Canadian state
New labour radicalism in Ontario
IN JUNE 1995, THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC government of Ontario, Canada's most populous and industrialized province went down to a crushing electoral defeat at the hands of the
Conservative Party. Neo-liberal deficit reduction with its panoply of vicious cuts to social services, the health system, education, childcare, workers' and women's rights became the order of the day for the new government led by Premier Mike Harris. Coming on top of the federal government's attack's on immigrants, social welfare and unemployment, the right-wing anti-labour, anti working class offensive provoked at least a very large segment of the union and community movements into what is potentially the largest mobilization in the history of
English Canada since the postwar strike wave of 1946-48.
Throughout all of the fall, there were numerous protests and mobilizations led by anti-poverty, childcare and other community-based organizations. Then, in spite of the existence of sharp divisions among organized labour - fundamentally along public versus private sector lines
- the Ontario
Federation of Labour organized a one day general strike in the usually conservative small city of conservative small City or
London on December 11
1995.
The federal and provincial municipal civil service, elementary, workers, secondary and college-level teachers and support staff were joined by the Canadian
Auto Workers local unions in the region in what some hope will prove to be ageneral rehearsal for much broader strikes in other cities and regions. Most recently, on January 13th, the Catholic teachers' federation, an unaffiliated union not particularly noted for either militancy or radicalism called a demonstration on the theme of "cuts hurt kids" which drew some 37,000 participants: considerably more than their total provincial membership. The refusal of three large private sector unions, the Steelworkers, the Food and Commercial Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers to take part in the mobilizations has however been a serious
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Union (OPSEU).
Although the civil servants have only recently won the right to strike and do not have a tradition of militant job action, they are facing an election promise by theConservative Party to fire 13,000 of them or more than 20%.
So far this right-wing government has kept all of its promises to slash and burn. At the same time, workers at Toronto Hydro-Electric have also voted to strike.If either or both of these two strikes are successful in at least winning partial victories, they are likely to be followed over the spring by Ontario Hydro as a whole, municipal workers, teachers at all differen tlevels and others sections of the broader public sector.
In September, the Canadian
In Centember the Canadian
Auto Workers are expected to strike against General Motors in
Ontario and Quebec.
Although there has been some joint mobilizing with community-based the organizations, no broad democratic coalition between organized labour unemployed and or workers, precarious particularly immigrant workers and women, has yet seen the light of day.
Such a coalition would seem to be almost a precondition for stopping the neo-liberal offensive and could make possible a real, and not symbolic, general strike. * by Michel Lafitte
Labour, feminist and radical news and
SOCIALIST analysis for English Canada. Socialist
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