This is a busy week for Ontario workers. On Monday November 21, the 40th Ontario legislature opens as does the 11th Biennial Convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Ontario Economic Summit organized by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. On Tuesday, the speech from the Throne will be followed by the Fall Economic Statement. These events are taking place at a time when Ontario workers are stepping up their fight for their rights and a new direction for the economy.

Ontario workers face three levels of government claiming to have the mandate to put all social assets at the disposal of the monopolies and criminalize workers' struggles for their rights under the hoax of defending the economy. In a matter of a few months, the Harper majority government has illegalized the struggles of the Air Canada and Canada Post workers. It justifies its attacks on these workers and every other sector on the grounds that their demand for wages, working conditions, benefits and pensions endanger the economy which then becomes a matter of national security. Besides all the things the Harper government is doing which endanger the national economy and security of Canada, it is attacking the livelihoods of Prairie farmers by dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board. Its engagement in trade negotiations which demand the destruction of all marketing boards will affect the livelihoods of many farmers in Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere, and also put all public services on the auction block. The Ontario government asserts a mandate and social consensus to revamp the whole public sector with further waves of privatization, slashing of the workforce and attacks against public sector unions in the name of reducing the deficit and debt. Toronto's Ford administration claims the mandate to privatize anything "that's not nailed down" and to direct its fire against the city workers, their terms and conditions of work, especially job security, and their defence organizations, in order to solve the city's supposed financial crisis.

Workers are taking up the challenge by stepping up their work in defence of the rights of all and by holding governments to account for their reckless activities. They declare that the economy these governments are referring to is the "pay-the-rich economy" in which everything is put in the service of protecting and expanding private capital at any cost. If this means shutting down perfectly good facilities and whole sectors of the economy and dismantling public services, so be it. Workers start with a very different, in fact, opposite outlook. As producers of society's wealth, workers have first claim on the wealth they produce. Nothing can function without the labour of the working class producing the material blessings of society and providing public services. The loss of livelihoods and lowering of the living standards the wrecking of manufacturing has caused across Ontario and Canada has shown in a very clear manner what happens when social production declines. Workers gathered at the OFL Convention affirm that their claims on what they produce must be met and provided with a guarantee. Far from being negated, even by the criminalization of their struggles, their right to their just claims must become law and the economy must be renewed on that basis, instead of being left at the mercy of the global monopolies' narrow interests.

Strike at Vale Inco, Sudbury, January 13, 2010.

Workers are gathering at the OFL Convention with rich experience from demands elaborated over the years in the course of their determined struggle for their rights, whether with U.S. Steel, Vale, Xstrata, the Post Office or many other public and private entities. They have given rise to demands such as "Concessions are Not Solutions!", "Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!", "Our Resources Stay Here!", "Public Services Yes! Privatization No!", "Whose Economy? Our Economy! Who Decides? We Decide!", "Defend the Pensions We Have! Fight for Pensions for All!" and many others. As they discuss how to step up their fight to hold governments to account, workers are making a clear statement that satisfaction of these demands is what is expected from governments that claim to represent the public interest and it is on this basis that the governments are being held to account by the movement. Workers do not come forward without an agenda and aim or in search of these things. They have been and are elaborating their aim and agenda and are taking this up to show the people of Ontario concretely that satisfaction of these demands would be beneficial to their economy and well-being.

Let us focus discussion on how to further the agenda to hold governments to account at a time when their refusal to uphold public right is putting the society and country in grave danger. Attempts to declare the workers and their unions criminal must be defeated. This is not how to protect the economy. It is how to protect the monopolies and their alleged right to do whatever they please with impunity in the name of making the economy competitive. Ontario workers will make an important contribution to opening society's path for progress on the basis of taking up the slogan: Our Security Lies in the Fight for the Rights of All!

McGuinty's "Job Creation" Fraud

Throughout the recent Ontario election, Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberal Party presented an upbeat economic picture aimed at avoiding a serious discussion of the severe problems Ontario workers are having maintaining their livelihoods. McGuinty bragged that Ontario was "leading North America in job creation" following the 2008 financial crisis. It was a deliberate cover-up in that the so-called "job creation" was simply a recovery to the pre-2008 crisis trend of a steady decline in employment and production in Ontario's goods producing sector.

This trend has been confirmed by figures released immediately after the election.[1] Statistics Canada reported that unemployment in Ontario rose to 8.1 per cent in October. Another 75,400 workers lost their jobs while the "job creation" success story is that some 36,000 found part-time work.

