PEOPLE'S VOICE - Issue of June 1-15, 2023

 

The following articles are from the June 1-15, 2023 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.

1. CLC convention ends with delegates calling on Congress to lead a fight for working people
2. Sudan: “The solution to the crisis begins with the unity of the people to fight the war and stop it”
3. RCMP whips up Cold War frenzy with “secret Chinese police stations” sting
4. Ontario’s working class can’t afford to wait for the next election
5. Capitalism's only wiggle room lies in war and reaction
6. Solidarity grows for Windsor Salt workers, now into fourth month of strike
7. The attack on the broader public sector is an attack on women workers
8. BCFED poll shows wide support for employment protections for gig workers
9. Italian labour movement calls 24-hour transport strike in fight for higher wages, lower prices
10. Maduro attacks Venezuelan communists through fake PCV congress
11. KKE sees vote surge in Greek election
12. CAQ congress shows how to be the best political vehicle for monopolies
13. The drive for more military is a drive for more war and poverty
14. Should get out of NATO

 

 

 

CLC convention ends with delegates calling on Congress to lead a fight for working people

Liz Rowley

The over 2500 delegates who met at the recent Canadian Labour Congress convention had a fighting tone on their minds. After all, they were meeting during the biggest cross-Canada strike movement in decades.

Against a backdrop that included job actions by 155,000 PSAC members; public sector workers in healthcare, education and transportation; building trades and transportation workers in the private sector workers;and Windsor Salt workerswho have been out on the line since February, the convention began with the hopes the outgoing CLC leadership would table a plan to fight the massive attack on workers’ wages and living standards.

But instead of meeting the moment with a militant plan of action, the leadership delivered NDP leader Jagmeet Singh who claimed (unconvincingly) that the NDP had made a historic breakthrough by expanding Medicare to include dental care. This balloon was popped by a healthcare worker who said that while the expansion of basic dental services to children and seniors was welcome, “it’s not dentalcare” and it’s not part of Medicare.

The leadership then pushed forward a series of constitutional amendments which would reduce the power of convention delegates and concentrate it in the CLC’s top echelons. These amendments had been defeated at the previous convention and they were defeated again, but the leadership seems determined to keep pushing them.

When the Action Plan was finally discussed, several delegates noted that the verbs in the document didn’t match the action required. It’s not “lobbying” that’s needed, but mass action by labour and its allies that can compel governments and corporations to change direction.

Canada is on the brink of a new recession with mass layoffs and job losses, more cuts to real wages, and reduced pensions and living standards. This is accompanied by mass privatization of healthcare, education, social programs and public services. It means more price hikes and skyrocketing profits for big corporations, and bankruptcies for farmers, fishers and small businesses. And it includes the massive diversion of public funds from job creation, social and environmental priorities and people’s needs, to NATO, the military and predatory foreign wars that could destroy the planet. 

In this context, an Action Plan that includes mass independent labour political action is urgent. This fight can’t be handed off to the NDP or the Greens or Québec solidaire.And with Pierre Poilievre straining to force the Liberal minority into an unwanted election with dangerous consequences for labour and the working class, this is no small matter.

Delegates refuted the Bank of Canada’s assertion that workers and unions are the cause of inflation, when it’s clear to everyone that it’s rising prices, interest rates and profits that are driving inflation today.

Instead of austerity, workers need full-time, unionized jobs with higher wages and good pensions. They need stronger employment insurance, and lower prices and interest rates. This was a recurring theme throughout the convention, along with repeated calls against raiding and for greater efforts to organize the unorganized. 

There was also discussion about the environment, and the need to ensure that workers displaced in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables were “looked after” by governments and employers. One delegate noted that the best way to accomplish this was through nationalization of energy.

One full day was devoted to a discussion of racism, which former MP Romeo Saganash openedby talking about the impacts on Indigenous peoples of residential schools and generations of systemic racism and genocide. He said the way forward was for the government to immediately implement all of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Calls to Action from the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This session was followed by a similar discussion on anti-Black racism, with delegates relating experiences of racism and discrimination in Canada including inside the trade union movement.

While there were a number of resolutions calling for an end to the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal of all foreign troops and a political solution to the conflict, none of these came to the convention floor for debate. The composite resolutions will go to the CLC’s Canadian Council. Their adoption would be a step in the right direction, putting the CLC in the camp of peacemakers and opposed to warmongers.

Guests from the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC – Workers’ Central Union of Cuba) were invited to the convention, but CTC Deputy Secretary Isdalis Rodriguez was refused a visa.  Miguel Loredo, the CTC’s International Relations Officer,arrived and participated in an event sponsored by the Association des travailleursgrecs du Québec, People’s Voice, Clarté and members of the Action Caucus. His remarks were warmly received,and he was given a standing ovation in solidarity with Cuban workers and the Cuban Revolution.

It's clear that the CLC can’t rest on its laurels in the days and months ahead. The days of the “we’re all in this together” are long gone, and workers are demanding the CLC lead a fight on behalf of all workers and their families. There’s no time to lose.  

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Sudan: “The solution to the crisis begins with the unity of the people to fight the war and stop it”

Sudanese Communist Party

The signing on May 11, 2023 of the “Humanitarian Declaration In Jeddah” between the warring groups, with a commitment to protect civilians in Sudan – while removing the Sudanese issues and the actual forces that represent its legate and fair demands from its declared agenda and establishing the hegemony of specific countries under the leadership of the United States – is welcomed by the active national forces with an interest in restoring the revolution, which begins with stopping the war and laying the foundations for peace, lifting the scourge of war from the shoulders of the Sudanese people.

The people, especially the inhabitants of the capital and West Darfur, are facing difficult humanitarian conditions which oblige all to respect and comply with the human right to life. Therefore, the issue of stopping the war becomes our immediate demand.

