The following articles are from the February 1-14, 2022 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.

1. No aid for war – Act now to stop US/NATO war with Russia!
2. Capitalism, labour and the problem of pay equity
3. BC Communists slam Horgan government’s pro-corporate priorities
4. Fiscal update shows need for labour action
5. Building the growing fight against privatization
6. Pages from our past: Conference of independent unions to issue call for all-Canadian labour congress
7. Kazakhstan: “Order” restored, but basic problem continues
8. Tenants must unite against slumlords and pest infestations
9. Take a stand against war

 

 

Act now to stop the US-NATO drive to war with Russia!

Mélanie Joly to Kiev: “a friend” with fascists to reassure warmongers

The Communist Party of Canada condemns Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s recent visit to Kiev, as a provocation against Russia and statement of support for Western imperialism’s inherent warmongering. Through her visit, she has contributed to legitimizing a fascistic regime, with the aim of escalating tensions between NATO and Russia.

“I have come as a friend,” she stated to the Ukrainian Prime Minister. At the end of her visit, she reiterated Canada’s openness to Ukraine joining NATO as well as the possibility of trading arms with the Eastern European country. She is following through on a policy of unconditional assistance and support for Ukraine which is manifested, among other things, by the $785 million in aid programs since 2014 but above all by the presence of about 200 Canadian troops (and police) through Operation Unifier.

However, the question arises: “Who are these friends who benefit from this assistance?” When Canada says it wants to defend democracy against a despotic and imperialist Russia, what does it really mean?

The truth is enough to send a chill down the back of any democrat and progressive. Post-Maidan Ukraine is nothing less than a den of neo-Nazis and fascists who occupy key positions in the highest spheres of public administration and the state. It is to them that Mélanie Joly speaks when she says she comes “as a friend.” The facts bear this out.

In 2018, Operation Unifier officials were seen training neo-Nazi fascist militias from the Azov Battalion. This militia has been part of the Ukrainian National Guard since 2014 and is responsible for several human rights violations and crimes in the country. Its commander, Biletzki, has already declared that the destiny of Ukraine is to "lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against the Untermenschensemites." This same person sits in the Rada (Ukrainian parliament). In addition, this battalion, which recruits white supremacist and neo-Nazi militants from around the world, has enthusiastically hosted NATO delegations and was commissioned to observe the presidential elections that brought Volodimir Zelensky to power.

As for the National Police, which the United States pledged to finance and train after 2014, it is also led by neo-Nazis like Vadim Troyan, veteran of the Azov battalion. With such a leader, the complicity of law enforcement with neo-Nazi militias is assured.

In addition to providing training, Canada will undoubtedly provide armsin the near future.

Andriy Paroubiy, President of the Rada from 2016 to 2019, is one of the co-founders of the neo-Nazi Social-Nationalist Party which, at the beginning of the 2000s, renamed itself Svoboda. His political ascent began when, after the Euromaidan episode, he was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council where he worked closely with Dmytro Yarokh, head of the fascist organization PravySektor.

Since 2015, the perpetrators of the massacres of more than 100,000 Ukrainians (Jews, Poles, communists, trade unionists, anti-fascists, etc.), including what is undoubtedly the most famous of them all, that of Babi Yar, have been recognized as national heroes. Symbols and demonstrations that glorify Nazi-fascism are increasing, with the complicity and even financing from the government and security forces. For example, in Kiev, a shopping center on Bandera Avenue (formerly Moscow Avenue) did not hesitate to cover its staircase with a Nazi swastika on the same day that fascist militias paraded on this same avenue. The few remaining statues of Lenin, the liberator of the proletariat and the peoples, are being replaced by plaques intended to wash away the crimes of Nazi-fascism. Indoctrination camps are being organized and publicly funded to instill a fascist mentality in young Ukrainians.

The law protecting minority languages ​​(Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek, etc.) was repealed in 2018 by a judicial decree in an attempt at forced assimilation.

The Communist Party, one of the main political forces in the country, has borne the brunt of persecutions, seizures orchestrated by the regime, constant attacks and raids. In 2015, a law criminalizing communist symbols (but accommodating to fascist and Nazi symbols) prevented the Party from standing for election. We also remember that in 2014 in Odessa, the Trade Unions House was set on fire on May 2 by pro-Maidan fascists, killing 46 people who opposed a Ukraine that NATO and the EU were serving on a silver platter to reactionaries and seditious groups.

During her visit, Joly declared that Canada defends Ukrainian sovereignty. But what kind of sovereignty is this, when the government has been put in place through the financing and support of the European Union, the United States and their allies? What kind of sovereignty are we talking about, when the police forces are trained by NATO mercenaries? And what kind of sovereignty is it when 200 Canadian soldiers are stationed there?

The truth is that the Euromaidan episode ended in a total abandonment of Ukrainian sovereignty, in favour of fascists subservient to Western imperialism which views Ukraine as no more than a game board on which the toiling masses are caught in the crossfire.

What Mélanie Joly, the Liberal Party and capital in general want is a Ukraine that plays the role of the spearhead of Western imperialism, of a power base against Russia. They only expect one thing from Ukraine: that it asks, “how high?” when told to jump. If this requires a regime in collaboration with fascist forces, so be it.

By falsifying history and by portraying fascistic post-Maidan Ukraine as a victim of Russian despotism, the Canadian government is trying to justify Western imperialist aims. It is reaffirming its commitment to Canada-US monopoly interests and to the further integration of Canadian foreign policy with that of the United States. Thisplaces Canada in the vanguard of Western imperialism’sdrive to war.

