Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis

You know that the labour movement is no threat to Canadian Capitalism when it can agree with the bosses on a band aid to the current economic crisis.;

'Job killing' EI premiums hurt workers, employers as manufacturing sector lags

Critics say the current EI program fails jobless workers, many of who don't qualify for EI benefits because they have not worked the required number of hours, as well as employers, who worry about having to pay what Liberal MP John McCallum, an economist, calls 'job killing' EI premiums.
On the employee side of the debate, the push is for more generous benefits.

Not surprisingly, one of the few things employer and employee representatives agree is the need to refrain from increasing the 2009 EI premiums for employees or employers. The chief actuary of the EI commission has already recommended a freeze for 2009, and the commission is expected to take the advice when it announces the 2009 rates this week.
Corinne Pohlmann, vice-president of national affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said the commission should go further and cut employer premiums. Continuing surpluses in the EI fund, estimated at $600 million for the last year, should be used to reduce the rate from the current of $2.42 per $100 of insurable earnings, she said in an interview.
The federation also wants the formula rewritten so employers and employees share the cost of the EI plan 50/50, or so that the government picks up a share of the cost. Employer premiums are currently 1.4 times higher than the $1.73 paid by employees.
The business federation and the CLC have both advocated - unsuccessfully so far - to give employers a 'premium holiday' for a period of time if they use the money to train employees.
The Conservative government's plan to move to a new system for setting EI premiums, starting in 2010, is causing jitters in some circles too. A newly-created EI financing board will set the premium rate each year "to generate just enough premium revenue during that year to cover expected payments" and to ensure a $2-billion reserve is maintained, according to government documents. Legislation establishing the new system became law last June.
Diane Finley, named last week to her former post as human resources minister, declined requests to discuss the EI system on grounds she is still getting briefed on the portfolio.
But Georgetti and McCallum said the system means that if the country's jobless rate worsens, as is expected, the board will either have to raise premiums the following year or cut benefits to meet its mandate.
"It has to be one or the other," said Georgetti. "That's the only way I have ever learned to balance the books. And neither one, in this environment, is the way to go."



Once upon a time the labour movement opposed child labour now they decry unemployment of the youth sector of the economy. These are kids working at Wal-Mart, MacDonalds etc., all of course in the non unionized sector.

Canadian Labour Congress: Public Works!
Now That the Election is Over, it's Time to Invest in Jobs That Last

Young workers, many of whom work in accommodation and food services, took a big hit in October. In total, 34,400 workers aged 15 to 24 lost their jobs. At the same time 27,000 people who earned their livelihoods in the accommodation and food services sector were out of a job last month.



And in their recently released paper on the global meltdown they sound more like economic apologists for capitalism than the voice of the working class. There is no discussion of using public and workers pension funds to finance the creation of worker controlled take overs of manufacturing in Canada. Showing that Canada's labour movement has lost the vision of building a new world within the shell of the old. Instead true to its nature as business unions the CLC calls for the state to bail out its bosses.



The Meltdown, Seen from Below
What union leaders, labour experts and anti-poverty activists say needs to be done.

The CLC has just issued a paper on its response to the current crisis titled "Global Capitalism: On the edge of the abyss." The paper says the global economy is now "almost certainly headed for a deep and prolonged recession," and notes that global markets have already fallen as far as they did in the Great Crash of 1929.
The labour group blames deregulated global finance for the crisis, pointing to what it calls "the unregulated shadow banking system of investment banks, hedge funds and private equity funds," and decrying the creation of "fiendishly complex and sometimes outright fraudulent products." The face value of these highly abstract and uncertain financial instruments, the paper notes, was recently estimated at over $50 trillion.
The CLC paper quotes Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business at New York University: "The crisis was caused by the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in the history of humanity.... a housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble, a hedge funds bubble are all now bursting at once in he biggest real sector and financial sector deleveraging since the Great Depression."
The CLC paper calls on Canada to play a role in creating a co-ordinated international response to the crisis that features re-regulation of both local and cross-border transactions and the imposition of a small transaction tax on all securities trading, including commodity futures. This Tobin Tax, named for the Nobel Prize winner who first suggested it, is designed to discourage short term speculation and to raise the government revenues that will be necessary to fund appropriate investments in social services and infrastructure repair.
Bail out tied to regulation
While many critics of the official response so far are asking why so much money is going into the banks and finance houses that created the crisis, the CLC endorses some bail-out activity as necessary to avert a systemic collapse. The bail out money must come, it cautions, tied to effective regulatory rules.
The CLC wants Canada Mortgage and Housing to re-finance distressed Canadian home mortgages at lower rates, dismissing the view that Canada is not experiencing a housing bubble as a myth. The $10 billion a year in new infrastructure investment the CLC calls for, says the paper, would create 200,000 new Canadian jobs rebuilding roads and bridges, mass transit projects, water works and the like as well as replenishing the country's diminished stock of social housing. A public letter recently signed by 80 prominent Canadian economists has echoed this call for an active and interventionist response by government to the economic crisis.
Further corporate tax cuts should be cancelled, the paper argues, in favor of direct government support for new investments in machinery and equipment, research, development and training.
Even if all these reforms are put into place, says the CLC paper, Canada may well experience serious increases in unemployment, which will expose weaknesses of the Employment Insurance program. Far fewer workers are eligible for EI as it now exists than was true in years past, and maximum rates and time allowed for coverage are both inadequate, according to the paper, which calls for broadened eligibility, higher maximum payouts and longer terms of coverage for the unemployed. The EI system currently has a surplus of over $50 billion.
Call for new pension protection
The CLC paper predicts the current financial crisis will create a severe pensions crisis, and a follow-up paper issued on Oct. 29 calls for the creation of a new pension benefit insurance scheme (financed by the proposed tax on financial transactions) to insure annual pension and RRSP benefits for individual Canadians up to $60,000 a year.
Pensions are a concern for Bill Saunders, too. Saunders, the president of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, says that Canadian workers and their pensions are more exposed to risk during market trouble because of the successful campaign over the past decades to move from defined benefit pensions, which guarantee a certain monthly amount when you retire, to defined contribution plans, promoted by market enthusiasts.
Contribution plans shovel a defined amount every month into mutual funds and other stocks, creating pension payouts that can vary widely depending upon the health of the market, as many Canadians are discovering this year as their RRSP holdings have shrunk dramatically.
"Twenty years ago," said Saunders, "60 per cent of Canadian private pension plans were defined benefit. Now that share has been cut in half. Defined contribution plans just don't deliver the goods for workers the way defined benefit plans do, and the current crisis illustrates that."