On October 26, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan released figures for the second quarter 2011, which show that Ontario production declined 0.4 per cent from June to August, an annualized rate of -1.2 per cent. This decline in production was led by an overall decline of 1 per cent in the goods producing sector and a 2.3 per cent decline in manufacturing. The graph shows that levels of manufacturing, which began to increase in mid-2009 after several years of drastic decline, is again following the trend of decline.

Rising unemployment and declining production are urgent concerns not only for the thousands of workers losing their jobs month after month, but for all the people of Ontario. Our standard of living depends on the wealth created by workers in the industrial sectors. But the ruling party in Ontario and the rich whom the Liberals represent, say this trend is inevitable and the situation doesn't even merit discussion. During the election for example, McGuinty refused to even participate in a leaders' debate about the fate of Northern Ontario, one of the regions severely affected by the wrecking of our economy by global monopolies. Whole communities are being devastated and de-populated in forestry-related resource extraction industries.

Protest against closure of Siemen's turbine plant in Hamilton, March 18, 2010. The plant was relocated
to North Carolina.

Instead of taking measures to protect and grow our economy by curbing the power of the monopolies to wreck, Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberal Party say Ontarians need to embrace globalization and stake the province's future on successfully attracting foreign investment "so as to create the jobs of tomorrow." Never mind that whatever investment has been made in Ontario thus far has been accompanied by the biggest loss in manufacturing jobs in the province's history -- this is the line of the financial oligarchy and McGuinty is sticking to it. Hundreds of millions of our dollars have been handed over as "incentive" to "green energy" monopolies like Siemens to "invest" in Ontario. Yet Ontario workers can plainly see that this "job creation" does not even come close to the scale at which industrial production has declined while McGuinty's party has been in power.

Since the Liberals became the ruling party in Ontario, employment in the manufacturing and primary industries has declined from 1.2 million workers to 840,000, a loss of 369,000 jobs and a decline from 21 per cent of total employment to only 12 per cent. To simply maintain the ratio of manufacturing/primary employment in the economy that existed when McGuinty came to power, there would need to be 1.4 million jobs in this sector today to account for labour force growth. Rather than "creating jobs" his government has supervised the creation of a deficit of 562,000 jobs in the manufacturing and primary industries.

The deceitful politicking about "job creation" and the refusal of the McGuinty Liberal party in power to address the urgent concerns of the workers and people of Ontario about job loss and the direction of the economy shows that it is unfit to govern. The issue of the Ontario economy is approached by the McGuinty Liberals from the narrow perspective of staying in power by championing monopoly dictate over public right, enabling wrecking of the economy and providing the monopolies opportunities to feed at the trough of public funds.

It is up to Ontario workers to establish a new direction for Ontario's economy, a direction that takes into account their need for livelihoods and the need for a prospering goods producing sector to ensure the well being of all people of Ontario.

Note

1. For details on Ontario's declining industrial output see the Ontario Economic Accounts, 2nd Quarter Report at www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/ecaccts/index.html#pbi

Harris and the Working Class

On July 21, the new Harris government in Ontario presented an economic statement on the province's financial situation and the future of many policies of the previous government. As is the tradition with every new government in Canada, Harris began by explaining that the financial state of the province is worse than expected and a great deal of changes will have to be made. In other words, he wants to cloud the reality that his government wishes to organize the provincial finances according to the dictates of the money-lenders. Many of the services previously provided by the government are being turned into private businesses. He wants to transfer money into the hands of those who are taking up this new service industry as a lucrative business for themselves.

As an ideological foundation for pursuing overtly anti-social policies he clumsily presented his view that, "Protecting the province's financial stability is the greatest single responsibility of any government." One can easily understand why social-democracy has been the preferred policy of the bourgeoisie for so long when the alternative is former golf pros standing naked before the people spouting capitalist jargon that will fool no one. Every time he opens his mouth it is a straightforward statement of his desire to serve his section of the capitalist class, and the people be damned.

True to his words, his Finance Minister Ernie Eves, who has the appearance of an unsavoury used car salesman, presented a long list of cancellations of policy objectives from the former Rae government. The amount of money involved is 1.9 billion dollars that is already budgeted to be spent. Eves only gave vague hints that there would be a reduction in the yearly deficit, but he left that question open for interpretation because of the "worse-than-expected financial situation" of the province.