We cannot be satisfied with the humanitarian declaration between two parties which are not qualified to implement its provisions, because of their shameful track record and their ongoing history of committing crimes against humanity.

The declaration represents the continuation and escalation of the war according to new rules, and an invitation to the capital’s inhabitants to leave it, to flee that center of resistance and perseverance and a beacon for the revolution. It confirms that both sides have no desire to stop the war and do not care about the lives of the people. This declaration remains incomplete so long as it is not followed with a clear mechanism for monitoring its implementation and a clear plan for removing the armed confrontation from residential areas and health and service facilities and stopping the aerial bombardment and destruction of infrastructure.

Today, with this catastrophic war in its second month and with the destruction it has left behind – hundreds of casualties and thousands of wounded, especially in the capital and West Darfur – the central issue and the main demand of the masses remains to stop the war immediately and reject all attempts to impose solutions and agreements which reproduce the crisis and the bloody partnership that fashioned this war.

The Communist Party believes that the solution to the general crisis and the disastrous scourge of war begins with the unity of the people in a broad mass front to fight the war and stop it. This requires the participation of all the forces of the revolution, its leadership and the grassroots organizations, in the humanitarian work of mitigating the effects of the war, especially in the capital; in mobilizing and organizing the masses to engage in this humanitarian process; and coordinating with trustworthy international and national organizations to distribute aid and relief to those who need it and to introduce measures that the prevent the dirty activities of the corrupt war merchants.

It’s very critical and crucial for the revolutionary forces to remain alert and to reject and resist all form of agreements or resolutions that aim to reproduce the main cause of the national crises and to impose the bloody partnership which led to the war in the first place.

Resistance action inside the capital goes hand in hand with widespread mass action in all states, towns and villages of Sudan through banner raising, demonstrations, protests and all forms of peaceful struggle. This will force all  parties to the conflict – including the international and regional forces and all supporters of the war – to stop the war, shackling the killers and criminals, restoring normal life to the people, sending the military back to the barracks, disbanding the militias, holding accountable and prosecuting all war criminals and not allowing them to go unpunished, restoring the revolution, protecting national sovereignty, blocking foreign interference and preserving the unity of the country.

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RCMP whips up Cold War frenzy with “secret Chinese police stations” sting

Marc Lacroix

The RCMP made a shocking declaration in the Quebec media on March 9, when it announced that an investigation was underway into two “secret Chinese police stations” in the Montreal area. According to spokesperson sergeant Charles Poirier, the presumed police stations were responsible for a “climate of terror” in the local Chinese Canadian community.

The RCMP claimed that the stations were operating under the cover of two respected community groups – Chinese Family Services, founded in 1976, and the Sino-Quebec Center located in the South Shore. News reports mentioned that both groups were headed by Li Xixi, who is also a municipal councilor in the Greater Montreal suburb of Brossard.

The feds offered no specific proof to support their vague allegations of “intimidation” and “threats.” Nor did they provide specific examples of “Chinese police station” activities. The RCMP made sure to cover its back in the initial media release, by explaining that a successful operation can be measured by the “perturbation of malicious acts” even in the absence of criminal accusations.

In other words, the RCMP was to win coming and going. In the total absence of proof of criminal activities, the police can claim credit for preventively stopping them. This way, the RCMP ensures that its claims cannot be refuted, because the absence of proof becomes a sign of success of the “perturbation” operation.

And this is exactly how the saga has played out.

The media immediately jumped on board, splashing sensational headlines about “Chinese interference” across front pages, with no critical questioning of the RCMP’s allegations.

The Mayor of Brossard expressed “deep concern” about the possibility of China obtaining sensitive information through Councilor Li Xixi, since she is president of both organizations slandered by the RCMP. The media reported the mayor’s concerns with breathless solemnity. Imagine the danger for Canadians if the Chinese communist government should learn the details of contracttenders for recycling in Brossard! Or obtain the blueprints for the new basketball court being planned for the municipal park! Luckily, the RCMP is there to protect these vital interests.

Curiously, as of May 6 there has been no further information from the feds. No one has come forward to confirm the allegations. The two groups in question have offered to fully collaborate with the RCMP investigation and have not even received a callback.

On April 28, federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino claimed that the RCMP had indeed successfully shutdown all “Chinese police stations” in Canada. The RCMP has still not explained the exact nature of these stations.

Regardless, the RCMP claimed victoryon May 5, asserting that they had indeed successfully “perturbed” the illegal activities. No further details of what these activities may have been were offered. We are meant to believe that the operationwas so efficient that the illegal activities simply disappeared without leaving a trace.

The farce would be laughable were it not for the devastating effects on the local Chinese Canadian community. Despite lack of proof and specific allegations, the two community groups saw their funding completely cut off by the Quebec government, resulting in a loss of vital services for vulnerable members of the community.

A climate fear is indeed present in Montreal’s Chinese community, and it is a direct result of the RCMP’s dirty tricks.

The same day the RCMP claimed total victory, members of the local Chinese Canadian community held a press conference, demanding that the RCMP provide answers. They were accompanied by Yuen Pau Woo, independent senator from British Colombia, who called on the RCMP to “provide information, clarity, and in the meantime, don’t create more problems for the community.”

Local immigration lawyer Walter Tom had harsh words for the RCMP’s tactics: “By associating, in such an irresponsible manner, these two [community] organizations with secret police stations, and particularly by flashing the names of these two organizations every time that there are headlines about secret police, they are creating an atmosphere of fear.”

The baseless allegations may fade from the headlines, as the lack of evidence becomes impossible to ignore, but irreparable damage has been done to the community. Not only have funding and services been cut, but the ambient Sinophobia has been reinforced. The RCMP dirty tricks are clearly the byproduct of US geopolitical efforts to rachet up the new Cold War against China. Demonizing the Chinese community in Canada makes it easier to get people on board with increased military spending and gearing up for war to counter the “Chinese threat.”