The final irony is that despite calls by the CLC to meet with Harper government it appears that labours agenda was accepted by the Premiers and the PM at their first ministers te'te' today.

Harper, premiers agree on infrastructure, pensions

Once again proving Herr Doctor Professor Marx correct:



Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Addressed to Working Men, The First International Working Men's Association, 1865.



SEE:

Concessions Don't Work

And Then There Was One

October Surprise Was The Market Crash

No Austrians In Foxholes

Pension Rip Off



Tags
unionization, labour, CLC, Ken Georgetti, economy, trade union, recession, EI, business unions,
CLC
Labour

Fire Your Boss

I was traveling on the bus down Whyte Ave today and saw a fellow with a hat which had written on it;



I regretted I was not wearing my wobbly button in response;




See:

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

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Don't Mourn Organize

The Greatest Wobbly folk singer and hobo since Joe Hill has taken the last train out of the station.

Bruce 'U' Utah Phillips has passed away late Friday night. We mourn his passing, a great Wobbly who kept wobbly culture alive through many a dark night when the organization was a mere memory of its past glory. By keeping our wobbly culture of song, and activism alive the spirit of the organization continued on inspiring a whole new generation of activists to become wobs.

As Joe Hill admonished his comrades on his passing; Don't Mourn boys, organize, the same holds true for our fallen comrade and wobbly hobo; Utah Phillips.

The IWW is strong and growing in no small part thanks to the dedication and perseverance of Utah.

U. Utah Phillips

U. Utah Phillips has passed away in his sleep at 11:30PM PDT on May 23, 2008.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," an organizational artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in small part due to his efforts to popularize it.

Phillips' other survivors include another son and a daughter, several stepchildren, brothers and sisters and a grandchild. The family requests memorial donations go to Hospitality House, a homeless shelter founded by Phillips in Grass Valley, Calif. Additional information is available at www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org.

SEE:


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AFL Demo Falls Flat On Its Face

Ouch. Suppose we called a demonstration and no one came?

The majority of the 15 workers that did show up were probably Wobblies who have been active on every wildcat picket line over this last month. Dual carders, folks who belong to both the IWW and their regular trade union. The IWW has been gaining support amongst the building trades union rank and file pissed off at their union's lack of democracy.

While the union bosses couldn't organize a rally, demo, or meeting bigger than a gathering in a phone booth, cause they are pork choppers, far removed from the rank and file. And when they do organize rallies its the paid union staff that show up.

This is not only disappointing but shows that the real resistance of the workers in Alberta not only to our bad labour laws, but to the Oil royalty rip off will be led by rank and file militants not the labour bureaucracy. That was what made last months wildcat actions successful. But as soon as the labour bureaucrats joined in well it died.

While the Oil Bosses bused in their workers and paid them to attend their Anti-Royalty Rally at the Leg on Wednesday the AFL's excuse is that their demo was poorly attended cause it was payday. Well that was a brilliant move wasn't it. The pork choppers don't even know when pay day is up in Fort McMurray. Or when shift changes occur. Talk about being out of touch. They should have just organized a counter demo in Edmonton instead.