The facts are clear here as well. While Western governments cry foul when Russia moves its troops within its own territory, nobody seems overly concerned about the presence of 8,000 US troops in Europe or about NATO’s eastward expansion which increasingly threatens Russia’s sovereignty. But what would the US say if Russia were to open massive military bases in Canada or Mexico?

The fact is that the main danger to peace in Europe and throughout the world does not come from Moscow, but from Washington and NATO.

The Communist Party calls on the Canadian government to halt its militarist policy and to take action to de-escalate the crisis:

• Repatriate Canadian troops stationed in Ukraine and Latvia and stop deploying troops outside of the country.
• Cease all sales of arms and military equipment to Ukraine.
• Withdraw from NATO, an aggressive and murderous alliance, and adopt an independent foreign policy of peace, disarmament and international cooperation.
• Oppose NATO’s eastward expansion and call for the organization’s complete dissolution.
• Re-establish full and constructive diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation.

Only in this way can Canada truly support the Ukrainian people’s sovereignty and allow them to freely choose their future. The Communist Party calls on democratic forces in Canada – especially peace organizations and the labour movement, which has already taken positions against NATO – to mobilize against these provocations against Russia. It is urgent to oppose imperialism, which is the main enemy of the working class and the peoples of the world, and to take a stand against the increased danger of war.

Central Executive Committee

Communist Party of Canada

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Capitalism, labour and the problem of pay equity

Jeanne McGuire

There are a number of problems which confront us when we decide to tackle the issue of pay equity. We could, for example, get lost in a debate about the basis of the value of labour power as it applies to the matter of pay equity. 

Should wages reflect the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce the labour power? If that were the case, then across the board, women should earn more than men as more women (35 percent) have post-secondary degrees than men (29 percent). If you are young, 25 to 34 years of age, the ratio is tilted even more in the direction of women, 70 percentof whom have post-secondary degrees compared to 53 percentof men in that age category. And education is a considerable factor in determining the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce labour power. 

Should wages reflect the strength of the workers’ movement to demand and receive improvements to their wages? Obviously, no progressive would deny such a positive reflection of the organization and struggle by workers, wherever they may be, to counter the power of the owners to determine the price of labour power as well the conditions within which it must work. In this area, the balance leans towards men, who have had a longer and more militant and, thus, successful history of unionization and struggle to advance their demands for more and better wages, working conditions, benefits, pensions. Women have offset this historical deficit with respect to unionization partly because of the decline in unionization overall, and partly because they are increasingly part of the public sector, which has become one of the largest unionized sectors in society. 

Should wages reflect the amount of surplus value that labour produces for the owner? In this regard, women suffer because so much of the work they do has been confined to the service sector. If you exclude the category of public administration, the service sector accounts for 89.8 percent of employment for women, compared to 68.3 percent for men. Many parts of the service sector do not produce any surplus but are, in fact, paid out of the social surplus generated by labour that does produce a surplus. Not being part of the surplus producing work force has had serious implications for women’s wages, primarily because it has meant that they have been denied the full power of the strike which threatens the profit of the owner. For the sectors of the workforce dominated by women, too often the strike is not a cost but a potential savings for the employer. 

Not being a part of the surplus producing workforce should not be understood to mean that women’slabour is less valuable. It has less leverage withincapitalism, but the work that women do within the public sector and the service sector in general is work which creates (education, childcare) and maintains (health and fitness, food services, personal services) the workforce. It is also important because there are two sides to surplus –its production its realization. The service sector allows for the realization of the surplus that has been produced (sales, marketing, packaging, transportation). If we were to remove the capitalist class from the equation, a rationally organized social system would obviously value the care of its children, the provision of health services, the sanitation services such as garbage collection and other forms of waste management as highly as – and in some cases more highly than –it valued the production of t-shirts, shoes, blenders, computers and golf-carts. Do we really need another brand of sneaker?  Or do we really need more nurses? The pandemic provides the answer.

For the moment, however, let us deal with calculating the enormous amount of money that is not being paid to women. Calculating the actual amount that is lost is made difficult by the differences in job categories, the number of hours worked, whether the work is paid by the hour or by the month, the length of time in the job, the size of the company, the effect pregnancy/childbirth has on employment and the income that employment provides.   

Here are some of the things we know about the wages which women do not receive. If income is calculated based on hourly income, women in 2020 received 89 cents for every dollar a man earned. That is an increase from 81 cents for every dollar a man earned in 1998. Earning 11 cents less doesn’t sound like so much until apply it to actual wages. In 2018, that meant women were earning $4.13 less per hour than men. Multiply that by the hours worked per week (say 40) and you can see that over the course of a year women were taking home a seriously reduced pay-packet.

If the calculation is based on annual wages earned, the gap is larger – only 71 cents per dollar of men’s wages in 2019, up from 63cents per dollar in 1998. The reason that hourly wages are a greater percentage than annual wages is because more of the female workforce is part-time – 16 percent of women compared to 4.8 percent of men. Thus, while the hourly wage of women is 89 percent of men’s hourly wage, when you factor in the total number of hours worked, which includes the part-time workers, women’s annual wage packet is only 71 percent of men’s. The other effect of part-time work on wages is the reduction of the ability to unionize. Part-time work also means a lack of benefits like paid sick days and paid family care days, which reduces the number of hours worked when other responsibilities intervene in the work schedule. Lower income also means smaller pensions – a coat which women are forced to wear for the rest of their lives.

