Workers' Movement Builds Up Its Resistance
and Organization

2011 saw the working class movement break new ground in various places. The challenge in 2012 is to extend this trend throughout the country and make it the Year for Resistance & Organization, the Year of the Working Class!

Steelworkers in Hamilton under the leadership of Local 1005 USW upheld their dignity and emerged with honour from an eleven-month battle with U.S. Steel. Steelworkers strengthened their social consciousness and outlook of the working class as the rising leader of society. They developed new forms of organizing to empower their membership to participate consciously in analyzing the concrete conditions, make decisions as a collective on strategy and tactics, and as individuals carry out those decisions responsibly. In doing so, steelworkers strengthened their independent voice in Hamilton and made headway in how to unite the community behind their working class agenda to defend their rights and the rights of all against monopoly right and to build a self-reliant and diverse economy under the control of Canadians.

Elsewhere, Air Canada and Canada Post workers took bold steps to defend their rights against both the executive thieves and Harper dictatorship. Through unjust and disruptive Parliamentary and bureaucratic measures to negate the rights of postal and airline workers, the state machine led by the Harperites stands exposed as a tool of the owners of monopoly capital against the working class.

Political action against the working class was duplicated in Quebec with legislation to attack construction workers and in Ontario to deny public sector workers the right to strike in defence of their living and working conditions. In BC, the political class in power is directly interfering in the education sector attacking teachers and deliberately weakening public education to privatize it through stealth and transfer the education of BC youth into the clutches of global monopolies. In Toronto, a most reactionary anti-worker cabal within the political class has seized power. The Toronto Ford gang is bent on privatizing "anything that's not nailed down" to hand the city's entire actual and potential assets to its monopoly patrons, lay off and impoverish large numbers of city workers, and generally make the city unliveable for the working class.

None of these attacks has cowed or disheartened workers who are resisting with renewed vigour. Quebec construction workers are persisting in the struggle to defend their rights, as are public sector workers in Ottawa and throughout the country. Education workers in BC and students in Quebec are actively engaged in defending both the working conditions of teachers and the right to free high-quality public education. Workers are challenging monopoly right and the absolute power of the political class and through conscious participation in the battle are learning what more has to be done to turn the situation around in favour of the people.

A New Equilibrium Based on the Recognition of Rights

The refusal of the global monopolies and their political representatives to recognize public right and the rights of the actual producers, the working class, has created disequilibrium in the country. Disequilibrium is reflected in the inability and unwillingness of the global monopolies and political class to solve the economic crisis in favour of the people. Even worse, the global monopolies and political class are using the crisis as an excuse to extort concessions, consolidate their economic and political power and block the working class from assuming positions of authority to put into practice its own pro-social program and agenda to resolve problems and the crisis in a manner that serves the interests of the people and society.

Contrary to the ravings of the Harper dictatorship that the working class is responsible for disrupting the economy, the disequilibrium and associated economic crisis are a direct result of those in authority blocking the working class from giving a new direction to the economy and solving problems, and from the continuing attacks on the rights of the working class and society such as the following -- the privatization of public services including city services, public education and health care; the extortion of workers for concessions including attacks on their pensions; the disruptive interference of governments into the affairs of working class organizations and attempts to disrupt and sabotage their defence activities and organizing; the elimination of social programs under the medieval banner of "fend for yourself"; the neoliberal sell out of the country to global monopolies under the discredited banner of "free trade" that wrecks manufacturing while turning the basic economy into a polluted cheap source of unfinished or semi-finished raw materials; the refusal to police foreign and domestic monopoly investment to ensure that it benefits Canadians such as at U.S. Steel, Vale, Xstrata and Resolute Forest Products (AbitibiBowater); the refusal to recognize the rights of First Nations, pay reparations for the harm colonialism has caused and allow them to build and control an economic base in their territories; the increasing ease of governments handing over public money to private monopolies in pay-the-rich schemes; the refusal to organize public not-for-profit financial institutions as a secure place for savings and insurance, and internal source of development money for nation-building; the unlawful destruction of public institutions such as the Canadian Wheat Board; the forcing of P3s on municipalities so that global monopolies can seize Canada's water, hospitals, infrastructure and other public assets, in sum the domination of monopoly right over public right and the refusal to recognize the rights of the working class. All this and more results in disequilibrium that the working class refuses to accept. This is our economy and our country. Workers demand nothing less than their rights and equilibrium in the country based on the recognition of those rights.

The events of 2011 taught the working class that equilibrium can only be established through the conscious participation of individuals in organizing into defence collectives and bringing the full weight of their numbers, determination and social consciousness into the class battle. The global monopolies, Harper dictatorship and other levels of government will continue to refuse to recognize the rights of workers unless confronted and held to account by a conscious, organized and determined Workers' Opposition.

In 2012, let's get organized and bring workers' strength of numbers, determination and social consciousness into actions with analysis to defend the rights of all and for a new equilibrium based on the recognition of workers' rights that prepares conditions for a human-centred alternative!

In 2012, let's bring working class organizing and activity to a level that establishes a working class trend and new direction for the economy and politics that cannot be stopped!