Prolétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous!
Otatoskewak ota kitaskinahk mamawestotan!
Workers of all lands, unite!
Contents
*Riot Police attack protest"
*Public sector workers demand fair contracts
*Bill 22 worst Tory legislation yet
*Well-heeled rednecks storm Ottawa board
*B.C. public workers hold strike votes
*War against BC poor heats up
*History in fast forward - Editorial
*Cubans are winning the economic war
*Dynamex couriers join CUPW
*Makis File Refugee Claim
*India Enters the Nuclear Club
*Dockers win huge victory
*Merger fever grips big banks
*Send me information on the Communist Party of Canada.
Over half a million public sector workers in Québec and British Columbia are going into major contract battles with their provincial governments.
The first confrontation came May 26 in British Columbia, as 20,000 health care support workers staged a four-hour walkout. The 45,000-member Health Employees Union has been in negotiations for a new contract since January, bargaining for average wage increases of 2.7% over each of two years, and improved working conditions.
The Health Employers Association of B.C., which represents the province's hospitals, has refused to budge from its position of a 0-0.2% wage increase over 3 years. The HEA's demands for concessions would take benefits from injured workers, and target long-service employees and vacation provisions. That stance has been dictated by B.C.'s NDP government, which claims it cannot afford a better settlement. While playing hardball with its public sector workforce, the Clark government has given tax breaks to the forestry and mining corporations.
HEU members recently gave their union an 81% strike mandate. Union leaders said that unless the May 26 walkout helped lead to a settlement by the end of that week, further strikes were possible. Gary Mosher, the chief executive officer of the HEA, said May 25 that those who think a resolution is imminent are "completely dreaming in technicolour."
The B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, which represents 28.000 provincial employees, have been offered the same terms as the health care workers. They have voted 76% in favour of strike action.
Meanwhile, results of a contract vote by 44,000 members of the B.C. Teachers Federation were to be announced on May 29. The BCTF broke away from a common front of provincial unions earlier this spring.
In Québec, contracts covering 400,000 public sector workers will expire on June 30. The province's three largest trade union groups are calling for wage increases of 3.5% in the first year and 4% in each of the next two years, as well as pay equity and parental leave.
The Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), the Québec Federation of Labour, and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec together represent about 287,000 members, mostly teachers, nurses and other health workers. Their previous contract provided 1% annual increases, but also slashed some 25,000 workers from the public service through early retirement and other means. The Parti québecois government of Lucien Bouchard is standing firm with its demand for a three-year wage freeze. Any pay increase, warns Treasury Board president Jacques Leonard, would have to come through concessions in benefits. Worsening relations between the PQ and labour have sparked a widening debate in the trade union movement about its traditional support for Québec independence. Observers expect these negotiations to go on for at least several months, with a provincial election now seen as likely for the spring of 1999. -P.V. Vancouver Bureau
The Multilateral Agreement on Investment will go ahead, says Donald Johnston, the Canadian bureaucrat who serves as secretary- general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation an Development, the 29-country group negotiating the deal. In Montreal on May 25, squads of riot police drove home Johnston's warning by arresting 99 of the more than 500 anti-MAI protesters at a conference on globalizing the world's economy.
Since the late April announcement by the OECD that the MAI would be delayed for six months, Canadian corporate leaders and the mainstream media have stepped up their campaign in favour of the deal. Their task has been made more difficult by the groundswell of opposition to the MAI, such as resolutions by Toronto and other municipalities.
The May 19 lead editorial in the Globe and Mail ("MAI down but not out") called the suspension of MAI talks " a minor but significant victory for protection and demagoguery over the free- trading principles that underlie the Western world's prosperity."
The Council of Canadians, trade union leaders, environmental groups and other anti-MAI forces are now gearing up for a further round of political battles over the deal. The July issue of People's Voice will include information on upcoming anti-MAI campaigns and a special background analysis on the nature of capitalist globalization today.
"History is about to split wide open," wrote Angels in America playwright Tory Kushner." That famous line rings true this spring. At times it seems the struggle over our planet's future is in fast forward mode.
Two major conflicts rocked the Asia-Pacific region in recent weeks: the Australian dockworkers strike and the protests in Indonesia. After four weeks on the picketlines with their labour and community allies, the fired dockworkers were back on the job. The struggle to defend their jobs and union rights is not over, but the Maritime Union of Australia has dealt a major blow to the global anti-labour strategy of the shipping companies.
Just to the north, courageous protests by Indonesian students and working people finally ended Suharto's bloody regime. Ironically, this puppet of imperialism found himself between the proverbial rock and a hard place as the Asian economic crisis continued. Amidst the glittering shards of "miraculous" capitalist growth, Suharto could either follow the dictates of international finance capital, or try to meet the demands of the people. Trying to walk the line between these opposing forces, he satisfied neither and was forced to resign. Similar scenarios lie ahead in countries like South Korea, where mass layoffs are starting to kick in. The Korean unions have called a two-day strike May 27-28 to protest job cuts.