A partial list of the cuts from programs of the previous government includes: a 21.6 percent reduction in welfare payments effective October 1, a program to force welfare recipients to work for the amount that has been cut from their entitlement, ending special relief for municipalities with high welfare caseloads, cancelling of spending for conversion of private child care to non-profit child care, the elimination of Jobs Ontario Training and Action Programs, a moratorium on the development of non-profit housing, a freeze on social housing construction, reducing transfer payments to municipalities for child care subsidies, reducing spending on infrastructure improvements, cancelling the commitment to the Ballet-Opera House, cancelling of the youth employment program JumpStart, employment equity and Advocacy Commission funding cutbacks, as well as capping pay equity payouts, the halting of the implementation of the Employment Equity Act in the Ontario civil service, and eliminating the Royal Commission on Workers' Compensation, as well as other schemes that generally tend to reduce the amount spent on social programs. Eves estimates the reduction in social assistance payments alone in the full fiscal year 1996-97 will be over one billion dollars.

The anti-social nature of these cutbacks is clear and brazen. Likewise, these cuts will do nothing but worsen the economic situation in the province. The all-around crisis of the bourgeoisie is bound to deepen and their in-fighting, as different sections jockey for power, is bound to increase. The working class has every opportunity to occupy the leadership of the movement for a new society that provides full employment and the ending of poverty.

The Rich Exploit the Crisis to Seize the Public Sector

On November 21-23, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) will be staging its annual Ontario Economic Summit (OES) in Toronto. Sixty-thousand Ontario businesses are members of the OCC which is part of a national network of chambers of commerce. All of the international monopolies operating in the province are members and dominate this organization. Its mission is to develop a consensus among the rich about policies they require from all levels of government, to communicate these requirements to the government and to promote policies serving the rich as being identical with the public interest.

The 2011 OES is being organized under the banner, Towards Our Next Great Era. The conference agenda sets the funding and delivery of health care, energy and city services as the issues to be covered. All of these sectors are areas of sharp conflict between the interests of Ontario workers and the interests of the aggressive monopolies expanding into public services.

Participation in the conference is by invitation only, with the 200 invitations going mostly to top executives of international monopolies. The discussions in the conference sessions will be led by executives of monopolies involved in the health care, energy and city services sectors and by celebrity pundits associated with monopoly interests in these sectors. Since the OES bills itself as a "collaborative effort to help build increased economic prosperity in Ontario," a few trade union representatives were invited to participate. Jim Stanford, an economist employed by CAW will moderate one panel discussion but no union leaders have been invited to speak.

The Ontario government is one of the main sponsors of the event. OES organizers ensure participants direct access to provincial political leaders in exchange for their $4,500 registration fees. One of the conference sessions will be attended by the entire Ontario Cabinet, with conference participants offered private or semi- private meetings with ministers. The OES organizers describe these private meetings as being "very popular with attendees." Dalton McGuinty, Tim Hudak and Andrea Horvath will all speak at the event, as will federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Other speakers include a number of academics and executives of NGO's aligned with government policy.

To give them a high media profile and PR value, events of this type usually arrange appearances by celebrity politicians working the paid lecture circuit and other celebrities. OES special guest speakers will include: former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Chicago Mayor Richard Daly and Stephen Lewis. Clinton will be performing at a special OES event open to the public at Massey Hall, a Toronto pop concert venue, with tickets priced at up to $168 each.

In preparation for the conference OES organizers posted the document, Program Framework on the OES website setting out an agenda for what it calls Ontario's "next great era." It outlines several "economic challenges" as a context for the participants' discussion of the issues of health, energy and city services, with challenges being categorized as of primary or of secondary concern.

Issues of primary concern according to the OES document are: the Ontario government deficit; the impact of global restructuring and poor markets on manufacturing; the end of the federal stimulus and the interdependence with fragile international markets. These it says are compounded by: fluctuating demand for exported goods; volatile markets and currencies; increasing oil prices and aging of infrastructure and of the work force.

After painting this bleak picture, the document goes on to describe the current situation as an opportunity which should be seized by businesses through immediate, urgent action. This description of the economic and financial situation which is causing such hardship and concern among Ontario workers as an "opportunity" shows the anti-social character of this conference being organized by the rich:

"While governments worldwide focus on stabilizing their economies, a tremendous opportunity exists for non-government sectors to play an even greater partnership role in meeting these challenges and spearheading growth opportunities ... now is our chance to seize the economic opportunities linked to tackling these issues and springboard our economy into a new era."

The logic of this urgent call in the OES document is: Now is our chance to seize the public sector! The governments' hands are tied because of the deficit from previous recessions. It cannot organize growth in health, energy and urban services. Let us exploit this situation! Let us push further into public services while the governments are tied up with deficit budgets!

