|
|
|
|
||
|
ONE UNION IN HEALTH CARE
People's Voice "Labour In Action" column by Liz Rowley
(This article is from the April 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
TEN THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT MEMBERS, members, or 98.75% of those who voted in eight Locals, can't be wrong. They're mad as hell at the Service Employees International Union, and they want out now.
It's understandable when you look at the conservative history of the SEIU in North America. It was the only public sector union not to see red when Bob Rae's NDP government introduced the wage-cutting Social Contract legislation in 1993. It was one of the quietest unions during the Ontario Days of Action, when rotating strikes and protests rocked the Harris government.
Furthermore, the contracts being signed in Ontario by SEIU, stewarded by employer-friendly wheeler-dealers like Ted Roscoe in Toronto (LU 204), were appalling. Massive cuts to hospital staff, speed-up, 12 hour shifts, the casualization of labour, became the norm across the province. For SEIU members, even the most basic servicing of local unions and policing of contracts became arduous efforts to just get phone calls returned.
This situation led Ken Brown to run for SEIU Canadian Vice President in 1996. He won that election, on a platform of increased union militance and fightback against neo-con governments and employers, coupled with the demand for autonomy, so that Canadian workers could control their own affairs in Canada.
At the same time, reformers in the US section of the union were also getting elected. SEIU became a part of the progressive forces in the US labour movement pushing to mobilize, organize and activate labour in the streets, at the bargaining table, and in independent labour political action. A struggle was underway, on both sides of the border, to transform a business union with a history of class collaboration, into a fighting union with a future.
Brown was able to make some progress on the autonomy issue. The Canadian section won the right to elect four officers to the 52-member International Executive Board, to establish a Canadian headquarters and research and organizing departments, and Canadian union publications.
But for many, the process was too limited and too slow. In November 1998, Brown established the "November Group," whose purpose was to push the boundaries on autonomy. At their Canadian Conference meeting on Feb. 14-15, 800 delegates from English-speaking Canada rejected two autonomy options, both still requiring the agreement of the International to implement decisions made in Canada. Delegates also rejected proposals from the International for a dues increase to fund an organizing drive, and for a province-wide amalgamation of SEIU locals (to strengthen sectoral bargaining, according to some; to put the brakes on autonomy, according to others).
Instead, an emergency resolution was unanimously passed "to reaffirm the right of each Canadian Local Union to self-determination; that is the right to decide its own future, as it best reflects the interest of its membership and the local communities in which they live."
Five days later, at a joint meeting of the eight Local Union Executive Boards, a resolution was unanimously passed "That this meeting will endorse the move to CAW-Canada and encourage all membership to vote CAW-Canada also."
A day later, well attended stewards' meetings were convened and the motion was again unanimously supported. A vote by the membership of the eight locals was set for March 2.
Enter the International Union, putting the locals into trusteeship, dismissing and charging close to 90 people (including stewards), and filing charges of raiding against the CAW.
The Canadian Labour Congress has appointed an arbitrator to deal with the raiding charges, which appear to have some substance. CAW cards were released, and SEIU members have been signed up. The argument that the eight locals needed a ready-made home doesn't easily hold water. When the CAW separated from the UAW under stressful circumstances (to put it lightly), they didn't head into the Steelworkers or the Machinists, though a case could have been made that they were all metalworkers' unions.
Instead, they formed the Canadian Autoworkers' Union, and worked out a fraternal relationship of equality and solidarity, one that has helped workers on both sides of the border and undermined the power of the auto giants.
When UE and Mine-Mill split from their US-based Internationals, it wasn't to join the IBEW or Steel. The UE and Mine-Mill worked out an equal, voluntary partnership with their American counterparts that recognized the sovereignty of each, and created the conditions for an effective and a coordinated struggle against the corporations, to the advantage of workers in both countries.
Could the SEIU in Canada have done that? We don't know, because the 90,000 SEIU members here were never offered that political option. Some will say it couldn't have been done. Maybe.
On the other hand, autoworkers were made that offer by their Canadian union leadership, and they took it. In the process, they won the support of the broadest sections of the Canadian labour movement, and brought a new sense of unity, democracy and militance to the trade union movement in Canada. They raised the bar in the US as well, contributing to the new militance in the US labour movement today. This is precisely why many workers are attracted to the CAW.
The CAW's untimely appearance in the SEIU events has less to do with its role as midwife at a difficult birth, than to its apparent self-perception as an all-embracing social movement to which jurisdiction does not apply.
The largely Canadian public sector unions do not agree, nor do the international unions who feel threatened by moves towards autonomy and independence that look more like a caesarian section than a natural birth and delivery.
The most natural place for health care and other public sector workers to go - if they leave SEIU - is another public sector union. But the best alternative would be a joint venture of all the health care unions fighting for medicare, which could eventally yield one union, parented and birthed cooperatively by all the unions in this sector.
Sweeping changes such as the declining industrial and manufacturing base in Canada require a new approach to organizing and jurisdiction - the emergence of one union in each industry and sector. That was the logic of the International Metalworkers' Federation which would have combined the UAW, USWA and IAM. The fact that this merger is still gestating means just that: it is still developing. But its time will come, because the every-union-for-itself alternative is mass suicide in the context of globalization and neo-liberalism.
The members of each union must decide for themselves the best way to express their sovereignty, as English-speaking Canadian workers, and French-speaking Québécois. The essence is control over their own affairs and their future, whether through Canadian autonomy or Canadian unions (independence).
In either case, sovereignty alone will be ineffective if the trade union movement is not also gripped with militant, class struggle policies and strategies, and an obsession to build a united and powerful movement around policies that can usher in real change and progress for Canadian workers.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
