Fight Back Solidarity Caucus Statement of Purpose

It’s time to start changing our unions into fighting organizations that can meet the escalating attacks that have been coming our way for many years now. Doing that will require more than voting out one set of leaders and voting in another.

B.C.’s labour movement has been crippled by a lack of vision, a lack of analysis, and bad internal and external politics. This was proved once again by the tragically unnecessary May 2 defeat of 43,000 courageous and defiant health workers along with tens of thousands of other workers who were poised (or already striking) to give them effective support IN ACTION. But it wasn’t just a defeat. It was a sell-out by leaders committed to an inadequate and therefore failing strategy.” ...

[The statement says BC’s labour leadership fears sustained mass mobilization, distrusts and manipulates community allies, and subordinates struggles to the electoral tactic of replacing the B.C. Liberal Gordon Campbell government with the B.C. New Democratic Party. The Fight Back Caucus argues that the employers’ agenda is global, and even if one could count on the election of an NDP government that would halt the attacks, it would not reverse the damage done up to that point.]

A New Direction for B.C. Labour

To move toward a labour movement that is genuinely militant, democratic and accountable to its members we must seek to implement a new set of strategies.... The essential first step is to organize a broad grassroots opposition within our unions based on putting forward and continually improving new fight back tactics and strategies, on developing new modes of organizational functioning, and electing leaders who will be accountable to the democratic decisions of the members.

An effective and durable general strike may or may not have been a real possibility, but that’s not the issue. It was possible to inflict a resounding defeat on the Campbell Liberals and their corporate backers. On May 2 we were on the brink of BC labour’s biggest struggle in decades—a massive strike wave that could have driven a stake through the heart of the Liberals’ privatization of health care services. We had the biggest chance in three years to defeat Campbell, and it was torn from our fingers by the capitulation of our own leaders.

The sellout of HEU was only the most spectacular of the leadership’s betrayals, but there’s no shortage of other examples. What about the silent complicity in the IWA (International Woodworkers’ of America) raid on HEU? ... And while we’re at it, what about the IWA leadership’s invitation to the government to legislate their own members back to work after a hard-fought strike against stiff concessions?

Meanwhile, the labour movement gave scant support ... to the struggles of youth against the six-dollar ‘starting’ wage, to anti-poverty activists fighting welfare cuts and housing shortages, or to women fighting the closure of women’s centers across B.C. Since May 2002, union leaders’ have maintained their staunch commitment to NOT mobilizing massive unitary protests of members and non-members against Campbell and the corporate agenda.

Simultaneous with these betrayals has been another disturbing development. Over the last 10 years, some B.C. union leaders have increasingly become a network of junior capitalists. Using billions from their members’ pension plans and retirement investments, they have created a corporate empire.

They control the largest venture capital firm in western Canada (Working Opportunity Fund), the largest developer of residential rental properties in B.C. (Concert Properties), and a network of companies involved in insurance, travel, investments and other activities. How many union members were shocked to learn recently of the $16,000 donation Concert Properties gave to Gordon Campbell’s Liberals?

In summary, the present B.C. union leadership has exposed their own political bankruptcy and democratic deficiencies. Our movement may not be able to long survive a continuation of their short-sighted vision and demonstrably inadequate strategies. It’s time for the rank-and-file to start making changes within organized labour so we can effectively fight back against greedy bosses, privatizing governments, and corporate globalization. If we don’t, we will simply have to go through all this again. And again.

What Sort of Labour Movement Do We Need?

We need a militant movement. In the face of our attackers we will get nothing and defend nothing except through educated, intelligent, prepared, coordinated, and courageous militancy. Globalization means everything is under attack, even the very existence of our communities. Refusing to fight back is surrender. Refusal to get ready for the inevitable battles is suicidal.

We need a democratic movement with a leadership and members committed to fostering debate within the labour movement, not stifling it. Membership decisions must be carried out, not ignored as with the action program adopted unanimously at the 2002 B.C. Fed Convention. And members must ALWAYS have the right to vote on contracts, regardless of leadership opinions OR strike-breaking legislation. Internal union democracy and membership control is one of the strongest weapons in our arsenal.

We need a movement that mobilizes solidarity. “An injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a slick slogan. It is what “union” means in concrete practice—our united strength against our enemies. No group of workers should stand alone and suffer defeats while the rest of us go along as usual.

We need a movement that builds alliances. Unions fighting alone to confront the attacks on our rights will lose. Community groups fighting alone will lose. We need to reject all the tired old habits of control and domination, and seek to build coalitions where labour and community organizations come together as partners and allies working together. We need to build open coalitions, and reject the past policies of exclusion, manipulation, and control.

We need an independent union movement. We will need be prepared to fight against cuts, and to preserve social services, and to resist return-to-work laws under a future NDP government too. Defeating Gordon Campbell will not mean our work is done, not by any means. This does not mean no involvement with progressive candidates or parties during elections. It does mean that electoralism is not labour’s sole strategy and that electoral support is critical support, based on the actions of the elected.

We need a movement committed to reclaiming the unrestricted right to strike, by whatever means are necessary. At present, for all practical purposes, public sector workers in BC have no legal right to strike. Ask HEU, the nurses, the teachers, the ferry workers. And now this de facto ban is starting to extend to private sector unions as well.

Ask the IWA. The right to strike was only won by labour’s willingness to defy unjust laws. It will only be preserved by our willingness to use our right to strike, legally if possible, illegally if necessary, whether the government in power is Liberal or NDP….

Building such a movement will not be the work of a moment. It will take time, commitment, creativity, some tolerance/patience with each other, and enduring courage. We can and will put the fighting spirit back into our movement, along with the necessary changes that go along with that—in strategy, in modes of internal/external functioning, and in leadership. The alternative is too grim to accept.

This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.