Blog Posts

A few thoughts on the federal NDP leadership race

10/2/2017

Originally published by newsocialist.org.

This is not an attempt at a full assessment of the campaign or its outcome, only some initial thoughts mainly about Niki Ashton’s solid but disappointing result and what next for radicals who aren’t advocates of a parliamentary road to change but who voted for her.

Ashton’s 17 percent is the best score for a left candidate since Svend Robinson in 1995, though I think her policies and approach were further to the left than Robinson’s, so a better comparison might be Steve Langdon’s 14.6 percent first-ballot score in 1989.
Society in the Canadian state hasn’t been affected by the long post-2007 economic slump nearly as badly as some other places, including the US and UK. Although there are many young people who’re stuck in awful jobs, loaded with debt, and fearful about the future, the situation of young working-class people isn’t as dire here as in the US and UK.
The federal Liberals under Trudeau haven’t been pushing aggressive austerity, presiding over a decline in real wages, and playing with racism to win votes, as the Tories have been doing in the UK. The Liberals’ version of neoliberalism is different from Harper’s, and many NDP supporters haven’t recognized that the NDP’s best response to the Liberals would be a smart left turn.
Many NDP supporters were disappointed by Mulcair’s performance in the 2015 election, but none of the candidates to replace him were widely seen by NDPers as candidates who would continue to steer the NDP to the right and even deeper into the conventional way that official politics is now done (even though Jagmeet Singh and Charlie Angus were obviously such candidates), which is the course that Ashton challenged. Yes, Ashton faced sexism, but there’s a lot more to why she got 17 per cent of the votes cast than that. Now the NDP is headed by a leader who, as Dru Oja Jay put it, “represents a huge opportunity to hit the reset button on the unspoken whiteness of the NDP” but won’t “fire up the base and duke it out with the people who stand in the way of climate justice and economic equality.”
Neither Singh nor Angus nor Caron were seen by NDP members in anything like the way many people in the US saw Hilary Clinton was when she was running for the Democratic Party nomination (as a candidate of continuity with eight years of job losses, falling living standards and racist killings under a president who embraced Wall St.). Nor were they seen like the contenders for Labour leader who were beaten by Corbyn (as more or less candidates of continuity with what the party had become—a party that advanced neoliberalism and went to war in Iraq when in government and promised milder austerity when in opposition). The dynamics around Ashton’s run were qualitatively less favourable than those around Sanders and Corbyn.
The level of social protest is lower here than it was in the US prior to Trump’s election, and—except in Quebec—there hasn’t been anti-austerity mobilization of the kind seen in the UK in 2010-11. Without such experiences of collective action, and in the conditions noted under point 2, there hasn’t been a widespread left-wing politicization. This meant the potential base for a left challenge to the NDP establishment wasn’t that large.
Ashton made anti-neoliberal and climate justice-oriented parliamentary reformism that opposes various forms of oppression, including the oppression of Palestine, more visible. That was welcome, since such ideas are outside the spectrum of what’s considered acceptable in official politics in Canada today. Her campaign probably gave some supporters a sense of confidence that there is a left to the left of the NDP establishment. But although I’d love to be wrong, I don’t think her campaign will probably have much of a lasting impact. This is both because she didn’t try to build an organized left current before she ran or during her run and because it doesn’t look like any significant organization is positioned to grow as a result of her campaign (I haven’t seen signs that Ashton supporters flocked to Courage or will do so now, though some will).
With the race over, people who see social struggle—not electoral politics—as key to making change but who joined the NDP to vote for Ashton shouldn’t get involved in the party. Instead, they should devote their efforts to workplace, community and campus organizing and to trying to strengthen the non-sectarian radical left. Fellow Winnipegger Matthew Brett put it well: “we need to build a strong, vibrant, independent left that engages in grassroots struggle and strives to build mass movements.”

When a "universal" approach narrows the fight

8/14/2017

Originally published by socialistworker. org, August 14, 2017

IT'S GREAT that more people on the U.S. left are embracing a politics of social class. But too many supporters of class politics still argue as if working-class struggle is separate from struggles against sexism, racism and other forms of oppression, or treat struggles against oppression as not all that important.
We can see this in the way some on the left criticize "identity politics." In the wake of Donald Trump's win, Bernie Sanders' call to "go beyond identity politics" got lots of attention. Writing in Jacobin that "Identity politics can only get us so far," Roger Lancaster argues for "an inclusive and universalist socialist program" because of the limits of demands by communities of "marginalized people" "for autonomy or for rights and recognitions."
Similar arguments crop up in other countries too; it's not just a U.S. thing. But it's time for people on the left to stop arguing about "identity politics" in this way.
The first problem is that the meaning of "identity politics" is far from clear.
As Richard Seymour helpfully notes, the right uses the term to mean "any concession whatsoever to the idea that anyone other than white bourgeois men are 'created equal.'" Used this way, it's "part of a whole vocabulary including 'thought police,' 'politically correct,' and 'liberal elites,' whose main intention is to undermine the legitimacy of liberal and left politics," as Linda Burnham argues.
Seymour adds that "a wing of the liberal center" uses "identity politics" "to criticize what they think of as the overly clamorous and over-hasty demands of women, gays, African-Americans, migrants and others for justice."
These meanings propagated in the mainstream media are by far the most influential ways the term is understood. No wonder, then, that some people who experience racism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of oppression identify "identity politics" with their struggles against the specific ways in which they're harmed.
This is reason enough for people who mean something different than these understandings of "identity politics" to find another way of talking about it. "Identity politics" isn't like "working class" or "socialism"--terms with highly contested meanings that we have to stick with because today we don't have better words to use to communicate these ideas.
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BUT THE problem goes a lot deeper than terminology. Sanders called for Democratic candidates--"Black and white and Latino and gay and male"--with the "guts to stand up to the oligarchy," who will "stand with...working people," who understand how many people's income and life expectancy are declining, and who get that many people can't afford health care and college.
Lancaster is more radical: he praises the "original, radical outlooks" of the Black, women's and gay and lesbian movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the content of the "inclusive and universalist socialist program" he contrasts with "identity politics" isn't clear. He observes that what "socialist and working-class movements have usually demanded" are such things as "universal health care, free education, public housing, democratic control of the means of production."
What both these lines of argument have in common is the idea that the left should champion a universalist politics instead of "identity politics"--and that universalist politics don't include demands directed specifically against racism, sexism, heterosexism, settler-colonialism and other kinds of oppression.
Action against gender violence, free contraception, free abortion on demand, free public child care, a federal and state jobs program for economically marginalized Black people, permanent resident status for all immigrants, full legal equality for queer and trans people, self-determination for indigenous nations – these and other reforms to weaken oppression are downplayed or sometimes even excluded as "particular" "identity" demands.
This approach "not only presumes that class struggle is some sort of race- and gender-neutral terrain but takes for granted that movements focused on race, gender or sexuality necessarily undermine class unity and, by definition, cannot be emancipatory for the whole," as Robin D.G. Kelley argued 20 years ago.
The history of struggles against oppression disproves those notions. The abolition of slavery in the U.S. inspired organizers for the rights of wage workers and women. "As slaves acted to change things for themselves, horizons broadened for almost everyone," notes David Roediger.
The liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s loosened the grip of ruling-class ideology on U.S. society and influenced some of the broader struggles of workers and students of the time. The May 1 "Day Without Immigrants" protests of Latinx people in 2006 showed that political strike action is possible in the U.S.
Today, Black Lives Matter is encouraging some people who don't experience racism to organize and fight for change. As we saw at Standing Rock, Indigenous land defenders are mounting some of the most effective resistance to capitalist energy industry projects that would make climate change even worse and contaminate water sources.
This history demonstrates that the freedom struggles of the oppressed can advance unity among workers by chipping away at material inequalities and reactionary ideas that divide the class. They've shown other people the power of militant collective action.
They've also inspired some who receive relative advantages because others are oppressed--men, white people, straights--to question our role and join in the struggle, leading us to recognize that perpetuating oppression is wrong and strengthens our enemies, and that these movements are ultimately about our freedom, too, as many of the demands in the platform of the Movement for Black Lives make clear.
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YES, SOCIALISTS need to fight for demands like free education, dramatic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions along with a just transition for workers negatively affected, and single-payer health care in the U.S.
But for socialist politics to be truly universal, they have to do more than advance such demands and link them to a vision of transforming society. We must also propose measures that specifically target different forms of oppression. That's the best way to put the old workers' movement slogan "An injury to one is an injury to all" into practice today.
To shy away from such measures because they're unpopular among some of the people we want to organize is to avoid the hard work involved in forging unity in societies in which the working class is deeply divided and oppression is still very real in spite of gains in legal rights and cultural norms.
When carpenters union officials report workers without status to ICE; when many union leaders were on the wrong side at Standing Rock; when many white people act as if people of color are a threat to them; and when cis women and trans people are routinely denied control over their bodies; "race-blind" and "gender-blind" politics won't help us get where we need to go.
Unity built on the foundation of such politics will be fragile and shallow. It will always remain vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics used by employers and politicians.
None of this means that a politics whose aspirations for oppressed people don't go much beyond cultural recognition and fair representation in the power structure of neoliberal capitalism aren't a problem. They are, as the records of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reveal so clearly.
Some supporters of these politics opportunistically use insinuations about Sanders and "Bernie Bros" being supposedly hostile to women and Black people to smear anyone who criticizes the Democratic Party establishment from the left. But attacks on "identity politics" in the name of a "universalism" that underestimates the importance of oppression or that doesn't explicitly take on oppression in every form aren't the way to persuade people swayed by that kind of liberalism to embrace socialist politics.

The NDP and the priorities of radicals

7/12/2017

Dru Oja Jay and Nav Kaur are absolutely right about what left electoral campaigns can sometimes accomplish in terms of education and mobilization. And their caution that there’s an enormous difference between “winning victories in debates” and “facing down international capital” is vital. But should we be working “to turn the NDP into a party that is willing and able to confront capital and win”? I think not.
It does matter who leads the NDP. A win by Niki Ashton would be a blow to the party establishment because, as they note, she’s been the most vocal left critic of the NDP status quo. The emergence of a dynamic new left inside the NDP would be welcome (and should affect the tactics of radicals). But I don’t see either as likely anytime soon, sadly. Political circumstances in Canada today are different in important ways from those that made Corbyn’s election as Labour leader and the Sanders campaign possible.
If we take “getting into a confrontation with capital with a real possibility of winning at least a partial victory — something that can begin to turn the tide” as a strategic goal, then our top priority should be organizing in workplaces and communities and on campuses to build power through collective action.
The reason is simple: it takes a lot of power to win even partial victories. That’s one lesson we should take from the 2012 student movement in Quebec (which made Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, recently elected as a Quebec Solidaire MNA, so popular). That kind of power can only come from disruptive mass mobilization that’s driven by grassroots organizing and becomes infectious, drawing in many people who’ve never before been involved in anything like it.
The $15 and Fairness campaign in Ontario deserves credit for pushing a weak provincial government to boost the minimum wage and improve workers’ rights. But let’s not kid ourselves: to win far-reaching changes will take mightier organizing and mobilizing. Naomi Klein is right: “only mass social movements can save us.”
That’s true whether it’s the NDP or another party that forms the government. I think Dru and Nav’s article really underestimates the obstacles to changing the NDP. The party is highly undemocratic and the people who control it would do all they could to crush a left force that threatened their grip, as they did with the Waffle in 1972.
Even if radicals somehow took over the NDP and the federal NDP formed government, it would be in office, not in power. A left-led NDP government would buckle under the pressure of its enemies — capitalists who’d refuse to invest, top state managers, the pressure of bond and currency markets — as SYRIZA did in Greece in 2015 unless it was driven forward by a powerful social movement that it couldn’t control.
Unfortunately, the forces that understand what kind of struggle will be needed and are working with others to build power are very weak in Canada. How we relate to the NDP (and Quebec Solidaire too) should be shaped by the goals of strengthening these political forces and social movement organizing. We should work towards a political organization of a new type, one that brings together like-minded people (whether they’re members of the NDP or not) to build movements and argue for anti-capitalist politics.
David Camfield is the author of the forthcoming We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society and a member of Solidarity Winnipeg (this article is written in personal capacity).

Solid Strike Wins Gains at the University of Manitoba

12/7/2016

The University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) went on strike on November 1 and returned to work with a new contract on November 22. UMFA is the union for around 1200 workers: people classified as professors, most librarians, and instructors (teaching staff whose contracts are open-ended or longer than a year; teachers and librarians hired on short-term contracts are members of CUPE 3909).

What made this strike different from most recent strikes in Canada is that it was mainly an attempt to win new collective agreement rights rather than fend off employer demands for concessions or raise wages. It was a response to changes happening at U of M, whose top managers are at the forefront of the general trend of reorganizing universities along corporate lines. For this reason the strike has implications not just for U of M but across the post-secondary education sector.

It was also significant for Manitoba labour. For some time strikes in the province have been even less frequent than they’ve been elsewhere in Canada. This was the first strike by more than a small group of workers since a Tory provincial government was elected in April 2016.

New budget model

At U of M the budgets of the units (faculties and schools) made up of the academic departments and programs responsible for teaching and research have been cut by over 10% in recent years. As a result, class sizes have grown and students have fewer courses to choose from, which can lead to students having to stay in university longer to complete their degree requirements. There have been job cuts for members of CUPE 3909 and for academic support staff (members of AESES, a small unaffiliated Winnipeg union). UMFA members who retire or leave U of M are often not replaced. Workloads are increasing, especially for instructors and librarians.

A new budget model that’s being developed will pit units against each other in competition for funding (a representative of Huron Consulting, the firm hired to help design the system, dubbed units “entrepreneurs”). New quantitative ways of measuring performance are central to this model. These metrics will be used to rank units. A lot of UMFA members have rightly been worried about management using metrics in annual performance evaluations as well as in decisions about granting tenure (permanent status) and promotion.

UMFA response

In response to this situation, UMFA members adopted a package of bargaining proposals that included bold proactive demands to limit the use of performance indicators and give members more influence on decisions about workloads (which are determined at the unit level) and on the guidelines for tenure and promotion. UMFA also demanded that instructors and librarians get the same level of job security as other UMFA members.

university-of-manitoba-faculty-strikeAlthough pay increases were part of the package too, by the time the strike started salaries weren’t on the table. This was because the provincial government made it clear that it expected U of M — like other publicly-funded institutions — to follow a new wage freeze policy (UMFA has filed an unfair labour practice charge to the Manitoba Labour Board accusing the employer of bad faith bargaining because of how it withdrew its previously-tabled financial offer).

Bargaining in 2013

In October 2013 a last-minute deal averted an UMFA strike. Unresolved issues were sent to arbitration. The outcome of that process revealed to members that they couldn’t expect an arbitrator to grant them stronger rights. The employer’s lawyer said that if UMFA members had wanted those they should have gone on strike — a point UMFA leaders made sure to repeat to members.

The 2013 bargaining round also revealed to some activists how poorly prepared the union was for a strike and highlighted some internal problems. By the time the strike began, UMFA was much better prepared than it had been in 2013, thanks to the hard work of some activists and a new staffer.

Stronger union, wider support

Three weeks on the picket lines made several things clear. One is just how upset most members are about what’s happening at U of M and how willing they are to be part of a union fight for demands that address their concerns. That’s why participation in the strike was stronger than some expected. A significant minority of people scabbed (perhaps 30% of the members not on leave) but this was probably fewer than the employer was counting on.

Another lesson, as UMFA President Mark Hudson put it, is that the strike gave members “a sharpened understanding of our collective capacities” to fight for a better university.

There was more support for the strike — and less hostility to it — from students and people in Winnipeg more generally than anyone predicted. With salaries out of the picture, few people complained about highly-paid professors going on strike. UMFA’s communications team skillfully made the case that what the union was fighting for was in the interests of students as well as UMFA members and contrasted the union’s priorities with those of the U of M administration.

There’s been almost no left-wing student activism at U of M for many years. Fortunately, efforts by the revived U of M Student Action Network and other students boosted strikers’ morale and even pushed the council of the U of M Students’ Union (UMSU) to pass a motion in support of UMFA (no doubt to the horror of some on UMSU’s executive).

What it takes

The strike also demonstrated just how determined upper management is to oppose union demands that could limit its power to reorganize U of M. Three weeks on the picket lines won contract language that gives UMFA members more influence over how teaching loads are determined and on policies for tenure and promotion.

The new agreement also contains protection against relying on performance metrics rather than a broader assessment of quality and quantity when evaluating members’ research work. A jointly-appointed committee will evaluate the use of research metrics and produce a report by the end of 2017; if its report recommends stronger protection, this will be automatically added to the collective agreement. This falls far short of UMFA’s ambitious initial demand that performance indicators “not make up any part of any system of governance, review, or resource allocation” (UMFA Bargaining Newsletter #6, October 2016). A letter that expires at the end of 2018 promises that no librarians or instructors will be laid off.

It took a solid strike to win these modest gains. To win more, UMFA and its supporters would have had to apply greater pressure on U of M than they were able to this time. It’s hard to judge how likely it is that enough members would have stayed on strike long enough to win more. Greater disruption of “business as usual” on campus and/or more damage to U of M’s public image would also have put more pressure on management.

Solidarity makes a difference

It’s worth pointing out that the disruptive impact of the strike on U of M was reduced by scabbing. It was also affected by the fact that other unionized workers on campus were not able to do much to put pressure on the employer. The support shown by members of CUPE 3909, AESES and Unifor 3007 (non-academic support staff) for the strike was much appreciated by UMFA members. But these unions don’t have any language in their contracts that protects their right not to cross another union’s picket lines, and solidarity-minded militants in them were in no position to organize job action to support UMFA in defiance of management and the law. There was no trace of anything like the stay-away from teaching by many contract faculty members of CUPE 3903 that happened during the eight-week York University Faculty Association strike in 1997 or the refusal by fellow CUPE members to cross the picket lines of Brock University ESL instructors in 2012.

Now that the strike is over there’s an opportunity that hasn’t existed since UMFA’s victorious 1995 strike to renew the union. Many members were inspired by the experience of solidarity. Finding ways for people who’ve just tasted union power to get involved will strengthen UMFA for the fights ahead. So will getting rid of rules and habits that are obstacles to democratic, member-driven unionism. Yet another cut to units’ budgets is threatened for 2017, and the new one-year contract will be up at end of next March.

Originally published by rankandfile.ca

Getting Ready for the Tory Storm in Manitoba

10/5/2016

No one has a crystal ball that allows them to foresee precisely what's going to happen as the new Tory government of Manitoba really gets down to business in the months ahead. But there are some things we can be pretty sure about.

Pushing Markets Further
The Tories will claim that it's vital to curb provincial government spending to reduce Manitoba's deficit and move towards balancing the budget. In reality, there's no deficit crisis. Not only was the share of provincial revenue spent on servicing the debt in the 2015-16 fiscal year low, it was lower than it had been three years prior. The Tory "cure" -- austerity -- for the non-existent crisis might not even lower the deficit (see this article).
But a balanced budget isn't the real objective (if the Tories had inherited one, they'd simply be talking about "reinventing government" or some other justification for their program). Although some Tory MLAs may be so naive as to believe that lowering the deficit is the government's true goal, and that doing this will somehow lead companies in Manitoba to hire more people and pay them more, they're wrong on both counts.

One of the things that this government's strategic thinkers really want to do is weaken public services. Deficit reduction is a means to that end. The Tories embrace this goal because they are ardently committed to neoliberal ideology. This vision aims to make people more dependent on markets (in other words, private firms) to meet their needs. It favours the delivery of health care, social services and education by for-profit firms. So we should expect not just spending cuts but also moves to create new opportunities for companies to make money, through privatization, contracting-out, deregulation (coming soon: Uber?), public-private partnerships, social impact bonds, and schemes that claim to offer people more "choice."
It's worth emphasizing that the Tory goal isn't "getting rid of government," as some critics will say. One of the key goals of neoliberalism "is to redefine the shape and functions of the state, not to destroy it," as the astute analyst Philip Mirowski has pointed out. The Tories want to use government powers to push markets deeper into society. This includes reorganizing what's left of the public sector so it operates more like the private sector. They're also keen on pumping up one part of the state: the already-inflated violent system of policing and prisons.
One of the other things the Tories are eager to do is weaken unions and workers' rights, since these are barriers to higher corporate profits (just like environmental and other regulations on what companies can do, which they also want to take down). The fact that the public sector is highly unionized is another reason why the Tories so like the idea of restructuring it in neoliberal ways. Changing the Labour Relations Act to make it harder for workers to unionize may be just the start of an assault on unions. Watch out for changes to the Employment Standards Act too. The Tories can't even pretend that these moves have anything to do with lowering the deficit -- higher profits is what they're all about.

Potential for Protest -- and More
The weakness of grassroots union activism and community organizing to demand change in Manitoba mean that few people have experience acting collectively to defend their interests (unlike in Quebec, for example http://isreview.org/issue/101/quebecs-wave-resistance ). The discrediting of the NDP after its decisive election loss means that many people think there's no alternative to what the Tories propose.
For these reasons it may well be difficult to mobilize much protest until the Tories introduce big cuts or really aggressive legislation. But as the response to the Newfoundland Liberal government's attacks this year makes clear , such attacks can quickly spark opposition on a scale that most foes of austerity would have thought impossible.
Yet even if the Tories proceed cautiously their attacks will harm many people. This will create possibilities for protest and, going beyond that, real resistance that tries to stop attacks. Even small-scale short-lived mobilizations can contain seeds that may flower into ongoing organizing efforts in workplaces, on campuses, in neighbourhoods or among specific communities of people. The Tories are less popular among indigenous people than in the non-indigenous population, so indigenous mobilization may develop more quickly.

With this in mind, people who recognize what the Tories have in mind for Manitoba should set ourselves the goal of building active opposition to their attacks. Just waiting for the next election will mean not even trying to repel Tory attacks. Just waiting will also demoralize people hurt by the Tories, making them less likely to bother to vote in the next election.
Starting from where we're at, we should aim to build protests that escalate to higher levels of resistance, including strike action. What's needed is a mass social movement that can force the government from office, much as happened in Quebec in 2012. That's a long shot, but it is what we should aspire to.
Right now, planning public protests against Tory attacks is a first step. Another is equipping more people with a clear understanding of neoliberalism and with organizing skills.

Work Life: What's At Stake At Canada Post?

8/25/2016

Originally published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives policy alternatives.ca

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is currently engaged in collective bargaining with Canada Post. Unlike in previous rounds, the contracts of both the Urban bargaining unit (covering about 42 000 workers) and the unit of some 8000 Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMCs) are being negotiated simultaneously.
That's not the only reason that this round of bargaining is unusual. This is a rare case of a public sector union not only trying to defend its past gains but also to change the nature of the work its members do. CUPW is backing a visionary plan to transform Canada Post called Delivering Community Power (DCP) and trying to win some of its elements at the bargaining table.
Clash of VisionsFor its part, Canada Post management -- led by CEO Deepak Chopra, who was reappointed to his position by Stephen Harper shortly before the last federal election and then refused the new Liberal government's request to resign -- is not proposing the status quo either.
The employer has proposed that all future regular employees in both bargaining units will have a defined contribution pension plan instead of joining Canada Post's existing defined benefit pension plan. On top of weakening Urban workers' vacation entitlements and health and safety training, Canada Post wants to shrink the number of full-time workers with open-ended contracts and increase the number of part-time and temporary staff. It also wants the right to close any or all of the close to 500 retail outlets it still runs. It wants to eliminate Appendix T of the Urban collective agreement, which deals with service expansion and innovation and provides for pilot projects. This is an attempt to kill discussion of the DCP plan.
These demands reflect management's ongoing effort to make work at this federal crown corporation more like work in the private sector -- above all, to make postal workers' jobs less secure. They are consistent with a longer-term perspective of trying to privatize at least the most profitable part of the organization, parcel delivery (Canada Post has been profitable for 20 of the past 22 years, with first-quarter profits in 2016 amounting to $44 million -- while letter mail volumes are shrinking, parcel deliveries rose 27% between 2011 and 2015, thanks to online shopping).
CUPW is resisting the effort to roll back workers' past gains. Its leaders have pledged to reject any "two-tier" proposals that would create worse jobs for future hires while not immediately affecting people currently working at Canada Post. As CUPW's chief negotiators have written, "what about the next round of negotiations? ... Once we open the door for two-tier pensions and benefits they will keep coming for more." This stance is noteworthy because multi-tier arrangements -- which deepen divisions between new (mostly younger) workers and existing workers -- and other concessions by unions have become common.
The union is also fighting to improve members' jobs and expand the services they deliver. One of its priority demands is pay equity for RSMCs, who are mostly women and make 28% less than mostly-male Urban letter carriers. It has a set of proposals to improve health and safety at Canada Post (where disabling injury rates are higher than in any other segment of the portion of the workforce that is regulated by federal rather than provincial government rules). These include ergonomic studies on new equipment and work methods, stronger overtime limits and a return to allowing letter carriers to carry mail in one bundle rather than two.
CUPW proposes to expand services by extending hours at Canada Post's retail outlets, restoring door-to-door delivery in the urban areas where it was cut under Harper (the employer's plan to eliminate door-to-door has been frozen since the Liberals took office) and reintroducing postal banking.
In many other countries post offices offer banking services. Until 1968 Canada Post did too. One aspect of DCP -- a multi-pronged plan backed by CUPW, the Leap Manifesto team and other organizations -- is for Canada Post to again offer a selection of basic financial services through its over 6000 outlets. Postal banking would be particularly helpful for people living in rural areas and First Nations communities, few of which have bank branches, and for low-income people in cities, including the close to two million people per year who use payday lenders.
The aim of DCP is to make Canada Post "the hub for our Next Economy," one that's moving rapidly away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In addition to postal banking, DCP's wide-ranging proposals include replacing gas-burning Canada Post vehicles with electric vehicles, installing charging stations at Canada Post facilities to spur the use of electric vehicles in society, expanding door-to-door delivery, having postal workers help with community elder care, and making it possible for people to order fresh farm produce through the post office.
While DCP itself is not on the bargaining table, CUPW is pushing for postal banking and defending Appendix T, without which it would be harder to implement DCP.
Bigger PictureWhat we have here is nothing less than a clash of visions for the public postal service. A strike or lockout in August seems increasingly likely.
What makes this set of negotiations even more important is that the federal government is now conducting a review of Canada Post. The report of the review task force could lead to major changes at the crown corporation. The strength of CUPW's contracts will influence the impact of such changes and possibly their substance too.
If the outcome of this round is an employer victory, the ripple effect will be felt far beyond Canada Post. On the other hand, if postal workers are able to make gains or even just beat back demands for concessions the expectations of other workers -- steadily lowered by a decades-long employers' offensive and the chorus of influential voices saying that working people shouldn't hope for job security and good pensions -- could be given a welcome boost. Success in achieving any element of the DCP plan could inspire activists in other unions to develop proposals for changing work in ways that both address climate change and improve society.

See more at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/work-life-whats-stake-canada-post#sthash.sjvVf1xy.dpuf

"Slay the deficit myth in Manitoba, professor urges on budget day"

5/31/2016

Via CBC Manitoba. May 31, 2016

Deficit fearmongering useful for politicians who want to justify cuts to public service, David Camfield writes
The new Progressive Conservative government wants Manitobans to believe the province's deficit is a problem. The claim that the deficit for the 2015-16 fiscal year topped the easy-to-remember $1-billion mark is suspiciously convenient. As a Winnipeg Free Press editorial noted, "there is lots of room in the provincial ledgers to move numbers around."
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, eager to spur the government toward cutbacks, insists the debt is "a heavy burden" and "bad programs, and even some good programs" will have to be eliminated.
But the claim that the deficit is a significant problem for the Manitoba government is a misleading and dangerous fabrication.
The real issue for any government is not the size of its deficit but how much it costs to service its accumulated debt. When governments spend more than they take in in revenue, they sell bonds to raise funds. A government's credit rating affects the rate of interest it has to offer in order to attract buyers for its bonds.
Manitoba's debt servicing costs are eminently manageable. Interest rates are low and all three of the main credit rating agencies that assess provincial governments give Manitoba a good score. Only a minority of provinces are ranked better.
Credit rating agencies aren't neutralEven so, it's important to point out that credit rating agencies are not the neutral technical information-providing services they claim to be. They are private firms that belong to broader corporate networks. The people who run them and issue ratings for governments are committed to a particular ideology: neoliberalism. Their evaluations of governments reflect this. For example, in 2013 Standard and Poors downgraded France's credit rating in spite of the French government's fiscal restraint. U.S. economist Paul Krugman pointed out that this move was driven by S&P's opposition to the French government's decision to raise taxes instead of "dismantling the welfare state."
What we are given by those who argue for deficit slashing is, as British political economist Hugo Radice puts it, "an entirely circular argument. We are told by supposed economic experts that deficit cuts are necessary because international bond markets require them. So why do the investors in international bond markets require cuts? Because the economic experts say they are necessary!"
If Manitoba's debt is objectively manageable, why is there such a hue and cry over the deficit? Such fearmongering is useful for politicians and lobbyists who want to justify cuts to public services.
Those who insist that the deficit is a problem also preach that the solution is austerity. This means cutting public spending, privatizing public services and reorganizing what's left of the public sector along corporate lines (corporatization). This is part of the neoliberal project of dismantling anything that could be a barrier to corporate profits, including workers' rights, environmental protection regulations and corporate taxes.
'Austerity policies … hurt demand'Unfortunately for those who would have the Manitoba government slash spending, there is growing dissent among neoliberal intellectuals about austerity. In the June 2016 issue of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) publication Finance and Development, IMF researchers Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani and Davide Furceri question this approach. They echo what many critics of neoliberalism have long argued: "austerity policies … hurt demand." Economic output tends to fall and unemployment rises, which increases the need for spending on social programs. "Faced with a choice between living with the higher debt… or deliberately running budgetary surpluses to reduce the debt, governments with ample fiscal space will do better by living with the debt," they suggest.
Even where debt servicing costs do create a crisis for a government, austerity is no solution. We can see this clearly in what's happened in Greece in recent years. Wave after wave of cuts and neoliberal "reforms" have hacked away at jobs, wages, services and rights, leaving most people much worse off.
Manitobans should worry not about the deficit but about what the new government plans to do to public services in coming years in the name of lowering the deficit. The previous government avoided major spending cuts. Nevertheless, many people who work in provincially funded organizations such as hospitals, universities and social service agencies are already overworked and hard-pressed to deliver the high quality of service to which they're committed. Austerity justified by the deficit myth threatens to make matters much worse.

David Camfield is an associate professor in the labour studies program and the department of sociology at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of the chapter on Manitoba in a forthcoming book on fiscal policy and public services in Canada's provinces.

Ten tips for building a political organization

5/6/2016

These are some things I've learned from my own experience, talking to others and reading about the experiences of many political groups of the radical left that I'd like to share with members of Solidarity Winnipeg. I'm not suggesting them as "Ten Commandments" (and I'm not auditioning for the role of Moses[1])!

1. A political organization needs all members to understand its common politics and purpose in order to be able to function coherently. This shared understanding also gives a political organization a framework for discussing and debating differences. Without this, a group will fragment.

2. The more minimal a group's shared politics are, the more important activity is for holding a political organization together (Solidarity Winnipeg has a very minimal basis of unity).

3. If a political organization says that social struggle is key to changing society, its members need to practice what they preach. Belonging to a radical political organization shouldn't be an alternative to being active in organizations that actually mobilize and organize wide layers of people in collective action for change (unions, groups based in communities or on campuses). The weaker such movement-building organizing is (it's been very weak in Winnipeg for many years), the more important it is to consciously try to get involved in what's happening.

4. A political organization whose activity is democratically-organized and in which members are accountable to the group will make better decisions, be better able to learn from mistakes, and be generally smarter and stronger.

5. The less a group asks of members, the less commitment it's likely to get from them (so far SW hasn't required anything from members).

6. Political education for members matters. It's inevitable that members will have different kinds and levels of political knowledge, skills and experience. Consciously trying to foster members' political development will make a group more effective. Political development will also make a group more democratic, since more members will feel able to develop proposals and take part in discussions. The goal should be a "leader-full" organization (a term I learned from reading about Black Lives Matter organizing in the US), not a leaderless one.

7. One of the most crucial things for radicals to try to understand is the context that they're working in. The political context of Winnipeg today isn't the same as Winnipeg in 1919 or even 1996. It's also not the same as Toronto or Montreal today (Alan Sears's book The Next New Left: A History of the Future offers valuable analysis of the political environment today and how it's different from past eras).

8. It's important to evaluate decisions in order to learn from them. Mistakes are inevitable but learning from them isn't.

9. It's really important to foster a group culture that's welcoming to new people and in which people treat each other with respect even when they disagree. But working together as members of a political organization shouldn't be confused with being friends. A political group should unite people who agree with its politics and want to work together for common goals whether or not they know or like each other personally. Some members will become friends too. But if a political group is a group of friends it can quickly become a clique that isn't welcoming to others.

10. Having clear positive expectations about how members should conduct themselves and procedures for how to respond to allegations of unacceptable behaviour gives a political organization a way to handle problems that will inevitably arise. After all, those of us committed to radical change are products of a messed-up society, just like everyone else.

[1] I've always liked this line from the US socialist Eugene Debs: "Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again."

The 2016 Manitoba election and the fight against austerity

4/24/2016

1. The Tories have won a majority government with 53.4% of votes cast. The increase from the 44% the Tories won in 2011 was more a matter of NDP unpopularity than enthusiasm for Pallister. What's most noticeable is the huge decline in the NDP's vote, from 46% in 2011 to 25.6%. The Liberal vote rose from 7.5% in 2011 to 14.2%.

2. During the election campaign the Tories didn't openly proclaim their intention to bring in far-reaching austerity. Yet that's almost certainly what the new government is going to do, probably justifying its actions as necessary because of a supposed "deficit crisis" inherited from the NDP.

3. A lot of people will be surprised by what the new government does. Even more will be upset and opposed to its attacks, including people who voted Tory in both urban and rural areas. This discontent can be tapped to build active opposition to the austerity agenda.

4. If active opposition isn't built, most people who don't like the new government's actions will conclude that nothing can be done except vote to defeat the Tories in the 2020 election. Experience in other provinces tells us that this is dangerous. It means that there won't be much of a fight to stop harmful government measures or a strong challenge to the idea that "There Is No Alternative" to neoliberalism. Such a political climate will help the Tories' chances of winning again in 2020.
If the NDP wins in 2020 in such a climate, it's very unlikely to reverse much of what the Tories have done while in office (remember that after the NDP won office in 1999 they didn't reverse the privatization of MTS or repeal the Tories' balanced budget legislation, and that what the Tories are going to try to do this time will probably be much worse than what they did under Filmon in the 1990s).

4. Efforts to build active opposition to austerity will be starting from the very low level of activism that exists in Manitoba today. But they won't be starting from nothing: pockets of activism in union locals and on campuses, the ongoing indigenous resurgence and efforts that bring low-income people together in some Winnipeg neighbourhoods can all be seeds from which protest and resistance can grow.

5. One-off demonstrations are important. But they won't be enough to stop attacks by this government. What's needed is grassroots organizing in communities and workplaces that tries to build a movement against austerity. The best strategy for fighting austerity is working to build a movement powerful enough to do in Manitoba what students and others did in Quebec in 2011-12: organize against unpopular government policies, mobilize broadly and create a political crisis that forces an election and the defeat of the government. That's a goal we should aspire to.

The Politics of Racism

4/24/2016

It seems like racism is in the news every day.

In January 2015 Maclean's ran a cover story that called Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada, pointing to the treatment of indigenous people here. In the federal election campaign, "Stephen Harper and the Conservative party peddled hatred of Muslims, fear of refugees, disregard for First Nations communities," as Toronto journalist Desmond Cole aptly put it.

Bilan Arte, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, was clear: during the campaign "Time and again we witnessed the people running to represent our country pander to blatant racism." Racism was "harnessed and manipulated as a political tool." It's possible that we'll see something similar happen in the 2016 Manitoba election.

South of the border, Donald Trump is skillfully using blatantly racist signals about people of colour as part of his maverick campaign to be the Republican candidate for president. Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers. He has also pledged to keep Muslims from entering the US and claimed that in Jersey City thousands of people cheered when the World Trade Centre was hit on September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, as US journalist Paul Waldman points out, "his opponents tiptoe around the issue, unwilling to criticize him too severely."

Across Europe we're seeing a rise in racist words and deeds directed against Muslims. Repressive "national security" measures are spreading. France is just one example. In the wake of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the Socialist Party (France's NDP) government proposed to strip dual citizens convicted of terrorism of their French citizenship -- a policy long advocated by the extreme right-wing National Front party, which is enjoying unprecedented support (the Harper government's Bill C-24 allows the Canadian government to do the same thing). The French prime minister has said in a speech that migrants "put the concept of Europe in great danger." The government is also pledging to maintain its repressive state of emergency measures until Islamic State has been defeated.

So what's going on? Racism isn't new. Although it hasn't always existed, it's been part of European society and countries founded by European settlers for several hundred years.

In Canada and the US, one reason that racism has been getting more attention recently is that indigenous people and people of colour have been shining a spotlight on it and demanding change. It's people organizing against violence and harassment against indigenous women and people of colour that deserve credit, not journalists or governments that respond to their courageous efforts.

But it's not just that everyday racism is getting more attention. Around the world, racism is being used as a political tool more frequently. In Canada, Muslims and indigenous people in particular have been targeted, though African-Canadians and other people of colour have been too.

Some politicians and pundits use racist scapegoating of certain groups of people to win votes and divert attention away from the many harmful things that governments and corporations are doing. They fan the flames of racism. However, they don't create it. Racism can be used as a political tool because racist beliefs already exist.

Those beliefs aren't part of human nature. Racist attitudes exist because of how our society is set up. They're perpetuated by racist realities. Certain groups of people who are seen as inherently and unchangeably different are oppressed on that basis. They're subjected to a specific kind of systemic harm -- that's what racism is. They have less money, less power and worse jobs. They have worse health and are more likely to be jailed.

It's objective realities like these that racist ideas pretend to explain. After all, the racist thinker says, if so many "of those people" are poor or in jail it must be their own fault, right? This kind of blame-the-victim thinking would have little appeal if those it targets weren't oppressed.

Who gains from racism? Although well-meaning people often say that racism hurts everyone and benefits no one, this isn't true. In our racist society, all white people have some advantages relative to people who face racism. Better access to jobs, better treatment by landlords, business owners, the police and the courts -- these and other advantages are white privilege.

Yet racism benefits some people much more than others. Employers reap higher profits because racism divides and weakens workers, and bosses can make divided workers work harder. Workers who face racism are often forced to work for lower wages and in worse conditions. Also, governments have an easier time keeping people in line and implementing policies that hurt most people when indigenous people and people of colour are blamed for problems like unemployment, bad jobs and inadequate public services that are caused by capitalism. That's why white privilege isn't in the interest of white workers -- it's poison bait.

Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" put it this way:

“But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.”

Winnipeg today isn’t segregated Mississippi, to be sure. But what Dylan sang about racist workers in the Jim Crow South still applies to working people who buy into racism today.

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