The motivation of the rich in seeking privatization of public services is the high rate of return on capital guaranteed by the government in privatization agreements. These arrangements also provide opportunities for fraud and corruption at the public expense. When the rich seize the public sector as a market for investment it gives them relief from their problem of the falling rate of return on capital, a constant of the capitalist system. The rich are especially motivated to seek guaranteed high returns on public sector investment during crises when opportunities for making big scores on other kinds of deals and swindles have dried up.

The international privatization monopolies pretend that their profits are earned through efficiencies, advanced technology and expertise, effective management, etc. Expansion of monopolies into public services is presented as a "win/win" for the rich and the workers. One of the purposes of conferences like the OES is to establish this pretence as an irrefutable truth. The working class in Canada and other countries, though, now have many years of experience with these global privatization monopolies. This experience disproves the self-serving claims of the monopolies.

Guaranteed returns for the privatization monopolies can only come from one place, out of the working class. In public enterprises, wealth claimed from the labour of the working class by the government is returned to the working class as public services and as wages for workers who provide public services -- a closed circle. When public enterprises are privatized, this circle is broken. The monopolies have to be paid their guaranteed profits and this has to come from somewhere. This profit comes out of the wages of workers providing services, out of increased user fees and out of reducing the level of services. Skimming funds out of public services as profits also damages these sectors and the entire economy.

The conference document, while relishing the possibilities for exploiting the crisis, never gives solutions to what it lists as the primary and secondary causes of the current economic situation, except to advocate more of the same policies that created it. Most of the "economic challenges" it raised are related to the integration of the Canadian economy into the financial and trading regime among the imperialist system of states and to competition among the global monopolies. The solution? The OES says that Ontario's overall economic goal should be to become a "centre of global expertise" so it can become even more integrated and involved in global competition. And the road to becoming global experts? Hand over the health, energy and urban services sectors to the same monopoly groups that have wrecked vast sectors of the Canadian economy in the past 30 years with their bloodsucking. The OES conference's agenda Towards Our Next Great Era would produce an era just like the one we have now, except worse.

Anti-Worker Media Offensive

Don Drummond, who the McGuinty government appointed to chair the Commission for Reform of Ontario's Public Services, has been on a life-long mission of slashing social programs, reducing corporate taxes and promoting penetration of the public sector by international monopolies, including a leading role in the cuts of the Harris/Chretien/Martin years. In a media interview published on November 12 , Drummond is quoted as saying that regarding his current anti-people assignment there is "less resistance and less territory protection than I've ever perceived before." The interview concludes, "Drummond is struck by a public perception that change is inevitable."

What is being expressed here is the wish of the rich that the destructive capital-centred course they have set the economy on is perceived by the public as inevitable so that no new human-centred direction is ever established for the economy. But the rich do not leave this to wish or chance and everyday take concrete measures to manufacture this public perception.

Among these measures are the frequent high level summit conferences they organize, such as the Ontario Economic Summit (OES) being organized in Toronto on November 21-23. At these summits, executives of international monopolies, political leaders and the pundits associated with them meet, develop a consensus among the rich and promote this consensus around their interests as "common sense" and as constituting the "national interest." As workers attempt to establish a new direction for the economy, an important task is combating the creation of public opinion about the inevitability of the direction the rich have established and to develop conviction that a new direction is possible..

According to documents posted on the OES website, the issues that will be discussed by the rich and their representatives at this particular summit meeting are: the funding and delivery of health care, energy and urban services (especially mass transit). These are all areas where workers have important interests at stake in terms of their livelihoods and in terms of the rights of people to services necessary in a modern society. They are also three areas that aggressive international monopolies have set their sights on for expanding investments with profits guaranteed by government revenues. To support the resistance of workers in these sectors and to develop conviction that there is an alternative to the destructive course being planned by the rich in these sectors is very important.

There Is Only One Working Class

There is only one working class in Canada, which comprises contingents from across the country including Quebec and workers of all nationalities and origins working in all sectors of the economy. This working class faces the most brutal anti-social offensive and nation-wrecking agenda of the ruling elites which puts very concrete issues before the class which must be taken up for solution. This is the situation Ontario workers face as they go into the 11th Biennial Convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) which begins on November 21 in Toronto. All workers have a common interest in uniting to do battle against the anti-social offensive and if these common interests are discussed and the full weight of the working class movement is put behind how to stop the anti-social offensive and resolve the crisis in favour of the people, not the rich, headway will be made.

