February 9, 2009 - No. 29 Ontario Part-Time College Faculty Unionization Campaign Count the Votes! Ontario Part-Time College
Faculty Unionization Campaign Ontario Part-Time College Faculty Unionization Campaign Count the Votes!The certification vote for the part-time college faculty of Ontario's 24 Colleges concluded last Friday, February 6 on a very sour note due to the College Council's continued interference in the democratic process. The College Council is appointed by the government. It would seem that whenever the democratic process does not yield results favourable to the government, there is interference to skew the results. Of course, it is always done in the name of democracy, due process and other pretexts but the pattern is unmistakable. Despite this, every anti-democratic move has been cancelled out by the overwhelming response of part-time college staff in defence of their rights. Now, once again, despite making the conditions for the certification vote as difficult as possible, when a large number of part-time staff turned out to vote, lawyers for the College Council filed a legal petition with the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) to seal the ballot boxes and stop the counting of votes. Why this was done is not known at this time. However, it is reported that some 3,544 part-time and sessional employees took part in the certification vote. The first opportunity OPSEU will have to even discuss it with Labour Relations will be March 24. TML condemns this latest interference by the College Council aimed at preventing college part-time and sessional employees from unionizing or even simply having their "true wishes" expressed in the certification vote. Such interference by the Ontario government and its state agency is unacceptable. From beginning to end OPSEU and the part-time and sessional college employees have faced this brazen interference in the certification vote. For the college employees, this vote took place under the most difficult conditions following three long years of organizing. It took the OLRB three weeks to conduct the vote. Even then, polling stations were not established at every college facility; voting schedules were arbitrarily changed making voting inaccessible for not a few employees. Harassment by the college management included an anti-union e-mail campaign by the employer's Council, posting security guards in front of balloting stations and destroying information on union boards. It also became clear the colleges provided OPSEU (by contractual obligation) lower numbers of part-time and sessional employees during the card signing, so that OPSEU could not be informed who would be eligible to join the new bargaining unit. It then filed official employer lists with the OLRB at the time of the vote with much higher numbers. When all else failed and part-time/sessional college employees voted in their thousands, the Colleges Council filed a legal challenge to prevent the votes from being counted! In Ontario, anti-labour laws written in the Mike Harris era are still largely in effect. Still, Section 11 of the Harris anti-worker Labour Relations Act states that where an employer, employers' organization or a person acting on behalf of an employer interferes to prevent the true wishes of the employees being revealed in a certification vote, the Board may: a) order that a representation vote be taken and do anything to ensure that the representation vote reflects the true wishes of the employees in the bargaining unit; b) order that another representation vote be taken or c) certify the trade union as the bargaining agent of the employees in the bargaining unit if no other remedy would be sufficient to counter the effects of the contravention. The interference in the democratic process says a great deal about what kind of democracy exists where after 30 years of denial of rights to collective bargaining, after having the anti-labour Community Colleges Bargaining Act declared illegal by the International Labour Organisation, after OPSEU submitted more than enough membership cards to justify a certification vote last spring only to have those cards seized by the OLRB acting on government orders -- and now all these violations continue to take place! Automatic certification is certainly an appropriate remedy! Failing any inclination by the McGuinty Liberals to uphold the law let alone to voluntarily recognize that the part-time college workers have repeatedly shown their "true wishes" by resisting every attempt to deprive them of their rights. TML demands that the very least that can be done is to: Count the Votes!
The Votes Are in the Box:
|
 OPSECAAT Fall 2008 Meeting |
The last poll on the last day of the certification vote had barely closed when we were informed that the employers' council had undertaken it's most desperate measure yet to block part-time and sessional faculty from unionizing.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the College Council (a government created and appointed body) asked the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) to seal the ballot boxes and not to open them or count the vote! Who are they kidding?!
3,544 part-time and sessional college faculty turned out to vote -- after years of struggle just to have this opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to unionize. We demand our votes be counted! We demand an end to state organized interference to recognition of our rights and our ability to exercise them!
What kind of democracy is it where outcomes are recognized and enforced only when those with power and in power find them acceptable? What kind of democracy is it where those with power and in power violate our rights -- anyone's rights -- with impunity?
Last spring more than enough union cards were signed to warrant a vote for certification for both the part-time faculty and support workers in the 24 Ontario colleges. The Ontario government intervened telling the Labour Relations Board it would be usurping the authority of the Legislature because the government had not yet amended the Community Colleges Bargaining Act (CCBA) to allow part-time and sessional employees to unionize.