Racism and xenophobia against the Chinese community are nothing new in Canada. Now, they are being used to serve the ends of US imperialism.

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Ontario’s working class can’t afford to wait for the next election

PV Ontario Bureau

The CUPE Ontario convention concludes with a rally on June 3, organized by the Ontario Federation of Labour’s “Enough is Enough” campaign. Both of these events – a week-long meeting of the largest union in Ontario and a mass demonstration led by the largest provincial labour federation in Canada, representing over 1 million workers – come at a key moment for the working class in Ontario.

Across Canada, working people face plummeting real wages and living standards, caused by corporate profiteering and a deliberate recession designed to create mass unemployment. One job should be enough to have a decent standard of living, but it isn’t enough, and work is becoming more precarious across most sectors.

A massive transfer of wealth is currently underway, from working people to monopoly corporations and the rich. This is happening throughout the capitalist world and Ontario is no exception. However, Ontario has an especially aggressive government which has already demonstrated its willingness to use unprecedented autocratic measures like Bill 28, which invoked the notwithstanding clause to break the strike by CUPE education workers and impose the corporate agenda by force.

Doug Ford’s Conservative government leads the way in attacking health and education through cuts and mass privatization. Ford’s privatization of hospital surgeries strikesat the roots of the public healthcare system. His government has deepened the housing crisis, resulting in increased poverty, foreclosures and homelessness. Ford has used this crisis as a pretext for opening up Ontario’s Greenbelt to his developer base, as well as undermining municipal democracy through his strong mayor laws and other legislation. If municipalities and school boards don’t resist, local democracy and autonomy will be steamrolled once again.

The Ford government is among the most right-wing in Canada and is leading the assault on working people in many areas. This means that Ontario’s labour movement must lead the way in the fight back.

For decades public sector workers have faced and fought a succession of Tory and Liberal governments intent on freezing and reducing wages. What is new is the speed at which the cost of living is currently rising, especially for basic necessities like food, fuel and housing. Wage increases that are below inflation mean a steep and swift decline in living standards for workers. This is the main driver for major strikes in the last year, including those among the building trades, education workers and federal public servants.

The wage and benefit restraints in Bill 124 did serious harm to public sector workers and public services, especially healthcare. But there’s even more at stake now, with Ford’s intention to continue forcing below-inflation increases.

The Tories’ increasing viciousness is driven by an economic backdrop in which corporations are pushing for higher profits and expanded power at the expense of wages, pensions and benefits, labour rights and public services. This is what gave rise to Bill 28 and Ford’s strikebreaking strategy against CUPE education workers. Although this was defeated through the courage and militancy of education workers and seldom seen unity in the labour movement, we can expect similar anti-democratic and union busting maneuversfrom the government and its corporate backers. Workers will inevitably fight back.

This is not a fight which will not wait three more years until the next election – it’s here now and will continue to sharpen. Our health and education systems, our public services and our livelihoods are on the line now. Working people cannot afford a “play-it-safe” strategy in which labour outsources its political demands and action to the NDP. Elections do matter, but a narrow reliance on electoralism, which pushes aside the necessary fight in the streets, has failed before and will continue to be a losing strategy for the working class.

Fortunately, we have seen that a mass fightback is possible and that it can get results. The most recent example wasthe education workers’ unity and militancy last fall, but there are many other instances including the Days of Action against the Conservative government of Mike Harris in the 1990s. If labour can again unite effectively around an escalating action plan which includes the political strike weapon and builds toward a general strike, this government’s agenda can be disrupted. Governments have been brought down before.

Labour needs to lead with its own demands, likethose being advanced by the OFL’s“Enough is Enough” campaign – raise wages; stop privatization; ensure affordable food, fuel and rent; and make the banks and corporations pay. Campaigning on these policies raises the political bar, forcing all parties to respond to a people’s agenda for Ontario. It builds the basis for a stronger election campaign in three years, mobilizing a wave of mass pressure which can defeat the Conservatives and their corporate agenda. A government elected in the wake of such a campaign – including an NDP government – will be compelled to introduce more fundamental change than just pushing a more “friendly” version of the same corporate policies.

Elements of what’s needed to defeat Ford are already visible. The June 3 province-wide Day of Action and the Ontario Health Coalition’s recent workplace and community referendum against healthcare privatization have brought together thousands of labour and community activists. The “Enough is Enough” campaign demands, and the increased unity and militancy seen in strike solidarity are hopeful signs, but they need to expand.

We need to grow this movement quickly and with deeper roots, by building labour-community solidarity in local grassroots fightback committees. This kind of organization was key to sustaining and building the large mobilizations of the Ontario Days of Action in the 1990s.

Unions need to commit resources for organizing, to help build and mobilize local committees. Among other things, this means providing money for booking off and hiring organizers. We cannot limit ourselves with strategies that focus on lobbying, buying billboard ads and pouring resources into “swing ridings” during elections.

Mass action, including political strikes, works.The current working-class struggles in France and Britain demonstrate that sustained, widespread mobilization is possible and that mass political strikes have the power to shake governments to their knees and even bring them down.

But this kind of movement needs to be built – it cannot be brought into existence by sloganistic motions calling for an immediate unlimited general strike. We need an escalating campaign that increases the size and scope of our mobilizations, and which includes the political strike weapon. The conditions of the class struggle can develop very quickly, but without organization and preparation now, we will not be able to effectively launch a general strike.

Preparation includes confronting and overcoming rifts in the labour movement. Unifor played an important role in many struggles and labour councils across the province until their departure from the Canadian Labour Congress and the OFL. Solidarity brought Unifor to the podium when labour confronted the Ford Government last fall. The labour movement needs to find ways to continue building that unity, fighting together now on picket lines and in labour campaigns.