Much of the improvement in the wages of women relative to men reflects the increased participation in the work force, specifically moving from part-time to full-time work as well as moving into better paid occupations. So, while there were few women auditors and accountants in the 1950’s, 58 percent were womenby 2014.

According to Statistics Canada, the wage gap for women was largest in the trades and in transportation and equipment operators, where women earned only 72 cents for every dollar a man earned. It was smallest in the natural and applied sciences, where women earned 92 cents for every dollar of a man’s wage. 

While it is true that the gap in wages decreases with the amount of education, that only holds for the first two years of work after the degree. In that first two years, a woman with a professional degree will earn 92 percent of what a man would earn. Within 2 to 5 years after earning her degree, she will now be earning only 86 percent of what he would earn. With an undergraduate degree a woman in the first two years after graduation would be earning 86percent of what a man would earn but from 2 to 5 years after graduation would be earning only 76 percent of a man’s wages.

This trend of the wage gap increasing the longer one works after graduation assumes gargantuan proportions if you look at the earnings of men and women over a 15-year span.  According to StatsCan, as reported in the Globe and Mail in October 2021, a man with a bachelor’s degree would earn $1,292,247 over that period while the woman would earn $816,282. That is a gap of $475,965, almost $32,000 a year less than the man with the same qualifications. The amount of the difference is more than 50 percent of her total wage over the course of the 15 years.

This increasing gap applies to those with high school education as well. Over the same 15-year span a man who has graduated high school would earn $723,499 while a woman with the same qualification would earn only $344,012, a difference of $379,487. That difference, which works out to just over $25,000 a year, amounts to more than 100 percent of what she did earn over the 15 years. In other words, had she earned the same as her male counterpart, she would have more than doubled her income over that period. 

Two things can be learned from the above figures. First, while education diminishes the percent difference between the wages of men and women, it doesn’t get rid of it by any stretch of the imagination. The second is the clear expression of a process that seems counterintuitive on the face of it – the longer women work the further they drop behind. 

One reason for this is the effect that having children has on the wage gap for women. In a society which apparently glorifies the role of motherhood and claims to assign a high priority to the needs of children, the treatment in the workforce of women who have children stands in stark contrast to these putative “ideals.” Women experience a 48 percent drop in wages in their first year of having a child and an additional 14 percent decrease during the five-year period after having a child. Clearly, having children seriously diminishes women’s ability to work full time and to avail themselves of opportunities for increased responsibilities and promotions at work. Childcare responsibilities – having to be home or at the day care or at the school at a certain time each day – restrict the hours of availability to work.This also erodes, falsely, the perception of their commitment to the workplace, which further impedes their access to improvements in their wages and status at work.   

Employment ghettoization is another feature leading to lower wages. Of the positions in the 10 highest paying fulltime, full year job categories, less than 20 percent of the workers were women. In contrast, 75 percent of the workforce in the ten lowest paid occupations were women. Even within these categories, women earn less than their male counterparts. 

One of StatsCan’s most significant calculations makes clear that the reasons we have listed – family care responsibilities, loss of seniority and advancement opportunities, occupational segregation, lack of unionization, underrepresentation in higher wage categories, part-time work versus fulltime work – account for only 30 percent of the wage gap that exists between men and women. These conditions can be altered. We must work to remove, wherever possible, these sources of the 30 percent wage differential.

That leaves the other 70 percent of the wage gap. This part of the gap is a result of nothing more than gender-based discrimination. Nothing – neither hours of work nor level of education nor family responsibility – justifies this differential. Now is the time to demand an end to gender-based discrimination. Now is the time to demand than women be paid what present wage conditions specify for the work they do. 

It needs to be noted that all these calculations apply with even more serious consequences for Indigenous women, immigrant women, racialized women and trans women. We need to link our demand for an end to gender-based discrimination to a demand for an end to all wage discrimination, an end to all forms of discrimination in the workplace. 

We know that the wage gap drains millions from the pocketbooks of working women, their families and their communities. In July 2021, People’s Voice calculated that the total amount of the wage gap, when measured across the entire economy, would add up to $148 billion. Each year. Every year.

As mentioned, this is a loss that women carry with them into their futures. Their children carry it in the form of lost opportunities. Their communities carry it in the form of social problems such as food and housing insecurity. The effects of inequitable pay ripple across society and into the future. It is not just a women’s problem, it is not just a workers’ problem, it is a social problem.

Note: All data is based on information provided by Statistics Canada

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BC Communists slam Horgan government’s pro-corporate priorities

Communist Party of BC Provincial Committee

As 2022 begins, the Horgan government’s shift away from the promises which helped them win elections in 2017 and 2019 has become even more evident. Recent months have highlighted several key areas where the NDP has retreated further in the face of pressures and demands by big business: the continued disastrous emphasis on resource extraction and export strategies; using the RCMP for mass arrests of Indigenous land defenders and environmental activists; the appalling decision to limit paid annual sick time for employees to just five days. The response is a growth of cynicism and anger against the NDP in British Columbia, even among their supporters in the working class and Indigenous peoples who hoped the defeat of the Liberals would bring positive change.

But now, the Horgan government’s failing record on the COVID pandemic crisis has sent its popularity into a sharper decline. Everywhere in the capitalist world, including in British Columbia, the highly infectious, changing nature of the virus has brought complications. However, most governments, including the NDP here in recent years, have failed to heed consistent warnings that public health care systems must be expanded and strengthened. Instead, health care spending has been the target of neoliberal slashing and privatization for decades, while the rich and corporations benefit from huge tax cuts.