That "democratic authority" was invoked to enforce an illegal law -- CCBA had already been ruled illegal and a violation of Canada's commitments to the International Labour Organization of the United Nations (ILO). This was of no matter to those in power.
In its brief to the Provincial Legislature on Bill 90 this past September the Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L) stated that the "Ontario Labour Relations Board had its opportunity to uphold the rule of law with respect to OPSEU's application for a certification vote -- and it refused to do so. This Committee of the Legislature has its opportunity now to put a stop to government and state interference with impunity, against part-time and sessional college employees exercising their rights."
The Workers' Centre brief said that because of government interference to prevent "the true wishes" of part-time and sessional college employees to join a union the Legislative Committee could recommend automatic certification -- in accordance with the Ontario Labour Relations Act -- and adequate social investment to redress the discrimination against part-time and sessional employees in terms of wages and working conditions. (TML Daily, September 8, 2008 - No. 114)
The interference is well documented -- from the outright ban in the original CCBA, to the Ontario Government's intervention before the ILO, its quashing of OPSEU's application for a certification vote last spring, etc.
With each success of the part-time and sessional college workers in clearing the obstacles to affirming their rights, the government and state have put new ones in their path. The hooliganism continued throughout the certification vote, through to the Council's appeal to the OLRB to seal the ballot boxes and disregard the vote. Why it sealed the ballot boxes is not even known.
The anti-union email campaign by Mr. Sinclair on behalf of the College's Council is but one other example, which violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Ontario Labour Relations Act and is itself grounds warranting that the Labour Board grant automatic certification.
The OLRB itself is fully implicated. Kevin Whitaker, Chair of the OLRB, served as advisor to the McGuinty Liberal government in drafting Bill 90, advising among other things how to accomplish what the government could not accomplish with its arguments before the ILO.
The interference in this certification vote was felt from Collingwood where the vote access was cancelled at the College Council's request, to Hearst Ontario where voting took place 100 kilometres away, to Markham where management stationed security guards at the poll door and finally this week in Toronto where scrutineers were chased out of the hallways, union bulletin boards defaced, voting rooms hidden in maze-like locations and even the OLRB representative at one location arrived one and half hours late, denying many an opportunity to vote.
This is not acceptable in a modern society. Nor is voting TTC workers back to work. Nor is using the excuse of "failed negotiations" in the York University strike to settle the strike. Nor is using the excuse of "failed negotiations" to deny the Ottawa transit workers their rights. Nor are the shenanigans going on with the corrections officers this past week who faced e-mail threats of being declared an essential service even while negotiations are taking place.
The question of "Who decides?" reveals a lot. Ancient Greece is said to be the birthplace of democracy -- for the slaveholders of the day. Our present parliamentary democracy is showing similar limitations in that it does not want to accept and enforce decisions of the people which don't favour those in power. Rule of law cannot mean one thing for those who enforce it and another for those on the receiving end of the enforcement.
Recognize our rights and the rights of all Mr. McGuinty!
* Christine Nugent is a part-time college worker. She has been an organizer for the part-time college workers in Ontario first with their association OPSECAAT followed by the union organizing campaign of OPSEU. She is the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada candidate in Barrie.
Ontario
Autoworkers Are Not a Labour Cost,
They Are the
Producers of the Value They Claim
Autoworkers and
their claims for wages, benefits
and pensions on the wealth they produce and their demand for security
of livelihoods are not to blame for the economic crisis that has
affected all the global auto monopolies not just the U.S.-based ones.
Workers and their organizations must challenge capital-centred theory or they will not make headway in defending their rights and building an alternative. The assumption that workers are a "labour cost" in the production process is a prejudice fiercely held by owners of capital to attack workers, demand concessions and rationalize anti-social layoffs. The anti-labour theory appears in all official discourse, education and mass media.
To uphold their dignity and affirm the truth, workers and their organizations must denounce the conception of "labour cost" as deeply offensive, backward and capital-centred. Workers are not a labour cost; they are the producers of the value they claim! Don't let anyone tell you differently no matter what their position or status!