In other recent battles against the neo-liberal agenda, Danish workers carried out a militant general strike for higher pay and longer vacations, and Russian miners have led mass walkouts to demand unpaid back wages.
On a wider scale, the MAI negotiations in Paris collapsed under intensive pressure from people's movements. Infuriated OCCD globetrotters like Canada's Donald Johnston vow to raise the deal from the dead, but anti-MAI sentiment is still growing.
It's an uneven process, but these struggles show that the international working class and its allies are taking the resistance to global capitalism to a higher level. Working people are starting to demand that the massive wealth and the new technologies we have created should be used to reduce unemployment and to improve living standards. As the song says, one day we'll own those banks of marble; right now it's time to educate, agitate and organize for that goal!
Despite the escalation of the US blockade of Cuba, living standards in Havana city and province have visibly improved since the trough of 1993-94. Huge line-ups for buses have become a rare sight. Begging is much less frequent and assertive. Laughter on the streets is noticeably louder and widespread.
The "mighty" imperialist elephant is, so far, losing its economic war of genocide against the Cuban people. How can this possibly be?
According to Rita Perreira, a leading member of the Federation of Cuban Women, there are three key reasons. First, there is the 150-year-old determination of the Cuban people to be and remain independent.
Second, the organized working class and other movements (such as the FMC) have intensified their efforts to ensure independence and to safeguard the many social gains achieved over the last 40 years, and to deepen the chosen socialist direction among all sectors of the Cuban working class.
And third, the Communist Party of Cuba has once again demonstrated its ability to learn creatively from its close connection to the realities of the people. The Party has again confirmed in actions its status as a real (as opposed to self- proclaimed) vanguard of the Cuban people by showing sufficient economic flexibility while also reasserting its socialist commitment.
Cuba is beginning to emerge from the worst effects of the crisis with, if anything, an even greater determination to be free and socialist. In Cuba it is clearly understood that the fight to be free is the fight to build a socialist globe, and vice versa.
The war is certainly not over, far from it. And yet, the ability of the people, the organizations and the Party to act together has already openly defied both US imperialism and its strange bedfellows, all those mechanical, economic determinists who long age "knew" that revolutionary Cuba could never survive such a concerted onslaught.
And yet, against all odds, Cuba vive. Viva Cuba!
-Jim Sacouman,
Wolfville, Nova Scotia
The Maritime Union of Australia and the country's entire labour movement won a huge victory on May 4, when a High Court decision upheld previous rulings that 2,000 fired dockworkers must be reinstated. By a 6-1 majority,the High Court judges rejected an application from Patrick Stevedores to appeal the earlier decisions, including the Federal Court's finding that companies cannot use corporate restructuring to undermine the legal rights of employees.
Thousands of union members and supporters gathered at picket lines to hear the decision, chanting "MUA here to stay" and other slogans. "We won't be settling for anything other than the full return of all our members in every port," said MUA National Secretary John Coombs, "and only then will we have look at the viability of those ports and any need to take into consideration possible labour surpluses."
Although the sacked dockworkers were able to return to their jobs, the struggle over the future of the industry continued during May, with employers seeking every possible way to get around the legal rulings.
Three days earlier, tens of thousands of people took to the streets for the largest May Day marches held in Australia for many years. Led by contingents of the MUA and Women of the Waterfront, the marches brought together workers, students, and the unemployed, as well as environmentalists, community groups, church leaders, women's groups, and political parties, and even small business owners.
-With files fromThe Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia.
Bill 22, "The Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998", introduced May 14th, is the most dangerous anti-labour legislation yet produced by the Ontario Tories. The government intends to drive it through the Legislature without public hearings by the end of June. By July 1st, the 250 word Act could be law. This must not happen.
The Act stipulates that "under the Labour Relations Act, 1995 no person shall do any of the following with respect to his or her participation in a community participation activity: join a trade union; have the terms and conditions under which he or she participates determined through collective bargaining; strike."
The weirdly benevolent-sounding "participation in a community participation activity" is Tory double-speak for "workfare" (just as "replacement worker" is double-speak for "scab"). Workfare is now obligatory for all "able-bodied" men and women on social assistance whose children are over age 3.
That's the kick in the teeth. Now here's the kick in the ass: the retroactive enforcement date for the legislation is May 1, 1998. The Tories and their employer buddies must have thought it would be quite a giggle to introduce this union-busting, slave labour legislation on May Day.
Slave labour is what this law is all about: forcing the poor and the unemployed to work without any legal recourse or protection, for less than minimum wage, and far below the union wages negotiated by the public sector unions whose members they will replace.
In many US cities, this model has already destroyed thousands of unionized public sector jobs, from street cleaning to desk jobs. It happened in New York City, and in Indianapolis, which happens to be the political and economic model for smashing up local democracy, introducing local referenda ("propositions") on tax and other issues, and contracting out whole sectors of services in Toronto. In the Southern US, workfare slave labour competes with penal slave labour in a privatized prison system. It's vicious - and profitable.
Workfare and privatization have decimated U.S. public sector unions. This is what the Tories and the employers aim to do in Ontario, and then across Canada.
Scared yet? You should be. It could be your kids taking your old job, while you head down to sign up for welfare/workfare. Or you might see your neighbour's kids coming across the picket line as you fight to get a new collective agreement after mass amalgamations across Ontario. It's time to sound the alarm bells and get organized.
If there was ever a piece of legislation that required coordinated mass resistance to beat, it's this one. The Tories intend to carry it through, with force if necessary. They are not interested in the law, or the legislature, or the public interest. They will respond only to power, to the organized and united action of labour and the community in the streets and on the picket lines.
That's the response we need to give at the Kingston Day of Action on June 8th. The OFL leadership must seize the initiative and use the Kingston events to issue the Call and name the date for the province-wide strike and protest tentatively scheduled for the fall.
If the OFL drops the ball, the government will whack a home-run with Bill 22. With the NDP dropping like a stone in the polls, labour can't wait for an election. A Liberal government wouldn't reverse Bill 22, nor could the NDP with the handful of seats they are rumoured to be sure of winning.
In many countries, certain events have later been recognized as enabling events for future, horrific acts against the people. Bill 22 is one of these. It's more than just the usual daily grind of dirty provincial politics. As Roy Adams, past Director of McMaster University's Theme School on International Justice and Human Rights, put it: "The Prevention of Unionization Act in its conception and choice of terminology is a frontal assault on the fundamental building blocks of democratic society."
As the Vienna Declaration (of the World Conference on Human Rights, signed by 170 countries in 1993) asserts `All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated.' Denial of any one places the entire structure in jeopardy. From that perspective this action by the Ontario government is in the same class as arbitrary imprisonment, torture and murder. It is a threat to our democratic way of life. We must be outraged by it and do what we can to stop it." Amen.
Workers in Winnipeg made labour history on May 5, as Dynamex courier and warehouse employees voted 82-60 to join the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. The victory was one of the first for CUPW outside of the working structure of Canada post, and the first for inner-city couriers in Winnipeg.
The certification breaks new ground in an industry where until now, workers have been mainly considered "self-employed contractors." The result will send shockwaves through the courier industry and other sectors like carpentry, where many workers are hired as self-employed contractors.
On voting day, CUPW leaders and the Dynamex organizing committee waited nervously behind the backdrop of pictures of the Winnipeg General Strike in the Union Centre cafeteria. Dynamex management did everything in its power to ensure anti-union employees would get out to vote, as 92% of eligible voters cast ballots. However, the years of frustration by workers who have not received the barest of benefits, such as paid holidays and vacations, was loud and clear in the result.
The "yes" vote was the culmination of 17 months of organizing and educating the workers on the benefits of being unionized. CUPW local president George Floresco said these workers overcame unbelievable odds: delays by the company and the Canadian Labour Relations Board, the firing of two key organizers, 20% turnover of drivers, and fear and intimidation by the employer.
One of the biggest obstacles was the nature of the work. The drivers have no main workplace environment. Scattered throughout the city, most don't know each other face to face, they just know each other through the voices over the two-way radio system. The weirdest thing is that most refer to each other not by names, but by driver number, said Floresco. "You're sitting in a room with these drivers and you hear, `I was talking to 211 Jeff, he seems interested in the union,' and all the drivers know who he is but don't know his last name or what he looks like."
The determination of CUPW and the workers led to the victory. We came into this for the long haul, Floresco stated: "We have a mandate from our last national convention to organize the unorganized workers in the transportation and communication industries, not only in Winnipeg but throughout the country."
Organizing seemed like the only hope for the courier drivers, who have seen their paychecks get smaller and smaller over the past 15 years. Over that time, drivers in the industry have seen their commission reduced from 80% to as low as 59%, while the cost to the customer for delivery has remained the same or shrunk. Drivers today are receiving 60% of a $3.50 delivery, compared to 80% for a $3.50 delivery 15 years ago. Add on to this vehicle and maintenance costs, which have almost doubled, and many of these drivers barely make minimum wage.