This has left British Columbia poorly prepared for the COVID emergency. During the initial pandemic months, rates of infection and hospitalization were lower here than most other parts of North America. But after coasting on this early success, politicians here increasingly acted mainly on business demands to “open up the economy”.  As infection and hospitalization rates rise and fall, mixed signals have been sent by government and health officials, in terms of crucial decisions around schools, public gatherings, masking rules, vaccination timetables and mandates, etc.

Here as elsewhere, politicians tried to deflect public anger by focusing on the outrageous actions of anti-vaxx far-right forces which target unionized health care and education workers, hospitality sector employees and other front-line workers. But the Horgan government’s response to the latest wave of infections and serious illnesses related to the Omicron variant signals that it considers major investment in improved health care measures and public protections to be “too expensive”.

The BC Committee of the Communist Party condemns the Horgan government’s weak and confused response to this mass disability event. Shamefully, the government continues to downplay Omicron as “mild” for those without pre-existing conditions and is even preparing to close the long-COVID clinic in Abbotsford. We strongly support the demands by teachers, health care workers and others for mass distribution of top-quality masks, a much more robust rapid test system, stronger regulations on public gatherings during the Omicron wave, installation of HEPA air filters in schools, 14 days of annual paid sick leave, the restoration of emergency COVID payments (by both federal and provincial governments) and other measures. We renew our demand for an immediate increase in social assistance and disability rates, to help those facing the greatest health obstacles at this critical and difficult time. The priority of governments today must be to protect public health, not to cave to the pressures of big business demands to force employees back to jobsites under unsafe conditions.

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Fiscal update shows need for labour action

Liz Rowley

The Economic and Fiscal Update delivered by Christa Freeland on December 14 is important, but not for anything said by the Opposition parties or by the media.

It is this:

“We remain committed to the fiscal anchors that we outlined in this spring’s budget – to reduce the federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium-term and to unwind COVID-19-related deficits.”

This sentence is what made the bankers happy, and it’s the “fiscal anchor” that Perrin Beaty, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and former Tory Cabinet Minister was looking for.

To see why Beatty and the Chamber are so pleased you’d have to look at the second half of the 83-page report. It’s there that the government’s cuts to program expenditures are listed.  Program expenditures of $608.5 billion in 2020-21 drop to $455.2 billion in 2026-27. 

That’s a cut of $153.3 billion, which includes a $31.9 billion cut to Employment Insurance benefits and $55.8 billion cut to income supports such as CERB, CRB, sick benefits, care-giving benefits, etc.

It’s also a decline in real dollars in spending on healthcare and social programs, which are already seriously underfunded, as the crisis in hospital and healthcare services has exposed over the last two years. Instead of self-congratulatory verbiage in the fiscal update, the government should have massively increased the Canada Health Transfer, reversed privatization and enforced the Canada Health Act. 

Instead of boasting about indexing the GIS and OAS, they should have substantially increased the Canada Pension Plan benefits and cut the full-pension retirement age to 60.

Instead of boasting about indexing the Childcare Benefit, they should have introduced a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income, a $23 minimum wage and committed to start building affordable social housing stock across Canada.

Decreased federal spending is accompanied by increased revenues, including truly speculative – and rosy – projections of GDP growth and economic recovery. This recovery includes an “official” unemployment rate of 7.5 percent in 2021, 6.1 percent in 2022 and 5.7 percent forever after, but with a much-reduced EI fund. Further, the EI top-ups negotiated a year ago by the NDP will disappear, leaving unemployed workers with even less money to pay inflated prices for housing, food, gasoline and home heating.

Projected new revenues from employment and economic recovery, together with funds “saved” from reduced program spending will be used to bring down the deficit, and this is what pleases Perrin Beatty the most. 

While some recovery benefits such as the sickness and care-giving benefits have been extended until May 2022, and a leaner income support ($300 per week) is on the books in the unlikely event of a major health “lockdown,” the Big Business supports continue.  

And while the report speaks glowingly of 6,000 more small businesses in operation today than before the pandemic, a walk down any main street shows store after store closed, bankrupted by COVID and the recession, and inadequate government supports.

The CEWS program, which has finally ended, was a huge subsidy to Big Business at a cost of over $80 billion. It was used to fatten enormous corporate profits and the personal wealth of the richest corporate bosses in the country. 

Yet the newly created Canadian Recovery Hiring Program will continue to subsidize corporate rent and wage bills up to 50 percent until May 2022. The federal budget could extend this even further if the government opts to do that.

The fiscal update suggests no change in direction is in sight.

The $40 billion in funding for Indigenous children – whose education, healthcare and social services have been deliberately underfunded for much longer than the 30 years specified in their lawsuit against the federal government – is the result of a determined struggle by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, along with orders to act by the UN Human Rights Tribunal, serial court orders directing the government to pay and mass public support following the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at residential school sites across the country. 

The promise of a Canada-wide system of $10 per day childcare made during the election is included in the Fiscal Update. What’s not there is a commitment to build a universally accessible, quality, public childcare system, which is what the public is expecting. In fact, Prime Minister Trudeau has just concluded negotiations with Alberta Premier Kenney, in which they agreed to include private for-profit childcare as part of the package. This means massive transfers of public funds to big box childcare corporations, and not only in Alberta.  

