02) LABOUR MELTDOWN AVERTED, BUT FOR HOW LONG?

By Sam Hammond

The dispute that NUPGE has been nursing with the CLC since 2005 or perhaps longer, over the issue of raiding, motivated  National President James Clancy to announce in November 2010 that his union would withdraw from the central labour body January 1st, 2011. The first shock wave was felt in British Columbia, when the BC Fed going into its November convention had to decide if NUPGE's affiliate, the BCGEU, could seat its delegates.

     The BC Fed wisely decided that until January 1 they were affiliates and should be seated. Unfortunately, CUPE did not agree and pulled 300 or so delegates from the Convention, although CUPE's largest affiliate, the Health Employees Union (HEU), stayed on the floor.

     On the NUPGE website the reasons, as they see them, for the withdrawal are articulated in a commentary, "NUPGE ‑ CLC dispute over raiding" presented by James Clancy. There is also a discussion paper, "A Vision for the Future of Labour Centrals in Canada," that reveals quite articulately that the grievances go far beyond raiding and also involve structure.

     On January 5, the crisis was temporarily halted when NUPGE was apparently invited into a conference call of the CLC leadership and a deal was worked out. Although speculation on the content of that discussion is running wild across the country, apparently the withheld per capita will be paid and NUPGE intends to be seated at the next CLC Convention in May 2011.

     Whatever criticism or charges of irresponsibility could be laid, it is now time for a breath of relief that a major tragedy has been forestalled. But for how long?

     The emergence of what has come to be known as "business trade unionism" went through several stages since the early 1900s in the United States. It was imported into Canada, where the Canadian units of American unions were ordered and sometimes volunteered to mirror the policies of their parent bodies. In the American Federation of Labour, business trade unionism sought peace and deal-making with employers, vigorously opposed the organization of industrial workers, and promoted an "aristocracy" of privilege in the working class. Dissatisfaction in the AFL finally led to a split that created a new industrial labour centre, the CIO. This was reflected in Canada, where the AFL affiliate, the Trades and Labour Congress, was faced with the CIO and the left-oriented All-Canadian Congress of Labour.

     In 1956, shortly after the AFL and CIO compromised and re‑united into the AFL‑CIO, the TLC and CCL merged into the Canadian Labour Congress. These mergers maintained both the business union models and the newer and more progressive industrial union models.

     Over the years business trade unionism has developed and changed. While absolutist or stereotypical definitions are too rigid, it is true to say that business trade unionism has penetrated the old industrial unions and has a presence in their organizational and programmatic operations.

     The public sector unions, which emerged in the late 1950s and continue to evolve and shape the labour movement, were born into an environment where business unionism was already an expanding factor. Although not business unions as such, they are definitely affected by its strong presence. In some of their competitive struggles with each other, these unions have adopted its ideology by some degree.

     The lines of demarcation are blurred also by the privatization of public sector jobs. In a struggle to maintain and represent their members, public sector unions are forced into the private sector, in turn becoming a target for opportunist raiding from some private sector, even industrial, unions.

     The left-oriented class conscious workers, especially communists, who organized most of the large private sector unions, were battered into a minority by a combination of the McCarthyite capitalist state, the Cold War and the business union rejection of class struggle. The problems of trade union unity, or the lack of it, can be traced back to the attack on the class conscious left.

     In the late '50s, raiding emerged in the Canadian Labour movement as an instrument of anti‑communism inspired by the McCarthyite attack on everything to the left, especially within the labour movement. U.S. unions were required to insert anti‑communist clauses into their constitutions and many thousands of workers were expelled or denied membership.

     This condition was imported into Canada and used as the excuse for raids on unions that did not expel communists, or people labelled communist, from their ranks and leadership. The Canadian Seamen's Union was destroyed in this struggle and replaced by a gangster-led union. The raids by the Steelworkers against Mine Mill were a part of this attack.

     Raiding as an instrument of pro-capitalist interests to smash and divide was imported into the labour movement. This was the biggest boost that opportunism and class collaboration had received, firmly entrenching them as a feature expressed in business trade unionism.

     Over the years the changing production methods of industry and the resulting changing structure of the industrial working class, the attack on trade unionism that escalated after the destruction of the socialist states, and the de‑industrialization of large sections of our country, have posed very serious problems for the trade union movement. The loss of industrial jobs, the break‑up of large production units and the hostile environment of the global neo‑liberal agenda, have depleted the sector density of industrial and transport unions, and shifted the ratios in favour of the public sector unions.

     The private sector unions, because of the dominance of business unionism, did not commit all their resources to fighting back. They did not commit their treasuries to organizing the unorganized, or restructure to reflect the new class demographics or replenish militancy. Where it was easiest, workers were organized. If the numbers were too few, they were turned away as "too costly" to represent with an insufficient dues base.

     Some unions began to lean towards the model of self perpetuation, to maintain income and financial investment. The instrument of raiding to maintain membership, the infusion of competition to lure workers, the provider‑client relationship between leadership and membership, are the conditions of business unionism. The provider-client relationship also spawns the tendency of memberships to shop for unions, rather than shaping their own to their needs.

     Sector organizing and concentration has gone largely by the boards. Steelworkers try to organize banks, public sector unions and auto unions try to organize casinos, and are raided by Teamsters who have largely left the transportation sector. Every large union moves to becoming a labour centre competing with the others. Dragged more and more into the impossible job of arbitrating disputes, while being ideologically neutralized by warring affiliates, the CLC is ineffective in the real class struggle.

     Fortunately this bleak picture, this bourgeois model, is not and never will be complete. There are many fine trade union officials in Canada, and the membership of unions are all working people whose self-interest objectively cannot be served without unity and struggle. We cannot advance without struggle and we cannot struggle without unity. But by degree, business trade unionism is a threat to the ability of workers to struggle. That is why a dispute over Casino workers in Manitoba kept NUPGE's delegates out of the last CLC Convention, and brought the CLC to the verge of a meltdown.

     The meltdown was prevented. That is wonderful, but the conditions which threatened the cohesion of the CLC, and would have bankrupted most Provincial Federations, severely damaged the Quebec Federation of Labour, and virtually destroyed most labour councils outside of Quebec, are still there.

     Raiding and competition will destroy labour or turn it into an instrument of corporate capital. Raiding and competition are spawned in opportunist leadership, and are a threat to the ability of working people to form unified resistance and defense against the global onslaught. The danger is imminent, and time is very short. 

     This last dispute was patched up. Thank goodness the ship is still afloat but the patches are only temporary.

     A general exchange of ideas in the People's Voice would be very healthy and informative. Please consider this, dear readers.

(The above article is from the Feb. 1-14, 2011, 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.)