Key organizer John McMaster stated, "Worst of all is the drivers are carrying almost all of the overhead of the company. They charge the drivers for use of the radio, cargo insurance, uniforms, warehousing costs, administration costs, and even the bad debt of the company. When the delivery rates stopped increasing the courier companies decided to continue to increase their profits by making the drivers pay more and more of the bills, while reducing the drivers' paychecks."
Floresco added that Dynamex Winnipeg is just a start. While intra-city couriers like Purolator and Federal Express make a better wage, the inner-city drivers are really suffering, and CUPW has plans for other cities and other companies. "Lots of these workers in the transportation and communication business are being exploited. Some of these companies are going to have to deal with us in the future," he says.
May 5, 1998 will be remembered as an important day for Canadian labour, a day workers rose up and won a major struggle. However, as the CUPW slogan reads, "The Struggle Continues" while the union and the Dynamex workers push for a collective agreement. As Floresco says, "the union is determined to bet a collective agreement, and we'll take as long as necessary to get that contract."
British Columbia's public service is preparing for a summer of labour action, with nearly 200,000 workers' contracts up for negotiations in the first six months of 1998. Although the recent provincial NDP convention spoke out strongly against wage controls, the public employer has come out with a "non-negotiable" offer of 0-0-2% wage increases over a three-year agreement, as well as demands for concessions and clawbacks of previously won benefits.
Settlements for public sector unions have fallen behind the private sector by 12% over the last decade, even as members face huge job losses and increases in workload. The unions are adamantly demanding meaningful pay increases as well as job security, including tougher restrictions on contracting out.
These incompatible positions have led to an early breakdown in several areas, including the facilities table led by the Hospital Employees' Union (HEU), which in mid-May completed a strike vote with 81% in favour of job action.
BCGEU members (who are also conducting a strike vote) feel a keen sense of betrayal, having settled last time for a contract which froze their wages for twenty months, followed by a one-percent increase. They accepted this below-inflation settlement in exchange for job security, only to be hit with a cut of 3,500 jobs a few months later.
Although many of these jobs were cut through attrition and relocation rather than layoffs, job security has been dramatically reduced, and services to the public have been decreased.
During the last negotiations the union leadership failed to bring the membership into militant action, or even to support those who were willing to fight for their jobs, counting instead on backroom deals with "our friends in Victoria". This may have changed dramatically. BCGEU President John Shields has affirmed the union's willingness to engage in job action to win a meaningful wage increase as well as the right to job security. Shields has pointedly mentioned that BCGEU's last strike vote in the master bargaining unit took place during the reign of Bill Vander Zalm.
The health care sector has lived with constant shake-ups for the last seven years: the Health Care Accord, the closure of Shaughnessy Hospital and many other programs, "Closer to Home" (quickly renamed "Home Alone" by healthcare workers), and regionalization and reallocation of regions and regional governance. Bill 48 reduced the number of unions in health care, then later Bill 28 brought many of them back in, leading to the formation and re-formation of bargaining associations or tables. At last count there are five tables now in negotiations: the interns, the nurses' table, paramedicals, facilities and community care.
The government should have learned a lesson from the downsizing in mental health services begun by the Socreds - the closure of Tranquille in Kamloops, Woodlands School in New Westminster, and the ongoing downsizing of Riverview Hospital in Port Coquitlam. All those measures were taken before there was adequate community support for mentally handicapped, mentally ill and their families. To this day, the community mental health sector is struggling to deliver a level of services similar to that provided in the institutions.
A parallel development is now seen in the push away from acute care, again without ensuring adequate community support prior to bed closures. This has resulted in a proliferation of private service providers, with far lower wages and poorer working conditions than in facilities.
Much of the blame has to go to the federal cutbacks in transfer payments. However, the Clark NDP has bought into the myth that private operators are somehow more efficient and cheaper for the public purse. In reality, private business exists for the primary purpose of making a profit. This means additional costs to the user as well as inferior wages and conditions for the workers. In addition, this two-tiered approach creates a lower common denominator, increasing the pressure on public service unions to accept further cuts.
What can be done to ensure quality public services and fairness to workers at an affordable price? Progressive forces including trade unions need to unite around a program which puts people's needs ahead of profits. The Communist Party of BC is proposing such a program, including a legislated 32-hour work week with no cut to take-home pay, restoration of public services and rejection of two-tiered healthcare. To afford those and other measures requires a complete tax reform, first and foremost a reversal of the ratio of personal income taxes to corporate taxes (which now raise less than one-tenth of overall government revenue), and an end to handouts to corporate welfare bums. We need a new approach to our natural resources, with an emphasis on manufacturing and environmental protection and restoration, instead of exporting raw materials. Labour rights need to be strengthened and expanded to include all working people.
