Things Aren’t Always What They Appear to Be

The ongoing debate about the Canadian Auto Workers in these pages isn’t about particular tactics, it isn’t about whether or not to consider new and creative approaches (who could oppose that?), and it isn’t about underestimating the very real challenges that Canada’s largest private sector union (and all unions) face today.

There is no doubt that recently there have been important new direct actions across the CAW. The strikes and occupations, as well as last summer’s large mobilizations around the Manufacturing Matters campaign are positive and need to be supported.

But Jim O’Neil’s commentary doesn’t address the concerns so many of us who love this union have about changes to the union’s fundamental direction that undermine its capacity to mobilize workers, challenge employers and fight for the kind of politics workers need.

Over the past few years, the union has been doing things that stand in contrast to any promise of a new militancy. The CAW pressured the leadership and members in the major auto plants in Oshawa and Brampton into accepting employer-sponsored takeaways (in the latter case, after workers rejected concessions, they were pressed into voting “until they got it right”).

The concessions took the form of contract re-openers that outsourced “non-core” jobs, such as janitors; gave up minutes of relief time (this, in the midst of a long-term and ongoing wave of work intensification); endorsed management lean production programs, without efforts to carve out an independent union critique and gave up other important workplace rights.

These agreements were legitimated by claims by the leadership that the then 85 cent dollar, made Canadian plants non-competitive (a claim rather inconsistent with the recent argument that at dollar parity with the United States, our plants remain relatively competitive).

Experiences such as this sow confusion amongst the members and raise questions about the union’s commitment to the struggle against concessions and the use of militant action to challenge employers in the long run.

Then there was the Magna agreement. Last October, the union’s leadership unveiled a project which, in exchange for access to 18,000 unorganized Magna workers, the CAW gave up the principles of workplace committees fully independent from management and the right to strike–-based on the paternalistic practises of Magna’s notorious anti-union owner, Frank Stronach. Originally articulated as a “trade unionism for the 21st century,” this move was universally condemned across the labor movement in Canada, including by many who had in the past drawn inspiration from the CAW.

The Magna deal may increase union density, but the kind of unionism it promises won’t increase the strength of workers in the auto parts industry.

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As with Magna, the basic approach of the union increasingly seems to be shaped– ven where campaigns and mobilizations occur--around partnership with employers. In both the auto campaign and the Manufacturing Matters campaign, the union developed a sophisticated set of policy demands to pressure governments to implement, but left them rotting on the shelf, gathering the computer age’s equivalent of cobwebs and dust.

Instead, the auto campaign only concentrated on calling for direct subsidies to the U.S. auto companies, and the Manufacturing Matters campaign seems mainly to emphasize demands to open up Asian and European markets for U.S.-owned companies, bizarrely reinforcing the principle of freer trade the union once was so active in resisting.

This is not about opposing subsidies. In certain instances they are a necessary part of facilitating investments. The problem is that in both campaigns, demands which oppose and challenge corporate interests are put in the closet, and the only issues raised are those which call for support and collaboration with corporate employers.

An unintended outcome of this kind of approach is that it reinforces the existing dependence that workers have on their employers, particularly when the latter are threatened by competitors. It teaches worker-activists the wrong lesson: that the role of political activism is to help the boss, rather than challenge them and it undermines the crucial importance of building alliances with other workers so our collective capacity is strengthened rather than fragmented.

The outcome of the way that political issues have been raised in the course of these campaigns--the abandonment of any class-oriented political project and the lack of fightback in the auto sector--is ultimately a feeling of defeat and powerlessness: a sense that fighting back does not make a difference.

A NEED FOR CHANGE

Having rank-and-file-based leadership bodies is an excellent thing. The problem isn’t with their rank and file nature; it is in the way they are selected, led, and the overall political culture of the union of which they are a part.

Membership in the national executive board is enormously beholden to the national president, and he has huge discretionary power to make policy on the fly–-regardless of formal decisions by the CAW Council or the board.

The recent Magna debate, rather than showing the democratic openness of the structure only demonstrates its weakness: it was rammed through just about all of the union’s structures in a little less than two months, after having been conceived of and bargained in secret during the previous year.

The union’s resources weren’t mobilized in order to organize a debate-–but to sell the agreement. If it wasn’t for a couple of staff (who risked their jobs), a few courageous local leaders and activists, some staff retirees, friends and allies in other unions and Socialist Project members and supporters, there wouldn’t have been any debate at all!

I mention this not in order to take pot shots at rank-and-file union leaders or to ridicule union institutions, but in order to point out a glaring weakness that needs to be addressed. The union needs leadership bodies and leaders that are given the space and training not only to lead, but also to soberly debate, discuss, strategize and even criticize the direction of the union.

This clearly requires major changes in the overall culture of the CAW-–changes that will have to come from a series of reform movements from the bottom.

TWO-TIER CHALLENGE

The threat of two-tier wages is possibly the most difficult challenge the union has ever faced. The UAW leadership has accepted a direction that could very well end up halving the wage and benefit structure of autoworkers. CAW President Buzz Hargrove’s verbal opposition to it is to be welcomed and supported.

But such support should not be given blindly. It is crucial that CAW members don’t simply resist two tier by giving up damaging concessions elsewhere--such as our negotiated hours of vacation and worktime, or the right to strike. All efforts must be made to build a grassroots campaign across the union, and throughout the Canadian labour movement, opposing employer plans to force it through in Canada.

Solidarity and support must be built with efforts of union activists in the United States to undo the two-tier agreements as well.