Support The Strikes To Defend Pensions

Usually even the mention of Margaret Wente's name can ruin my day but her article in today's Globe & Mail is actually not too bad in terms of laying out the terms of the strike and lock-out at Canada Post and Air Canada respectively. Of course, in the interests of "balance" she reaches the basic conclusion that while pensions were great while they lasted, they're unsustainable. My guess is that she won't be giving up her pension in order to save the Globe & Mail's bottom line but that's another story.

What is most important here is that corporate Canada and the government are opening up a new austerity front that is about reducing our living standards - both in the present and in the future - as a means to restore the economy to profitability. In the public sector the Tories intend to slash spending and reduce payrolls both through layoffs and attrition over the coming months, beginning with the soon-to-be-released budget. In the private sector, pensions are the big target.

Make no doubt about it, pensions are a component of wages, just like healthcare benefits. When Canada Post and Air Canada attack the pension plans of their employees, they are demanding wage reductions. But workers have the right to ask a number of questions when they're told to take the knife. The most obvious one that is printed in big letters on the picket signs of Air Canada employees is why should only CEOs get pensions and not workers? This must seem doubly infuriating to Air Canada employees who took it on the chin a few years back to "save Air Canada", agreeing concessions in a big way. Now, Air Canada is profitable again - and is coming back for more.

But there is a deeper question that has to do with the whole way the economy runs. Workers didn't cause the economic crisis of 2008 - the Great Recession. That was sparked by greedy and corrupt banks with their exotic and incomprehensible debt packaging schemes that came unraveled - and in the US housing market shows no signs of stopping the decline. Nor are workers responsible for the long term decline in western economies that have come more and more to rely upon "financialization" - that is, to have greater weight placed upon the casino of speculative investment - while China has become the world's manufacturer. These imbalances and contradictions are directly the result of the policies of neo-liberal government - from the Harper Tories to the Chretien Liberals and, beyond our borders, to every party across the spectrum from Labour to Republican and Democrat. They are also the result of decisions in innumerable boardrooms where investors, bankers and manufacturers have shifted resources and capital around the world in order to maximize profits.

The result of all this jerry-rigged global profit-taking has been that workers didn't benefit particularly during the boom times - with debt levels rising even in the peak periods of growth in the past three decades - while the global economy has become more dangerously unbalanced. Now, with it likely that the imbalance will lead to years of stagnation, workers are again expected to pay, this time with their future as well as their present wages.

And it's not just in Canada that this battle is taking place. Attacks on pensions are a central feature of the struggles and strike waves in Greece. There is also a massive public sector strike set to take place in the UK on June 30 that will involve teachers, civil servants, and more. This struggle is about whether we will continue to live in a world where the rich get richer in good times and bad and the working class gets driven ever downward towards immiseration.

That's also why what is needed is a united fight, not just piecemeal isolated actions. The Tories will legislate the Air Canada workers back to work by early next week - effectively eliminating the right to strike for a small group of non-essential workers (they're customer service agents and call centre staff, for God's sake!). This will be followed by similar legislation against postal workers in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. There are two other unions at Air Canada, as well as the Pilots Association. They all oppose Air Canada's pension plans. They should all be out together - if the customer service agents are defeated, they almost certainly will have lost as well. In fact, union leaderships must see the writing on the wall as far as pensions go. The entire working class will either be picked off one by one, sector by sector, or they will come together in a joint campaign, which will probably need to include industrial action, to win. It's all of our future's that's at stake.

The unions at Canada Post and Air Canada are fighting a rearguard action - The Globe and Mail

Alberta Is A Cargo Cult

There's no other way to explain the political phenomenon in Alberta, the will to one-party statehood of the majority of population in this semi-developed, resource-laden hinterland. There has certainly been political heterogeneity on the edges of Alberta politics in the past - even radical leftist politics - but firmly rooted in the centre is a cultish adoration of all that is small and rural and backwards.
In the present case the "cargo" that provides Albertans with their fetish du jour is, of course, oil. And they think that their god can only be accessed through the anointed priesthood of oil executives and right wing populists. They will destroy the land, pollute their air, deplete their water, all in the service of their god, beside which Jesus (another popular fellow - or at least a cartoon of him) appears as a mere hand-servant to aid the power of the great fetish. Besides the damage cults do to one's mind it's rather embarrassing, to say the least. This is a province in need of a serious intervention.
To be fair, Albertans aren't stupid as the cows they ranch. Nor are they as slimey as the oil they dig. What they are sorely lacking is any demonstrated alternative to the great oily priesthood. This is the province with the lowest unionization rates in the country and, by my guess, the lowest levels of strikes. No, what Alberta needs is some strikes. They need some struggle. They need to discover the horrible truth that the oil barons don't give a flying f**k about whether they live, die or suffer terrible malignancies to them and their children as a result of the polluting practices involved in the oil sands. I don't know how such a watershed will happen but I feel confident that it will - not because workers are inherently geniuses but because the ups and downs of capitalism cause corporations to make choices and low on their list of priorities are workers rights, wages and living conditions. At a certain point the development of Alberta into a modern economy will undermine the consensus as it grows beyond the paternalist boomtown feel and the growing working class in the oil fields, schools, public sector and beyond struggle against the priorities of Alberta capitalism. Sure hope it's soon.