What it means for workers is a lot of pain, lower wages and living standards, more unemployment and more precarious work. And all of this is added onto wildly inflated prices of food, fuel and housing, and looming interest rate hikes that will hit hard at homeowners with mortgages and people with credit card debt.

The fiscal update showed that the government’s priorities don’t match the needs of working people for good jobs and increased wages and pensions, or for EI reform that increases benefits to 90 percent of previous earnings and covers all the unemployed for the full duration of unemployment. The government could have projected big increases to the Canada Health Transfer, to address the chronic underfunding of healthcare and the current crisis resulting from COVID. It could have cut military spending by 75 percent and stopped the purchase of fighter jets and warships, using the savings to get women back into the workforce with a universal quality public childcare system, and a public school system that was safe for children, teachers and education workers. They could have helped students by canceling student debt and abolishing tuition. They could have made building affordable social housing stock across Canada a priority. They could have rolled-back prices and rents. They could have addressed the impacts of climate change by nationalizing the energy industry, abandoning pipelines and moving decisively from fossil fuels to renewable energy. They could have implemented the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

And much more.

Instead, this Big Business government and its corporate supporters will cut spending that is urgently needed to help working people, women, youth, the unemployed, Indigenous and racialized people, to recover from the worst economic crisis in 100 years. It is a crisis that cost 7 million people their jobs and livelihoods, and that is not over for the almost 1 million people cut-off CRB in October, or for the unemployed, or part-time and precariously employed workers, or workers who have been forced back into their homes, or for those who have given up looking for work.

This is the reality the government, supported by the Tories, chooses to ignore.

When the budget comes down in the next few months, the labour and people’s movements must act – this is a minority government that is vulnerable to public pressure. Defunding program spending is a cut to vital services that people need, while diverting funds away from job creation and raising living standards, towards spending on NATO and war preparations, is a crime.

The priorities in the fiscal update are the priorities of the corporations and the military.  Working people – the labour and democratic movements, together with the NDP, the Greens, the Bloc and the Communist Party – need to organize to pressure the government to act for a People’s Recovery.

The government has indicated that 2022 will be the year it undertakes EI “reform.” The corporations want to further reduce their contributions to EI, and to further reduce access by laid off workers. They like high unemployment because it forces wages and working conditions down. Expanded EI provides some social security while pressing governments and employers to create jobs and raise wages and working conditions. 

Left to the Liberals and Tories, these issues will be settled in the interests of the corporations and the wealthy. The labour and democratic movements need to take joint action now.

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Building the growing fight against privatization

PV Labour Bureau

One of the most important outcomes of the COVID pandemic is the widespread call by healthcare workers, community organizations and the public in general, to bring all long-term care (LTC) facilities under public ownership and control. It has been many years since there’s been a mass demand for nationalization like this, and it draws a critical line in the sand in front of the right-wing push for more privatization.

In a recent newsletter, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) warns that right wing governments, corporate think tanks and private healthcare corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic “to promote privatization as the solution to the issues facing the country’s health system.”

The union points to provincial governments which have underfunded the public system while funneling billions to for-profit health providers, pursued P3 (private-public-partnership) models for new hospitals and contracted out a range of health services to for-profit privateers.

This article comes on the heels of a report in the Globe and Mail that the federal government has increased outsourcing of the federal public service by over 40 percent since 2015 – nearly $4 billion. That report quotes Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) President Jennifer Carr as saying that the government is creating a “shadow public service” through the outsourcing, one that skirts the rules in terms of transparency and accountability. What the Globe fails to note – unsurprisingly – is that this outsourcing is also a form of mass privatization.

In response to Newfoundland and Labrador’s “The Big Reset” plan (the report of the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team, headed by Moya Greene) in May 2021, UNIFOR warned that the plan’s massive privatization would result in a 4 percent drop in the number of jobs available in the province. The union cited Statistics Canada data about the especially high multiplier effect (jobs created per dollar spent) for government spending on public services, versus private sector spending.

In June 2020, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) released For the Public Good, the report of its Task Force on New Forms of Privatization. The document, prepared with extensive involvement of several CLC affiliates, is an excellent analysis of the many forms of privatization, the legislative and funding instruments used to promote privatization, and the range of social and economic effects of such policies.

UFCW is absolutely right. PIPSC is absolutely right. The CLC, Unifor and all the rest are absolutely right.

So, if all these unions are right about the problem of privatization, the question is: “Where is the fight?”

Partly, it’s at the level of individual bargaining disputes at the local level. This is what has happened with municipal waste collection in Toronto over the past decade. In 2011, the city privatized roughly half of the public service, and outsourced more in later years. The union (CUPE) was, and still is committed to maintaining public waste collection, and it scored a partial but important victory for its members when it forced a delay in the city’s plans for another round of privatization. But the union was in a difficult position: the forces of privatization – including governments, corporations and banks – are enormously powerful and individual locals and bargaining units rarely have the resources required to fight them on their own. This challenge is deepened by the loss of members and power that results from outsourcing.

Struggles at the bargaining level – including strikes, work-to-rule and occupations – are absolutely essential. But in addition to local militancy, the fight against privatization needs to be taken to the political level. This is where the labour leadership, particularly at the federation level, really weighs in.

Unfortunately, labour’scurrent right-wing social democratic leadershiphas for decades overwhelmingly relied on lobbying for its political work. With cap in hand, they meet with parties which are usually firmly nestled in the back pocket of corporations (Liberal, Conservative) but which occasionally have a relationship with labour that they are prepared to scrap to in order to get/remain elected (NDP). This over-reliance on lobbying is a weak, but enormously expensive strategy and waiting for the NDP to (a) get elected and (b) adopt and implement a left-wing platform is simply a duck and cover approach. These strategies really only guarantee one outcome – the political disengagement of union members.

So, what is the way forward? Labour’s own history shows what it needs to do.

In 1976, when the government of Pierre Trudeau introduced wage controls legislation, labour responded with a historic one-day general strike in which 1 million workers downed their tools. Union activists in the CLC and in Quebec unions like the Confédération des syndicatsnationaux worked with social movements to mobilize the grassroots support necessary to build the strike.

In 1983, when BC’s Social Credit government introduced massive cuts to education, health and social programs, and attacked collective bargaining rights by moving to strip unionized workers of seniority rights, the labour movement launched Operation Solidarity. The escalating campaign of rotating strikes and mass protests was made possible because of labour-community alliances that were built up in local communities.

Similarly, in response to the Conservative government of Mike Harris in Ontario in the 1990s, the labour movement worked with social movement allies to build local anti-cuts committees which provided the foundation for escalating action. This grew into the Days of Action campaign, with rotating shutdowns and mass demonstrations in communities across the province.

In 2015, when Ontario’s Liberal government launched the privatization of Hydro One, the province’s electrical utility, unions moved into action. CUPE Ontario had a particularly strong campaign, which mobilized members to coat the province with education, outreach and mobilization. CUPE’s campaign was so effective that it spurred an estimated 180 municipal councils (40 percent of municipalities in Ontario) to pass resolutions opposing the sale.

Through 2019 and into 2020, Ontario teachers and education workers launched an escalating campaign of resistance to government cuts which would lead to increased privatization of education. Their struggle, which united unions with parent and community groups, included public education and outreach, picket line support, lobbying, school “walk-ins” and strike action.

In 2020, when Alberta’s Jason Kenney government announced plans to outsource 11,000 hospital jobs in laundry, patient food services and cleaning, hospital workers held wildcat walkouts across the province.

And, of course, there is the current campaign to nationalize LTC. This is a country-wide effort, led by healthcare workers in every province working with residents, families, health coalitions and community groups. This campaign has included rallies, pickets, petitions, public meetings and lots of grassroots organizing.

There are rich lessons to be learned here – when unions trust their members and devote resources to these political campaigns, workers will respond.

In addition to providing cover for privatization, the pandemic is unfortunately often used an as excuse for avoiding mass action. But there are many examples of safe, yet effective mobilizations during the health crisis. On several occasions over the past two years, Indigenous people and their allies have blockaded of highways and railways, often with an effect just as forceful as a major strike. In October, the Ontario Health Coalition held a day of action on long-term care which included rallies and pickets in at least 17 communities across the province, and which received widespread media coverage and public support. And there have been strikes – during the pandemic, there have been nearly 200 work stoppages involving more than 900,000 workers.

The drive to privatization is dangerous and powerful. The only way to oppose it is through unity, organization and a fighting leadership that is committed to mobilizing workers for escalating mass action. The labour leadership – starting at the CLC – needs to commit to this kind of strategy, working with all unions (including the CSN and UNIFOR) and connecting local collective agreement fights with political ones.

There are no shortcuts in the class struggle – if change came through strongly worded press releases, we’d have achieved socialism long ago.

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Pages from our past: Celebrating 100 years of the communist press in Canada

Conference of independent unions to issue call for all-Canadian labour congress

40,000 workers represented at conference in Toronto – Convention of all independent unions to be held next March in Montreal

The Worker, Vol 5 No 215 – December 4, 1926

A labour gathering which may make history met for two days, November 22nd and 23rd, at the Prince George Hotel, Toronto. This was the conference of the larger independent unions who had agreed to meet and discuss the possibility for the unification of all the independent unions in the country.

The organizations which had representatives present were the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees, the Mine Workers’ Union of Canada, the Electrical Communication Workers, the Canadian Pacific Express employees, the Canadian Federation of Labour and the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union. All in all, it is calculated that these organizations represent some 40,000 workers.

There was, we understand, complete unity on all essential points. It was agreed to send out a call for a convention of all independent unions to be held in March in Montreal. The conference worked out the outlines of a constitution which, we hear, is more flexible and progressive than that of the Trades and Labour Congress This constitution will be submitted to the larger convention. The conference decided to recommend that the name of this new trade union centre should be “The All-Canadian Congress of Labour.” The Canadian Federation of Labour is prepared to merge its identity in the interests of a larger unity.

The crystallization of this movement of the independents was inevitable. The Trades and Labour Congress has ostrich-like obstinately refused to undertake a move to unite the independents under its own wing. It has placed jurisdictional loyalties far above the necessity of bringing about co-ordination for action. Year by year the Congress has been getting more and more conservative, more and more out of touch with the growing need of the workers of the Dominion for greater autonomy. It has been as a result unable to stem the growth of secessionism. The Trades Congress has insisted on remaining nothing more than a legislative “mouthpiece.” Perhaps what constant verbal criticism of the policies of the Congress has been unable to achieve alone, the organization of this block of independent Canadian unions will be more successful. Perhaps the Congress will at last realize the need of both national unity and national autonomy.

The Congress may find itself in the greatest difficulties if it refuses to get out of the rut. There are burning problems facing the workers of Canada – amalgamation, nationalization of industry, world trade union unity, organization of the unorganized, mobilization for the Canadian Labour Party. We greet the new movement for the unity of the independent unions only because we hope that by confronting the Congress with an accomplished fact, it will help to bring about the unification of all labour forces in the country in one national congress.

Notes: Formed in 1883, the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) had become the main trade union federation in Canada by 1886. It was dominated by US-based unions from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), led by Samuel Gompers. By the 1920s, discontent with the TLC’s conservative politics and subservience to the AFL sparked calls for the independence of Canadian unions from their US counterparts. As disunity and splintering (“secessionism”) spread through the labour movement in Canada, unions representing about 15 percent of organized workers proposed a new federation, organized on the basis of labour independence (from the US) and committed to more militant political action.

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Kazakhstan: “Order” restored, but basic problem continues

The government of Kazakhstan claims to have “restored constitutional order” after the country was shaken to its core by several days of massive strikes and demonstrations in early January, but the proverbial genie has been released from its bottle.

Western corporate media portrayed the unrest in the simplest of terms – protests, sparked by a huge overnight increase in gas prices, against the excesses of unbridled neoliberal policies. Under such a narrative, “order” can be restored by temporary caps on fuel prices, government acknowledgment of public discontent and a handful of high-profile dismissals – all of which Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev performed by the third week of January.

But the facts tell a different story.

The Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, a communist party which has been banned and its members harassed by the government, called the protests “a real popular uprising” and noted that the doubling of fuel prices was only the latest in a long line of problems facing the country’s working class. The dynamics of the movement support this assessment – by January 3, a general strike had gripped Mangystau Province was spreading to neighbouring regions with the demands – echoed by workers throughout the country including the entire mining industry – for a 100 percent increase in wages, improved working conditions and freedom of trade union activity including the right to hold meetings and to strike.

Within days after the protests began, the uprising had developed to the point that the municipal government building (Akimat) in Almaty, the country’s largest city and its commercial centre, was seized by demonstrators following open clashes against police. Strikes continued to spread and the movement’s demands were becoming both more widespread and more radical, to include the resignation of the president and several government officials, constitutional changes and the release of political prisoners.

This is the real scenario in which the government restored “order.” It paints a much more critical picture than the one described in the Western media, and the government’s response was equally more brutal. Tokayev declared a country-wide state of emergency and deployed thousands of military and security forces, with authorization to “shoot to kill” any demonstrator without warning. More than 200 people are estimated to have been killed by security forces and nearly 10,000 arrested.

The government has announced that the protests are over, but the problems which led to the uprising are far from resolved. Workers’ wages have not increased, trade union rights have not been guaranteed and the government’s massive privatization campaign remains intact. A large part of the mining sector remains controlled by transnational capital and workers face repeated rounds of mass layoffs without meaningful support during unemployment.This has been accompanied by massive corruption in the government, which is well documented.

These problems and many others are rooted in the restoration of capitalism in Kazakhstan, which began with the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 30 years ago. As power and the means of production transferred from the hands of the working class to those of capital, the vast majority of the people have faced deepening economic, social and political problems. The massive strikes and demonstrations in January were a class response to this ongoing reality.

The events in Kazakhstan contain a message to working people throughout the world: capitalism is a barbaric system which must be overthrown and replaced with socialism if people’s needs are to be met and guaranteed.Even in the face of brutal repression, such as that imposed by Tokayev, or the threat of interference by foreign interests, workers must (and will) continue to organize and mobilize on their own class basis, with their own revolutionary parties, in order to secure their future.

Kazakhstan is a key battleground in the drive by imperialist countries to redivide the world into “spheres of influence” at one another’s expense. It is the largest economy in Central Asia, generating 60 percent of the region's GDP through its vast fossil fuel and mineral resources,and imperialist forces are seeking to take advantage of the upheavals to advance their own interests. This reality – which is complex and requires further analysis than this article permits – illuminates the importance of international working-class solidarity to the workers’ struggle in Kazakhstan and elsewhere.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

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Tenants must unite against slumlords and pest infestations

Kyle Fillo and Doug Yearwood

Across Ontario, working-class tenants are suffering as a result of pest and bug infestations in their apartment complexes. After suffering in silence for years, in recent months tenants in places like Kingston and Toronto have started to organize and demand an end to infestation. The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) recently adopted housing policies that include the call for expropriation of negligent landlords, who only deal with pests and bugs in piecemeal fashion, if at all. These important policies respond to the immediate needs of tenants, but if they are to be implemented, mass work needs to be done to serve tenants in need, and spread these ideas not only through tenant groups, but also unions and organized labour.

Through our organizing efforts with the Katarokwi Union of Tenants in Kingston, we’ve gotten an idea of the pest problem’s horrific scope in one city. From discussions with other tenant and housing advocates across Canada, we know that these conditions are the norm, and have been for years. We have seen ample evidence that the lives of thousands of Kingstonians have been completely overtaken dealing with pest infestations. On top of this, unaffordable rent is being charged for units unfit for human occupancy.

As a result, tenants are forced to live out of plastic bins, quarantining their belongings from infestation. They sleep in horror, knowing the bugs get worse at night. We’ve spoken to one parent whose children refuse to eat or drink anything in their homes, for fear that it’s contaminated with bugs. Another parent was left wondering what to do after their child was bitten by a rat. This is the state of rental housing in the province.

However, tenants are beginning to fight back. People living in the dozens of infested buildings owned by Homestead Land Holdings, Kingston’s largest landlord, are organizing a campaign to achieve systematic pest removal in all buildings, rather than the completely ineffective unit-by-unit treatments currently undertaken. Additionally, amid deplorable living conditions and landlord harassment, tenants in Golden Equity buildings around Toronto are exercising their tenant power. They’re demanding necessary changes and maintenance to, at the very least, ensure healthy, happy living conditions for them and their families, in one of the world’s most unhinged rental markets.

While these individual movements are an excellent first step, what we really need is a coordinated, militant, nationwide, worker-led housing movement to reclaim the human right of housing through publiclyowned, democratic housing solutions. With many municipal and provincial elections coming in 2022, we need to support platforms that will hire more bylaw and property standards officers, to hold slumlords to task over their ruthless negligence.

Furthermore, while the immediate and systemic eradication of all pests is our primary goal, achieving this goal requires education on how pest problems come about. Tenants are almost universally blamed for their own pest problems, despite the fact that these pest infestations are structural problems brought on by institutional disregard for tenants’ livelihoods. Pest removal is a multi-million-dollar industry, and both landlords and exterminators are financially incentivized to do the bare minimum: it keeps pest control coming back, and it is less taxing on the landlord’s pockets. Pests exist primarily in deteriorated buildings, having found their way in through cracks in the foundation or via people coming in and out of buildings. To a certain extent they are normal and expected, but the problem is compounded when no proactive approach is taken and when tenants are individualized and shamed for pests existing in their unit.

At itsconvention in November 2021, the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) adopted a series of housing supported policies that, if adopted as law, would give tenants more power to deal with the bed bug and pest infestations plaguing the rental market. This includes the expropriation of buildings owned by negligent and absent landlords and those who fail to upkeep their property. Thousands of these buildings exist across the country, in which Canadian workers and their children face the daily physical and mental torture of defending their homes and belongings against infestations. Any caring government must prioritize swift retribution for those producing and perpetuating this myriad of inhumane living arrangements.

Working-class tenants harbour shame over infestations and are slandered as dirty and irresponsible by landlords and even other tenants, as powerful interests shift the blame to individuals they see as powerless. We are not powerless. We are only divided. There’s no shame in having bed bugs or pests. Pests and bugs exist solely as a result of improper maintenance and can only be resolved systematically. We must shame those forcing people to live with them, and unite to eradicate pests from our homes, and landlords from our lives. Ultimately, expropriation of neglectful landlords is an effective way of combating this issue.

The Communist Party’s policies are an important step in the right direction. However, people cannot wait idly for an idealized future, and must get involved in other people’s struggles today, to serve the interests of our shared communitiesand materialize a future for the people. The Party’s policies will resonate more with those who we have served, those who have put in the work to turn potential into reality. This is why unionized workers must bring these struggles into their unions, from the local and regional, to provincial and federal levels. Organized working class power has historically played an important role in developing progressive housing policy, and we must channel these past successes to construct possibilities in the present.

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Take a stand against war

Editorial

Nineteen years ago this month – on February 15, 2003 – an estimated 10 million people from over 600 cities in 60 countries took part in a coordinated day of protest against the looming US-led invasion of Iraq. It has been called the largest anti-war protest in history.

In Canada, rallies were organized in over 80 cities and town, meaning that virtually every single Member of Parliament had a protest in their riding. The numbers were spectacular and bear repeating: 150,000 protesters in Montreal, 80,000 in Toronto, 40,000 in Vancouver, 18,000 in Edmonton, 8,000 in Victoria, 6,000 in Ottawa, 4,000 in Halifax, 1,500 in Chicoutimi,… Across the country, an estimated 400,000 people protested on that one day.

The participation was especially remarkable given the bitterly cold weather. In many communities, protesters faced temperatures of −30 °C or lower. And yet, people poured into the streets to oppose the war and to call upon the Canadian government to stay out of the invasion.

It’s a day that is still celebrated by peace and anti-war activists. But it’s also a day that seems too far in the past, too unique.

Because, while the numbers are remembered, what’s quickly forgotten (or never realized to begin with) is the amount of work that went into the protests.

Almost a full year earlier, in the summer of 2002, the largest peace organizations in English-speaking Canada held a conference on Salt Spring Island. The single biggest issue was the US drive to war on Iraq. Afghanistan had been invaded at the end of the previous year – Canada sent a huge troop deployment there in February 2002 – and it was very clear that the second President George Bush was eager to launch a second Gulf War against Iraq. It was also clear that the issue at the heart of the drive to war was oil.

That last point is vitally important. Even among the peace activists at Salt Spring Island, let alone among the public at large, there were wildly different views about the Iraqi government. But it quickly became clear that the main danger, which had to be opposed, was US aggression. It also became clear that, in order to build an anti-war movement, it was critical to adopt that as the broadest basis of unity.

What followed was months of teach-ins and town halls, petition campaigns, rallies and marches, and lots and lots of local organizing and networking.

Today, 19 years later, we are faced with another drive to war. Like then, there are wildly different views about “the enemy.” Like then, the main danger to be opposed is clearly US aggression. Russia, after all, is moving troops around in its own territory, unlike the US-NATO forces which have stationed troops and weaponry far from their own territory, right up to Russia’s borders. Like then, it is critical to use that broad basis of unity to build an anti-war movement.

But unlike then, the peace movement has not moved into high gear in terms of education, outreach and organizing. Instead, it has been woefully quiet.

The forces opposing one another have conventional weapons with enormous destructive capacity. They also have nuclear arms. This is no time to sit on the sidelines and wait to see where the chips land. The stakes are too huge.

As in February 2003, this is once again the time to take a stand and say “No” to war. 

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