CSF: Only right wing would gain from student federation split

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NDP: McQuaid nomination challenges Mulcair’s policies 10 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2013 With the Quebec student strikes still fresh in mind, one would expect a push for solidarity in student unions to fight austerity measures and tuition hikes. Sadly, the op­ posite seems to be the case. Before the fall semester, stu­ dents from 15 different universities across the Canadian state campaigned to get their local student unions to leave the Canadian Federation of Students.

The CFS was formed in 1981. It has been a critical tool for organizing cross-country activities to protest rising fees. Originally the CFS was identified with grassroots actions and advanced working-class demands for the ab­ olition of tuition fees. However, by the mid-1990s what was once a meeting place for progressive student activ­ ists had turned into a vehicle for careerist liberals. Many of these careerists sought to downplay radical demands and weaken the CFS as a forum for student union or­ ganizing. Under an increasingly opportunist leadership, the CFS became riddled with corruption, including such practices as ballot box stuffing. CFS activism shrivelled.

This altered somewhat in the spring of 2012, when tens of thousands of Quebecois students hit the streets against the tuition increases imposed by the Jean Charest Que­ bec Liberal government. The CFS rose from hibernation and supported the Quebec students; it even dusted off its old demands for free-post secondary education. As the Quebec student strikes evolved into a general movement against austerity, the CFS claimed it sought to reform its own top-down style of conventions comprised of dele­ gates, and replace it with the Quebecois system of gener­ The author is an assembly line worker at Ford Oakville, and was candidate for Uni­ for president on Aug 31.

As a 15-year member of the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW), I couldn’t buy the line that my union was merging with the Communication, Energy and Paper Workers Union (CEP) just to have greater strength in numbers. The labour movement already had the numbers; what it needs is greater solidarity in action. So why this merger to form Unifor?

The CAW name was tarnished for many reasons, not just the lack of democracy and vision, or the plague of appointed reps, or nepotism and tokenism. It was also because of the 2009 auto bailouts in exchange for massive concessions, and for not support­ ing any other workers.

Here are two examples from my own ex­ perience: (1) My Local (now Unifor Local 707) president tried to get a court injunction against the CEP-represented workers at the Ford Oakville Assembly Complex, both in 2006 against an information picket line they set up, and in 2010 for being locked out by the company, instead of supporting those workers and blaming the company. (2) The Local invited Lisa Raitt, the former federal Minister of Labour, to the union hall as a guest speaker after her government had leg­ islatively broken the strike of Air Canada and CP Rail workers.

The merger also provided an opportunity for the founding unions to rewrite their con­ stitutions and tighten up their Policies and Procedures. Which is exactly what they did. The new Unifor constitution protects the National Officers a little more, it reduces the role of the Public Review Board, diminish­ es the appeal procedure for members who want to grieve decisions, and it allows the union to collect dues from laid-off workers who have found other jobs to help them pay bills while they are waiting for a return to work call from their employer. Back in 2009, during the auto industry bailouts, the CAW was not prepared with a plan. It has yet to come up with a vision, other than the Auto Policy Plan, which is full of absurdities, often enacted at the ex­ pense of other industries and taxpayers. At the Unifor founding convention, officials made claims about union renewal and mov­ ing forward. So why didn’t the National Officers, who brag about their experience and knowledge, implement a measure of democracy at the initial convention? It was an opportunity to implement One Member One Vote, and to invite nomina­ tions for the new 25 National Executive Board positions elected at the convention. But this didn’t happen. Retiring National Officers declared it wasn’t the right time— an excuse I’ve been hearing for 15 years. However, I did get nominated by Bruce Allen, Vice President of former CAW Lo­ cal 199 and one of the most outspoken mili­ tants. I proudly accepted. Never in CAW history had the top positions been contested. It was necessary that Unifor’s first National President be elected instead of following the usual practice where people at the top pick and choose the people at the top. With a modest grassroots leaflet and only four minutes to speak, I managed to snag 17.49% of the vote. That sent a strong mes­ sage that members want change at the top. It hopefully set the precedent that these posi­ tions in future will be contested. The other 24 nominees, all promoted by the National Officers of both unions, were acclaimed. Acclamation should be a dirty word in an organization that purports to be democratic. In 2012 many autoworkers were hoping for a strike. But a strike was avoided by hyping threats of plant closures, followed by more frightful concessions. Unifor has since “moved forward” by ratifying the same massive concessions for GM Cami workers. It accepted that the “supplemen­ tals” in those bargaining units will now be­ come full time—but with a 10-year phasein period to reach the top pay rate, so these workers will be working nearly 15 years al assemblies that encouraged all students to participate. Sadly, the promises of the CFS leadership never mate­ rialized. It has been over a year and not a single student protest has been organized by the CFS. There has been no move to adopt Quebec’s more democratic institutions. Indeed, the idea of a Quebec-like student strike spread­ ing to English Canada has been condemned by the CFS, which claims it would be divisive, since the student body is “not ready yet.” This is where we see some of the basis for the split emerging.