After everything is said and done, the OFL Convention will clearly show that the workers have a lot to do to defeat the anti-social offensive. It is a quite well-known axiom that things are not always as they appear, if they are looked at superficially. Since Mike Harris unleashed his Common Sense Revolution in 1995 and the OFL responded with its Fight-back Campaign, the fight against the anti-social offensive has not been merely a question of making it difficult for Mike Harris or after him Ernie Eves and then Dalton McGuinty to impose the dictate of the native and foreign monopolies. The workers have found out that it is, in fact, much more than that. Unless they put the full weight of their numbers and organization behind their demands, based on the understanding that their security lies in fighting for the rights of all, the workers find it very difficult to put a stick in the spokes of the anti-social offensive, let alone turn things around.

The most important thing is that the working class does not accept this offensive. It has rejected it but still, its views carry no weight in stopping it. It is important to discuss why this is the case. The answer lies in the fact that unless the workers have their own program to get Ontario out of the crisis, a pro-social program that lays the foundation for a new direction to the economy and politics, where who decides is resolved in favour of the workers exercising control over all decisions which affect their lives, the working people will continue to be held hostage to the spin and counterspin of the powers that be. This spin and counterspin constitute the disinformation which keeps the workers' movement ineffective as a force to protect its interests and the interests of their society and country. It includes all the justifications provided to attack labour such as the disinformation about the need to balance budgets, pay down deficits, workers as a "cost of production," entitlements such as benefits and security in retirement as unaffordable because they interfere with the rich becoming richer and therefore make businesses so-called uncompetitive, and so on. The neoliberal idea that if businesses are competitive it will bring prosperity to society must be rejected with all the contempt it deserves. In this way, a pro-social program must become the banner of the fight against the neoliberal offensive. Besides having secondary slogans that dissociate the workers from what the Harper and McGuinty governments are up to, the main thrust has to be a program that the workers embrace and around which they unite all others to create a wave of support which sorts out the problem of having not only defensive tactics, but tactics which put in place new arrangements that help resolve the crisis in favour of the people, not the rich.

Generally speaking, defensive tactics are always necessary as they demand a halt to this or that attack or cutback. However, defensive tactics which are reactive, in the absence of tactics which drive the agenda decided by the workers (i.e. tactics elaborated on the basis of a pro-active approach) may or may not be effective in themselves, but they will not succeed in changing the course of events. For instance, a protest against the closing of a hospital may or may not stop the closure of a particular hospital but it will not stop the drive to privatize health care.

The pro-active tactic does not merely respond to each attack. On the contrary, it is a worked-out program, a banner for the working class. For it to be successful in Ontario, delegates to the Ontario Federation of Labour Congress must work out the program and organize for its successful implementation by organizing many events of all kinds. Actions which are local, provincial and national in scope would include resolutions, information pickets, demonstrations, conferences, agitations through the workers' own websites, media, newspapers, etc. Not to have their own agenda is to fall into the trap set by the ruling class to deprive the workers of any independent action or initiative.

The Convention of the OFL is a great opportunity for the workers from across the province to exchange experiences of the battles they have been waging against the anti-social offensive and draw lessons and inspiration from each other's struggles. Just to repeat no to this and no to that, or just to make a declaration of general interest to "fight back" will not do. What is necessary is to seize the opportunity to adopt a new direction for the Ontario economy where the schemes to pay the rich, destroy jobs and unions and sell-out our resources in the name of investments and job creation are rejected and it is the workers who produce the goods and services and the people who own the resources who decide what is to be done with them.

The pro-social program to Stop Paying the Rich; Increase Investments in Social Programs developed out of the experience of the workers, their actions as a class and according to their deepest interests, which are consistent with the highest achievements of social science. The experience of the workers taken as a whole is a boon to social science, for without the achievements of social science it is not possible to raise the level of consciousness of the working class and their organizing capabilities.

Necessity to Provide a New Direction for the Economy

The 11th Biennial Convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) opens today in Toronto under the theme "Defending the Next Generation" and continues until November 25. The main demands put forward are good jobs, secure pensions, public services and strong communities. More then 1,500 delegates are expected to participate. The OFL represents more then 700,000 workers organized in about 1,500 affiliated local unions from all the major sectors of the economy in both the private and public sectors.

