June 18, 2009 - No. 121
Fight for the Dignity of Labour!
Our Security Lies in Defence of the Rights of All!
Concessions Are Not Solutions!
Hands Off Ontario Municipal Workers!
• Defend the
Toronto City Workers! Anti-Labour Concessions Are Not Solutions!
• City Marching Us toward Strike with
Concession Demands - Toronto Civic Employees Union Local 416
• Anti-Social Offensive Against Ontario
Municipal Workers
• Arbitration Not a Four-Letter Word
- Sid Ryan, Ontario President, CUPE
• Toronto-Dominion Centre Workers Locked Out
- Interview with Zoran
Grgar, National Representative, CEP
Defend the Toronto City Workers!
Anti-Labour Concessions Are Not Solutions!
As the deadline of 12:01 am June
22 draws closer, when Toronto city workers will be in a legal strike
position, the anti-labour propaganda targeting these workers is rapidly
becoming more vicious. The CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade recently
sent a letter to the media highlighting U.S. city authorities that
have laid off city workers who refused anti-labour concessions that
would make them "part of the solution" to the recession, such as unpaid
days off and the elimination of accumulated sick days. One Toronto city
councillor made an especially backward proposal that garbage collection
be contracted out across Toronto so that
the city cannot be "blackmailed" any more by its workers.
All workers and everyone concerned about defending
workers' rights and finding a solution to the global economic crisis
must speak out against this criminal propaganda, which targets and
tries to isolate those workers who provide the services upon which the
very running of the City of Toronto depends. A city representative
speaking at a recent press conference stated:
"During a recession demand for city services increases while the
revenue to pay the cost of delivering these services is generally
reduced. Therefore, the cost of our wages and benefits needs to reflect
what is truly affordable." The City of Toronto is dead wrong in pinning
the solution of its financial difficulties on city workers. Moreover,
the city is in abject denial of its social responsibility for the
well-being of Toronto residents through the provision of services they
objectively require. The well-being of the workers who carry out all
the public services is the necessary
condition for the well-being of the city's residents. This is
especially true during a time of economic
crisis. According to the city's capital-centred logic that workers
should make concessions, Torontonians should also make concessions on
the
public services they require. Neither is acceptable.
An example of increased demand for services versus lack
of revenue are the thousands of people in Toronto who every month join
the ranks of those on near-starvation levels of welfare, a situation
that is totally unacceptable in a wealthy
country like Canada. A factor fuelling the massive flow of people onto
welfare is the fact that less than four in ten Toronto workers who lose
their jobs are eligible for Employment Insurance. If the City of
Toronto was serious about dealing with the problem it would at least
unite with the people and demand appropriate
funding from the provincial government, which downloaded social welfare
onto the municipalities without providing adequate funding, and demand
that the scandalous theft of EI monies be stopped at once. Where has
all the social wealth gone, social wealth created by the workers that
should be used to deal with
these problems and create an atmosphere in Toronto that is pro-labour
and pro-social? One thing is certain, this social wealth is not in the
possession of the Toronto city workers and it is not hiding in their
accumulated sick days.
The recession has not been
caused by the conditions of work and the benefits the Toronto city
workers have fought for and won over the years. Thus, it will not be
solved by demanding concessions from them. Solving the recession and
the global economic crisis requires governments that stop paying
the rich and increase funding for social programs. It demands economic
and political authorities that make the defence of the rights of all
the overriding consideration for the direction of the economy, economic
policies and programs. The recession cannot be solved and will only be
exacerbated by scapegoating and
attacking the producers of goods and the providers of services.
Workers must oppose this anti-labour hysteria with all
their might. This hysteria criminalizes workers who refuse to accept
the deterioration of their working and living conditions and
contributes to imposing a dictate for anti-labour concessions on all
workers. Concessions are not solutions to the crisis
and will only worsen it.
City Marching Us toward Strike with
Concession Demands
- Toronto Civic Employees Union Local 416
Outside Division,
Bargaining Update, June 12, 2009 -
When your bargaining team requested a ‘no-board' in
early June, we hoped that the June 22 strike deadline would focus
discussions.
We hoped that the City would get serious about achieving
a deal and take the concessions off the table. So far that hasn't
happened.
A strike is looking very possible at this point.
The City's approach is not going to get us to a
settlement.
They are trying to rewrite an entire collective
agreement that has come together over decades of labour relations,
arbitrations and even strikes.
The City has repeatedly said that they need more
"flexibility" in order to manage. We have spent months trying to find
creative solutions that will accommodate them without stripping you of
any of your rights.
We need the City to show the same willingness to reach
agreement or we will have a strike.
We have launched a newspaper and radio advertising
campaign to get that message out to the public.
We need a fair contract now.
Your bargaining committee will continue working to the
deadline. But we need the City's negotiators to hear this: it's time to
get moving. It's time to get the job done.
