Nation-Building Versus Nation-Wrecking
Prince George rally,
December 10, 2024
Initially, the ruling elite in Canada wanted Canada Post as a public utility for nation-building. The Post Office Department of the federal government was established in 1867 headed by a Cabinet minister, the Postmaster General of Canada. The government kept the direct payment, like stamps and postage fees, for the value postal workers produce very low, especially for businesses that wanted a cheap means of communication. Indirect payment for the value postal workers produce came from general government revenue. Indirect payment has always been predominant as part of government taking responsibility for providing a public post office for all of Canada, a vast country with many smaller communities based on resource extraction and agriculture. A public utility for mass communication was and continues to be a vital element for nation-building.
This arrangement was wrecked in 1981 in the throes of the global anti-social offensive. The Federal Parliament relinquished direct responsibility for the post office with the 1981 Canada Post Corporation Act greatly opening up mail delivery to meet the demands of the global elite and its drive for maximum private profit and control using privatization.
In contradiction with nation-building, neo-liberal globalization has spawned enormously rich people, their supranational narrow private interests, gross inequality, mounting social and natural problems, constant war and bloated war economies. The global elite seek places to invest worldwide that are secure and can guarantee a certain return. Public utilities such as Canada Post and Hydro-Québec as well as health care and education institutions, besides others, are prime targets for their greed and megalomania through partial or complete privatization.
The global rich want to seize as their private property the enormous social value workers produce through public utilities and deny the use of this social value for nation-building, social programs, wages agreeable to workers, and the humanization of the social and natural environment. The people are confronted with the challenge to organize mass movements to take the communications, transportation, energy and other vital sectors out of the hands of the global rich and transform them into utilities which truly serve the people and nation-building.
The attack on postal workers' right to negotiate their working conditions and those of new hires, with their criminalization and threat of punishment if they do not end their strike struggle, arises from the general dictatorship of the ruling elite who seek to maintain an iron hand over all decisions affecting the lives and work of the people. The dictatorship of the ruling class of rich parasites does not tolerate any encroachment of the people on its monopoly right to dictate all affairs in the country including wages and working conditions.
Facing this dictatorship of the rich, the working class fights to uphold its right to control all affairs that affect its life and work including the right to negotiate and come to an agreement with employers on the price of workers' capacity to work. The right to control our lives and work is central to the modern era of democracy and no elite force can deny this right of the people and their forward march.
Postal workers have the right to a portion of the new value they produce as wages, pensions, benefits and to working conditions agreeable to them. Canada needs postal workers and the social value they produce as an essential public utility for nation-building. Canada does not need the nation-wrecking of neo-liberal globalization that seeks to overwhelm public right with greed, criminalization of workers, destruction and the constant wars of monopoly right.
Denounce the Government for
Criminalizing Postal Workers
and Ordering
Them to End Their Strike!
Defend the Dignity and Just Demands of Postal Workers!
Whose Economy? Our Economy!
Stand
with Postal Workers in Their
Struggle for
Terms of Employment Agreeable to Them!
Prince George, December
10, 2024
This article was published in
Thursday,
December 19, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/ITN2024/Articles/TI54722.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca