02) CAW PRESIDENT ISSUES MILITANT CALL TO ACTION
By Liz Rowley
In a militant speech to a sea of delegates attending the CAW's Constitutional and Collective Bargaining Convention, held August 20‑24 in Toronto, President Ken Lewenza laid out the breadth and depth of the neo‑liberal attack on Canadian workers. "Global capitalism is long past its best before date," said Lewenza, inviting progressives and democrats across Canada to "join the family of the labour movement to change the course of Canada".
"Another world is possible, and that's not empty rhetoric ‑ it's a call to action for working people across Canada", he said. "We are in the early days of a popular movement that will redefine our country, and the same is true for countries around the world".
Lewenza pointed to the "Arab spring", the Occupy movement, the Quebec students' protest, the labour fightback in Wisconsin, the NDP's rise to Official Opposition, Canadian scientists and doctors who are confronting the Harper government's environmental and refugee health care policies, refusing to be muzzled.
The CAW leader cited the loss of 800,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada in the last decade, and the vicious attacks on wages, pensions and jobs at Vale, US Steel, Rio Tinto, and Alcan, as well as in the public sector with austerity budgets at every level. Corporations and right‑wing governments are aiming now to break the unions in Canada, said Lewenza, the way they've broken them in the US starting with Ronald Reagan's firing of 13,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981.
Pointing to the Hudak Tories, who are campaigning to eliminate the Rand formula and the closed shop in Ontario (labour laws won with the historic 1945 Ford strike in Windsor), to Premier Brad Wall whose reactionary Saskatchewan Party is campaigning to do the same in that province, and to Liberal Premier Jean Charest, who criminalized dissent in Quebec with Bill 78, Lewenza warned that "they've declared war on workers... The fight will intensify, but we are determined to win."
The way forward, he said, is through social unionism and the merger of the CAW and the CEP, to create a new union that would be "Canadian, democratic, progressive, a social union, with strong local unions".
The proposal is the focus of the CAW's historic 2012 convention, and of the CEP's convention this fall. The new union would be formed next year, if the two conventions vote to support the proposal.
Lewenza also called for the creation of "a publicly‑owned national development bank to direct spending toward real investments in key sectors and regions. We need to tame the uncontrolled power of private banks to control the flow of credit and set interest rates. And we need to assert public control over the financial sector."
Speaking about the union's relationship with the NDP, Lewenza said this would be settled at the new union's 2013 convention, but noted criticisms of the NDP including that it has been "galloping to the centre". He also said that political action cannot be left to the NDP, and that putting people into the streets was crucial to future victories.
At the end of the first day, delegates seemed gripped with the seriousness of the challenges facing their union, and the Canadian labour movement, and were clearly supportive of the direction their union proposes.
CUPE national President Paul Moist topped off the day with a strong endorsement of the proposal, and called for a united and fighting labour movement that would build strong links of solidarity with communities. "You can count on CUPE anywhere in Canada to support you" he said.
(Look for a full report in our next issue.)
(The above article is from the September 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)