by Marlon Berg

“The place is hot like hell, especially in the summer time at night, bad ventilation, a lot of humidity and of course machines emitting heat doesn’t help.’ said Iain*, a temporary worker at an auto parts plant in the Toronto area.  “To top it off I work night shift so there’s the extra stress of not actually functioning like a normal human being. I work for what by most standards are fairly good starting wages but are drastically inferior to the wages of permanent workers. But I’m hardly the hardest done by of the employees that work there, a lot of them have families they never see because we’re given 6-7 days a week. Yes, overtime is paid, but it doesn’t give you much time to do anything else. Theoretically you could turn down the overtime but then you wouldn’t be working there for very long”

These are typical working conditions for auto parts plant workers in the inner suburbs of Toronto and nearby cities. For the first time since the 2008 economic crisis that nearly destroyed the automotive sector, the industry seems to be entering a period of sustained growth. Job opportunities are opening up again at the parts companies that supply GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The three major parts suppliers in Canada, Magna, Linamar, and Martinrea, have all seen slow yet steady growth.  Yet, jobs at GM, Ford and Chrysler (the big three) in Ontario continue to decline as these companies persist in closing plants and laying off large numbers of workers to take advantage of the cheaper labour in the United States, particularly in states that have passed anti-union or so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws that make workers’ unions difficult to organize and maintain.

All of the permanent workers at the big three plants in Ontario are unionized with the Canadian Automotive Workers (CAW).  However, the CAW has been unable to mount a successful fight against closures and layoffs at the big three and other employers, including some of the parts suppliers that they had unionized in the past.  The remaining work is in the parts suppliers and the new hires entering these companies are mostly without any kind of union representation and have often shockingly bad working conditions and the lowest wages in the automotive sector.  Some workers, like Ian, are forced to work too much overtime, others work unstable shifts and can’t get enough hours.

“The time I was at Linamar, there was two very serious safety incidents,” says Yelena*, a former employee in Guelph. “In the worst one, someone moved up the line to finish the work they had forgotten, and the component ended up falling 20 feet onto their shoulder.” She explains the reasons behind this kind of accident, “There is a lot of pressure with numbers and forced overtime on Saturdays if the numbers were not met, so people took the numbers very seriously, and it was also one of the hottest days of the summer.” Linamar also “stopped paying him after a week, so he had to go back to work…he also wasn’t getting the extra documentation he needed to see his specialist, and that they were taking a long time to get them to him.”  Workers “would have to check off machinery as safe even if it had a problem, and would just have to call in maintenance and wait till they came to fix it while continuing to run.”

“There were also two deaths at Linamar couple years back, one person was electrocuted and another was crushed, and there was another person electrocuted recently too, and he was in a coma last I heard.”  Her uncle also works for the company and “his pay has gone down to $16 an hour from $26 an hour a few years ago and he’s been there 17 years. He’s getting older and older, and the work is getting more and more difficult for him, and he’s making less and less money.”

In London, Ontario, at a Caterpillar plant that was unionized with the CAW, the management locked out the workers when they wouldn’t agree to a 50% cut in their wages and then closed the plant so they could move production to Indiana, which has anti-union laws in place.  While there was a massive movement against this closure by the workers themselves as well as workers from all over Ontario, who came to London on buses to support the struggle of the London workers against Caterpillar, the CAW was unable to save these workers’ jobs.  Herman Rosenfeld, a retired automotive worker and long-time member of CAW, is very critical of the CAW’s approach to the Caterpillar lockout. He believes that rather than just standing outside the plant and setting up a picket around it, they “needed to take it over, and the reason why they needed to take it over was that taking it over would have meant that they would have upped the anti, they would have raised the question of pressuring the government to take it over.”  While they did win good severance packages for their members, many good blue collar jobs were lost in London due to the inability of CAW to, in Rosenfeld’s words, “actually challenge capital”.