The organized labour movement in BC needs to provide leadership to this democratic struggle, rather than relying on the Clark government, which continues to yield to the demands of the corporations, at the expense of its 1996 campaign promises to working people. (Hanne Gidora is the chair of the CP-BC's Labour Commission.)
At 15:45 hours on May 11 an eerie rumbling noise woke up the sleepy hamlet of Khelotai. The entire skyline of the hot summer afternoon was lit up in a pink glow that slowly became a deep purple. Then the horizon started to change shape. A multi-tiered envelope of sand and cloud emerged in slow motion from the ground. Looking like a gigantic tulip flower, it rose several hundred feet into the sky, then started to settle down even more slowly. A mad rush of wind rushed around the village. After what seemed an eternity, the world became normal again. The entire experience had actually lasted just five seconds, marking India's transition from a peaceable nation into a hawkish nuclear power.
"India," chortled premier Atal Behari Vajpayi at a hastily-convened press briefing, "is now a nuclear weapons state." Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, awash with emotions, silently dabbed at his eyes....
Scarcely 48 hours later another series of nuclear explosions disturbed the afternoon siesta of Khelotai, in the western province of Rajasthan. The basic tenets of India's post-independence foreign policy lay in ruins, the nation's future fraught with uncertainties.
The prime minister's office issued a terse statement about the "rapid degeneration" of the "nuclear environment in India's neighbourhood," prompting the government "to take appropriate counter-measures towards safeguarding the country's security." Later, Vajpayi reminded the country that the nuclearization of India had always been an "article of faith" for the BJP. It was the "China factor," he noted, that had converted the "article of faith" into a foreign policy imperative. As an afterthought, he added that the recent test-firing of the medium-range Ghauri missile by Pakistan had "also influenced our decision..."
Vajpayi went on to say that by exploding the nuclear devices, "India would be able to negotiate a favourable deal out of signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty." Education Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, an RSS hardliner, boasted that "We had the know-how and we chose to demonstrate it; let Pakistan conduct its own puerile nuclear programme; we know who gets to be on top in south Asia."
The international backlash was predictably furious and hypocritical. Bristling with ire and disbelief, President Clinton announced sanctions to the tune of just over US$2 billion. As we file this report, the steps envisaged by the US include: termination of credit; opposition to international loans; blockade of US bank loans; termination of all "non-humanitarian" bilateral assistance; prohibition on exports; and termination of all military sales and financing.
Australia and New Zealand could do little but express their "utter disgust" and recall their envoys. Japan, with more at stake, cancelled a 3.5 billion yen (US$26 million) grant scheme. Germany threatened to freeze DM 300 million worth of fresh aid. Tony Blair's "new" Britain confined its feelings to "shock and dismay." France's ambassador to India called sanctions "mostly counter-productive." Russia's response was slightly disconcerting, offering India no fewer than nine "kilo" class submarines, and "several Pacific Fleet battleships and cruisers" at hugely-reduced sale prices. The G-8 meeting did not express a view on the issue of sanctions; nor was there a consensus at the fortnightly meeting of the Conference on Disarmament at Geneva.
Initially, the announcement of sanctions by the US saw stock prices slump and the rupee slide against the dollar. But the size of the Indian domestic economy helped the rupee firm up in the foreign exchange market, and the World Bank's India director, Edwin Lim, confessed that the Bank's loans, being "immune from political manipulations," would not cease.
One potential threat is the Japanese ploy of bearing down on the Asian Development Bank to put a moratorium on loans, putting the squeeze on US$500 million worth of roads and ports projects. The political turmoil may also jeopardize the credit rating of India, which already has a total debt of US$93 billion on its back.
This crisis scenario will help boost the BJP regime's programme of "liberalisation" and "privatisation" of the economy. Various overseas consortiums and cartels have already responded with glee to fill in the void left by a drying up of funds from countries having investment stakes in India, and the marginal depreciation of the rupee will boost exports.
With the BJP railroading the "reforms" through, the common people will suffer immeasurably. The effect of sanctions will be nullified, but at a cost of spiralling prices, wide-ranging retrenchments, and neglect of the core sectors which are the engine of GDP growth.
News reports on May 19 said that US private investment proposals worth US$12 billion have been approved by Finance Minister Yasawanta Sinha, as the housing sector and the mining and minerals sectors are thrown open to private investment. Subsidies to the power sector have been withdrawn, and the Federal Government is furiously signing counter-guarantees to various US firms towards construction of several major power projects. On the same day, India signed production-sharing contracts with US and UK petroleum companies for oil exploration deals worth US$48 million.
The response of India's political parties has been comparatively muted. Congress congratulated the BJP government for the successful explosion, but raised the issue of the timing of the test. United Front constituents have generally offered their felicitations to the Indian scientists for the "good work they have done."