Over the week, delegates will be thinking about and discussing rapidly rising unemployment, the continuing collapse of manufacturing and the entire goods producing sector, the wave of actions by all levels of government trampling on workers' rights and criminalizing workers' struggles, attacks on public sector services and the political marginalization of the working class. While these deliberations are taking place, the rich, their political representatives and media will be carrying out a massive PR campaign around the re-opening of the provincial legislature and the convening of the annual Ontario Economic Summit.

This campaign will spread disinformation about the creation of jobs and prosperity and about the nature of the current Ontario government deficit situation. Its aim is to overwhelm any attempt at creating an organized opposition based on the independent politics of the working class.

The McGuinty government is re-opening the Legislature following an election in which there was a record low voter turn out and the Liberals won only 18 per cent of the eligible vote. Despite this, they claim to have a mandate to do as they please. During the election campaign, McGuinty bragged that Ontario was "the leading North American jurisdiction in job creation." All the while in the breast pocket of his suit he had reports showing Ontario was about to lose 50,000 jobs and that the disastrous decline in the goods producing sectors is continuing unabated. Throughout the election, the monopoly media and the pundits spread disinformation that it didn't matter who won the election since stepped up attacks on the workers and public services because of the deficit are "inevitable."

Workers in steel, in Northern Ontario's primary industry, in auto/auto parts, in public services and other sectors have put forward proposals for dealing with the economy with measures which restrict monopoly right in various ways. None of these are regarded as worthy of consideration. During the election, McGuinty even refused to attend a debate about the future of Northern Ontario. This puts the onus on the workers at their organizations to address providing Ontario with a new direction so that the crisis is resolved in favour of working people not the rich.

The workers must take a militant stand against the agenda of the Ontario Economic Summit to "seize public sector opportunities" by exploiting the government's deficit situation resulting from declining government revenues. While this gathering of millionaires is feigning concern about "deficit reduction" to promote privatization and pay-the-rich schemes, the experience of the Harris/Chretien/Martin "deficit reduction" years shows that measures such as privatization, slashing public sector workers, imposing user fees and deteriorating services only prepares conditions for even greater indebtedness in the future. Under Martin, the workers' employment insurance premiums were seized and put into general revenues for pay-the-rich schemes. Furthermore, the regulations were changed so that fewer workers could access the fund, for less funds for shorter periods. Now it is revealed that the fund faces a humongous deficit. To cover up the government's own corruption, it attacks workers, unions, wages benefits, pensions and jobs. It must not pass! Governments must be held to account! Old methods of holding governments to account such as parliamentary procedures and prerogatives and election campaigns no longer achieve this aim because they are both manipulated and obsolete. The workers must build their oppositions and do it themselves!

These are some of the issues which face the 11th Biennial Convention of the OFL. There is an alternative! There is an urgent necessity to build the Workers' Opposition so as to provide a new direction for the economy.

All Out to Defend City Workers!

The OFL Convention is the occasion for the federation to put its full weight behind the fight of Toronto's municipal inside and outside workers whose labour contract expires December 31. It is essential that the Federation stand solidly in defence of the city workers' right to remuneration and working conditions commensurate with the work they do, in order to defeat the anti-social and anti-worker agenda of the Ford administration and the Ontario government. Other municipal administrations are following closely what is going to happen in Toronto and preparing further attacks on their own workers.

The Ford administration is shamelessly telling its workers it will negotiate with them only on the basis they can prove themselves competitive with the terms of work in sectors where city functions have been or are being privatized! The Ford administration denies the city workers' pay and conditions must be determined in line with what is needed to provide the services on the basis of the highest standards of safety and quality, recognizing their right as the providers of the services to security and well-being, and that the workers through their defence organizations must have a say in the determination of these things. They are the ones providing the services and know first hand what provision of the services involves. Since when are the inferior conditions in the privatized sections of city operations to be the new standard and norm? Who has decided that? Not only is the Ford administration denying the workers' rights but, in the most irresponsible manner, it slanders them in the monopoly media and is preparing to criminalize their struggles as the Harper government is doing to workers across the country in the name of protecting the national economy. The Ford administration goes into this battle counting on full backing from the Ontario government with its nefarious tradition of criminalizing workers as it did once again this year by making it illegal for the Toronto public transit workers to withdraw their labour in defence of their working conditions and that service. This must not pass!

The holding of the OFL Convention is the opportunity for Ontario workers to declare the city workers' standard level of job security and other protections is a condition for the the workers' and the public's security and well-being. They are also a measure of protection against the upheavals caused by recurrent economic crises. Far from being reduced or eliminated, these should be extended to workers of public and private sectors who lack such protection.