Working people can’t afford three more years of Ford. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait!

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Capitalism's only wiggle room lies in war and reaction

Adrien Welsh

Capitalism is living on borrowed time. Day by day, it reveals its parasitic and predatory character, making it increasingly clear that capitalism’s salvation depends on alternating between increasingly violent phases of self-destruction and reconstruction.

This dynamic is observable in each of the main political-economic alignments of capitalism in the modern era.

The three alignments of contemporary capitalism

Until the 1930s, capitalism was in a conquering and ascendant phase – purely liberal with limited or no control. This was the era of "laissez-faire." The absence of regulation led to the crisis of 1929, in which the working class could not consume what it produced. It was the first great crisis of production.

Roosevelt's New Deal, later theorized by Keynes, gave rise to a realignment of capitalist forces in which the state invested a little more in the economy, but in the service of monopolies. This was state monopoly capitalism in its ascendant phase. The periods of stagflation of the 1970s, as well as the oil shocks, upset this balance between capital and labour. Similarly, the allied imperialist states begin to compete with each other. This was the end of the "thirty glorious years."

The new “equilibrium” is found through neoliberalism, with its focus on the deregulation of markets and the free movement of capital. This is the golden age of free trade agreements, relocation, privatization – capitalist globalization.

But this model is not foolproof. The economies of capitalist countries are artificially boosted, since they produce hardly any added value. This gave rise to the subprime crisis of 2008, which sounded the death knell for the neoliberal era. The crisis induced by the COVID-19 puts a final nail in the coffin, by exposing the limits of globalized production chains (the semiconductor crisis, the months-long stoppage of maritime transport, etc.)

We are experiencing the crisis of the neoliberal system. The economic measures applied thirty years ago, as well as the political consensus involved, no longer work. Alarmingly, the people who are most articulate about this problem – at least at the rhetorical level – are the proponents of the extreme right. Liberals, social democrats and "classical" conservatives are all trying to artificially maintain the neoliberal order.

This context of global volatility helps explain Donald Trump's election, his “victorious defeat” and the rise of populism around the world. We are living through a period of transition and transformation that is not unlike recent periods of capitalism’s development.

The balance of power

The interplay between different social forces is not mechanical. It corresponds to capital’s constant need to remedy the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. But the context for this is one in which workers continually fight for higher wages and better working conditions.

During the crisis of the 1930s, the young communist movement became increasingly powerful in the unions. Roosevelt's New Deal was an effort not so much to revise the relationship between the state and capital, as between capital and labor. Its overarching drive was to depoliticize union action – specifically, to marginalize communists from the working class – at all costs, using both the carrot and the stick. The idea was to make people believe that capital knows how to respond to the demands of the working class – this is the basis of “yellow unionism.”

By the 1980s, the decades of McCarthyism and the Cold War had severely weakened communist influence in the unions and among the working class in the West and especially in North America. The ruling class was able to go further with its attacks, but it still had to deal with a major brake – the USSR and the people's democracies of Eastern Europe, as well as their influence among the workers and peoples throughout the world. This was a period in which the labour movement was open to "social dialogue" and compromise.

And for the future?

The absence of the Soviet counterweight, combined with the relative weakness of the communist movement and class struggle unionism, gives imperialism and capitalism – for the first time in recent human history – free rein in its war against the working class and the peoples of the world.

Capital has very little to fear and can press much harder than it would have dreamed just 30 years ago. In today’s logic of work, job creation takes a back seat to corporate benefits, and the “industrial reserve army” is collectively maintained through structural unemployment. Weakened, unions must accept contracting out and more widespread use of temporary migrant labour with few rights. This is particularly true in the private sector, which was harmed by deindustrialization flowing from free trade agreements.

Against this backdrop, we can expect another realignment in which management is contracted out through remote work, while some parts of presently globalized production are repatriated but carried out by foreign workers without rights, from countries victimized by “our” imperialism. As for the local population, it will be paid for its idleness in the same way as the population of the Gulf States or the white population in South Africa during apartheid.

But such a system needs two things to function. First, the state would have to invest more and more in the economy. This investment would not have – and never has had – the purpose of transferring wealth from capital to labour, but rather the other way around. Instead of reinvesting in production, the state ensures that employment is destroyed either through inflation or through higher interest rates. It invests to intensify the rate of exploitation and put workers in competition with each other, as well as to suppress unions and other organizations dedicated to the working-class struggle.

Second, the state can only sustain a parasitic local working class by intensifying labour exploitation on a global scale, which means imperialist hegemony. But this is now being challenged, through global competition from new economic alignments such as BRICS which are attacking the supremacy of the petrodollar and, consequently, of Western imperialism.

This means that the new capitalist realignment which Western imperialism desires only becomes viable through war against China and Russia. Nobody in the ruling class is fundamentally opposed to this – the only difference is one of tactics.

Lenin said, more than a hundred years ago, that globalized capitalism means war. Whatever the alignments of contemporary capitalism, the goal is and always has been to ensure that the state drains the working class for the benefit of the monopolies, so that they compete to the point that, in the name of their interests, workers go to war.

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Solidarity grows for Windsor Salt workers, now into fourth month of strike

Struggle against union-busting tactics highlights need for anti-scab legislation

PV staff

Imagine going to trial and being told that proceedings will only begin if you agree in advance to a sentence of capital punishment. This was the bizarre situation facing workers at Windsor Salt, whose employer told them during contract talks that it would not negotiate any monetary issues until the union agreed to outsource their jobs.

Faced with this existential threat to their union, wages and working conditions, the 250 workers walked out on February 17 and have been on strike ever since. The strike involves three bargaining units organized by two Unifor locals, 240 and 1959, at its Windsor, Ontario facility.

