(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2007 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, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.

By Sam Hammond

We live in a world where the top 2% of adults own half of the total wealth. The top 10% own 85% of the world's wealth, while the bottom 50% own 1%. There has been an unprecedented worldwide shift of wealth from the producer classes to the military/industrial ruling classes, the result of a monstrous growth of inequality and finance capital domination. Corporate CEOs collect an average of 400 times the income of wage and salaried workers, who really produce everything; the casino/economy speculator/managers of hedge funds walk away with a 1000-1 average over real workers. These servants of the top 2% help them manage and maintain their 50%. Workers stand at the precipice of absolute poverty, while the established ruling class and their flunkeys never had it so good. There has never been such productive capacity, such technological innovation and efficiency; there has never been such wealth, or such poverty and human misery.

     This offensive of capital has cost insufferable human wreckage, from the temporary destruction of the socialist bloc to the miseries inflicted on the global South and the workers of the developed capitalist world. The higher level globalization of capital is anchored securely in the imperialist countries (with the USA at the core) and the market economy lunacy of "commodification" of everything from labour power to national cultures and human genes. Everything is to be privatized for profit, with destruction, war and genocide for those who resist or have the bad fortune to live near desirable raw materials or resources. The US generals like to brag about "Shock and Awe" because the wholesale slaughter of peoples is a warning to all. Modest estimates place the toll in Iraq since 1991 at millions of dead, including perhaps a million children under five as a result of the 1991-2003 embargo. And that is just one of their adventures. Client states like Israel commit genocide as state policy, and puppet governments like Pinochet or the present day Colombians do the dirty work as well. But still the people resist, and the war machine stalls against the wall of determination that will eventually bring these criminals to account.

     This is by no means what always was, or what always will be. Rather it is the aim and result of the present offensive of capital in the competition of two social systems: capitalism and socialism. One that worships exploitation and plunder, and one that is dedicated to accumulation and social distribution. One that has gained a brief rejoinder, but whose course is mainly run, and the other a new-born whose main existence is yet to come. Which one is the dream of the victims? Which one has to be neutralized if we are to exist? We have the Cubas and Venezuelas, the defence of social programs, the peace movement, the national-liberation movements, the global environmental movement and of course our labour movement. We are not helpless.

     This tapestry must be recognized as the social environment, the arena in which the working class exists. In fact, the present capitalist offensive was launched to destroy previous working class gains, both international and domestic. It wasn't that long ago that colonialism ruled, until the first socialist revolution launched the forces of national liberation that changed the world forever. That was also the heady period of struggle that smashed Hitler fascism, established our industrial unions, and paved the way for our social programs and the massive numbers of unionized public workers who manage them on our behalf.

     Those labour struggles were as much a civil war in the labour movement as they were a conflict with capital. The CIO was born in the rejection of AFL class collaboration. In our time, the birth of the CAW out of the UAW also had these characteristics. The two trends of collaboration and struggle are an inherent part of the working class struggle, seen most sharply in organized labour. The ascendancy of one or the other in a given time or place can accurately measure progress or defeat. It was in the periods where struggle was on the rise that the gains were made. Collaboration and partnership has always led to defeat and setbacks. The concessionary forces in the CIO eventually brought merger with the AFL (AFL-CIO). The recent CAW-Magna tryst will bring the CAW back into line ideologically with its former parent; if not halted, this collaboration will transform the CAW into a corporate partner and its members into industrial prisoners of war.

     South of the border, the UAW engineered itself into the healthcare/pension/severance business by taking over the VEBA Trusts (Voluntary Employee Benefit Association) from the Big Three auto companies, becoming another private health care business that will manage workers' lives on behalf of the auto corporations for small per capita payments. It also sold its members and future members into poverty by giving up cost-of-living allowances, creating a two-tier wage system, and negotiating $14 per hour wage give-backs for all non-line employees and all new hires. Within ten years these new hires will represent 80% of the entire workforce, earning $2 per hour less than the non-union industrial average wage, with the benefit of paying dues. The declining dues base will not impoverish trade union staffers, who are now in the health care business. To keep the trough full, the workers will have to make up any shortfalls in the under-funded corporate gift. The leadership of the UAW say they have no choice. They have the stated purpose of saving the industry and themselves. When it comes to standing up or crawling, there always has to be a choice. It is not possible to resist on your knees, and when standing fully erect the air is much fresher. In time, the workers will have to replace these leaders to reform their union and to get at the corporate wealth they have created and need for subsistence.

     In Canada, the CAW refined its concessionary drift under the leadership of Basil (Buzz) Hargrove by signing an odious "Framework of Fairness" partnership agreement between the union and Frank Stronach of Magna Corporation.

     The CAW-Magna deal is a close repeat of the early model developed by Mackenzie King when he was working as a labour analyst for Rockefeller in 1914: a partnership where profit and efficiency were the glue of the wedding between management and labour, creating the traditional company-controlled "employee association". The miners in Colorado didn't agree with Mackenzie King. They went on strike, were evicted from company houses, and were machine gunned with their families in their tent city.

     The industrial wars that swept Canada after the Second World War were the workers' answer to Mackenzie King and company unions. They created their own worker-controlled unions that were partisan for their interests, vehicles for social change and liberation which they have defended ever since. Company unions next appeared in the form of organizations that preached corporate-labour partnership as a "Christian" value. They evolved into CLAC, which is presently recognised as legitimate in only five provinces where labour legislation had to be changed to accomplish this goal. Hated by building trades unions for decades as an internal ulcer, a pro-company fifth column in the fight for wages and living standards, CLAC is presently moving into the industrial sector mostly in Alberta but also in a smaller way in Ontario and British Columbia.

