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Precarious work predominates 10 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2013 The protest by Ontario education workers against clawbacks and anti-labour legislation is collapsing like a house of cards built by feckless bureau­ crats.

In spring 2012, a common front of 140,000 teachers and education sup­ port workers stood tall together against Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s two-year wage freeze and his slashing of paid sick leave. Catholic and French school board teachers’ leaders were the first to break ranks. They signed con­ cessionary deals in the summer—with­ out conducting a vote of their members.

The Legislature passed Bill 115 in ear­ The trend towards insecure jobs with no benefits has grown sharp­ ly over the past two decades. A re­ port by McMaster University and the United Way of Toronto (chari­ ty) provides fresh evidence. Issued on Feb. 28, the study shows that barely half of working adults in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamil­ ton, the densely populated arc at the west end of Lake Ontario, have full-time jobs with benefits.

Precarious or insecure work in the region has increased by fifty per cent in 20 years. The phenom­ enon has implications for econom­ ic well-being and job security. Ris­ ing tensions at home and at work are often the result.

Precarious work is common in low-income households. Surpris­ ing to the researchers is “how much precarious work has crept into middle income households,” said McMaster labour and eco­ nomics professor Wayne Lewchuk.

Low-income workers in unsta­ ble jobs are typically employed by temporary agencies that pay minimum wage, with no benefits or security. They can also be found in the fast-food, cleaning, and ser­ vice sectors, and in manufacturing, where they are often “on call” and uncertain of their work hours or ly September. It set a Dec. 31 deadline.

On that date the terms of the Memo­ randum of Agreement accepted by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ As­ sociation would take effect across the education sector, instantly suspend­ ing collective bargaining and the right to strike. Teachers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-On­ tario) launched a court challenge of Bill 115.

Starting in October, the Ontario Sec­ ondary School Teachers’ Federation and the Elementary Teachers’ Federa­ tion of Ontario urged their members to withdraw from extra-curricular activi­ ties (e.g. clubs, sports, field trips, drama and music productions). This tactic weekly schedule. Lack of job se­ curity often makes these workers reluctant to report or refuse work they consider dangerous, the re­ port notes.

The study surveyed 4000 work­ ing adults between the ages of 25 and 65, and conducted in-depth interviews with 100 of them. It is part of a five-year, $1 million research project on precarious employment in southern Ontario, funded by the federal Social Sci­ ences and Humanities Research Council.

Precarious employment com­ pounds the impact of poverty, Lew­ chuk said. Non-whites and new­ comers who’ve been in Canada less than 20 years were more likely to be in insecure work, as were those aged 25 to 35 and those over 55. This kind of employment is putting a dignified retirement increasingly out of reach for millions.

Big business took full advantage of the economic boom and bust periods that bracketed the 2008 crash to increase worker insecu­ rity while padding private profits and extending corporate holdings globally. Associated with the term “neo-liberal agenda,” this drive has had little to do with competitive necessity, and much more to do with greed and political opportu­ nity. n mainly impacted students and parents. Teachers held rallies and picketed Lib­ eral MPP offices. ETFO held rotating regional one-day strikes in December. CUPE caved on Dec. 30. OSSTF prom­ ised a province-wide walk out in Janu­ ary, but backed away when the Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled it illegal and threatened heavy fines.

Then, in late February, OSSTF officials decided to “suspend political action.” This was a totally one-sided “gesture of good will” toward the new Liberal Leader and Premier Kathleen Wynne. But ETFO, and a large number of OSSTF members continue to boycott extracurriculars.

The legal challenge, which will take four years, together with the continu­ ing ETFO action, maintain resistance at a low frequency. The initial battle cry is By BARRY WEISLEDER On the road to merger of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communication, En­ ergy and Paperworkers that will soon cre­ ate Canada’s largest private sector union, what do you suppose is the chief concern of the Communist Party of Canada (CP)? The threat of a bigger top-down bureaucracy? Less membership control? More conces­ sions bargaining?

Nope. The focus of CP concern appears to be … wait for it … affiliation to the NDP.

That’s the thrust of an article in the CP newspaper People’s Voice (Nov. 16-30, 2012) titled “NUP: a step forward or just another merger?” Writer Sam Hammond, referring to the vision statement of the New Union Project, warns that “support for the NDP contains within it the relationship to capitalism itself. The historic resistance of the NDP to coalitions and united front movements is one of sectarianism and class propriety.”

Sadly, the CP scribe has it upside down. The affiliation of the Canadian Labour Con­ gress and major unions to the NDP express­ es working-class antagonism to capitalist rule. The labour link to the NDP was forged in the 1950s and ’60s by breaking union subordination to the Liberal Party. The LP, as every communist ought to know, was the main instrument of Canadian big business political rule in the 20th century.

The idea of building “peoples’ coalitions” comes from the Stalinist playbook of the 1930s. Long since the CP ceased to be com­ munist or revolutionary, it has zigged and reduced to a whimper.

From the start, the real options were clear. Either capitulate to the govern­ ment’s austerity agenda, or defy the an­ ti-labour legislation. A variation, which teachers used to win the right to strike in 1973, is to resign en masse. But mili­ tant mass action was never in the plans of the top brass. OSSTF members didn’t even get to vote on the move to “sus­ pend political action.”

As the education common front dis­ integrated, the emboldened Conserva­ tives under leader Tim Hudak, and a number of media editorialists, began baying for legislation to force teachers to conduct extra-curricular activities.

So you can see it coming. That, plus a permanent ban on strikes in education. And the one way to stop this assault on education workers is just as clear. n zagged between ultra-left rhetoric and lib­ eral coalition politics. It sees “democracy,” not socialism, on the political agenda. And it sees an independent labour party as a barrier to the CP’s twisted ambition to be part of a liberal coalition government—for what?—to protect workers from a “prema­ ture” socialist transformation.

To find evidence for this indictment one need not look far. The CP supported the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois coalition that was thwarted by Harper’s proroguing of Parliament in 2009. In addition, while the Stalinists have long opposed the NDP’s run­ ning a full slate for municipal government, they did endorse the Liberal-NDP regime of Mayor David Miller at Toronto City Hall whose service cuts and tax hikes paved the way for right wing populist Rob Ford.

Finally, in the PV editorial in the very same edition, the following words jump right off the page: “The U.S. election shows that the far right can be blocked at the polls, but this is just the first step in the fight for a better world.”

In other words, Barack Obama, the Ameri­ can imperial war president who bailed out Wall Street while millions lost their homes and savings, is “the first step in the fight for a better world.” Supporting Democrats in the USA, and backing the so-called progres­ sive wing of the Liberal Party in Canada, has long been a specialty of this deformed, exMarxist tendency.

So, how should workers view the CAW-CEP discussion about political action and the NDP? We should see it as a golden oppor­ tunity to extend working-class politics, free of the bosses’ parties, while being fiercely critical of the social democratic leadership, and fighting for a socialist agenda. n

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‘Communists’ irked by unions’ NDP link