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CLC MUST BE PROACTIVE IN CAW/SEIU CRISIS
"LABOUR IN ACTION" Column by Liz Rowley
(This article is from the May 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.)
AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS situation is rapidly developing in the Canadian trade union movement.
It is born out of Canada's curious labour history, such as craft unionism giving way in the 1930s to the northern extension of US-based CIO industrial unions.
Pummelled by the Cold War, some of those unions became conduits for McCarthyism and class collaboration in Canada. Others adopted a class struggle approach, sharply differentiating from their US counterparts. A movement for trade union autonomy arose, based on this essential division, and on the issues of inner union democracy and membership control. Large and influential public sector unions were built, becoming a major force in the Canadian labour movement.
In that period the Canadian Labour Congress was formed, uniting workers in the national and international unions on the basis of Canadian autonomy, and workers in English-speaking Canada with substantial numbers of workers in Quebec through the QFL.
This significant achievement provided jurisdictional agreements and dispute settlement mechanisms for affiliates, allowing labour to develop a unified voice (though rarely effective action) on legislative and bargaining issues. But the CLC structure and constitution made it a reactive body - rather than a leadership body - to its affiliates.
Throughout these years, the left pressed for more autonomy for the Canadian sections of international unions, more grassroots democracy and control by members of every union, more class struggle unionism, and stronger links with labour on a global scale.
The wisdom of that position was proven in the struggle of the Canadian section of the UAW for autonomy, which paved the way for independence and the creation of the CAW. It was a win-win situation: fraternal relations between the US and Canadian auto unions were established, and class collaborationism in the US union was dealt a serious blow. The whole Canadian trade union movement was strengthened (including those fighting for autonomy and democracy), while the Big Three were out-maneuvered in Canada and exposed in the US.
A similar strategy is needed today to head off the crisis brought on by the current SEIU/CAW struggle. Here's how it shapes up.
A CLC Umpire, Vic Pathe, has reviewed charges that the CAW was raiding the SEIU. The existing CLC Constitution recognizes only the authority of the affiliate organizations - not their locals or their members. While acknowledging that it is virtually impossible for the membership of a local to disaffiliate from its parent union, Pathe says he's bound by the rules created by the affiliates. Reasonably enough, he found the CAW guilty of raiding.
The CAW argues that since the eight Ontario SEIU locals couldn't do it alone, its help was essential for 30,000 dissatisfied workers to break from their international union. Therefore, CAW claims to be justified in making a merger deal, to take in 30,000 "homeless" (mainly) health care workers who otherwise might not have left the SEIU. The CLC Constitution ought to be changed, the CAW asserts.
The CAW has put in certification applications for about 40 bargaining units currently represented by SEIU. Reports on a membership vote ordered by the Ontario Labour Relations Board indicate a 97% "yes" vote by workers to leave the SEIU and join CAW.
The CLC meets in May to impose escalating sanctions that could see the CAW removed from leading bodies and blocked from participation in Labour Councils and provincial federations of labour. Several unions are urging full sanctions. Part of this has to do with concerns about jurisdiction, and some of it is pay-back for the CAW's policy of social unionism, and its sharp criticism of the NDP.
The CAW also meets in May, and Hargrove says they will press ahead with the certifications. Rumours about that motions to disaffiliate from the CLC will surface.
The SEIU is administering trusteeships against a hostile membership, fighting representation votes at dozens of workplaces, pressing for maximum sanctions, and leafleting CAW autoplants with attack leaflets.
The labour movement is splitting. The employers are delighted.
The CAW is right when it says the CLC Constitution is not enough. The evidence is the 30,000 workers who have clearly had it with the SEIU.
But riding roughshod over the Constitution and the CLC and its affiliates is no solution. Despite the increasing breadth of its membership, the CAW is no substitute for the CLC. And in "righting a wrong," the greater wrong would be to split the trade union movement at a key moment in the struggle against the right, here at home and internationally. A pyrrhic victory indeed.
The CLC should respond by opting to recognize the eight departing SEIU locals and their 30,000 members, taking them in directly as Canadian affiliates. That would provide an opportunity for the CAW to demonstrate its position that the issue is not about dues, but about the principles of democracy. And that would pre-empt the raiding charges, and the potential for a split.
Such action would also recognize the realities imposed by the scientific and technological revolution and the assault by neo-liberal governments and gigantic corporations. In this new situation, it makes sense for unions to develop new forms of cooperation and unity.
Recently CUPE proposed unity discussions amongst unions in the hospital and health care sector. Some of this was achieved in the last set of hospital negotiations between CUPE and SEIU under the leadership of former Canadian SEIU Vice-President Ken Brown. But much more needs to be done. There is a strong case for one union in health care, just as there is for one union in public education, in metallurgy, and so on.
Health care unions need to put together a powerful and united opposition to for-profit health-care operators who are having the red carpet laid out today in Alberta, and next year in Ontario, and then Canada-wide.
Jurisdiction is important, for the defense of workers and public services in divergent sectors, for labour unity everywhere, and for an effective counter-offensive against neo-liberalism.
At the end of the day, hospital workers belong with hospital workers, in a new militant configuration, which the CLC can help to birth by its actions now.
This May Day the watchwords are unity, democracy and struggle... starting with the CLC.
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