     So much for "innovation" under the tired old guise of class collaboration: unprincipled dues grabs, giving up the right to strike, signing contracts before the members are organized, putting the boss on the negotiating committee, destroying the right to nominate and vote, and quashing dissent. What a sad and tragic spectacle to see a once proud union go the way of Mackenzie King, European corporate unions of by-gone days, Mexican corporate unions, CLAC and who knows what else?

     The press has reported that the same deal could be offered to Toyota and Honda, and the UAW is looking at it as a model for the parts sector in the US. But a virtual avalanche of retired officials, activists and important local union presidents are livid about this union-corporate deal.

     There is a strong opposition emerging within the CAW. The leadership was forced to call a special executive board meeting, and although Hargrove got majority support, the largest local in the union (Oshawa, with 22,000 members) gave their president a resounding mandate to oppose the deal at the executive level, which he did. The resistance is growing with more and more local union presidents and executives coming out against deal. The leadership is definitely in trouble, which will not end even if the leadership can wangle support at the National Council meeting in December.

     A very prominent member, Mike Shields, former CAW National Director of Organizing and now a staffer who currently services more than 24 bargaining units, has come out strongly against the deal. Other staffers may be discreetly silent, but there is dismay among them and they will carefully watch the strong resistance from the floor. The leadership would be very wrong to interpret silence as acquiescence. The resistance will continue to develop and it will spill out beyond the union. Ed Broadbent has unequivocally opposed the Magna deal, stating that Canadian workers do not need a "defanged" labour movement.

     There is no denying the union is under extreme duress, as are all organized workers in the hard hit manufacturing sector, but corporate compliance is not the way out, any more than it was for the Chrysler workers in 1985 and the militant fightback that created the CAW. If the members of the CAW National Executive think this is only for Magna and won't affect their members, they are dreaming in Technicolor. This is a signal to the corporations and their political hacks in every level of government that the time is ripe for regressive changes to federal and provincial labour codes, that there is another CLAC in the game which should be promoted by "innovative" labour laws. What happens when Magna accomplishes their stated purpose of going into the assembly business? They have already tried to get control of Chrysler for that purpose, and are very much in the assembly business in Europe.

     During the last week of November, two powerful and important provincial bodies are meeting, the British Columbia Federation of Labour and the Ontario Federation of Labour. Both share the same main challenges, and both face unique challenges. The BC Federation has an advanced case of TILMA and the Campbell government's privatization drive to deal with. The Ontario Federation has a great challenge to pull the majority of labour organizations into affiliation - especially the CAW - and to wake itself up out of a rather deep and long sleep.

     In fact the OFL and the CLC are guilty of more than a long sleep. They sat it out while more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared and more than a million people took an economic and social dive. The present leadership of the OFL took the helm to kill the movement which started with the "Days of Protest". Their only objective was support for the NDP, where there are powerful elements who disagree with extra-parliamentary campaigning. These elements openly stated that the money spent on the "Days of Protest" to activate hundreds of thousands onto the streets, should have gone into their coffers for parliamentary campaigning. This precipitated the isolation of the CAW, then still fighting hard for a left class-struggle social movement. The CAW didn't leave the OFL, it was pushed out. The petty bickering that ensued is only camouflage to hide the split over social responsibility and social activism.

     Where were they when the "Manufacturing Matters Campaign", mostly organized by CAW, put 40,000 protesters on the street in Windsor? Their support was token in other cities, and participation in the Ottawa demo was only a few hundred on top of the thousands of CAW members. This abandonment in the midst of crises, where the auto and parts sectors are the hardest hit, is for sure a major factor in the CAW move to "go it alone" and look for appeasement rather than struggle.

     How long will the CLC's Georgetti and the OFL's Samuelson stand idle and silent while the entire manufacturing sector disappears and industrial jobs shift to part-time "McJobs" at minimum wages? Exactly what kind of human tragedy, of social trauma will it take to activate these people?

     There will be a lot of negativity for trying to bring the CAW back into the OFL, but it should be pointed out that inclusion is part of the solution, and exclusion is the problem. It is extremely important that both these federations oppose the CAW corporate union model developed at Magna, but the OFL and the CLC in particular have to share the guilt because they were the first to abandon the fight-back, the first to leave the field.

     The Canadian working people more than ever now need to take their fight into the streets and to fight for their workplaces. If big business and foreign owners want to close our plants, we should take possession and create the public support to keep them.

     Autoworkers invented this tactic in the 1930's. It is part of their history and their essence. This requires a resurgence of a strong left within the trade union movement. It is the left who always have and always will bring the larger view of emancipation, of social movement, of social struggle and class power into the fray. As wrong and as bad as the CAW-Magna deal is, it has provided for the first time in years a glimpse of the left, which has also been a sleeping giant in some respects. The backlash inside and outside the CAW has already displayed that the fighters for social justice are still there, has laid the foundation of a new resistance. This must be reflected somehow in the debates and decisions of these two vital provincial labour conventions.

     The signal must go to governments that downgrading standards of labour legislation to allow company unions will precipitate a fight. The signal must go out that the labour movement is waking up, that we will fight on every street in this country to protect the people and roll back the attack on our lives, our resources and our future. Delegates must show that the labour movement - the property of the working class, past, present and future - is alive and capable of representing its members, defending peace and our environment, standing in solidarity with the liberation and social justice movements and committed to our last resources to do this. Every member of the Communist Party is dedicated to this struggle, and will be at the heart of every militant action and in unity with all who struggle on behalf of working people. That is our legacy and that is our challenge.