Workers' claims for wages, benefits and pensions come from the value they add to the social product being produced at every level of the production process. Workers add value to the raw material they transform from iron ore to steel, from steel to auto parts and from auto parts to assembled vehicles. The added-value workers produce can be calculated at every level of production according to the average work-time expended. For example in 2007, Canadian autoworkers at GM, Ford and Chrysler expended on average 20.36 hours of work-time to assemble a vehicle.[1] The 20.36 hours of work-time equals the added-value contributed to each new vehicle by autoworkers in the assembly plants. This is the source of value to pay workers' wages, benefits and pensions, to pay profit of enterprise to owners of GM, Ford and Chrysler capital, to pay interest and rent, and taxes. The 20.36 hours of work-time (added-value) when realized (sold) as part of a finished vehicle is the source of money to pay workers, owners of capital and government.
The claims of autoworkers can only be characterized as "labour costs" by those with an ulterior motive. This motive is to steal the claims of workers on the added-value they produce, transfer the amount to themselves and never face up to the reality that the capitalist system is transient, suffering from basic contradictions and crises that can only be resolved by moving forward to the next stage of human progress. Those with the ulterior motive to reduce the claims of workers, increase their own claims and block the transition to the new are the owners of capital and their representatives in government.
In truth, none of the claims of workers or those of the owners of capital or government can be considered a cost of production. A cost of production is a cost of a machine or material that has been made and purchased beforehand and is used up wholly or in part at a different level (and ownership) of the production process from where it was produced. At an auto assembly plant a cost of production consists of the auto parts that are purchased from Magna International for example, which are then assembled together to make a vehicle. The value of the auto parts is wholly transferred to the finished vehicle and together with the 20.36 hours of work-time (added-value) of the assemblers forms part of the vehicle's total value. Other costs of production that are transferred into the value of the vehicle come from such things as the electricity consumed at the plant and from the machines used in the assembly process, which transfer their value little by little until they wear out. A cost of production does not give rise to any more value in the production process than the value put there by previous workers through their work-time. A cost of production transfers its existing accumulated-value either gradually or all at once.
Wages, profit or taxes cannot be extracted from costs of production, as an equivalent of those costs is transferred to the social product and no more. The value of the vehicle keeps increasing as it passes through each level of the production process. The value of the finished vehicle is the sum of added-value from living workers at the assembly plants and the transferred-value from costs of production. The total value cannot be adjusted downward through concessions by transferring claims on added-value from workers to owners of capital. The value remains the same.
Wages, profit and taxes come from the value added by the work-time of workers at a particular level (and ownership) of the production process precisely because added-value is not a cost of production or labour cost. If the work-time of workers were a cost of production, it would only transfer to the social product an equivalent value to what it then claims as wages, benefits and pensions. There would be no value to pay profit of enterprise, interest, rent or taxes.
Do not believe
the nonsense of owners of GM, Ford
and Chrysler capital that concessions on pensions or other claims will
"impact the production cost competitiveness" of GM, Ford and Chrysler
vehicles. Concessions transfer added-value from workers to owners of
capital but do not change the value
of social product.
The owners of Toyota capital can claim more added-value and receive a better rate of return on invested capital in the U.S. and Canada because they have far fewer retired autoworkers claiming pensions in the United States and Canada at this time. The higher claim by owners of Toyota capital and lower overall claim by Toyota autoworkers on the added-value they produce do not change the value of Toyota vehicles, which is based on the average work-time necessary to produce them and according to the Harbour Report is slightly more than at the Canadian operations of GM, Ford and Chrysler.
Living work-time and the added-value it produces by transforming raw material is the source of workers' wages, benefits and pensions, and profit of enterprise, interest, rent and taxes.
Workers are not a labour cost; they are the producers of the value they claim! Don't let anyone tell you differently no matter what their position or status!
Concessions are not solutions!
Workers transforming the natural bounty of Mother Earth produce all the social wealth that society needs to renew the economy, guarantee the rights of all and humanize the social and natural environments.
The only thing stopping workers from ushering in the new is lack of organization and confidence in their independent capabilities as a class of and for itself.
Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Investments in Social Programs!
Note
1. Source: Harbour Report and CAW Study: "Productivity in the North American Auto Assembly Industry, 1998-2007." Note: the 20.36 hours per vehicle reflects both work-time of autoworkers and salaried employees)
Quebec
"Continuity Agreements" and Secret Deals between Alcan, Rio Tinto Alcan and the Charest Government
 "What has [Charest] done to our Quebec?" |
Writing in TML Daily, January 28, 2009, Gabriel Girard-Bernier pointed out:
"In mid-December, aluminum monopoly Rio Tinto Alcan announced that in the first few weeks of 2009 it would proceed with an anti-worker restructuring, thereby depriving 14,000 workers in various countries of their means to a livelihood. In Quebec on January 20, Rio Tinto Alcan clarified its threat by announcing the shut down of the Beauharnois smelter and the layoff of 300 workers in other plants. The monopoly is also feeding the rumour of the shut down of the Vaudreuil plant in Arvida as well as the Shawinigan smelter."