The Ford administration must be warned that rather than assaulting and criminalizing its workers on the pretext of Toronto's supposed fiscal emergency, it must negotiate fairly with the workers and deal with Toronto's economic situation at the very least by demanding restoration of proper funding from senior levels of government.

Pressing Concerns of Injured Workers

- Janice Murray -

Injured workers and their associations bring their voice and demands to the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) Convention for their rights to be realized, for adequate compensation and for safety and protection for all workers.

The pressing concerns of injured workers, besides punishing the criminals who injure and kill workers on the job, is the crisis that our system is in and the governments' solution to the crisis of cutting funds to injured workers through their deeming process whereby even injured workers who are attending school to retrain are facing harassment by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). The WSIB pressures them to accept jobs that will either further injure them and/or decrease their standard of living.

The Ontario government has been invoking a crisis in the funding of the system to divert attention from the wrecking caused by its anti-social offensive to pay the rich and to step up its attacks on the benefits of the injured workers. Already, injured workers are facing a new wave of cutbacks on their benefits, their medication, medical treatments, travelling allowances and so on.

The OFL convention policy paper "Prevent, Protect, Compensate for the Next Generation," calls for strong reprisal protection, swifter action on reprisals and more prosecution of employers who put workers in harm's way. The OFL website notes that "In the six years since Bill C-45[1] was passed, it was unused in Ontario, yet more than 400 workers have been killed on the job and nearly two million injured." With this they are declaring: "Kill a worker, go to jail" as the most important solution to reductions in workplace fatalities and injuries.

The OFL policy paper also calls for the scrapping of deeming in Section 43 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997, which allows the Board to deem a worker to have earnings related to a suitable employment or business and to set the worker's loss of earnings benefits based on such deemed earnings regardless of whether the worker has actually secured employment after suffering a workplace injury.

The issue of deeming was raised as an election issue by the injured workers' associations before and during the Ontario election. The determination of injured workers and their associations for justice has put their demands front and centre. In addition they are demanding that this government be accountable and enforce the following:

- coverage of all Ontario workplaces by the WSIB (close to 38 per cent of Ontario workers are not covered);

- full cost of living adjustment (they received 0.5 per cent for cost of living in 2010 while the increase in the cost of living was 3.3 per cent);

- an end to the experience rating program, which grants rebates to the monopolies that allegedly reduce their number of injuries (when in reality the program means the companies pressure workers into not reporting injuries).

Employers and governments are duty bound to uphold and defend the rights of all workers to healthy and safe working conditions.

It is the opposite which is happening as reflected by the rate of workplace fatalities in Ontario's construction sector and on our farms.

Injured workers are waging a courageous battle against the neoliberal politics of cuts to their livelihoods and deadly working conditions. The time has come to end their marginalization by uniting all workers and putting the full weight of the working class behind their demands for their dignity and their rights which are theirs by virtue of being human.

An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!

Demand that Governments Do Their Duty!
Oppose the Funding Cuts of the WSIB!

Note

1. Bill C-45 -- Federal legislation that amended the Criminal Code and became law on March 31, 2004. The bill established new legal duties for workplace health and safety, and imposed severe penalties for violations that result in injuries or death.

Workers' Rights to Collective Bargaining, Unionization and to Defend their Wages and Working Conditions

- Christine Nugent -

The Ontario government continuously passes laws that attack workers rights and feigns support for workers rights only to deny them.

Such is the case for 80,000 Ontario farm workers who face a new legislature this week with the conditions of the Ontario Agricultural Employees Protection Act which was upheld by the Supreme Court. According to the Ontario government and Supreme Court, there is no requirement to provide the collective bargaining rights of agricultural workers with a particular form, the kind that allows them to exercise the right to defend their wages and working conditions.

What this means for organized labour is that it cannot keep its support for agricultural workers general as well. Concrete measures have to be taken to implement our resolve to make sure that the rights of agricultural workers are upheld. The unity of all workers is built in the course of fighting for the rights of all.

The McGuinty Liberals continue to deny part-time college workers the right to organize in defence of their working conditions.

Concurrently, part-time college workers during the two terms of the McGuinty government have had their rights to a union denied.

The Ontario Federation of Labour convention this week comes at a time when education workers are facing the pressure of the neoliberal offensive which threatens their livelihoods and undermines their demands for job security, wages and working conditions commensurate with the work they do. These conditions are causing the wrecking of the learning conditions of students.