Stop trying to turn back the clock on every article in
the collective agreement and join us instead in moving forward.
Anti-Social Offensive Against
Ontario Municipal Workers
Windsor inside and
outside civic workers enter third month
of their strike in defence of their rights
Toronto City workers
prepare for strike June 22
The Windsor City authority
personified by Mayor Eddie Francis has unleashed an attack on all city
workers including firefighters, Huron Lodge nurses, transit workers,
inside and outside civic employees and even the police. His opening
shot is to try to eliminate post-retirement benefits for new civic
workers. This anti-social offensive comes in the context of an economic
crisis in the Windsor area, which now has the worst unemployment rate
of any large urban centre in Canada.
Municipal authorities throughout Ontario, in an
unconscionable manner, are using the crisis to intimidate city workers
and drive down their living and working conditions under the hoax that
concessions are solutions to the crisis. Workers and their
organizations have stood firm in defence of their rights,
exemplified by workers in Windsor and Toronto who are resisting the
cynical manipulation of the crisis to transfer wealth from workers to
the same ruling elite that caused the crisis in the first place.
Certain municipal authorities across Ontario are using
their authority to wreck public services through cutbacks and are doing
everything in their power to weaken social solidarity amongst workers
and their collectives. Owners of monopoly capital and their municipal
and provincial political representatives
throughout Ontario are hoping to benefit from the high rate of
unemployment, insecurity and psychological pressure the crisis is
putting on the working class. Using the situation to their advantage,
they have unleashed an anti-social offensive to drive down the living
and working standards of the Canadian working
class.
In sharp contrast, workers have said repeatedly that
concessions are not solutions and that economic problems must be dealt
with objectively in a pro-social manner putting human beings at the
centre of all considerations. They uphold the view that it is inhuman
and unjust to attack workers' rights and
have launched the slogans: Concessions are not solutions! Manufacturing
yes! Nation-wrecking no! Increase investments in public enterprise and
social programs! At the heart of social programs is the role of public
employees such as civic workers in Windsor and Toronto who deliver
without private profit of enterprise
those services, programs and infrastructure necessary for any modern
civilized city and society.
Windsor Workers Resist
The city authority in Windsor has targeted new hires to
split and destroy the defence organizations of civic workers. The city
authority insists that any new contract with the 1,400 inside workers
of CUPE 543 and the 385 outside workers of CUPE 82 must include "a wage
freeze, benefit rollbacks and two-tiered entitlement for new-hires."
The intransigence of the Windsor political authority
provoked both CUPE locals to strike in mid-April. Jean Fox, president
of CUPE 543 has said, "It came down to a few issues but one major:
post-retirement benefits... The City refused to move and kept asking
for concessions... They left us no choice
but to go on strike... Windsor's Mayor and City Council are looking to
use the recession as a cover to demand rollbacks that will stay with
city workers long after the economy has recovered. Cutting back on
public services at a time when our City needs them most shows a lack of
vision and leadership."
The Windsor City authority believes that concessions on
post-retirement benefits wrung from civic workers will be a
battering-ram to accomplish the same with transit workers,
firefighters, police and nurses. Owners of monopoly capital are egging
on Francis hoping to generate a wave of anti-worker
concessions across the province. They sense an opportunity during the
crisis to drive a wedge between new-hires and active workers. The
anti-worker ruling elite know that any basic inequality among workers
who belong to the same collective will destroy their sense of social
solidarity and eventually the union itself.
In opposition, workers realize that union/social
solidarity cannot be maintained if certain members of their collective
face inequality and social injustice based on date of hiring, age,
gender, national background, religion or any other difference that does
not relate directly to work qualifications. Workers
understand this spontaneously because they are united from their
objective position as workers who have languished in the capitalist
labour market and then hired by those with capital whether the employer
is the state or a private company. Workers recognize through their
direct experience that their unity is what
gives them strength as individuals and as individuals within a specific
collective of workers. By cherishing and harmonizing the relationship
amongst individuals and between individuals and their collective the
sum of the individuals making up the collective is stronger and better
able to defend their individual rights
and those they have as a collective. Conscious social solidarity
amongst individual members of a working class collective and with other
workers in society is what gives the working class its unique
subjective character representing and leading the fight for the rights
of all and for new economic and political
arrangements.
Necessity for a Working Class Mass Media
Of particular note during the Windsor strike has been
the role of the mass media and their open anti-worker campaign for
concessions and to undermine social solidarity amongst the Windsor
working class and its allies. The Windsor Star has
been leading an anti-social class war of the mass media all the while
openly admitting that it reports everything from a "business
perspective." This "business perspective," which is inherently
anti-worker is repeated endlessly on radio and television.