The announcement of the Beauharnois closure
followed a 2006 "continuity agreement" signed
between Alcan (prior to its sale to Rio Tinto) and the Charest
government which provided for "investments
of $2 billion in Saguenay/Lac-St-Jean in exchange for substantial
government aid in the form of a $400 million loan, an extension of the
Péribonka lease until 2058 and a new block of 225
megawatts of electrical power at preferential rates."
Under such favourable conditions, a company's
shareholders, i.e., its private owners, would of course be "open" to
selling the company for a higher price. Such a scenario took place with
Alcan in 2007. In 2006, Alcan's own "Sustainability Report" put its
sales and operating revenues at $20.3 billion
(based on 2005 data, prior to establishing the "continuity
agreements"). Shortly thereafter, the Charest government took Alcan's
present and future accumulated value out of Quebec's socialized economy
by permitting its sale within the framework of these agreements. In the
spring of 2007, U.S. aluminum monopoly
Alcoa attempted a hostile takeover of Alcan for $33 billion (considered
a "low-ball" offer), followed by its eventual acquisition in July by
Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, who purchased it for $38.1 billion.
However, there is more going on behind the scenes. A secret deal
between Rio Tinto
Alcan and the Quebec government as part of the "continuity agreement"
has also recently came to light: "The
secret
arrangement allows the aluminum monopoly to close, without penalty, the
Vaudreuil smelter as of 2009, the Beauharnois smelter in 2011, the
Shawinigan smelter in 2013 and the Arvida
smelter in 2014. It also enables it to close all its Quebec
installations without delay and without prior notice if the price of
aluminum falls below a certain threshold for 30 consecutive days.
Certain sources are reporting that price to be U.S.$1,800 per ton of
aluminum, while the present negotiating price
for aluminum on global markets is $1,400 per ton," Girard-Bernier
writes.
While the public agreement contained a continuity protocol for
all agreements regarding investments
and the preservation of certain plants in the case of Alcan's sale,
this is presumably negated by the secret deal for penalty-free
plant closures. Not only does the secret deal ensure
monopoly right trumps public right through an arrangement where Rio
Tinto Alcan is unfettered by any social responsibility, it is not hard
to image that following a closure,
insult will be added to injury and Rio Tinto Alcan will retain its
hydro-electric power to sell at a profit.
It is a well known fact that such agreements
are conceived of, planned and brought into being well in advance of any
public announcement, as are the accompanying secret deals for the
benefit of private shareholders. Such infamous continuity agreements
and secret clauses are
in part the result of Alcan's millionaire and billionaire
shareholders' demand that the Quebec Liberal Party government accord
them privileges that render the company's financial worth greater
than the market value of the arrangements, benefits and privileges
conceded by the government.
The Quebec Liberal Party, Premier Jean Charest,
Minister of Economic Development (sic) Raymond
Bachand and company may claim the "continuity agreement" with Rio Tinto
Alcan ties the company to making an investment of $2 billion in
Quebec's aluminum industry. However, the
government gave them concessions of more than $3 billion, knowing full
well it had handed the monopoly the right to shut down four plants and
deprive workers, their families and their communities of the means to a
livelihood. No government working or claiming to defend the
national interests or the interests
of Quebeckers would accept or agree to such plant closures, which
represent the destruction of one of Quebec's social economy's key
sectors, the destruction of the means of production produced by the
working class and the destruction of the livelihood of the workers of
those plants. At the very least, a government
defending Quebec's national interests as well as the interests of
Quebeckers would prevent the closure of such plants by turning them
into public property under government control and investing in their
modernization. Instead, the premier and the Minister of Economic
Development became partners in the destructive
economic activities of the private monopolies in Quebec.
This is business as usual for governments of any political stripe in the service of the rich: to be a business partner of the monopolies facilitating the destruction of Quebec's industrial potential and the plunder of its human and natural resources. In financial terms, based on the calculations of economists and university professors of economics, government concessions to Alcan represent over $3 billion. (See below: "Aluminum: Yearly Subsidies of $336,000$ Per Job for 20 Years")
Is this what Charest has in mind when he keeps repeating that he and his party are going to "create wealth"? What social wealth is being created by enriching a handful of monopoly capitalists by funnelling billions of dollars to them through secret underhanded schemes?
As for Bachand, he claims this wrecking activity was his best career move yet and that "Worldwide, governments are doing their utmost to attract strategic investments, the creators of jobs and wealth."
* Serge Patenaude is the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada candidate for Longueuil–Pierre-Boucher.
Aluminum: Yearly Subsidies of
$336,000 Per Job
Over 30 Years
Last December 14 (2006), the Quebec government and Alcan unveiled an agreement for building a new aluminum smelter in the Saguenay--Lac-Saint Jean region, with an annual production capacity of 450,000 tonnes using the new AP50 technology intended to significantly cut electricity use per tonne of aluminum produced. Fulfilling this project should result in Alcan investing $2 billion over the next ten years and creating 740 highly specialized jobs plus 1,200 to 1,500 construction-related jobs.
The Quebec government's contribution to the partnership is particularly difficult to measure given its complexity. It is comprised of a number of financial, tax and energy obligations that are to take effect at various times over the next 50 years. Our objective is to measure the cost, for Quebec society, of the government's contribution to the project.
The main aspects of government support are:
(i) a $400-million interest-free loan over 30
years;
(ii) tax benefits worth $112 million;
(iii) a new block of 225 MW of electricity
supplied by Hydro-Québec at the high-power L rate from 2010 to 2045;
(iv) extension of the sales contract for 342 MW
delivered by Hydro-Québec at the high-power L rate from 2034 to 2045;
(v) an extension of Alcan's rights over the waters
of the Péribonka River from 2034 to 2058 for continuous power
production of 900 MW. The Quebec government is to receive royalties on
the use of the AP50 technology by smelters elsewhere in the world.
In order to evaluate the economic cost of such a multi-faceted agreement, with implications stretching over 50 years, an evaluation framework and certain hypotheses had to be drawn.
The yearly cost over a 30 year period was calculated beginning in 2008. The 30 year period corresponds to the $400-million interest-free loan period. In our analysis, the cost of electricity attributed either by contract or through concession of the rights over the waters of the Péribonka River is based on the economic opportunity lost by Quebec society. It represents the best alternative lost, which is the export price on open electricity markets with our American neighbours. Based on the National Energy Board, that price was 8.9 cents/kWh during the first eleven months of 2006. If we had considered the development costs of new hydro-electric development in Quebec such as the La Romaine project (1,500 MW) and Petit Mécatina (1,500 MW), the estimated cost would have exceeded 10.0 cents/kWh. The price of high-power electricity sold at the L rate is set at 4.3 cents/kWh. The interest rate used for the calculations is 7.5 percent which corresponds with the rate on new 30 year bonds sold by Hydro-Québec. Not being soothsayers, we have used the most recent estimates available on future prices and costs which we consider to be generally conservative.
The table presents our evaluation of the yearly costs to Quebec society of the various elements of the agreement between Alcan and the Quebec government. The greatest contribution comes from extending Alcan's rights over the waters of the Péribonka River from 2034 to 2058, followed by the sale of 225 MW at the L rate from 2010 to 2045.
In total, we estimate the Quebec government's contribution over 30 years to be $249.2 million. The 740 jobs announced for the new aluminum smelter represent a yearly subsidy of $336,700 per job over the course of the same period. In current value, if a sole global subsidy was given at the start of the project, it would amount to $3.19 billion, while the expected investment from Alcan is $2 billion.
The gap between the government subsidy and the expected investment by Alan leads us to question the advantages of this partnership with respect to the wealth of Quebec society.
Yearly Costs Over 30 Years in $ Millions
i) $400-million interest-free loan over 30 years:
30.0
ii) Tax benefits worth $112 million: 8.8
iii) Sale of 225 MW at L rate from 2010 to 2045:
81.6
iv) Extension of sales contract for 342 MW at L
rate from 2024 to 2045: 37.7
v) Extension of Alcan's rights over the waters of
the Péribonka River from 2034 to 2058 for production of 900 MW: 93.1
vi) Royalties collected by Quebec government on
new aluminum production technology: -2.0
Total: 249.2
Information on calculations available at www.green.ecn.ulaval.ca . Translated from French original by TML Daily.
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