Ontario Federation of Labour in Jeopardy

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2015 The $4.5 million budgetary shortfall at the Ontario Federation of Labour, fea­ tured in lurid front-page headlines, is mainly the result of unpaid dues by ma­ jor union affiliates arising from an un­ principled fight between labour bureau­ crats. Sectarian actions by leaders of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, and the Service Employees’ International Union are threatening to destroy the provincial house of labour.

The target of much of the bureaucrats’ petty, unbridled acrimony is OFL Presi­ dent Sid Ryan. He is criticized for the OFL campaign in 2014 that focussed on de­ feating the Tim Hudak-led Ontario Con­ servative Party, which threatened to cut 100,000 public-sector jobs and introduce “right to work” legislation to deprive unions of automatic dues deductions. The concentrated opposition to Hudak and the Tories did detract somewhat from labour’s traditional stance of clear, strong support for the union-based New Democratic Party.

Ryan is also renowned for his pertinent criticisms of the NDP leadership’s antitax populism and its reluctance to join the effort to raise the minimum wage. Ryan is a prominent supporter of con­ troversial but very important campaigns like the pro-Palestine boycott of Israeli apartheid.

On the whole, Sid Ryan is the most pro­ gressive president of the OFL in many de­ cades. The morally unjustifiable conflict within the OFL is weakening the struggle against the austerity agenda of Liberal Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, and could result in a drastic undermining of unions for years to come.

This is a particularly bad time for this kind of division in the labour movement. The political parties of Bay Street are on the move, attacking workers’ right to strike and pushing a brutal auster­ ity agenda by attacking nurses, teachers, and employees in the Ontario Public Ser­ vice.

Ontario unions should find the road to a united fightback by working together to build an effective strategy against the bosses’ agenda. That means supporting the ongoing movement for a $15/hour minimum wage, saying NO to conces­ sions bargaining, rejecting two or threetier wage and benefit structures, giving critical support to the labour-based New Democratic Party, and fighting alongside community organizations against priva­ tization of public services.

These efforts should challenge the en­ tire austerity agenda, not just one as­ pect of it (like the government’s plan to sell the majority public stake in Ontario Hydro). To win, the struggle should em­ ploy the tactic of a province-wide general strike.

OFL represents and links 48 unions. It has the capacity, with militant, democrat­ ic leadership, to turn this province right side up. Labour should unite in action. United we win, divided we beg! n

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activist who is running against incumbent Bruce Harrell. Jeanne Legault stated, “I felt outraged.” She drafted a pe­ tition to have Sawant included in the forum. It was signed by 76 Democrats in the district. After receiving the peti­ ... Sanders (continued from page 1: “‘Leftist’ Sanders seeks Democratic nomination”) oppose the parties of big business (in­ cluding the Democratic Party) are of­ ten ridiculed as purist, finicky, or ide­ alist. But this principle is derived from material relationships between people, not moralistic ideals. It begins with the relationship between a worker and her employer.

On the surface, the relationship be­ tween employer and employed is one of equality. The employer freely offers a job, and the employee freely takes it. Beneath this appearance lies direct domination. Once employed, the work­ er’s time and activity is the property of the boss just as much as any other commodity. Unauthorized breaks are literally (not figuratively!) considered “time theft.”

The profit of the employer, and thus the existence of his business, comes from unpaid labor squeezed from the workers. This surplus expands the so­ cial power of employers and strength­ ens their hold over society as a whole.

The conflict between owners and la­ borers does not end with the close of the workday. Without intervention in every aspect of life, capitalists could not expect their employees to return to work every day. They could not rely upon the next generation to enter the workforce, or secure the necessary markets or the needed resources, or fulfill a great many other concerns.

For all this they need a state with a monopoly on legitimate violence, a vast bureaucracy, and an array of other in­ stitutions, including schools, churches, charitable foundations, NGOS, and me­ dia outlets that are under their control. Thus, workplace struggles do not occur in isolation from the broader political context. Likewise, no political ques­ tion floats above the struggle between classes.

Elections serve to conceal the role of a state in a similar way that the free mar­ ket conceals the relationship between bosses and their workers. While elec­ tions allow each individual the right to vote for one politician or another, the state does its real work through the most undemocratic and rigid hi­ erarchies in human history: military and police forces. The commanders of these hierarchies are deeply loyal to the capitalist class and its order—a fact that many, like Chilean socialist Salva­ dor Allende, have learned all too late.

This is why the police can do no wrong in the view of capitalist courts. They are the constant staff upon which the social order rests. Behind the police and military is an apparatus that is also unelected, including numerous judges and functionaries.

With a monopoly of force in the hands of this hierarchy, and a radical monop­ oly of private property directly in the hands of capitalists, the ability of elect­ ed politicians to vote away the power of the capitalist class (should they be so inclined) is nonexistent.

The power of the capitalist class is di­ rectly at odds with the power of work­ ing people. The social order required by capitalists for their rule is directly at odds with the social order required by working people for their emancipation. Any unity forged between workers and their bosses is like the unity of the pro­ verbial chicken and the roach: it takes place in the belly of the chicken. Every struggle by working people lives and dies on the degree to which its fight­ ers stand on their own strength and act against the interests, values, and insti­ tutions of the capitalist class.

No labor movement has ever gained an inch that respected bourgeois prop­ erty rights or the bourgeois monopoly on violence. The rebellions in Fergu­ son and Baltimore frighten the estab­ lishment because they show disdain for the capitalist monopoly of prop­ erty and force. The movement against the war in Vietnam succeeded to the degree that it made possible a soldier rebellion that produced half a million desertions, and a fear in the Pentagon of a collapsing command chain.

The recent Chicago teachers’ strike won important victories because its leaders recognized the Democratic Party power structure for the deadly opponent that it is. The fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage is winning gains because it has been infused with the idea that workers can only win the demand through their own power.

Democratic Party campaigns like Sanders’ are so disastrous for our movements not simply because they take up our time, but because they teach people to trust in the power and the values of the capitalist class. Before he convinces supporters to re-enter the Democratic Party, Sanders will teach them to place faith in the bour­ Thanks to cartoonist Stephanie McMillan.

Link to McMillan Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/ projects/stephaniemcmillan/365affirmations-for-revolutionarymilitants-desk?ref=card geois state and its institutions. These are the ideas he will spread in the com­ ing months. Countering this sophistry is reason enough to oppose Sanders’ campaign. n