkers at Stelco in Hamilton resisted a company pension default, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) agreed to major concessions to Canadian food retailer Loblaws (supposedly to help Loblaws be competitive with WalMart).

During Air Canada’s bankruptcy crisis, instead of demanding re-nationalization of the flagship carrier and re-regulation of the industry, the CAW and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) gave major wage and work rule concessions, though they did manage to hang onto pensions.

One concession leads to another. In the April 2006 edition of Socialist Action newspaper, Bruce Allen reported on the CAW’s “shelf agreement” with General Motors in Oshawa to reduce time off the job via reduced work-break times, and to out-source 400 non-skilled maintenance and construction jobs, thus ending the closed shop at GM Oshawa. Those concessions spread far and wide.

The early May 2008 CAW agreement with Ford, followed quickly with deals at GM and Chrysler, are consequent, even if breath-taking by comparison. New workers will receive only 70 per cent of full wages and move to 100 per cent after three years. (New hires now start at 85 per cent of full wages and rise to 100 per cent after two years.) Wages of current workers will be frozen for three years and a cost of living allowance is suspended until the end of 2009.

Workers lose one week of vacation pay annually and pay more for medical drugs. Lump sum bonuses replace increases in the wage structure. CAW President Buzz Hargrove may call these moves “off-sets”, but they amount to concessions by any other name, and they accelerate the shift to a two-tier structure. Hargrove’s former executive assistant Sam Gindin calls the latest contract round “panic bargaining”. The effect is devastating for all workers.

Equally breathtaking was Hargrove’s deal with billionaire Frank Stronach at Magna in which the CAW abandoned the right to strike and the right of workers who join the CAW at the auto parts giant to elect their own stewards and negotiators. The so-called Fairness Framework Agreement at Magna is permanent, not temporary.

Finally, just three weeks after extracting the concessionary contract from the CAW, General Motors of Canada Ltd. announced that it will close its Oshawa truck plant, leaving over 2000 auto workers jobless by the fall of 2009, not to mention thousands more without work in Durham region due to the spin-off effects. GM will also close truck plants in Ohio, Wisconsin and Mexico, killing some 10,000 jobs in all. So much for the job-saving effects of ‘realistic’ concessions bargaining.

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