In a joint statement issued on May 13, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the CPI said that while the Indian scientists had done a good job, the nuclear test would complicate the south Asian situation, that funds would get diverted for military purposes, and that the reason for the tests was not "adequately" explained by the BJP-run government. On May 15, the CPI(M) Political Bureau opposed both the anti-China rhetoric of the BJP and the US-led sanctions.
Other than a few small demonstrations in Delhi, the country did not see the militant mass actions that should have met the BJP's adventurous gamble, which may lead to an arms race in the whole of east and central Asia. Surveys in the large cities of the country revealed that more than 85% support India's nuclear programme.
The nuclear tests have upset the image India has built over the decades as a country opposed to the use of force in the international arena. India has been a staunch champion of disarmament, and a stringent critic of the CTBT which would make the Nuclear Club of Five an exclusive affair, keeping the nuclear "have-nots" in the aridity of powerlessness. And yet, India went in for a nuclear test when relations with China had improved, and when China had offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. The tests will upset China and make Pakistan panic-stricken.
Inside India, the "bomb" will become the touchstone of patriotism. But in the long run, the economy will falter, and social unrest will grow, a scenario offering an opportunity for the Left to go to the masses and lead protest actions. Inertia must be made to give way to mass movements, before it gets too late.
WINNIPEG - The Maki family - Alan, Carol and Jeremy - of Marchand, Manitoba, filed their "Claim to be recognized as Political Refugees from the United States" with the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (CIRB) on April 28. No American has ever been granted refugee status in Canada on grounds of political persecution in the USA.
The Makis fled to Canada without legal formalities in 1990 after Jeremy, then 9 years old, was shot at by right-wing extremists while waiting for his school bus.
The Refugee Claim consists of about 50 pages, including more than 30 pages from the files of the Michigan State Police "Red Squad" and FBI documents. The family has more than 3,000 pages of documentation to present at the actual refugee hearing next year. Theirs is one of the most thoroughly documented cases concerning political persecution ever brought before the CIRB.
A statement by U.S. Attorney John Smietanka, representing the FBI, written as a legal brief in the U.S. Federal Court in 1990 and submitted by the Maki family to back their claim, states that "... Alan Maki admits he is a Communist. Thus, any reasonable FBI agent would not have concluded that merely investigating Alan Maki constituted an unlawful act..."
The FBI began its "investigation" into Maki in about 1965, for "violation of the Communist Control Act of 1954" - a law still in effect. Alan Maki notes that, "even though I was under constant surveillance, including having my phone tapped, not one single charge was ever laid by the FBI or the United States Department of Justice."
In his Refugee Claim, Maki declares, "the FBI document states that they were `merely investigating" me. `Mere investigation' involved 25 years of being watched, harassed, recorded, arrested; it involved turning neighbours, friends and a community against me, my wife and my children; it involved having my life raked over the coals at the merest excuse; being morally discredited and portrayed as a criminal; it involved not being able to live and work in peace.... At what point does `mere investigation' become political persecution?"
Carol Maki explains how the local prosecuting attorney, Kevin Drake, told her he had issued a warrant for Alan's arrest, saying "once we get him in jail he'll never come out - accidents happen."
The Refugee Claim cites other chilling examples of such persecution by the FBI and national security agencies, and by local and state police "Red Squads," often working in collusion with racist, anti-Semitic right-wing extremists. The FBI's own files acknowledge that a local prosecuting attorney, Donald Zerial, was known to be a prominent member of the far-right John Birch Society.
The Refugee Claim provides FBI files showing how the Bureau tried to intimidate more than 150 people, including prominent labour leaders, civil rights and peace activists, who signed a "Call to a Demonstration" written by Alan, against the Reagan administration's budget cuts and increased military expenditures.
In another instance, the documentation details how an FBI informant stole a list of over 200 names of people attending a picnic at the home of Hillary and Wadsworth Bissel, Michigan peace and civil liberties activists. The FBI labelled everyone in attendance as "left-wing extremists", including prominent Democrats and Republicans.
As reported in previous issues of People's Voice, a growing number of elected politicians, religious leaders, and activists in the labour, peace and Aboriginal movements have called for a fair hearing for the Makis. Petitions are circulating across Canada to support their right to stay in the country.
The Friends of the Maki Family hosted a well-attended "Tribute to Paul Robeson" at the Store Front Union in downtown Winnipeg on May 18, raising over $300. More events are being planned.
Alan and Jeremy Maki had their fishing, hunting and trapping rights revoked by the Manitoba Department of Natural Resources. These rights have now been restored after vigorous protests.
The Refugee Claim is available for five dollars to cover publication and postage (or $12 Canadian to the U.S.), from: Friends of the Maki Family, 188 Austin St. N., Winnipeg, Manitoba, R2W 3M6.