Windsor Salt is the largest salt manufacturer in Canada, with estimated annual revenues of nearly $450 million. In 2021, it was purchased by private US holding corporation Stone Canyon Industries, which owns much of the salt industry across North America and whose combined revenues have been estimated at around $3 billion.

Since acquiring Windsor Salt, Stone Canyon has demanded deep concessions and embarked on an aggressive union-busting campaign.

Throughout the strike, the company has used scab labour and hired private investigators to intimidate union members. On March 1, it received a court injunction against union pickets which had blocked salt from being removed from the plant.

The strike has received solidarity from several areas, including in the Windsor community and in the political arena. NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West) called on the Ford government to pass anti-scab legislation, which the NDP has tabled sixteen times at Queen’s Park. “The Conservatives have had many opportunities to support anti-scab labour legislation but didn’t. You can’t claim you’re working for workers and vote against anti-scab legislation. Speaker, Windsor Salt workers and workers across Ontario want to know, will the Premier stand up for collective bargaining rights, stand up for workers, and finally pass anti-scab legislation, yes or no?” 

The Communist Party has been mobilizing picket line support in Windsor and recently called for increased solidarity for the strike. “As the strike enters its 14th week,” said the Party, “we demand the company bargain in good faith and immediately cease their tactics of intimidation, union busting and the use of scab labour.”

Speaking at a strike rally at the beginning of April, Unifor’s Ontario regional director Naureen Rizvi noted that the Windsor Salt struggle involves more than just job security at one employer. “When you have disputes like this, other employers are watching,” she said. “If the goal is to introduce non-union positions, get concessions and eliminate our jurisdiction, we can’t let that happen. Windsor has 16,000 Unifor members working in close proximity. There’s no way we’re going to let that message out.”

Ontario Communist Party leader Drew Garvie says this strike, like many others, points to the need for increased political struggle by working people. “Stone Canyon’s union-busting tactics demonstrate the need for an immediate expansion of labour rights in Ontario. In particular, we call for anti-scab laws, bankruptcy protection for workers, card check union certification and a Labour Bill of Rights to protect the rights of all workers to organize, bargain collectively, strike and picket.”

Garvie adds that “Labour Minister Monte McNaughton and the whole Ford government claim to be ‘working for workers.’ In fact, the Ontario government is facilitating attacks against working people by transnational corporate monopolies like Stone Canyon. It is no coincidence that employers and their friends at Queen’s Park are stepping up their attacks on workers and unions, as working people struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table. We stand in full solidarity with the Windsor Salt workers!”

The Communist Party has been campaigning across the country for government action to roll back prices, rents and interest rates, and for an increase in workers’ wages and incomes. The soaring cost of living – largely driven by corporate profiteering and the Bank of Canada’s job-killing interest rate strategy – is resulting in declining real wages for working people across throughout Canada.

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The attack on the broader public sector is an attack on women workers

Doug Allan

Women's wages caught up to men’s wages when broader public sector (BPS) wages grew but when BPS wages were suppressed, the wage gap grew.

Women comprise 74 percent of the Ontario education, healthcare and social assistance workforce. A strong female majority is present in all three of these sectors but is especially marked in healthcare and social assistance, where 762,800 women work. These three industries account for 31 percent of all women employees in Ontario. So, what happens to these workers has a big impact on women.

For men, it's a different story – education, health and social assistance account for only 9.89 percent of all male employment in Ontario. So overall, males are much less affected by what happens in these sectors.

These three industries are the great bulk of the provincial broader public sector or "BPS." The BPS is the portion of the public sector that is primarily funded and, to a large extent, controlled by the provincial government. It is composed of about 1.2 million workers, or 18.5 percent of the Ontario workforce. It excludes the federal government and municipal governments. The BPS also includes 66,000 employees in the provincial civil service – another large employer where the majority of employees are female.

The gender wage gap

The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) reported on May 16 that progress on reducing the gap between men and women’s wages ended in 2010. “The gender wage gap has made no progress over the past decade, with women earning 87 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2022.” 

This coincided with the attack on the wages of the female dominant BPS by the provincial government. Similarly, when BPS workers achieved higher settlements, the overall wage gap between men and women shrank sharply.

The attack on BPS wages

In 2010 the provincial government began imposing austerity on BPS wages. In that year the Ontario government required BPS unions to negotiate over a proposed wage freeze. Few unions took them up on their offer – but that was the start of more than a decade of wage austerity directed at BPS workers. This proved to be a serious and lasting campaign, with women workers the major target. 

The campaign really took off after the introduction of Bill 115 (the Putting Students First Act, passed in 2012 by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government) which would freeze BPS wages. Teacher unions and others fought off the bill in a 2012 showdown. While the right to free collective bargaining was retained for BPS workers and the bill was ultimately withdrawn, the result for hundreds of thousands of BPS workers was lower wage increases.

There was a slight reprieve in 2017, as the failing Liberal government sought to repent just before it faced the electors – and their negative judgement. After the Conservatives came to power in 2018, however, the new government announced their plan to introduce Bill 124, and this legislation imposed lower wage settlements on the BPS once again, dampening the bargaining climate for everyone. 

Government statistics show that BPS settlements have lagged other settlements over the post 2010 period up until the pattern began to change at the very end of 2022 when the school board workers’ illegal strike pushed the BPS average way up – a pattern that is being built upon, with new, even higher BPS settlements. 

For many decades, public and private sector settlements have had a close relationship with inflation in the year of settlement, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower. That remained true for private sector settlements over 2010-2021 but public sector settlements, while still bearing a close relationship to inflation, fell a little behind. 

The gender pay gap shrank when BPS workers did well

Public sector settlements are sometimes higher than inflation and higher than private sector settlements. And that is what happened over the 2000-2010 decade. Once again, the wage pattern in the BPS is associated with a change in the gender wage gap, but in this period strong public sector settlements were associated with women's wages catching up to male wages.

The gap decreased sharply between 2000 and 2010. with women’s wages catching up from 80 percent of men’s wages to 87 percent. During that period, public sector settlements were above inflation and above private sector settlements. 

The NDP took up a similar theme, noting that Bill 124 and its attack on BPS wages has exacerbated the gender wage gap. “Instead of efforts to close the wage gap, the government has chosen to widen it. They’d prefer to spend money taking nurses and midwives and teachers to court rather than pay them a fair wage,” said NDP leader Marit Stiles. And she is right – the provincial government has acted to suppress women’s wages though Bill 124. But there is a longer history too.

The class struggle in the broader public sector is closely aligned with the struggle for women’s equality. When BPS wages are suppressed, women's wages fall behind – when BPS wages do well, women's wages are improved. Other major employers of women workers (retail, food services and accommodation) provide limited pathways to fair-paying employment and low levels of unionization to push those wages up.

The Ford government has taken a special interest in portraying itself as a friend of private sector blue-collar workers, a group that is mostly male and which is under threat due to de-industrialization and the province's switch to the service and IT economies. 

This makes for a lot of photo opportunities, with plenty of cosplay and lots of money thrown at private corporations. But for workers, the talk is cheap. The Ford government doesn't pay these private sector blue-collar workers even one slim dime, and the government claims to be pro-worker even as it pursues an attack on its own BPS workforce – the largely female BPS workforce.

It's impossible to see this as an innocent move. Ford is stoking gender divisions to further his class war on BPS workers. That is now being challenged as BPS workers – like the school board strikers – challenge the low wages (for men and women BPS workers) built on the government's sexist strategy.

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BCFED poll shows wide support for employment protections for gig workers

PV staff

A recent poll commissioned by the BC Federation of Labour (BCFED) shows overwhelming public support in the province for extending basic employment protections to app-based gig workers.

Of the more than 800 people surveyed, three-quarters (74 percent) agreed that gig workers should be protected by employment standards like minimum wage, overtime pay, paid sick days and workers’ compensation. An even higher percentage (80 percent) said employees of companies hiring gig workers – such as Uber, Lyft, Uber Eats, DoorDash and SkipTheDishes – should have to pay into employment programs like workers' compensation, the employer health tax, Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan.

Notably, less than half of those surveyed (48 percent) knew that gig workers currently do not receive minimum wage, overtime pay, paid sick days, statutory holiday pay or workers’ compensation protection.

Despite heavy lobbying of the public by the companies involved, only 28 percent of people surveyed felt that gig workers should only be paid for the time they spend actively transporting a customer or making a delivery. The poll notes that this position is outnumbered nearly two to one by people who support paying gig workers for all the time they spend working.

The poll, conducted by Research Co. between April 15-17, indicated that supporters of all political parties in the BC Legislature agree with extending basic employment protections to gig workers. This was strongest among NDP and Green supporters (81 percent and 78 percent respectively) but it was noticeably high among Liberal Party supporters (61 percent).

BCFED President Sussanne Skidmore said the poll should prompt the province’s NDP government to enact legislation. “There’s no ambiguity in these results. It’s time the BC government took the actions needed to ensure app-based gig workers get the same protections the rest of us count on.”

Low wages and lack of basic employment protections are problems facing gig workers across the country, including an estimated 250,000 who work as delivery couriers and passenger drivers. A report released in January by Toronto-based RideFairTO estimated that full-time Uber drivers in Toronto earn only $7.90 per hour, just 51 percent of Ontario’s $15.50 minimum wage.

This terrible situation belies the promises made in the “historic agreement” between Uber and UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) in January 2022. That deal, which the union made with the corporation in secret without worker involvement or vote, ties 100,000 Uber workers to UFCW but only provides very limited union representation on a narrow range of issues. Improving wages, clearly, was not part of the agreement.

It means that, in addition to Skidmore’s statement that governments need to step up with legislation to protect gig workers, the labour movement needs to put more time and resources into real organizing drives. Some unions, including CUPW through Gig Workers United,have beenengaged in grassroots organizing among gig workers, but their efforts among Uber drivers were cut off by the sweetheart UFCW-Uber deal.

Hopefully, the BCFED poll results will put some wind back into the sails of genuine union organizing among gig workers.

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Italian labour movement calls 24-hour transport strike in fight for higher wages, lower prices

In an intensifying struggle with far-right Italian Prime Minister GiorgiaMeloni, public transport workers have called for a 24-hour general strike on May 26. The strike is organized by the UnioneSindacale di Base (USB), a left-wing, class struggle union which is a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).

The USB’s demands include an immediate net pay increase of 300 euros per month (about $435 CDN), a minimum wage of 10 euros ($14.60 CDN), a cost-of-living allowance which links wages to real inflation, and price controls to lower the cost of living.

The union calculates that millions of workers have seen their purchasing power decline by around 12 percent over the past 30 years. Government policies have led to deteriorated working conditions, with workers facing widespread precarity, speed-ups, increased part-time and casual work, and weak job security including indiscriminate firings.

Italy has no minimum wage legislation, and millions of working people have had their wages fixed at less than 7 euros per hour, often through poor contracts negotiated through business unionism. USB also says that constitutionally enshrined rights like housing, public education, health and public transport have been diminished to the point of worthlessness.“Essential public services are totally abandoned and suffer continuous heavy cuts, while military spending ever-increasing.”

The May 26 general strike is also to oppose privatization of public transport, which negatively affects workers through both reduced wages and decreased service. The union says that a job in public transport has become “a job from which one escapes” due to heavy workloads, poor compensation and unsafe working conditions.