It seems that across the board, whether unionized or not, auto workers are under attack. CAW is currently in negotiations with the big three automakers and just voted at their recent convention to merge with another big union, Canadian Energy and Paperworkers, to form a new union that will attempt to initiate a massive organizing drive to recruit more racialized workers and work in immigrant neighbourhoods, which they have traditionally failed to do.  It seems that the union leadership has realized that auto workers in Ontario and industrial workers generally are at a historic make or break point.

Iain, the temp auto worker, believes “that it has to be an initiative that comes from the workers themselves, and that if there is actually the anger and the will to organize, nobody can stop them, but people can divert them and channel that energy into fruitless enterprises…and as far as unions having halls in immigrant neighborhoods, I don’t know of a single union that has a big presence there, but all of these temp agencies have a major presence in immigrant neighborhoods.”

[*Name changed to protect workers’ identities - Ed.]

By the May 1st Movement

When he arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport 3 years ago, Santiago Escobar saw a large group of people who caught his attention.  From their clothing, resembling the traditional clothing of indigenous peoples of Central America, he assumed they were Latin Americans.  Having just arrived in Canada on a work permit himself, his curiosity got the better of him and he went to speak to people in the group.

“It was not easy to strike up a conversation because they were intimidated, one of them told me they are farm workers and they were forbidden to talk to strangers,” said Escobar.  “When I asked him who had been forbidden this, he chose to keep walking and our conversation ended there. I felt a lot of mistrust and fear from the worker.”

Escobar now works with the Agricultural Workers Alliance in Virgil, Ontario providing services and advocacy for migrant workers there.  Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers from some 80 countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Philippines arrive in Canada on a temporary, seasonal basis. Over the last decade, the number of these workers that enter into Canada has increased from 100,000 to 250,000.

Often working for minimum wage in agricultural fields, hotels, restaurants, slaughterhouses, factories, and households as caregivers, these workers also must pay for their flights, insurance, and housing while most receive no payment for overtime nor rest during the holidays.  Moreover, since their job security is primarily at the discretion of the employer, many workers endure further hardships so as to not run the risk of being sent back.

A worker who chose to identified only as Francisco said “fortunately the members of the Support Centre help by taking us to the medical clinics, because if you notify the Patron (master), you run with the risk of being returned to Mexico, as the Patron is not interested in having people sick or not produce what each worker must produce.  Here we come to work and if you cannot work then you are on the next flight back”.

In addition, these workers must pay the numerous income, retirement, social security and workplace safety taxes that a regular worker would pay despite the fact that they are often denied access to many of these benefits. Edward, a Jamaican migrant worker who has been participating in the program for almost 2 decades, was denied Parental Benefits because he did not apply during the time required by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.  ”I do not understand, why after working 19 years within this program, paying all my taxes, my application is denied, no one informed me about the time required, here in Canada nor in Jamaica”.  With this erratic weather, many of the crops have been devastated in southern Ontario.  As a result, hundreds of workers have been sent back without any access to the Employment Insurance that they pay into, or any of the compensation that Ontario farmers receive from the government.

Despite these exploitative conditions, these women and men take out personal loans  to apply and endure in order to earn money for the families they leave behind.  In many of the ‘sender’ countries, the governments have struck these ‘labour export’ agreements with countries like Canada as a way to address high unemployment domestically, as well as a way to bring money into the country in the form of remittances.  In the Philippines for example, remittances which come primarily from overseas Filipino workers account for over 9% of the Gross Domestic Product.

In addition, these governments have continued a reckless subservience to domestic economic policies which favour transnational firms over the people and local producers.

“Before the NAFTA treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico - ed.], I cultivated my corn fields and had more work in Mexico” said Magdalena Perez, an agricultural worker. “If you invested $1000 you would at least get back $1800. Currently, you can’t even recover $500 because it is cheaper to buy imported U.S. corn,” said Perez. Heavily subsidized US corn was allowed to enter the Mexican market as part of NAFTA.

