(The following article is from the April 16-30, 2009, 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 Liz Rowley, leader, CPC (Ontario)

     The deal signed by the CAW and General Motors to save Canadian jobs and plants was a bitter pill for autoworkers who paved the way for private sector wages and working conditions in Canada for decades, leading the way in union militancy and struggle.

     In 1945, it was Canadian autoworkers who organized and won the fight for union recognition at Ford in Windsor. They broke away from the UAW in 1985 over concessions and anti‑democratic, back-door deal‑making.

     So the concessions forced on the CAW since the Auto Pact was struck down in 2001 (opening up the floor beneath the union) have been grudgingly accepted, as the union struggled to find its feet.

     Big mistakes were part of the price the union paid, like the Magna agreement that allowed the CAW access to Frank Stronach's non‑unionized parts plants, conditional on giving up the right to strike and the right to union committees on the shop floor.

     Now, the CAW and Canadian autoworkers are being told they must gut their own agreements or face losing the auto assembly plants and jobs that were legally and contractually protected by the Auto Pact for almost 40 years.

     After the World Trade Organization - an institution that speaks for the transnational corporations - struck down the Auto Pact, auto assembly and parts production in Canada were suddenly unprotected, and became completely subject to made‑in‑the‑US corporate decisions and interests. The fact that auto assembly and parts production in Ontario is at the very heart of manufacturing in Canada today, producing 7.5 spinoff jobs for every direct job, is treated as inconsequential.

     The governments in Ottawa and Queen's Park respond that auto assembly and manufacturing are "out of date" sunset industries. Everything is left to the market.

     Until four months ago, that is, when the Big Three all demanded fat bailouts. Now, the Big Three have added the demand that the government enforce wage, benefit, pension and job cuts to the bailout packages.

     What's not yet visible are the other foreign carmakers in Canada. As soon as the trap is sprung on unionized autoworkers, cuts to wages, benefits, pensions, and jobs will follow immediately in the non‑unionized Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and other car plants in southern Ontario, along with corporate bailouts. This is a given, and there are already noises to indicate what's coming.

     More generally, what happens in GM, Chrysler and Ford will set the pattern for cuts across the country. In other words, it can get worse. The floor will collapse under the entire labour movement and the working class as a whole unless the CAW and the CLC draw the line in the sand over negotiations at Chrysler, Ford, and GM.

     In March, the fight for Employment Insurance got off to a good start in Hamilton, but as the CAW's Peggy Nash and Local 1005 USW President Rolf Gerstenberger said there, what we want is the jobs. A jobless economy can't sustain EI or universal social programs.

     In other words, this fight has to move from the defensive to the offensive. It has to get political, and it has to mobilize both labour and communities in mass militant action in the streets and in workplaces.

     Peggy Nash said it right: the trade union movement has to take up the fight to improve the real conditions of low‑paid workers, so there are no divisions between well-paid unionized workers and impoverished, unorganized and often young workers. She might have added, some of whom are being organized by employers and reactionaries right now to attack unionized workers.

     Paul Moist had it right when he said that there must be no divisions between public and private sector workers and unions. That means the CAW should get back into the OFL, to help win this fight in Ontario, where it will be won or lost.

     Hassan Youssuff had it right when he said that attacks on pay equity, on women, and on workers of colour, are an attack on labour which must be fought by a united labour movement.

     What's required now is for the CLC to follow up with a fightback that goes beyond EI, a plan to fight for jobs and a whole agenda that protects workers and their families across Canada. A plan that pulls all sectors together to force back the corporate agenda, defeat the wage and job cuts, create jobs, build affordable housing, protect and expand social programs, support Medicare and education, and so on.

     The 1996-97 Days of Action in Ontario stand as a solid testament to the power of the people, mobilized, united, in action on the streets, in communities and in workplaces, to take on reactionary governments and their corporate agendas.

     In Quebec, labour is mobilizing in a Common Front to oppose and defeat the corporate attack. In France, Greece, Ireland, and elsewhere, labour is mobilizing and confronting corporations and right wing governments.

     In Ontario and English-speaking Canada, a similar battle plan and call to action is urgent. The campaign to Fix EI is a good start. Let it be the first step to mobilize, organize and unite Canadian working people for the fight of our lives.