News and views from SA Canada Bosses’ drive for concessions can be stopped — Ford workers must say NO!
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Canada. Canadian Auto Workers’ President Ken Lewenza is deep in discussions with Joe Hinrichs, vice-president of global manufacturing and labour affairs for Ford. The automobile giant employs about 7000 workers at plants in Oakville, St. Thomas, and Windsor, Ontario.
Ford wants labour concessions comparable but not necessarily identical to those given by the union for some 20,000 GM and Chrysler workers in Canada. These will include, though not be limited to a freeze on wages and pensions, an extension of the two-tier wage structure, contracting out of some inplant work, cuts to vacation time, and reduced benefits until 2012.
GM and Chrysler demanded concessions as a convenient condition to receive almost $15 billion in loans from the federal and Ontario governments amid the industry’s worst sales slump in decades. Ford asked for up to $2 billion in a line of credit last December, but later withdrew the request. Still, it demands the rollbacks to ‘remain competitive’.
When the next deal is done, Ford autoworkers will be asked by the CAW tops to ratify it. Anyone paying attention can see that this has nothing to do with ‘economic recovery’, and has everything to do with lowering workers’ living and work standards, and raising profit margins, for the anticipated post-depression period.
This pattern is now evident in numerous disputes, from strikes involving railway car builders in Hamilton to civic employees in Windsor and Toronto to newspaper workers in Montreal. Windsor city workers have been on picket lines for over 10 weeks as of early July.
Toronto’s 24,000 inside workers and 6200 outside workers, including garbage collectors, walked off the job on June 22. The strike was provoked by city bosses who insist on clawing back long standing sick leave benefits and seniority rights, and on providing a lower pay raise than the city gave several other a looking for something better. Otherwise, they would have replaced Rodney MacDonald’s Tories with Stephen McNeil’s Liberals, as they have done so often in the past. Keep in mind that the conservative policies of the British Columbia NDP helped to re-elect the right wing B.C. Liberal government of Gordon Campbell in mid-May.
The Nova Scotia election result challenges the claim that voters are turning to the right everywhere. But the question remains: what will the NSNDP do with this victory? If it makes Capital pay for the crisis created by big business and the banks, the NDP will win the admiration and support of the working class and poor. If, like the treacherous Bob Rae-led NDP government in Ontario 1990-1995, it places the burden of ‘recovery’ on the shoulders of workers, women, youth and the unemployed, it will leave little behind other than wrecked public services and a very bad taste.
Another important lesson from the Ontario Rae-days is that labour and the social movements should not give the Dexter team a honeymoon of any duration. Now is the time to press Nova Scotia’s first NDP government to tax the rich and move quickly to provide jobs, housing, and decent incomes for all who need them.
Ford plant in Oakville, near Toronto. Like GM & Chrysler, Ford now seeks a wage freeze and other givebacks.
groups of municipal workers. These anti-concessions strikes are a crucial test of wills that labour cannot afford to lose.
Yet another battle taking shape is at the Globe and Mail newspaper, where union members voted 97 per cent in favour of a strike. The Globe workers could be out soon because management is seeking to reduce the wages of 30 per cent of the staff, and to cut up to 50 per cent in pension benefits for future retirees.
While officials at the Canadian Labour Congress and its major affiliates limply campaign to ‘fix E.I.’, ‘protect pensions’ and ‘put people before banks’, a more proactive struggle to reject backward steps and to make capital pay for its crisis is sorely needed.
One positive sign now comes from members of Air Canada’s technical, maintenance, and operational support unit. On June 30 the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced that its largest Air Canada bargaining unit voted 50.8 per cent to reject a deal reached in early June that would freeze pensions and wages for 21 months.
If Ford workers, who are in a stronger position than many on the economic battle front, say no to the latest round of concession demands, it would be a powerful indictment of the policies of the CAW leadership and might have an electrifying effect on the entire workers’ movement. It could be a positive turning point. That is why socialists and militant unionists are campaigning for a clear and resounding “no” vote at Ford. n While CBC-TV fatuously reported that only 500 demonstrated, in fact nearly 2000 people rallied and marched on June 13 in downtown Toronto at the call of the regional labour council to demand “Good Jobs For All” and to Fix E.I., Protect Pensions, Strengthen Public Services, and Put People Before Banks.
After a selection of labour activists addressed the crowd at Metro Hall, the assembly paraded through the financial district, concluding in a rally outside the Delta Chelsea Hotel, the scene of a bitter labour dispute with hotel management.
The only party banner that expressed political slogans directed specifically to the current economic crisis and which offered socialist solutions was that of Socialist Action. The SA banner read: “No Corporate Bail-out! Make Capital Pay for the Crisis. Nationalize Auto, Steel & Big Banks—Under Workers’ Control!”
Meanwhile, the local labour scene is heating up. Toronto is presently seized by a major civic workers’ strike. Workers barricaded entrances to an auto parts manufacturing plant slated to close in Ajax, east of Toronto, demanding severance pay and salaries owed.
The need to step up the struggle against the employers’ offensive on a wide scale, and indeed, to put the failed system of global capitalism on trial is sharply posed. That is precisely what the NDP Socialist Caucus endeavors to do at the federal NDP convention in Halifax in mid-August.
— B.W.