Over the past year or so, the work done by the Agricultural Workers Alliance/ United Food and Commercial Workers and migrant advocacy organizations such as Justicia for Migrant Workers and MIGRANTE have raised the profile of the plight of these workers and the conditions of their super-exploitation. Tragically, this has not lead to greater protections as evidence by recent deaths of workers including the 11 killed in Hampstead while being driven in unsafe conditions, as well as the deaths of Paul Roach and Ralston White, two Jamaican workers who died while attempting to fix a pump for a vinegar vat at the apple orchard where they worked.

Currently in Ontario, there exists a legal framework that inherently places these workers at risk and makes them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation as well as injury or even death.  In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled with the Ontario government denying migrant workers the rights to join or form union despite the International Labour Organizations ruling that this constituted a breach of labour and human rights.

While labour organizations are beginning a campaign to address the issues of workplace rights and dignity, the May 1st Movement and its affiliates reaffirm that the safety and rights of the most vulnerable set of workers including migrants must be on the top of the agenda. Following the cue from the Fraser Institute’s recommendations to shift immigration further towards this labour import model where citizenship and status are used as tools to divide and discipline workers, the Conservative government are openly floating schemes that would incentivize further exploitation by allowing employers to pay migrant workers 15% less than the minimum wage. Not only is this a brazen attack on what little rights migrants workers have, but it is also setting the stage for a pitting of workers – migrant vs. residents – against each other for the withering pool of jobs.  As we sink deeper into this global crisis in capitalism, this will surely feed xenophobic and racist scapegoating in the same way it has in Europe.

We must demand the end to the distinct categorization and regulation of migrant labour designed to keep them in precarious conditions, the guaranteeing of the social benefits that they are entitled and pay into, the right to organize and associate, and clear pathways to residency.  By fighting for the rights of these workers, we are also fighting to ensure that no government is able to lower the bar for all of us.

While fighting for these necessary reforms to alleviate the condition of these workers, must also be clear that this international phenomenon of labour import and export – the trading and use of women and men as cheap, disposable labour – is an inhumane practice that lines the pockets of the companies and governments involved, while keeping countries poor and workers subjugated.

The Israeli Siege of Gaza is a War on the Palestinian Masses

A few examples:

Fishing, a key element of the Palestinian economy in Gaza, has been devastated.  Israeli war ships prevent fisher-folk from reaching their traditional fishing grounds and limits them to a thin strip over sandy beach adjacent the coast where the fish are few and small.  Palestinian fishermen who try to get to their deep water fishing grounds are fired upon by the Israelis and face being injured or killed or being imprisoned and having their fishing boats confiscated (stolen).  Thus 70,000 people, some from families who have fished these waters for centuries, are denied access to their basic livelihood by the siege.

Farmers near the unilaterally declared 3 km buffer zone that runs along the ‘border’ with the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948 face a similar attack on their livelihood.  This farmland is important not only to the farmers who work it but for the food security and sovereignty of all Palestinians living in Gaza. All along this strip the Israelis destroyed the Palestinian farms including orchards of citrus and olive trees.  When farmers try to go to their farms they are fired upon and many have been killed. We met with farmers who persistently return to their lands, risking their lives to plant crops that face a high chance of being destroyed by the Israelis before they can be harvested.

Many Palestinians living in Gaza used to work in factories and businesses in the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948.  These Palestinians are now denied the right to cross the ‘border,’ as Israel has pursued a strategy of substituting super-exploited Palestinian labour with super-exploited migrant labour from Asia and North Africa in its dirtiest, worst paid and most dangerous areas of work.  Meanwhile the siege allows the free entry of Israeli products and ‘international brands’ like Pepsi and Coke but prevents import of materials needed to repair factories and production destroyed by the Israeli occupiers and severely restricts exports, limiting the potential for indigenous economic development. As a consequence Palestinian workers in Gaza face chronically high rates of unemployment (as high as 40%) and poverty (mostly living on about $2 per day).

So, even when the bombs are not actively dropping, the war on the Palestinian masses living in Gaza continues.  Organizations like the Union  of Agricultural Committees and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Union of Women’s Committees who challenge these brutal violations of Palestinian economic rights are part of the broad resistance to Israeli war and occupation including military, political and cultural resistance.