In recent months, merger fever has gripped the largest Canadian banks. The decision by the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal to merge was quickly followed by a similar announcement by the CIBC and Toronto-Dominion.
Although the mergers are subject to approval by the Competition Bureau, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, and the Minister of Finance, most observers say the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Despite public outrage at the growing concentration of a sector already known for its monopolistic practices, financial analysts and the mainstream media all agree that in the era of globalization, regulatory intervention by the state is simply out of the question. The experts never tire of repeating, as if to make it self-evident, that public opinion has no role to play in such a fundamental question of market dynamics.
The New Financial Landscape Through the financial reforms of 1987 and the new Bank Act of 1992, deregulation has drastically changed the Canadian financial landscape. The "Big Six" Canadian banks, which hold 90% of total bank assets, have been expanding into a wide range of new activities through the takeover of other financial institutions or the development of their own subsidiaries. In fact, these new activities, which include trust businesses, securities dealing, insurance products, and mutual funds sponsorship, have already exceeded in value the traditional deposit and loan activities of the banks.
Thus, while the assets of the banks and near-banks (i.e., trusts, caisses populaires, and credit unions) have recently reached the $1 trillion mark, the assets under administration by the Big Six - assets which mostly include trusts and securities custody and mutual funds - had already exceeded $1.3 trillion in 1996.
Another feature of the big Canadian banks is their extensive and growing international operations. Up to the mid-1980s, the share of foreign currency assets in their total assets had been on a continuous rise. After peaking at 46% in 1985, this trend was reversed in response to the accentuation of the debt crisis of the underdeveloped economies. However, since 1995, this very lucrative component of their operations is again on the rise.
Banks, Credit, and Speculation The primary function of banks is to act as financial intermediaries in the process of payments. This centralizing role allows them to mobilize all forms of money in society to serve as capital that will re-enter production (for the purpose of generating profit). But acting as much more than just an intermediary between deposits and loans, the banking system generates its own deposits through the credits which it grants. Therefore, besides the provision of social loan capital, the banking system also generates a circuit of "fictive" capital, separate from the circuit of "real" capital. By creating this system which feeds on itself, profits in the banking system are redistributed to financiers and speculators of revenues generated in the productive sector of the economy.
Through the development of the credit system, the parasitic nature of the banking system becomes intertwined and inseparable from its functional role as intermediary. In 1996, the largest component of the speculative activities of the Big Six, their off-balance sheet activities, which included credit-related and derivatives transactions, reached over $5 trillion in nominal terms.
Bank Profits The parasitic activities of the banks and, more generally, of the financial industry are extremely profitable. While the profitability of the financial sector has traditionally exceeded that of non-financial companies, this difference has reached staggering proportions in the last few years. The profit margins of non-financial corporations have hovered around the 6% mark for the last twenty years, but since 1992, the profit margins of the banking industry have grown at an unprecedented rate, reaching 26% in 1997, at $15.7 billion in operating profits.
These higher rates of return on capital have increased the financial industry's relative portion of national wealth. Between 1961 and 1997, the share of financial corporations in Canada's national assets increased from 14.9% to 26.6%, at the expense of the shares of the government and its business enterprises, the non-financial private corporations, and the personal and unincorporated business sector.
Mergers Lead to Massive Job Losses Technological developments as well as a spate of takeovers of other financial institutions by the big banks have already reduced employment in the banks and near-banks sector to 279,000, down 22,000 from the 1991 peak. The majority of these losses, 15,400 jobs, resulted from the restructuring of trust companies acquired by the banks. These losses represented over 40% of employment in the trust companies, in an industry where the majority of the activities were quite distinct from the regular banking activities of the new owners.
Clearly the merger of the largest financial conglomerates, many of whose operations, administrative structures, and branches duplicate the same activities, will result in the loss tens of thousands more jobs.
Future Trends In his submission on the bank mergers to the Competition Bureau, CAW President Buzz Hargrove warned of the threat of the concentration of political power that will result from a further increase in the economic power of the banks.
This issue cannot be overemphasized. In recent years, the banks have already demonstrated their political might by persistently eradicating many state regulations impeding their grip over financial activities in Canada. A natural evolution of their economic and political activities will likely lead the banks to campaign against the limits on their control of non-financial firms. For example, the CIBC has already ventured on this path by gaining 20% of Sun Media and 20% of its parent, Hollinger Inc., key parts of Conrad Black's media empire.