The strike has been organized in major cities in every region of Italy, with the exception of the flood-stricken areas in Emilia Romagna.

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Maduro attacks Venezuelan communists through fake PCV congress

On May 21, the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) convened a fake congress of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), with the aim of taking hold of the actual PCV and subordinating it to the interests of the Nicolás Maduro government.

The Communist Party was involved for many years with the Bolivarian Process in Venezuela, working with Hugo Chávez and, initially, with Maduro. But as the US blockade and other imperialist measures took their toll on the Venezuelan economy and society, Maduro and the PSUV have made deep concessions to both local oligarchs and foreign capital. The result is an increasingly neoliberal set of policies which place heavy burdens on the Venezuelan people.

The PCV has been one of the most principled critics of this policy direction, and the PSUV has responded by singling out the Party for increasingly aggressive harassment. The fake congress is the most recent example.

PCV General Secretary Oscar Figuera (pictured) explained, "the PSUV leadership wants to usurp the legal personality of the Communist Party of Venezuela; they want to put their hand on the PCV's capacity for action and neutralize its role in the social struggles in the country.”

“Whatever happens, in the courts or in the Electoral Council,” Figuera added, “there will be a Communist Party here.” 

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KKE sees vote surge in Greek election

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) received a big increase in votes in the country’s May 21 parliamentary elections, with their popular support rising to 7.23 percent from 5.3 percent in 2019. The Party received a total of 425,000 votes (an increase of 125,000) and elected 26 MPs, eleven more than 4 years ago.

The results make the KKE the fourth largest party in the Greek parliament and the third largest in Attica, the wider region around Athens which contains over a third of the country’s population.

During the election campaign, the communists warned that of a political correlation among the conservative New Democracy party and the social democratic SYRIZA and PASOK parties. “It is clear that despite their individual differences and confrontations, they converge on basic strategic policies, on basic directions,” said KKE General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas. “In particular, SYRIZA, both when in government and in opposition during the past four years, has been a key vehicle for the conservative turn of the people, eventually fueling the prevalence of New Democracy.”

Koutsoumbas noted that the election outcome, as well as the government’s decision to hold ne snap elections in June, mean a new wave of “cuts and austerity, strict fiscal policy, the possibility of a new economic crisis, the dangerous developments regarding the imperialist war in Ukraine and Greece’s increased involvement in it.”

He said that, in this context, “the KKE will be the only hopeful opposition for our people both in and out of parliament, on the side of the class people’s struggles for the protection of the life, income and all the rights of the people and the youth.”

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CAQ congress shows how to be the best political vehicle for monopolies

PV Quebec Bureau

Quebec Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) held its congress May 13-14. After winning a dominating 90 out of 125 seats in the National Assembly in the October 2022 election, the CAQ leader had little to worry about in terms of retaining his party’s confidence.

True, his latest announcement cancelling his pharaonic “Troisième lien” project (a tunnel between Quebec City and its south shore) displeased a lot of his potential electors. He had promoted the scheme during his whole campaign, despite scientific reports proving it to be detrimental for the environment and, to a certain extent, unnecessary.

Québec solidaire and other political organizations dogged CAQ about the plan during the whole campaign. But now pretending to have listened to his critics, Legault decided that instead of a massive tunnel under the St. Lawrence, he would tone it down to only public transit use.

It didn’t take long for Québec solidaire to claim victory. Similarly, other parties including Éric Duhaime’s Conservatives didn’t take long to portrait Legault as a “sellout.” Polls have CAQ at its lowest level. But in the end, this is nothing more than a political distraction.Hence Legault’s 98.61 percentapproval vote at the CAQ congress.

In fact, Legault has no problem taking such tricky decisions at the beginning of his hegemonic mandate, and it sets a trap for other political parties. Sure, there will be resentment from some voters but while the focus is on this non-issue, Legault will keep slowly but surely advance the monopolies’ agenda.

In March, he tabled Bill 15in an effort to centralize the healthcare system, while also jumping on the system’spractical collapse (highlighted during the pandemic) in order to further privatize it. However, he knows that the labour movement is the main obstacle to the corporate agenda. So, he is proposing that the entire healthcare system will now be run by an arm’s length super agency (Santé Québec), just like Hydro-Québec. He is also demanding that all healthcare workers will be infour union accreditation units, a severe reduction from the current 136 units.

With Bill 13, related to education, things are not much better. This legislation is simply a continuation of Bill 40, which dismantled school boards and replaced them with unelected bodies. With the latest proposed reform in education, any teacher or school principal who doesn’t follow the direct line of the Education Ministry could be dismissed.

There’salso has a reform ready for construction workers, which eliminates the recognition of the different trades.So soon, a carpenter will do the job of an electrician on a construction site.

The Legault government is clever and much more tactical than the Couillard Liberals and their austerity plan – it wants to get rid of anything that could stand in the way of capitalist profits. The only reason CAQ exists is to make sure that monopolies are in the driver’s seat.

Instead of frontally attacking the working class, CAQ’s main target is the union movement. Thisis shown byGovernment Administration Minister Sonia LeBel’s statements and practices which try to bypass unions in the public service. CAQ tries hard to turn people against unionized workers, in the same way that it tries to funnel working people from militant unions towards weaker and more compliant ones. Whether in healthcare or education, the goal is to hold the door to this multi-billion-dollar market wide open for private companies.

In short, CAQ’s goal is to dismantle all social gains stemming from the so-called Quiet Revolution. When Legault talks about rallying“nationalism and the economy,” he really meansthat for the sake of the Quebec nation, workers have to support not only their bosses but also NATO and Western imperialism.