Aiyanas, from Gaza, June 21, 2012

Rating: 3/4.  Directed by Katja Gauriloff. Running time 90 minutes.

Canned Dreams begins in Brazil, where workers rummage about looking for aluminum ore while a massive excavator smashes the rocks right next to them. They have no protective gear and are paid a pittance for their work.

We meet a worker who has had a difficult childhood and continues to have a difficult adulthood. She tells us with sadness that she has had twelve children but couldn’t afford to take care of them and so gave most of them away.

Read more…

On May 1st, 1886, workers in Chicago were shot down as they marched for an 8-hour workday. Ever since then, May 1st or May Day has been recognized as International Workers Day, a day of celebration and struggle for the toiling masses all across the world.

The twentieth century witnessed heroic struggles and glorious achievements of human liberation under the leadership of workers and supported by the most oppressed and exploited people.  The struggles of workers and peasants, women and students of the popular classes, and people resisting occupation, military dictatorship and fascism carved out important gains for the people in the past century.  However, decades of neoliberal “globalization” have reversed the gains of previous generations of working class struggles, revolutions, and anti-colonial movements.

With the onset of the 2008 financial crisis – after a brief period when many were questioning the viability of capitalism – the ruling classes of the G20 countries regrouped, decided upon their strategy, and declared open war on the people.  In June 2010 at the G20 Summit in Toronto, while 1,100 people were being rounded up in the streets of Toronto and thrown into cages, Stephen Harper announced that we were entering the “Age of Austerity”.

But this new era of “austerity” really isn’t so new. It intensifies the attacks of neoliberalism of the last thirty years on the Third World and the poorest people in countries like Canada, while extending the offensive to those layers of the working class who previously considered themselves as “middle class” – workers in manufacturing and the public sector.  Since 2003, 500,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs have been transferred from Canada to countries where workers are more heavily exploited.

For decades, Federal governments have slashed corporate tax rates in the name of job creation and attracting foreign capital. Yet, non financial Canadian corporations alone are sitting on more than $500 billion in cash reserves – never mind what the banks and financial corporations have.1   The stagnant economy is not the result of high taxes or “uneasy investors”, but a crisis of overproduction and overaccumulation of capital across the world economy.  The biggest corporations in the world seek to grow today not by expanding their capacity to invest in new production, but by swallowing up their competitors and often closing down their factories in order to conquer new markets, control output, and tweak price levels just to optimize profits.  One can say there is a crisis of “overaccumulation” because the capitalists have more capital than they can profitably invest.  Redistributing wealth is not an option for the ruling class because that means us workers wouldn’t be as desperate and exploitable.

This crisis of overproduction is what accounts for the upsurge in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) amongst the biggest corporations in the world. The media has a lot to say when a Canadian company is confronted with a takeover by a foreign corporation, but has little to say about Canadian companies buying up assets all across the world. In fact, Canadian companies, especially in mining and finance, have outpaced foreign companies in M&As for the last few years. In 2010, the global mining sector in particular experienced a record number of mergers and acquisitions – a staggering 2,693 – worth USD113 billion, in which Canadian capital was responsible for a breathtaking 713 of these takeovers, or 36 percent of the total global value in this sector.2  Canada is not being taken over by foreign corporations; Canadian companies are more and more dominating in the world.  This is what makes Canada “imperialist”, and it’s the people – most especially Aboriginal peoples, and third world workers and peasants  – who are paying the heavy cost for the gains of these big capitalists. But it’s also the workers losing their jobs. Our misery is their profit.

These takeovers then allow for big companies to close down the competition and shift production to places where labour is super-exploited.  This was the case with Caterpillar’s takeover of Electro-Motive in London, Ontario in 2010 and its eventual shutdown of the plant when it liquidated 500 jobs in early 2012, shifting production to a non-unionized plant in Indiana.  Meanwhile, the corporate media divides the working class by blaming more exploited workers in other countries, especially China, for the movement of capital.

