Toronto Assembly Ties Together Everyone Hammered by Recession

Faced with unrelenting assaults by employers and government, Toronto activists decided they needed something new: a membership organization for everyone affected by the Great Recession.

They created the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly last year to bring together union workers, the unorganized, the unemployed, people in temporary and part-time jobs, and student and community activists.

The Assembly was born from the idea that today’s incredibly difficult circumstances require new forms of organization and activism. Unions are weak and isolated and have seen many struggles defeated. Radical ideas don’t get a large hearing, and the fight against employers’ attacks is tiny compared to what’s needed.

The Assembly is organizing campaigns that speak to the needs of all working people: free transit for everyone and no provincial and federal government cutbacks aimed at public employees and public services. It’s also organizing a conference in January to create a network of labor movement dissidents and broaden the scope of the movement.

HOW IT STARTED

The Toronto Workers’ Assembly was inspired by an idea raised by two American labor activists, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin, in their book, Solidarity Divided.

The labor committee of the Toronto-based Socialist Project started talks with groups of activists in different movements: unions, environmentalists, community activists organizing social service recipients, and those stuck in insecure jobs.

Part of the effort was a series of consultations about areas of conflict. People talked about the similarities and differences between organizing workers in workplaces and in communities, what it meant to be working class, and how an anti-capitalist workers’ assembly would differ from, yet work with, institutions like the activist and progressive Toronto Labour Council.

The first assembly, in October 2009, was attended by 150 activists from different community struggles, students, academics, and workers. The next assembly adopted a vision statement and rules for membership. It set up committees and began considering campaigns.

The labor caucus attracted about 30 members, mostly from public sector unions, and gets 80-100 people to its events. They’re looking to expand a network of union activists who want to transform their unions and develop the ability to resist on a larger scale. First on the list is setting up a flying squad to support picket lines.

Torontonians today pay $3 per ride on public transit. The system does not serve every neighborhood, so many can’t get access to subways and streetcars. The campaign for a free and expanded system may seem to some like pie in the sky given the austerity climate, but the Assembly uses the idea to raise questions: Who is public transit for? Should the ability to get around be a right, funded through general revenues the way Canada’s health care system is?

In addition, improving public transit would tackle other pressing problems: climate change and the need for manufacturing jobs. Fewer cars on the road would reduce greenhouse gases and require building transit vehicles and infrastructure. The idea of free transit gets people talking about what taxes should be used for and the responsibility of government to fund cities adequately.

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Assembly members have leafleted transit stops, held a street-party/demonstration, and started building links with other pro-transit organizations.

Another campaign is to educate and mobilize against government austerity attacks on public sector unions and social programs. These include spending freezes and cuts, privatization of long-term care, closing emergency wards, and downsizing medical facilities. Unions with contracts expiring soon are being asked to take a two-year wage freeze (thus far leaders are saying no).

The Assembly labor caucus organized a series of public meetings on provincial government cuts. Creative ideas for resistance were raised, such as demanding at the bargaining table that governments increase social spending and increase the role of recipients in service delivery. The goal is public sector workers mobilized across unions to oppose austerity moves, along with private sector unions.

PROBLEMS

By its very nature, the Assembly faces challenges rooted in the divisions that gave rise to the project in the first place. Some Assembly activists work in community anti-poverty and immigrant rights struggles. Many tend to see unionists as privileged, isolated, politically compromised, tied to the system, and limited by their dependence on successful bargaining with individual employers.

Many unionists, on the other hand, see social movement people as tactically irresponsible, politically confused, and too limited to concerns affecting their constituencies to link up with larger movements. These differences came to a head in the wake of this summer’s G20 protests.

The G20 is a gathering of leaders of the main industrial countries. It met in Toronto in June to discuss strategy for the worldwide economic crisis. Furious debates over tactics to protest the G20’s austerity agenda spread across the Assembly, sharpening already existing tensions across age and political lines.

Some protesters broke windows and burned cop cars, dismaying unionists who’d turned out members on the belief this wouldn’t happen. The massive police overreaction—1,100 arrests, more than any other in the history of Canada—left several hundred protesters with continuing imprisonment and huge court costs.

The Assembly held an open forum on the experience, characterized by respectful and rewarding discussions, and set up a committee to support those still in custody and others who face steep legal bills. Unions, which grumbled at first, are now participating in fundraisers.

The Assembly is an experiment in trying to build bridges across differences, based on a belief in a more fundamental set of common interests. As one activist said last week, “This is one place where we not only have a chance to work together to openly discuss our differences, but move ahead in new and exciting ways.”

Herman Rosenfeld is a retired Canadian Auto Workers member active in the Assembly.