Mobilize the Power of the Working Class to Turn Back the Anti-Worker Offensive

Teachers, education workers and their supporters rally at Queen's Park, August 28, 2012.

Every year on Labour Day, tens of thousands of Ontario workers march through the Dufferin Gates of the Canadian National Exhibition in the Labour Day Parade organized by local and provincial unions. Every year this event is an exhilarating display by the working class of the power of its numbers and of its capacity for independent organization and action.

This year at the Labour Day celebration workers will be asking themselves many questions raised by the contrast between the potential power of the working class proudly on display and the serious challenges facing the workers' movement because of the aggressive anti-worker offensive of the rich. How is it that we are not able to mobilize our vast numbers and our unique capacity for independent action in our own interest? How is it that a rich minority can get away with electing politicians like Harper, the McGuinty-Hudak team and the Ford hooligans to do their bidding. How can these self-serving politicians act with impunity to trample on workers' rights and drive down the standard of living of working people?

There have been many outrageous attacks against the working class during the past year by the politicians serving the rich minority and the international monopolies. At this time, teachers and education workers are resisting the anti-worker legislation cooked up by the McGuinty Liberals and the Hudak Progressive Conservatives (PCs) in Bill 115, the Putting Students First Act. This legislation strips them of their right to collective bargaining and cuts their pay through a wage freeze, days off and changes to pay grids. It also is intended as a template for attacks on health care workers and other workers throughout the public sector.

Two attacks on workers in the past year though, stand out for many workers: the phony lockout and closing of the Electro Motive plant in London by the U.S. monopoly Caterpillar and the attacks on Toronto civic workers and the privatization of waste disposal services. What stands out about both of these situations is that despite the widespread belief that this wrecking was against the public interest and despite the huge popular support workers rallied to their side, both the Ford hooligans and the Caterpillar wreckers were able to do as they pleased.

The existing political arrangements enabled private interests to triumph over the interests of workers and the public interest. Despite the widespread opinion among workers in both these cases that `This shall not pass!' the workers' movement was unable to give this just stand effective political expression.

This is the problem that the workers have to solve.

How can the power of the independent social and political movements of the working class be used to stop Harper, the McGuinty-Hudak team and Ford and the entire neoliberal offensive of the global monopolies? This is the problem workers are trying to work out a solution to by participating in the September 6 Kitchener-Waterloo (K-W) by-election.

Workers have been organizing in K-W for several weeks to develop independent working class political strength. They have been calling on other workers to mobilize themselves, discuss the election with their workmates and neighbours and to go all out to defeat the candidates of the anti-worker Liberal and PC parties. Injured workers have been using the K-W by-election to raise the issue of justice for injured workers since McGuinty appointed the Conservative Member of Provincial Parliament Elizabeth Witmer to chair the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Teachers and education workers are now joining in the K-W election campaign to put forward politics that defend their interests and public education.

On August 28, thousands of teachers and education workers rallied at Queen's Park to oppose Bill 115. Many discussed the need to organize and work for the defeat of the candidates of the Liberal and PC parties in the K-W by-election to hold these parties to account for imposing this draconian legislation on them. It would be a non-partisan stand in the sense of uniting people in action in defence of the public good but not this or that party which they may or may not believe in.

Through actions like these, the working class can begin mobilizing itself to go into sustained actions with analysis and show the real power of its numbers and determination.

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