Unfortunately, there is little to no opposition to this aspect of CAQ. Québec solidaire is too busy trying to integrate itself into therespectable parliamentarism. The PartiQuébécois isstruggling to show it still exists, while the Liberals don’t know where they fit in the Quebec political scene.

In terms of the labour movement, the CSN did identify the Legault government as a right populist one. However, considering its capacity to lead the struggle against monopolies’ power, its actions still need to fit the bill.

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The drive for more military is a drive for more war and poverty

PV editorial

The mainstream media is filled with calls for Canada to increase its military spending, to reach the elusive and utterly daft NATO benchmark of 2 percent of GDP. The Globe and Mail alone has printed so many miles of coverage of “Canada’s financial commitment to its military allies” that bird cages around the country will never want for clean liner.

“Two percent” sounds so miniscule, so harmless, that it’s easy for people to overlook what this would mean in terms of military spending.

In sheer dollar amounts, it’s enormous. With a GDP of over $2.2 trillion USD in 2022 ($3 trillion CDN), Canada would have to spend $60 billion a year to satisfy NATO’s demands. Hitting such a target would require an additional expenditure of about $22 billion annually. That either means $22 billion more in personal taxes (like, do you really expect corporations to pay for this?) or $22 billion less for health, education, climate, jobs, housing or childcare (although most of those have already been cut back to help pay for the current level of military spending.)

So, goodbye $10-a-day childcare and hello bombers. Au revoir emission reductions and bonjour battleships. Adios affordable housing and hola missile defence. You get the idea.

But it isn’t just a question of priorities for future spending. This is also about current allocation of public money. National Defence is the largest department within the government, and it currently sucks up around 7 percent of the overall budget at $32 billion or so annually. So, all that talk we hear about healthcare being the big money vacuum is a load of BS. The real Hoover in the room is the military.

Worse, the military budget is already so big that they can’t even spend it all. For years, audits have shown that DND is underspending its annual budget. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that $10 billion in capital funding alone sits unspent. In March 2022, the Canadian Naval Review (hardly a hotbed of peace activism) published a report stating, “DND currently cannot spend what the government has allocated.”

This doesn’t mean that the whole military budget isn’t being spent, or that it isn’t being put to destructive ends. Increasingly over the past two-and-a-half decades, Canada has been (willingly and enthusiastically) drawn into US-led aggressions. Among them are the bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 (because the government wouldn’t sign a neoliberal privatization agreement called the Rambouillet Accord), the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (so that NATO could get a foothold in resource-rich areas in Asia), the overthrow of the government of Libya (because…oil!) and the arming and training of the Ukrainian military (so that Ukrainian people can die while ensuring that NATO expands right up to Russia’s borders).

Indeed, most of the military budget is being diligently put to deadly use around the world.

But the high military budget is also leading to deadly circumstances here in Canada. By prioritizing NATO over people’s needs here, Canada’s military spending ensures that more people will suffer in poverty, or go hungry, or work in dangerous conditions at two or more jobs, or freeze to death because they are unhoused, or die from untreated health issues.

The fact is, pushing for ever-increasing military spending (which is what pinning the DND budget to the GDP involves) means pushing for more poverty, more war and more misery.

Let’s chop the military budget back and fund people’s needs for a change. 

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Pages from our past…

Should get out of NATO

Canadian Tribune Vol 55 No 2000 ~ May 31, 1976

At their meeting in Oslo, Norway, May 20-21, the defence ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries tried hard to drum up arms sales on behalf of the multinationals, and to conjure up an alleged Soviet threat as justification. Behind closed doors they sought ways to maintain the status quo throughout NATO’s “domain” despite life’s changing reality. And, they had the task of papering over the cracks in NATO itself, from Iceland to Cyprus.

NATO’s problems, however, have not lessened but perhaps increased its aggressive purpose. As it threatened Portugal, it now tried to pressure and influence Italian voters in the hope of shutting off progress, which it sees as a threat to NATO’s “superiority.”

Under the influence of NATO’s propaganda campaign – helped along by Canada’s Defence Minister Alan MacEachen – Canadians are expected to contribute unprotestingly to the enrichment of the multinational arms merchants – electronics, chemical, aircraft, steel, etc.

We’ve been sold this bill of goods long enough. Canada should get out of the NATO military pact and make its own decisions, as it should have long ago withdrawn from NORAD (the North American Air Defence agreement by which US generals can push-button Canada into a war.)

We should get out of NATO because Canada is not threatened by the Portuguese or Italian or Soviet people, or the liberated people of Angola. The real threat to Canada is its tagging along in NATO’s made-in-USA foreign policy of arms build-up, military threats and of bribery and sabotage inside countries the USA wants to subvert.

Canada should get out of NATO, whose policies stifle our interests, and opt for a policy based on détente – a policy which would permit the investment of those so-far wasted billions of dollars in Canadian development for the benefit of the Canadian people.

Notes: The NATO military alliance has always taken a close interest in the political and economic developments within its member countries. Founded with the specific purpose of confronting and undermining the socialist community of states, the organization is also intensely preoccupied with preserving and strengthening capitalism. This includes weakeninganddefeating socialist, anti-imperialist and other progressive movements in countries in the West.

NATO’s willingness to interfere in the internal affairs of its members became crystal clear in the mid-1970s, first in Portugal and then in Italy.In both countries, the class struggle was surging, and millions of working people looked to the Communist Party for leadership. The thought that communists might be elected to a decisive role in the government of a NATO country, or even to lead the government itself, was too much for Western imperialism to bear. The military alliance interfered aggressively in both countries, particularly in the elections of 1975 in Portugal and 1976 in Italy. Threats of trade, financial and political fallout were accompanied by a massive influx of funding for parties, candidates and organizations which were friendly to NATO and Western imperialism. All to undermine democracy.

It’s a history (an ongoing one) that bears remembering in this era of charges of political interference…

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