Chinese Workers Kick Ass

Pity the poor GM workers who read about Chinese steelworkers and realize that if only they'd kidnapped their boss and did a little rioting they would have gotten a better deal. In fact, Chinese workers at the Linzhou Iron & Steel Company halted government plans to privatize their company. Three weeks ago some poor dumbass from another steel company told a group of 30,000 workers that most of them would be laid off and got himself beaten to death in what was a very large riot.

Some of this sounds very familiar - in France workers have taken to "bossnapping" and threatening to blow up capital equipment at their factories when they get lay-off notices.

In Britain and Ireland there have been occupations at Waterford Glass, Thomas Cook, Vestas (a wind turbine manufacturer), and Visteon (a car parts company).

In South Korea a spectacular and sometimes violent (check out those slingshots in the picture above - they were used to defend the occupation) occupation of the Ssangyong car plant - that fended off numerous assaults by police commandoes - managed to save half the jobs at the plant. Originally all the workers were slated for layoff.

On a smaller scale, here in Toronto, of course, we had a 36-day strike by city workers that managed to take the edge off of the city's concessions demands. Even the National Post thought that the workers won. And anything that pisses off the National Post can't but bring warmth to a left-wingers heart.

Could we be seeing a serious global re-emergence of working class militancy and even, gasp, victories?

French Fry Right Wing Prez

Ah, I love the French. They may elect a right-wing goon as president but, it seems, it’s only to better get some kicks in.
It’s been less than a year since Sarkozy stomped his way to the presidency over the increasingly right-wing Socialist Party candidate, Segolene Royal. But in that time he has managed to see his approval ratings fall from a high of 67 percent to around 39 percent today.
No doubt it has to do with his broad full frontal assault on French working people, starting with his attack on the “special regime pensions” of French train workers. This led to a national rail strike that ended with a qualified victory for Sarkozy but not the thumping he was hoping for as he had to offer pay increases and a bump in pension payments in return to increasing working time to 40 from 37.5 years.
Now, with the French economy all but stagnating and government deficits rising, Sarkozy has tried to take on different groups but often has failed in the face of mass resistance. Fisherman blockading ports over high fuel prices, won subsidies. Students protesting rules opening up university funding to the private sector lost on the central demand but won an extra $5 billion in state funding to upgrade deteriorating classrooms. And, recently, taxi drivers struck and defeated Sarkozy’s plans to de-regulate their industry.
So much for his slogan of burying the legacy of 1968, the year when French workers launched the largest general strike in history up to that point.
The failure of Sarkozy’s claimed goal of making France a place where one could “work more to earn more” is now leading to revolts in the private sector with the first ever national strike by retail workers in early February. There have also been walkouts in 17 McDonald’s and some workers have taken to holding managers hostage to win demands.

“This week the tyre giant Michelin continued talks over the closure of a plant in Toul, eastern France, after a government-appointed mediator secured the release of two managers whom workers had locked in a room for three days. It follows an incident last month when workers outraged at planned job cuts at the Miko ice-cream factory in Saint-Dizier locked up their British manager, Prakash Patel.
“This week, staff at a Ford plant near Bordeaux blockaded their factory and L'Oréal cosmetics staff took to the streets under the banner ‘because we're worth it’, asking for pay rises after their company's good financial results.”

Sarko isn’t yet down and out, not by a long shot. And he’s going for the usual weak spots in the lead-up to municipal elections that at present look set to deliver a big blow to his UMP party. Just last week 1,200 cops were sent into raid working class estates in the middle of the night to arrest 35 people from their beds as supposed leaders in the rioting that took place after cops killed two immigrant kids riding a mini-bike.
However, even this is blowing up in his face since it was clear to most that the whole thing was a press propaganda opportunity. The media arrived and had cameras set-up to film the raids before even the cops were there.
And his UMP party is fracturing under the pressure of resistance and the free-fall in the polls. Sarko can’t even get his own way in the town where he used to be mayor. Here, he tried to impose his spokesman to head the UMP list in town council elections but it was rejected by the council group – including by his own 22-year old son.
Nobody can accuse the French of having any sacred cows when even the right wing son of a right wing president skewers his father prior to a critical election.
With all this turmoil, the hope is that the left can revive itself and break out of the neo-liberal impasse into which the “governmental left” of the Socialist Party has fallen. At the February congress of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire, a small but significant far left party in France, they voted to set-up a broad anti-capitalist party with all those on the left who want to present an anti-neo-liberal alternative in upcoming elections.
The LCR’s presidential candidate, Olivier Besancenot, has a very high profile in the French media and was the only candidate to the left of the Socialists to increase his share of the vote last year. If they can tap into the growing sentiment for an alternative to Sarko and the governmental left, the French political scene could have an even bigger shake-up in the coming period.