Toronto civic workers are experiencing a similar class
bias from the mass media. Windsor and Toronto workers and their
collectives are learning that this lack of their own media negatively
affects their ability to defend themselves and the rights of all. This
realization is leading Ontario workers generally
to grasp the truth that they themselves must solve this problem of not
having mass media that uphold a worker's perspective.
Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L)
TML calls on all workers and their allies to
see the long Windsor strike and the pending Toronto civic strike not in
isolation but in relation to their own individual and collective
conditions. Workers across Ontario are in a similar predicament and can
defend
themselves during the crisis by informing themselves of each other's
conditions and methods of resistance and getting together to discuss
and plan actions with analysis as their struggles unfold. The Workers'
Centre of CPC(M-L) acts as a centre of convergence in this activity of
uniting, discussing, writing, disseminating
information and planning actions with analysis. It is our duty to break
the silence on the conditions of all workers who are under attack and
are resisting as best they can. By converging and pooling our skills
and strength, we can make the working class movement effective and
powerful.
The Windsor and Toronto city authorities' anti-social
campaign is in conjunction generally with efforts of many Ontario
municipalities, the province and owners of monopoly capital to extract
concessions and drive workers into insecurity through unemployment or
non-standard work at low pay without
benefits and pensions.
Social Solidarity
Social solidarity is a leading factor in defending the
rights of all during this economic crisis. No individual or group of
workers should be left to face the power of the state and monopoly
capital on their own. It is evident to all that the attacks on Windsor
city workers are a prelude
to attacks on Toronto city workers and the continued wrecking of the
manufacturing base of Ontario and the country.
Canadian workers, their collectives and allies must come
to the aid of their fellow workers in Windsor and Toronto. The fate of
all individual workers and their collectives is inextricably bound
together in a single whole. Let us bring to life the cherished slogans
of the working class through organizing
and uniting in action with analysis: An injury to one is an injury to
all! One for all and all for one!
Down with the anti-social offensive of the Windsor and
Toronto city authorities and Ontario government!
Victory to the just struggle of Windsor and Toronto city
workers in defence of their rights!
Arbitration Not a Four-Letter Word
- Sid Ryan, Ontario President, Canadian
Union of Public Employees,
June 11, 2009
(excerpts) -
There are times in life where the best thing to do is
for everyone to take a step back.
Here in Windsor, this is one of those times.
After more than two months on the picket lines,
municipal workers and the City of Windsor negotiators remain deadlocked
at the bargaining table, to no one's benefit. Neither the city nor CUPE
have been able to work out these differences, and residents are rightly
fed up.
Clearly, the time has come to step back and allow a
fresh set of eyes to look over the city's and CUPE's respective
positions and point a way forward for both parties.
That is why CUPE has asked for an independent,
third-party arbitrator to resolve the dispute. While this solution is
never the ideal option, there are moments in labour relations where it
is called for. In our view, this is one of those rare moments.
And so we find ourselves here. Two elements of the
city's bargaining position -- a two-tier benefit system for future
workers and net zero, the notion that any gains workers make be offset
by concessions elsewhere -- would each be considered strike issues
individually. That the city put both forward
in a single round of negotiations has proved disastrous. That it is
happening in Windsor, the cradle of Canadian industrial unionism, is a
sad symptom of a broader push to preserve an economic system that has
failed workers miserably on a global scale.
Sadder still is the cynical use of this dispute to pit
worker against worker, public sector against private sector, employed
against unemployed. Depending on your vantage point, a divide and
conquer strategy might garner a few more votes or sell a few extra
newspapers, but it also conveniently avoids
asking harder questions about how our economy got into this mess in the
first place, and why workers, whether from Chrysler or the Corporation
of the City of Windsor, ought to be the ones who pay the price for the
mistakes of Big Business and their friends in government.
While not ideal, arbitration represents a way forward.
It gets our members back to work immediately while the arbitrator
reviews our respective positions and decides where, within those
positions, a reasonable settlement exists. Contrary to what has been
stated by Mayor Francis and echoed on the Star's
editorial pages, arbitration does not inherently favour labour over
management. Rather, it is a quasi-judicial process that relies on
precedent, case law and most importantly, impartiality.
To suggest otherwise is to essentially suggest Canada's
entire industrial relations system is tilted in favour of organized
labour.
While this is a novel argument, any working man or woman
who has ever found themselves on the receiving end of employer
intimidation for signing a union card, had to endure watching others
taking away their livelihoods while on strike or watch their work get
outsourced to some far-off place to
provide shareholders with a few extra pennies per share, would likely
disagree with such a world view.
Despite the risk of having to accept a settlement
unfavourable to its members, Locals 82 and 543 agree arbitration points
us out of this impasse, a position wholeheartedly endorsed by CUPE
Ontario and CUPE National.
Why? Because it's the right thing to do under these
particular circumstances. The only obstacle left to our members
returning to their jobs lies deep in City Hall.
