Zellers workers on Target for their rights

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Scores of labour activists converged on a quiet business park in Mississauga (west of Toronto) on Aug. 22 to deliver a message to Target Stores CEO Gregg Steinhafel. The American retail giant recently bought out more than 100 for­ mer Zellers stores in a takeover deal, leaving at least 12,000 jobless.

The Stephen Harper Conservative federal government approved the takeover this year without ensuring that any of those workers would keep ... Shorten workweek (continued from page 7: “Shorten the workweek with no loss of pay!”) els of high unemployment as a key issue behind revolts from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy movement, however, has not yet put forward any de­ mands around worktime or jobs (not even on the May Day anniversary). At the moment the campaign getting most attention in OWS circles is its “Strike Debt” effort, an attempt to organize mass repudiation of individual debt. And for its one-year anniversary action on Sept. 17, OWS is planning another mass action targeting Wall Street—but again, with no specific demands around jobs, hours, income, or services.

In discussions leading up to the joint OWS/union/ community group May Day actions this year, when some activists raised the need for jobs and public works, a common response from anarchists was “we don’t want to work—work sucks!” These same activists argued for creating a society without alienation and without ex­ ploitation—but with no suggestion of how to get there, of how to make work shorter, less alienating, of how to their jobs, much less retain their hard-earned benefits and seniority.

“What they’re saying to you is this is going to be the fate of all workers in this country and this province in the years to come,” said Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan. “This is what we can expect, unless of course, the labour movement gets its act to­ gether.” Ryan’s dire warning could not be more pertinent. This predatory takeover, just like the flight of a Cat­ erpillar diesel engine plant from Lon­ don, Ontario to union-busting Indiana earlier this year, is a reminder of the increasingly precarious nature of work in the capitalist system.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union is challenging the dis­ missal of the few unionized workers in this sector, trying to invoke “succes­ sor rights” as Target takes control of re-integrate work into a rational life for a new humanity.

Certainly, Marxists share these anarchists’ resentment of our alienation from our productive capacities, from our loved ones, from nature. Such a radical stance is hardly news: Marx already in the “Economic and Philo­ sophical Manuscripts of 1844” was writing of the need of humanity, as individuals and as a species, to overcome estrangement from itself, from what it does and makes, and from nature. And Marx had already pinpointed the origin of that estrangement in workers’ separation from their means of production and reproduction, and their resulting dependence for survival on the ability to work for others, specifically for the ruling class.

This hatred of alienation shared by socialist and an­ archists is also visible in our common literary heritage, for instance the portraits of society’s potential so won­ derfully painted in the fiction of William Morris, Char­ lotte Perkins Gilman, Marge Piercy and others. And the withering scorn of Paul Lafargue’s 1880 “The Right to be Lazy” shows that Marxists will take a back seat to no one in our disdain for bourgeois society’s work ethic— and in our ability to chuckle along with Lafargue at the follies of working people when we mindlessly pay hom­ the Zellers chain. But employers’ more frequent use of strike-breaking legis­ lation and other anti-union laws are making the legal system less and less a recourse for pursuing any justice for workers.

Militant talk must be matched by more militant action, including mass pickets that shut down anti-worker en­ terprises. Only then will workers real­ ize their power. n age to that ideology.

What distinguishes Marxists is that we have a program, a strategy, a set of tactics for trying to turn such utopian visions into reality. Marxists support the fight against debt, but also recognize that debt is a symptom, not a cause, of exploitation. We start instead from the root of capital’s profits—production and reproduction—and propose a program to workers that will allow them to build on current struggles for fewer hours, more jobs, better pay, and benefits to the point where they can see the connection with the fight for a radically transformed society. Such struggles are, in fact, at the core of the ac­ tivities of the OWS Labor Alliance and its components.

We will be participating in the one-year anniversary demonstrations of Occupy Wall Street against the bank­ ers and corporate moguls who keep us enslaved on and off the jobs. And on that day and going forward, we will deepen the discussion of how to spread the worldwide uprising fighting for a society in which the duration, character, and fruits of labor are determined by those doing the work, not by the anarchic laws of the existing system or by those who profit from it without working themselves. n SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2012 9

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“Compliance,” a dramatic film based on true events, written and directed by Craig Sobel. With Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Philip Ettinger, and Pat Healy.

T film, “Compliance,” has the The shocking, cringe-worthy look of a cinema verité docu­ mentary. It takes place in a strip-mall fast-food restaurant; there are prob­ lems of spoiled food due to employee negligence and a shortage of work­ ers.

Sandra (Ann Dowd), the manager, a stressed-out, middle-age woman, gets a phone call from a man saying that he is “Police Officer Daniels” (Pat Healy), who unfortunately can’t directed, step-by step searches tanta­ mount to those perpetrated on prison­ ers suspected of concealing contraband in bodily orifices. Daniels rewards Van for conducting the most egregious search with a sex act by Becky.

You ask yourself why Sandra and the others allowed this to happen. People are conditioned through religion, edu­ cation, and government to obey the law and not to question authority.

The man spoke convincingly, repeat­ edly stating that he was an officer of the law, asking, “Don’t you want to do the right thing?” “Help me out here,” and “The sooner you do this, the sooner it’ll all be over,” interspersed with threats.

Can we use the message of the film to explain how tyrannical, imperialistic governments gain control of their citi­