Labour Bureaucrats Go On Strike

CUPE Staff Strike Update: Staffers hit the bricks

Well the high paid staff reps at CUPE have gone on strike against the membership of CUPE. These guys make an average $110,000 a year, have a paid car, get a great benefits package, have additional monies paid to them monthly as per diem's.

They are permanent staff. They are the bureaucracy striking against themselves.

I am sorry I am opposed to labour fakirs and porkchoppers, the guys who live off the backs of union members, being treated like other workers who go on strike.

This is a professional class whose jobs are reliant on some of the lowest paid public sector workers in Canada. While they earn six digit salaries many of their workers are making just over $10 per hour as entry level wages. None of the CUPE members have the protection or benefits that these guys have. And when they advise the membership it is often in their own self-interests and not the members.

Back at the turn of last century labour organizers were paid a $1 a day. Often they supplemented their wages by also selling life and benefit insurance through fraternal orders.

Today these striking bureaucrats are part of the business of business unions. Representing workers in the business of labour relations. Advocating against strikes, especially wildcats and general strikes, supporting managements rights clauses, etc. etc.

There is only one union in Canada that actually has eliminated the idea of a professional class of labour bureaucrats; that is CUPW. The Postal workers elect their representatives at their national convention. Being a CUPW rep is not a permanent job , it is what is supposed to be, a member who works for the members.

Not a labour fakir bureaucrat who belongs to another union within the union. That is the very antithesis of democratic industrial unionism. All reps should be elected and thus subject to recall. To create a professional class of reps is undemocratic and leads to an entrenched bureaucracy, and the transformation of a democratic industrial union into a business union.

On the other hand I support unionization of support staff who work for unions as they are employees. Reps are not employees they are supposed to be fellow workers who represent the members. Thus they should be elected and subject to recall. Something I have advocated for years.

It is now up to the membership, the rank and file of CUPE to challenge the bureaucrats and their own bureaucracy to be reformed into a truly member run organization.

Down With the Bureaucrats!

All union representatives should be elected and subject to recall.




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CN Wildcat

Canadian workers did not wait for permission from their Yankee Union Bosses to go on strike. And of course it began in Montreal, since Quebec workers have a long history of labour militancy.

- Canadian National Railway Co. said on Saturday that 2,800 of its conductors and yard-service workers at its operations in Canada began a strike, a work stoppage that could affect the country's key shipments of grain, timber and other commodities.

CN, Canada's largest railway, said it was putting management personnel on trains and in switching yards to continue freight operations across Canada because of the strike by members of the United Transportation Union (UTU).

CN said the strike is restricted to Canada and its other unionized employees remain at work.

CN said it was ready to negotiate with the UTU at any time, but the company was seeking to have the strike declared illegal because CN said it had been informed that the certified bargaining agent of the UTU members employed at the rail company had not authorized the walkout.

CN says that the proper union representatives did not authorize the strike action and will file a complaint with the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

The union admits that while its international president has not provided authorization, it does not affect the legality of the strike.

Rex Beatty, a representative for the UTU said in a statement that the union was “disappointed that it could not reach a negotiated settlement.”

The union submitted an offer to CN that included 3 percent wage increases, paid every Jan. 1 between 2007 and 2009 and also sought a $1,000 bonus paid to employees March 1.

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American Union Bosses

Here is an perfect example of why we need autonomous democratic Canadian unions.

Conductors at Canadian National Railway Co., the country's largest railroad, won't strike immediately after a midnight deadline even if labor talks today don't produce an agreement, a union official said. The United Transportation Union chapter, which represents Canadian National's 2,800 conductors and yard workers, needs to apply for strike authority from its Cleveland-based headquarters, Frank Wilner, a union spokesman, said in an interview today.

It's not the workers who decide to strike but the 'union bosses' ,as the Sun newspapers call 'em , in the U.S. This is the real meaning of International Unions operating in Canada, they are American business unions run by union bosses rather than by the members.

CN workers are represented by three different unions, which just goes to show that they need One Big Union of all the workers, run by the workers.

And here is another reason for Federal Anti-Scab legislation.

The company has said it will continue its freight operations across Canada during a strike, with management personnel performing the UTU-represented conductor and yard-service jobs.

This is just another CN disaster in the making, refusing to negotiate while raking in record profits and subjecting its workers to speed ups and accidents.

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