There have been no negotiations now for two weeks, and
none on the horizon. We can only speculate that the City of Windsor's
bargaining committee has no mandate to negotiate with us.
As always, we remain available to resume negotiations at
a moment's notice, but in the absence of negotiations, we are prepared
to put our faith in the legal process.
Is it too much to ask for the City of Windsor to do the
same?
Toronto-Dominion Centre Workers Locked Out
- Interview with Zoran Grgar, National
Representative, Communications,
Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) -
On June 14, Cadillac Fairview Corporation locked out its
61 workers at the Toronto-Dominion Centre in downtown Toronto. Cadillac
Fairview Corporation is one of North America's largest investors,
owners and managers of commercial real estate. It is wholly-owned by
the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. It
has locked out the workers in order to impose anti-labour concessions,
the aim of which, first and foremost, are to smash the union. Posted
below is an interview with Zoran Grgar, a national representative of
CEP.
***
TML: Please tell us something about
the locked out workers.
Zoran Grgar: The lockout involves two
bargaining units, both of them from CEP Local 2003, which is a
composite local. There is the engineers' group, with 21 people and
there is the maintenance group, with another 40, for a total of 61
workers.
The Toronto-Dominion Centre itself is an office complex
located in the financial district of Toronto. It is the home of some of
Canada's largest corporations. It has corporate offices, legal offices,
insurance offices and retail offices as well. The engineers basically
take care of the buildings in terms of
temperature, air conditioning and that sort of work. They are
stationary engineers, not mechanical engineers. The maintenance group
deals with the maintenance stuff: from the loading docks, to
deliveries, electrical work, plumbing repairs, mechanics, carpentry,
painting, etc.
The engineers' collective agreement expired on March
31, 2008 and we have been bargaining with Cadillac Fairview for over a
year. The maintenance groups' collective agreement expired at the end
of September 2008. Both groups were locked out at the same time.
TML: What is the lockout all about?
ZG: It is about union busting, first
and foremost. There are a couple of features in this lockout but the
main issue is that when everything is said and done, virtually
everybody will have to reapply for their jobs and go through a brand
new probationary period, which means that
the company can terminate their services if it is not satisfied. After
working there for over 20 years, workers will have to go through a
probationary period of just over 3 months. They will be thrown into a
different job that they do not know, serve a new probationary period
and if they do not make it, they can be
discharged. This is the most important issue because if workers lose
their job what is left for them in the collective agreement?
There are other issues as well. Cadillac Fairview wants
to be able to contract out some of the services that are currently
performed by people within the bargaining unit. This contracting out
does not make any sense even in terms of saving money for the company.
For us, it looks like a sort of revenge
against workers who are vocal and defend themselves against these
concessions. Cadillac Fairview wants to diminish basic things like
health and safety. For example, they do not want the health and safety
committee performing as much work as it is doing right now. Health and
safety is crucial for our workers.
There are also significant monetary reductions but
overall what we are fighting against is the elimination of the
foundations of the collective agreement. They want to go to the current
employees and pick and choose who they want to remain. They do not want
to admit it but this is what it amounts
to.
Both these units are high seniority bargaining units.
These are people with lots of years of service and they have given
their employers the best part of their lives. Now that they are getting
older and less able and have disabilities or restrictions, Cadillac
Fairview creates this scheme to filter them out.
This would probably be illegal if they were trying to flush the workers
out, pure and simple. So they are resorting to this scheme.
TML: What are the workers doing to
oppose this lockout?
ZG: We are picketing the premises.
Workers have set up a blog and a facebook page to voice their opinions
and give information about the situation.
This is the first time that there has been a labour
disruption at this workplace. These bargaining units have been
certified in excess of 30 years I think. We have had grievances but no
labour disruption. The company is just jumping on the bandwagon of
labour bashing that we see everywhere, whether
against the auto workers or workers of the other sectors. Everybody
wants a kick at the can. In our case, they are using the crisis as an
opportune time to come after a group of senior workers. Meanwhile last
year was the most profitable year ever for Cadillac Fairview. They made
nearly a billion dollars in profit.
We filed charges against the company at the Ontario
Labour Relations Board and we are awaiting hearing dates.
We are asking for peoples' support. They can pay us a
visit on the lines [surrounding all of the TD Centre on Wellington,
King
and one street to the south of Wellington] or send us messages of
support. Any form of support
is appreciated.
***
To sign a petition in support of CEP Local 2003 click
here:
- http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-cep-local-2003.html
For more information:
- http://www.xpdnc.com/files/tdc09/generalpubliccommuniquejune15.pdf
- http://therealcfnews.blogspot.com/
- http://www.cepunion.blogspot.com/
facebook group:
- http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=9302&uid=104383668872#/group.php?gid=104383668872
Read The Marxist-Leninist
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Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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