However, the greatest threats to the economic well-being of Canadians remain the speculative activities of the financial markets. Once freed of regulatory constraints, the speed and scale of transactions by the big financial monopolies, which control thousands of billions of dollars, make a mockery of the potential margin of manoeuvre of the Central Bank or of the federal government to defend the Canadian currency from speculative attacks. We need only look at our Asian neighbours to see what the financial markets have in store for us, unless we act now to stop them by nationalizing the banks.
(All data are derived from Statistics Canada sources, except for the assets under administration and the off-balance sheet transactions of the Big Six, which are from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.)
Well-heeled Rednecks Storm Hospital Board
-Ontario P.V. Bureau
The decision of the newly merged Board of the Ottawa Hospital to hire a former Parti Québecois election candidate as Chief Executive Officer has unleashed a storm of anglo-chauvinism. David Levine, a respected hospital administrator with top credentials from various hospitals in Québec, was the best candidate on a shortlist of four applicants, according to hospital Board spokespeople.
Aware of his candidacy in a Québec election 20 years ago, the Board stipulated that he refrain from involving himself in partisan public politics of any sort. Levine had agreed to the stipulation, but that wasn't enough for close to 500 angry, well-heeled demonstrators who packed the Hospital Board to demand that Levine be fired. To its credit, the Board instead reaffirmed its decision to hire Levine on a five-year contract.
The ugly, anti-Québec incident, which could boost PQ and Bloc Québecois fortunes, was about to blow over when Ontario Premier Mike Harris dropped his own chauvinist views into the mix. "(G)iven his background... (Levine) wouldn't have been our first choice," Harris said, adding that even a non-citizen would be preferable to Levine's appointment.
According to Communist Party (Ontario) spokespeople, the incident exposed Harris' real views, "the knock 'em, sock 'em views of the radical right led by Preston Manning in parliament and Don Cherry in the media." Liz Rowley said it shows that such supporters of the Calgary Declaration are prepared to do nothing to reach out to Québec, "at least nothing short of a left hook to the head, and a right to the gut."
"The Harris government is leading us over the brink" said Rowley. "There must be louder and stronger voices raised now from Ontario's labour and progressive movements, to demonstrate to working people in Québec that chauvinism is not the main sentiment amongst working people here. The main sentiment amongst workers is for democracy and solidarity, and for a just and democratic solution to the national question, based on working class unity and solidarity."
CPC Organizer Hassan Husseini said the situation underscored the need for negotiations that would "recognize that Québec is a nation, with the right to self-determination. Recognition of this reality in the rest of Canada is the only way to achieve a new, equal and voluntary partnership of Québec and the rest of Canada, together with the Aboriginal Peoples, in a new Constitution."
The British Columbia government and several municipalities stepped up their attacks on poor people during May, but resistance continued to build on both fronts.
On April 30, Vancouver's city council placed severe new restrictions on panhandling. Nearby New Westminster has passed a similar bylaw.
Vancouver now prohibits panhandling while sitting on the sidewalk, or within ten metres of bank entrances, automated tellers, bus stops, or liquor stores, or between sunset and sunrise. Offenders can be fined from $100 to $2,000, and could be jailed for failure to pay, despite the obvious fact that panhandlers don't have that kind of cash.
A legal challenge against the new bylaws seems likely. Accusing city council of attacking the Canadian Charter of Rights, B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive member John Dixon told the media that the group will soon decide on a challenge. He predicted that police will use the new bylaws to harass panhandlers.
The bylaws were demanded by business lobbies such as the Robson Street Business Association, which want the city to "clean up the streets." On May 17 and 24, members of anti-poverty groups such as End Legislated Poverty, the Urban Youth Alliance, the Marginalized Workers Action League (MWAL) and others took to downtown streets as tourists and locals looked on.
In a flyer distributed at the protests, the Urban Youth Alliance condemned the bylaws as "a war on poor people - telling us where and when we can sit and stand." To prevent panhandling, the group says, "how about lobbying to raise BC Benefits, protecting our low-income housing and giving us homes, treating us like people and not criminals."
On the provincial level, the Ministry of Human Resources (MHR) has stepped up its campaign to convince social assistance recipients to sign consent forms giving the ministry sweeping powers to investigate every facet of their financial history. MWAL has been distributing forms revoking permission to use the consent forms, and counselling recipients and applicants on how to refuse to sign away their privacy rights.
Following an initial court ruling against the forms, the MHR reissued a new version using "simpler language." Both versions face a full legal challenge now set for July 13. Until then, MHR officials are denying social assistance to many applicants and current recipients who refuse to sign the consent form. Many MHR offices are telling welfare clients that there is no court case, or that they must fill out a freedom of information request before being allowed to revoke their consent, a process which can take six months.
MWAL organizer Elwyn Patterson says MHR financial aid officers are using "gunslinger attitudes" to discourage people from withdrawing their consent. He says MWAL has received sixteen complaints about one office alone.