(The following article is from the July 1-31, 2008, 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.)
Labour commentary by Sam Hammond

     World class quality + world class productivity = our jobs to Mexico. Thanks, G.M.!

     This slogan was the message on a large banner carried at the head of a 5000-strong protest parade and rally on June 12 outside the General Motors Truck Assembly Plant in Oshawa, Ontario. Although the crowd was mostly CAW members, it was significant that there were also banners from CUPE, Ironworkers, Steelworkers, Teachers, Office & Professional Workers, Building Trades and others.

     There was a mood of rebellion and defiance. Expressions like betrayal, back‑stabbing, arrogance and corporate liars filled the air. Just three weeks earlier, General Motors pulled off a corporate class double‑cross of the CAW negotiating team, which had gone into early contract-opening concession bargaining to secure in writing, in a legal contract, the protection of jobs and investment until 2011.

     General Motors obviously knew quite well what they were going to do even as they led the negotiators, captained by Buzz Hargrove, down the primrose path. Why did they do this? Why not just announce the plant closure without this cruel charade?

     But more importantly, how is it that some of the most experienced trade unionists in Canada could be led so easily down this road of false trust and betrayal? Did they panic, or are they under some kind of illusion that the company respects workers?

     When the CAW leadership opened up the contracts without membership input before their own policy and negotiating conference, and went into bargaining without the strike weapon (their only weapon), they showed the corporations a weakness that General Motors could not resist exploiting.

     General Motors has sent a message to the CAW membership, and to all Canadian working people. The message is that they can do any damn thing they want, and they have the politicians, the courts and the police to assist them. The evidence is on display already in the form of a court injunction against the CAW blockade of GM's Canadian corporate headquarters.

     That blockade was ordered lifted on Monday, June 16, and the union obeyed. Local union spokespersons called it a victory because the judge criticized General Motors - a slap on the wrist while effectively delivering the goods.

     Thousands of people can be angry and unite to protect themselves (and our economy, too), but one little judge in one little courtroom can bring the entire apparatus of the capitalist state behind the corporation and guarantee loss for the workers and victory for the corporation. This is democracy capitalist style, the rule of the minority, the exploitation of the majority.

     In the background sit Ford and Chrysler. Now that GM has opened the road, any other corporation in this troubled land can walk down it any day they wish. How long can the organized working class live with this? Can we really have a trade union movement that amounts to anything when every slight resistance can be crushed and neutralized by one man in a courtroom issuing an injunction?

     What can be done about this? To defy the courts means criminal charges and perhaps jail - just ask the Aboriginal peoples.

     But the answer has already been supplied, the method has already been established - just ask the British Columbia Teachers. Courage and solidarity, winning the public and independent political campaigning. There is no other way. It is hard rations, but it is the reality of working class life. Until this issue is taken up, any individual judge in this country has more strength than the millions of members of the CLC and the CNTU, of the entire working class. The use of injunctions in labour disputes or to prevent massive protest is a violation of the right to assemble and the right of free association. It is a violation of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. It cannot be allowed to stand.