The Federal government’s drastic reforms to the immigration system complement super-exploitation. Refugees are being criminalized to keep them out and it is being made more difficult to sponsor family members to come to Canada, while Canada continues the “brain-drain” of professionals and high-skilled workers from the “developing” world — labour and experts that the Canadian system did not have to invest in to train and educate. Meanwhile, the numbers of Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) in the country continues to grow.  Capital wants to see a workforce that is disposable — that has few rights, no access to services, and can be sent back home when they’re no longer needed (when they’re injured or done their jobs).  In 2008, the number of TFWs entering Canada exceeded the number of permanent residents being allowed into the country.  As of 2011, there were more than 300,000 TFWs in Canada.  These workers look to Canada for a better life precisely because multinational corporations like those in Canada have made the prospects of a better life back home (under capitalism!) impossible.

Cheaper wages and shrinking social programs are allowing the capitalists to make record profits. Yet, only four years after the biggest financial bailouts in human history, running into the trillions of dollars, the international bankers and G20 countries have the audacity to call for more austerity from the workers!  The Canadian government (through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) is currently guaranteeing the big banks for up to $600 billion dollars in mortgage assets. That means that as Canadians begin to default on their mortgages under the heavy weight of record-high debt levels, public funds will go to bailout these banks rather than the people who cannot make their payments due to declining wages and lack of jobs.

Such bailouts are a major part of the  “fiscal crisis” that has become the justification for the major spending cuts and privatizing public goods. Tens of thousands of Federal public sector workers will lose their jobs in the coming years, a move that will disproportionately affect women employed in these jobs and families who rely on the related services.3  Workers under 54 years of age have had two years stolen from their old age security in the last Federal budget.

Yet, you can always become a cop, join the military, or help build new prisons for the poor!  These “public services” are exempt from austerity because they’ll be needed to contain the next round of popular struggles. Canada is in the midst of the largest prison building boom since the Great Depression.  Federal and provincial governments are building or expanding upon 60 prisons across Canada to make space for the Federal government’s Omnibus Crime Bill.4   The second largest addition is the New Toronto South Detention Center with 1100 beds.  It costs $117,000 to house an inmate at a Federal facility.  If even a quarter of this money was directed towards job creation, community services, affordable housing, and raising the disability support and welfare rates, crime would plummet significantly.  How do we know this? Close to 100% of all inmates are from the poorest 10% of the population – a shocking statistic that reveals the relationship between poverty and criminalization.5   What’s worse is that the prison population is “racialized”: Aboriginal and black peoples make up much higher proportions of the prison population than they make up in the Canadian population.

Yet the main debate we see animating Parliament today is about who got the contract to build the F-35 jets and how many we’re getting for however many billions of dollars.  The people are asking why the hell we’re spending billions on these death machine to begin with.  There’s no party in Parliament that has clearly stood up against any spending for these weapons of mass destruction to begin with. Why would they? Every parliamentary Party supported the bombing of Libya.  Canada dropped more than 550 bombs on the country, destroying its infrastructure and paving the way – or destroying the way – for the new Western-backed Libyan government to take out billions in foreign loans from for “reconstruction”.  It’s for wars like this that the F-35s are needed.

Meanwhile, the unions can’t even resist the concessions being forced onto their members. The only leverage that the unions have to resist attacks on their narrow defense of the collective agreement – the right to strike when collective bargaining breaks down – has been virtually banned by the state through the wanton use of “back-to-work legislation” by Federal and provincial governments. Examples: Air Canada pilot strike in March 2012; Canada Post postal workers in June 2011 and Air Canada flight attendants in October 2011; York U. teaching assistants and contract faculty in 2009; Toronto transit workers in 2008; the list goes on.  Some workers, such as seasonal farm workers, have no right to form unions at all.

Yet, the only resistance that labour leaders have to offer is begging at the feet of corporate management and various levels of government for “good jobs” and “green jobs”, as if the harmonious relationship between workers and capitalists can continue – a collaboration that was always premised on the super-exploitation of workers and peasants in the oppressed countries.