Despite the threats voiced by various spokespersons for the students seeking to disaffiliate from the CFS, it seems unlikely that the 6000 to 8000 signatures needed at Ry­ erson University to cause a referendum on this issue will be gathered.

Ryerson Student Union President Melissa Palermo ex­ pressed surprise that students would even consider such a move. “We have had such widespread support across Ryerson for what we are doing with the CFS,” Palermo told Socialist Action. She said that despite the many flaws of the CFS, it still provides post-secondary students with a variety of services, such as the community food rooms. Right-wing students tried to push disaffiliation in 2009, and the RSU is confident it will fail again.

However, the last split effort does pose key questions: Why and how can this be done? It seems clear that those who support the split want to form a new student union, but they seem to have no plan to accomplish it. There is no broad, grassroots organization working to unite those who want to create a new union.

Part of the problem is the political makeup of the split before they achieve it. And they will never receive the same benefits as those on the first tier. This is shameful.

Unifor’s new National President, Jerry Dias, was at the Ford Plant in Oakville on Sept. 19 along with Lisa Raitt, now federal Minister of Transportation, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, and company executives to celebrate the $135 million in taxpayers’ money to bribe the car bosses to retool for new product lines. Sadly, this P.R. Exercise came on the heels of Unifor Local 707’s By BARRY WEISLEDER When close to 400 New Democrats crowded a YMCA auditorium on Sept. 14 to choose Linda McQuaig to be their candidate in the Toronto Centre federal by-election, they bucked a trend. The trend is exemplified by federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s embrace of the status quo: pipelines to the east, pro-Is­ raeli apartheid foreign policy, reliance on the private sector to generate jobs, and no new taxes on big corporations and the super-rich.

Particularly on the latter point, Mulcair now has a vocal challenger—one with a good chance of joining his parliamentary caucus. The labour-based NDP placed a close second to the Liberal Party in the riding in the May 2011 general election.

Linda McQuaig, former Toronto Star columnist and author of many books on economic inequality, proclaimed af­ ter her nomination victory in Toronto’s downtown core that she has no intention of backing down. “They should pay more,” she told the Huffington Post on Sept. 16. Over the the ether.”

The prevalence of anarchist misconceptions on or­ ganizing without leadership, and so-called “diversity of tactics” (which all too often means no planning and condoning the actions of a substitutionist, violent minor­ ity) means that there is no plan to replace the CFS with a superior structure. Plus, there is no attempt to build a movement inside the CFS to address the corruption, un­ accountability, and lack of internal democracy—even as part of a plan to build a better and separate union. And with no visible organization, or coordination, those wishing to leave the CFS will either be left to their own devices, and substantially weaker. Less effective equiva­ lents to the CFS could emerge, or a disjointed and isola­ tionist political landscape for student unions may result. The CFS is a union and it should be treated accordingly. There should be an organized fight within it. Only as a last ditch effort, and provided that there is a mass base for real change, and only if the route to internal democratic change is totally barred, should a split be contemplated. Youth for Socialist Action argues that there should be a fight within the CFS to push its leadership to the left, or to replace it and return the CFS to its democratic roots as a bottom up organization. In addition, the local student unions should encourage its members to get involved in campaigns for social justice, such as the “drop tuition fees” and “abolish student debt” campaigns, the Justice for Sammy movement, opposition to war spending and social cuts, and the fight for affordable housing and free mass public transit.

Youth for Socialist Action contends that it is vital to show the connection between the attack on the students’ movement and the corporate austerity drive. To fight in­ side, as well as outside the CFS, is the only way the stu­ dents’ movement can hope to win against the capitalist rulers and their anti-student, anti-worker agenda.

fundraising for school supplies.

These latest examples show why the union needs to be independent of, and not a lobbyist for, the government and corpo­ rations, because the outcome of subservient lobbying is almost always in favour of the employers and not workers.

Unifor needs to acknowledge the dissen­ sion in the rank and file and come up with a vision to bring the “supplemental” and lower waged workers up to a living wage, and address the plight of youth unemploy­ ment and underemployment, to truly move forward. It will not thrive if it refuses to lead the fights workers are facing now. n past 20 to 30 years the very rich have got richer, but the proportion of taxes they pay has dropped. “We definitely need higher taxes on the rich,” she said. “First of all, we need the revenue to do what we want to do and, second of all, we need a better distribution of income in the coun­ try. We’ve developed too big a gap be­ tween the rich and the poor.”

McQuaig co-authored a book with Neil Brooks, “The Trouble with Billionaires,” calling for steep marginal tax rate in­ creases of 60 per cent for the rich (those earning above $500,000 a year’ and 70 per cent for the super-rich (those earning $2.5 million a year) in order to address income inequality in Canada.

The problem right now, McQuaig said, is that the top marginal rate kicks in at about $135,000 at the federal level but stays flat after that. “So, whether you are earning $135,000 or $1.5 million or $3 million, you pay the same top marginal tax rate,” she said. But Mulcair has cat­ egorically ruled out taxing the very rich.

While McQuaig is no anti-capitalist, her articulate, well-documented, and (continued on page 8, in “Scoring the AFL-CIO convention: Style — 10, Substance — zero”)

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By ROBBIE MAHOOD