This week's press releases are filled with anti-social attacks which claim that wage freezes are necessary at a time when part-time college workers, who are now over 50 per cent of the education workers in colleges, will have already endured two years of wage freezes this coming spring. This is not resulting in any indication of improvement in the crisis that Ontario faces.

They have no expectations that this government will honour workers rights in their throne speech, through the agenda of this weeks' economic summit, in upcoming budget reviews or the Drummond Commission on reform of Ontario Public Services.

Full time faculty faced imposed offers contrary to the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act which undermined their job security through modified work agreements, while full time support staff were pushed into a strike this fall semester in order to achieve a negotiated settlement from an arrogant college council that refused to bargain in good faith.

There are reports of bargaining in Universities where administrators are refusing to bargain over long periods of time.

All of this is taking place with a government that is determined to provide the public purse for the rich monopolies and financial oligarchy as a means to solve yet another crisis that our economy faces; a crisis of their making.

All education workers need to stand firm and united with all public sector workers in the battle to oppose the dismantling of public services which are threatened by privatization and the deterioration of delivery. They must resist the politics of divide and rule championed by the media in the service of the governments at all levels that are attempting to drive the wages and working conditions of public sector workers down arguing that the private sector workers had their turn.

Concessions are not solutions to the economic crisis. Not for private sector workers and not for public sector workers. It is the working class relying on the strength of their own numbers, their organization, setting their agenda and moving it forward that will open the way to progress.

Build the Workers Opposition!

Hamilton Steelworkers and Rail Car Workers
Call Demonstration

Hamilton steelworkers organized by Local 1005 USW and rail car workers organized by Local 7135 USW, are holding a demonstration in support of the demand of Canadian farmers to keep the Canadian Wheat Board. They are calling on workers in Hamilton and the community to demonstrate in front of the Federal Building at 100 Bay Street North on Friday, November 25 at 4:00 pm.

Harper's nation-wrecking agenda to dismantle the Wheat Board will affect the jobs of more than 1,000 workers who produce rail cars used by the Wheat Board at National Steel Car in Hamilton. It will also devastate many farmers in Ontario and Quebec who depend on marketing boards to market their produce. Their livelihoods are also now on the line.

"Support the Wheat Board and all our farmers and their marketing boards! Manufacturing yes, Nation-Wrecking No!," the organizers say.

Labour Council Resolution Supports CWB

Workers also got a resolution passed by the Hamilton and District Labour Council on November 17, 2011:

"Whereas the Canadian Wheat Board has conducted an internal plebiscite of members that found 62% of farmers in favour of keeping the existing system at the Canadian Wheat Board.

"And whereas the Conservative government has tabled Bill C-18, an act that would include reorganising the Board away from elected producers to government appointees.

"And whereas pre-existing legislation governing the Board stipulates any structural changes must be ratified by a vote by producers.

"Move that Hamilton and District Labour Council call on the CLC and affiliates to: support in words and resources the legal challenge lodged against the government by the Canadian Wheat Board for violating Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act, work with the CLC and affiliates to mobilise a call for the federal Agriculture Minister, Gerry Ritz to recognise the rights enshrined in Canadian Wheat Board Act and further call on the Minister to respect the plebiscite results from the Wheat Board announced September 12, 2011."

Workers Must Hold Governments to Account

Workers Must Hold Governments to Account

McGuinty's "Job Creation" Fraud

Note

Harris and the Working Class

The Rich Exploit the Crisis to Seize the Public Sector

Anti-Worker Media Offensive

There Is Only One Working Class

Necessity to Provide a New Direction for the Economy

All Out to Defend City Workers!

Pressing Concerns of Injured Workers

Note

Workers' Rights to Collective Bargaining, Unionization and to Defend their Wages and Working Conditions

Hamilton Steelworkers and Rail Car Workers
Call Demonstration

Labour Council Resolution Supports CWB

Workers Must Hold Governments to Account

Workers Must Hold Governments to Account

McGuinty's "Job Creation" Fraud

Note

Harris and the Working Class

The Rich Exploit the Crisis to Seize the Public Sector

Anti-Worker Media Offensive

There Is Only One Working Class

Necessity to Provide a New Direction for the Economy

All Out to Defend City Workers!

Pressing Concerns of Injured Workers

Note

Workers' Rights to Collective Bargaining, Unionization and to Defend their Wages and Working Conditions

Hamilton Steelworkers and Rail Car Workers Call Demonstration

Labour Council Resolution Supports CWB

Hamilton Steelworkers and Rail Car Workers
Call Demonstration