Now that this era of class peace between unionized workers and the big capitalists in countries like Canada is coming to an end, a new era is opening up for class struggle.  It’s time to reclaim the history of militant labour!  It’s time to reorganize workers under the leadership of our own class! It’s time to break with the bosses, the bureaucrats, and the bourgeois politicians! Most importantly, it’s time to break with the illusions of the previous era: namely, that capitalism can continue and that the majority of us have anything to gain by continuing to defend the capitalist system.

Our exploitation is their profits. Our grinding poverty and desperation means we’re forced to work for less.  Price increases to food, gasoline, and rent are extorting the people of our ever-shrinking real wages, while filling the coffers of the rich.

It’s either capitalism or the people. It’s either a system based on blind production for private profit and necessitating the destruction of the environment and the conquest of peoples and nations, or a system where production meets the needs of all people and future generations.  Those are the only two ways forward at this juncture of history.

The May 1st Movement (M1M) was founded in late 2008 as a coalition of working-class and people’s organizations to reclaim the history of May Day for the working class in Toronto. After four years of organizing May Day activities and rallies, in 2012 we have contributed to bringing together people’s organizations for a united rally on International Workers’ Day.  In the coming years, we must broaden and strengthen this unity with all possible forces in order to advance our struggles.

To do this, M1M and all progressives, militants, and revolutionaries – all anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial forces – must work together to win over more and more people to a positive vision of what is to be done.  The crisis of capitalism is deepening day-by-day.  Before the ruling class finds more reactionary solutions to the crisis, people’s organizations must struggle to unify around a project of universal liberation.

The May 1st Movement (M1M) believes that we cannot expect capitalism to meet the needs of the people. Our demands should reflect this reality, and so should our strategy for change.  We can’t propagate illusions about what’s possible in this system.  We need to build the capacity of the people to fight for a new society. We need to reclaim the history of militant labour and unions led by the workers, not big salaried bureaucrats. We need grassroots power in our communities and our schools — in every sector of society.  We need as many people as possible to take a lead. The Aboriginal people in this country are showing us the way forward as they stand up all across the country to defend their land, their lives, and their livelihoods from the plunder of Canadian government and the corporations.  The rest of us must do the same.

Let May Day be the launching point for the struggles that must come.  Let May Day be the day when we march with the toiling peoples of the world against the global capitalist and imperialist system!

By Mike Brito.

Some recent numbers coming out from Statistics Canada show that unemployment rates across the country are reaching levels above 17% for people between the ages of 15-24.  This is more than double the national unemployment rate from 2011, which was around 7.5%.  In Ontario, the numbers are slightly lower, but are still above 15% for youth 15-24.  According to Nancy Schaefer, president of the Toronto based non-profit organization Youth Employment Services, “The permanent, well-paying jobs that you can count on just aren’t there.  So young people, even if they’re able to get something, are taking part-time work, or piecemeal work, or contract work. “

Often these unemployment levels are attributed to changing dynamics specific to Canada including the recent elimination of mandatory retirement and larger numbers of “baby boomers” hanging on to jobs.  Some have pointed out that laid-off workers are competing with youth for an increasingly smaller pool of jobs to distribute amongst workers.  The reality of the current situation is that this is part of a larger worldwide trend, in particular amongst Europe and North America where the Global Recession of 2008 has contributed to an increase in youth unemployment that has reached levels as high as 50% in Spain and Greece.  According to Tom Zizys of the Metcalf Foundation based here in Toronto, “in times of recession, youth are the first to go and the last to be rehired.”

The rioting that occurred across England last summer was sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan, many observers have connected the uprisings that started in London but quickly spread, to the high-levels of unemployment amongst young people in that country, where rates are over 20% for people aged 16-24.  According to police, the rioters were almost all under 20, mostly born in the 1990’s with the youngest arrested being 11 years old.  Research conducted after the uprisings has also shown that the districts with the highest rates of youth unemployment were the most effected, and that most of the participating youth were from low-income neighbourhoods and public housing where employment prospects for youth are low.

Across Europe there has been similar trends in levels of unemployment, the EU reports their youth unemployment rate as 22.4%.  Greece and Spain have some of the highest levels, both with rates above 50%.  In Spain, young people also took to the streets last year in a movement called “Los Indiganados”, or the indignant ones.  This movement opposed high levels of unemployment as well as protested banks, bankers, capitalism, welfare cuts and the entire Spanish political system.

by Peter Braun

The austerity agenda that governments worldwide are currently imposing upon workers, students and poor people is now being brought to bear on the post-secondary education system in Canada.  In Ontario, this has become especially apparent with the so-called “three-cubed” document, recently leaked to the public.  Although this document is merely a “background paper,” and therefore not necessarily intended for implementation in its current form, it nonetheless presents in bold strokes the general character of the re-structuring that the McGuinty government hopes to impose on the post-secondary education system in Ontario.  In particular, it recommends reducing the length of undergraduate degrees from four to three years, with each year consisting of three four-month long semesters.  More alarmingly, it recommends that all Ontario universities be required to offer three-fifths of their courses online – a move that would, in all likelihood, further reduce the number of teaching positions available for recent PhD graduates.  The authors of the document argue that it would allow undergraduate students greater flexibility in completing their degrees, while also making post-secondary education more cost effective and “productive.”  However, these same authors fail to consider seriously the pedagogical implications of this shift to more “flexible” education – indeed, it is hard to imagine online courses, wherein students have even less contact with professors and teaching assistants than they currently do, actually improving the quality of education.

It is in this context of looming austerity that CUPE Local 3903, the union representing teaching assistants, research assistants and contract faculty at York University, has been bargaining with the university administration for a new collective agreement (CA).  It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the union has faced a number of hurdles in their negotiations with the employer.  One of the most significant of these hurdles has been the administration’s unwillingness to actually bargain – indeed, for the first four months of negotiations, the administration refused to discuss any of the specific proposals put forth by the union’s bargaining team (BT).  Instead, they simply insisted that the union whittle down its proposal package to fit within the austerity parameters that they (the administration) outlined at the beginning of negotiations – namely, a 2 percent increase on the union’s previous CA, which, in the context of roughly 3 percent inflation, would have amounted to an erosion of union members’ real wages and living standards.  Moreover, to the extent that actual bargaining did take place in these first 4 months, the process was rather lopsided, with the union agreeing to 22 proposals put forth by the administration, and the administration accepting only 12 of the proposals put forth by the union.

In an attempt to overcome the employer’s intransigence, the union organized a strike mandate vote – this was held the week of March 10th.  Of the roughly one-third of the membership that turned out for this vote, 66 percent indicated their willingness to strike in defence of the current collective agreement, and in support of the improvements on that agreement that the union’s bargaining team (BT) is currently seeking.  Around this same time, the BT put together an offer of settlement – one that the administration ultimately rejected.  Had it been accepted, this proposed settlement would have amounted to an increase slightly less than that recently agreed to at the University of Toronto.  Indeed, under the terms of the union’s settlement offer, union members’ salaries would have increased only 2 percent per year – just under the current inflation rate of (roughly) 3 percent.  Total compensation under this proposed settlement would have amounted to 4 percent per year.  CUPE 3903 members were willing to accept this decline in real wages in return for, amongst other things, the re-implementation of post-residency fees, which would lower the cost of tuition for graduate students upon their completion of coursework.

Despite this attempt at a settlement, the administration chose to continue their policy of refusing to engage seriously with any of the issues deemed priorities by the union membership – namely, the return of post-residency fees; the creation of anti-clawback language to keep the employer from reversing gains won in the CA by issuing reductions elsewhere; the creation of a minimum funding guarantee for graduate and research assistants, who currently make anywhere between 6000 and 9000 dollars per year; and the creation of continuing appointments for contract faculty members, who are currently assigned work on a year-by-year basis.  Indeed, although the administration has recently agreed to a number of minor concessions, it is significant that none of these concessions bear upon the above-mentioned priority issues.  It’s also significant that the administration has agreed to these concessions only after the recent strike mandate vote – apparently, they had no interest in bargaining with the union absent the threat of a strike.

In light of the administration’s failure to address any of these priority areas, the union’s bargaining team recently filed a “no board” report, putting the local in a legal strike position as of April 12th.  Despite filing this “no board” report, the union executive and BT still hope to reach an agreement with the administration prior to the April 12th deadline – indeed, it is hoped that a concrete bargaining deadline and the threat of a strike will force the employer to address the issues that are most important for union members.  Whether or not a strike action can be averted is yet to be determined – the administration will make the union a final offer on April 12th, and the membership will discuss then whether-or-not to accept that offer.  It’s anyone’s guess at this point which way the wind is gonna blow, but 3903 will be prepared for whatever hits us.

By SK & MB

In the capitalist system labour is viewed as yet another commodity that can be traded and exploited. Wages are paid for labour-power and hours worked but in some circumstances, like the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SWAP), contracted wage agreements and working conditions are not a guarantee.

As participants in UFCW Canada’s Youth Internship Program we were part of a contingent who went to Simcoe, Ontario to learn more about the SAWP. We visited farms, talked to workers and farm owners, with an objective of investigating the issues and introducing workers to the Agricultural Workers Alliance (AWA) action centre in Simcoe.

As a union contingent we organized a BBQ to celebrate the workers struggles and get more information into the hardships of the work, abuses in the SAWP program and generally agitate workers to organize themselves and talk about their working-conditions. We wanted to highlight workers’ value to the region, and to bridge the gap between the migrant workers and the larger community. The information in this article is based on our investigations.

Some of the issues we uncovered while visiting workers at their homes, meeting them in the community and visiting their workplaces are how employer friendly the program is. Some of the daily abuses include:
workers being frequently repatriated for demanding their rights. No enforced third-party regulatory system for health, safety, and labour regulations. Workers pay their employers rent for housing that is usually substandard and overcrowded.
Stories from the workers we met show that we cannot depend on individual farm owners to ‘do the right thing.’ We need to create a system of fairness where standards are regulated and monitored. Migrant workers are not familiar with Canadian laws and are given no paths to educate themselves. Through investigation, we discovered many workers who took home only $5 of the $10.25 per hour they are told they will receive.

Furthermore, many of the Latin American workers are not fully confident in the English language which means they can’t read WSIB and caution signs in their workplaces. It requires a huge effort for them to educate themselves on the rules, regulations and rights of agricultural workers in Canada.

When a worker attempts to educate themselves, or inquires about the many deductions on their paychecks, they are putting their jobs at risk. When workers turn to organizations that will assist them with their issues consulates from countries like Jamaica and Mexico often warn workers that the people at the Agricultural Workers Alliance (AWA) are dangerous and only intend to take their money. In reality the AWA helps workers apply for the benefits they contribute to and also assists the workers with ESL courses so they can better understand their rights. This program is further evidence of the growing systemic pattern where the race to the bottom is both legislated and supported by governments. Workers are easily replaced by the millions of other workers all over the world who are just waiting to be picked, and are just as quickly disposed of. If an individual proves to be vocal, entitled, or motivated they are easily replaced and forgotten.

The union compares the SAWP to the indentured labour practices of the 19th century but even worse in this program there is no pathway to citizenship. Agricultural work is not valued by the Canadian immigration system and when workers in the program apply to immigrate they find that the point system values education, and capital for investment, not the time and sacrifice farm workers have already made. The fight against the current SAWP program is a fight for good jobs and for sustainable communities. There are organizations fighting to improve standards and to eliminate the systemic circumstances that allow violations to occur.

Good jobs in sustainable communities that respect workers are rare in most sectors and employees must race to the bottom simply to ensure they are employed and hopefully in a slightly better financial situation.  Organizations like SAME (Students Against Migrant Exploitations), AWA (Agricultural Workers Alliance), Migrante, and the Workers Action Centre are all part of this battle for improved standards. We encourage you to find out more about these organizations and assist them in their struggles for justice.

Thanks to www.leftstreamed.ca for putting it together.