Unions drive message home despite poor turnout

By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Fort McMurray Today staff
Friday October 19, 2007

It may have been a tiny crowd at a royalty rally for oilsands workers Thursday night but that didn’t undermine their support for changes to the current royalty system.
About 15 people attended the rally hosted by the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). Gil McGowan, AFL president, wasn’t really surprised at the turnout given it was payday, and shift change day so many workers had already left town.
He explained the AFL went ahead with the meeting because of concerns Premier Ed Stelmach was going to announce his decision on the royalty panel recommendations today. That didn’t happen at press time; the premier is rumoured to have television airtime booked next Wednesday.
McGowan presented his top 10 reasons why big business won’t leave Alberta even though companies are “rattling their sabres” and threatening to pull out of the province.
“The oil is here. They’re going to stay here because there’s money to be made and there’s nowhere else to go,” stated McGowan. Other reasons included that oil companies have always known the government has the right to unilaterally raise royalties and companies are not going to turn their backs on billions of dollars of investments already made here.
He mentioned other jurisdictions like Alaska and Britain have increased royalty rates by as much as 80 per cent yet it hasn’t scared off investment. The royalty review panel is recommending a 20 per cent increase for Alberta.
McGowan pointed out some of the same companies threatening to leave Alberta continue to invest in Venezuela where royalties are higher than here and profit margins lower.
“We don’t have to be intimidated by the scare tactics being employed by big oil,” said McGowan.

While the premier is talking tough, there’s still a concern about closed door meetings between government and big oil companies, he said. Believing the companies are trying to intimate the government McGowan is urging workers and Albertans to tell their MLAs not to lose their nerve.
“We have to help them get the backbone they need to stand up to big oil,” he stated. “The time for accepting bargain basement royalties is over.” If government cows to oil companies, McGowan added Albertans can show their displeasure at the ballot box.
Petition letters to the premier available at the rally said the royalty report should be seen as a bare minimum for action. Anything less than that is a failure by government to stand up for the best interests of Albertans.
“Any effort to water down the recommendations would be a unnecessary capitulation to big oil,” said McGowan.
The local rally was held for workers in contrast to the one the day before at the legislature in Edmonton organized by business. Referring to that rally as a “paid political commercial brought to you by ownership,” Barry Salmon, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) official, said owners are more interested in their own bottom line than the best interests of Albertans.
Salmon said the panel came up with a mediocre report that was already a compromise favouring big oil.
This was intended to set a marker so when government introduces its decision, it will be seen as a compromise. “Albertans will believe its acceptable because they will be told it’s a compromise between the royalty recommendations and big oil demands.
“We’re being had,” he said, adding Albertans are now involved in a shell game with the government and big oil.
As part of their scare tactics, oil companies are threatening some 19,000 jobs, said Mel Kraley, IBEW assistant business manager. Yet, he noted, there some 21,000 temporary foreign workers in Alberta. McGowan believes the number of workers is closer to 60,000.
Several workers in attendance took the opportunity to express their concerns.
Ron Davidovich said the government should “feel ashamed” for finally asking for royalty review. “We’ve got billions of dollars lost in this province,” he added at a time when seniors can’t get the care they need and are struggling on fixed incomes. The extra $2 billion from increased royalties could help seniors among other things, he said.
“As soon as we encroach on them (oil companies) ... we hear some nice stories,” said Roland Lefort, an official with the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers union.
He added when the Kyoto Accord was first introduced, oil companies bemoaned the financial hardship it would cause. As a result, “Albertans believed Kyoto was going to destroy the economy.” The royalty review is no different, Lefort said.

Don't Let Big Oil Set Our Royalty Rates make sure Ed hears from you

See:

I Am Malcontent

Who Will Decide About Royalties

Alberta's Tar Sands Gamble

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royalties, oil, profits,
Bill Hunter, Alberta Royalty Review,
Alberta Cabinet, IBEW, Ed Stelmach,
Big Oil,oil royalties, AFL, Gil McGowan, Fort McMurray, IWW,

How Do You Spell Sell Out?

B U Z Z.

CAW shelves right to strike

In Alberta workers are fighting to change our regressive labour laws to allow the right to strike which was recognized this summer by the Supreme Court. In Ontario workers are being sold out by once progressive talking union leader Buzz Hargrove. All so he can increase his declining membership and assure his pork choppers their salaries. It is sending a chill through out the Canadian labour movement.

Hey maybe Buzz would like to move to Alberta, since the bosses here would love this kind of agreement. In fact thats why CLAC is so popular with employers out here. So what's the difference between CAW and the employee management consultants from CLAC....nothing.

If workers vote in favour of the CAW and the contract at their plant, any subsequent collective bargaining disputes would be resolved through binding arbitration rather than a walkout by the union or a lockout by the company.

The fundamental right to withdraw labour is a provision that unions have protected vigorously for decades as its only ultimate power against management.

But the CAW's decision to give up the right to strike triggered criticism from other labour leaders.

"It's a pretty drastic measure and ultimately is not good for workers because they no longer have the right to withdraw their labour," said Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

"It's pretty fundamental to the labour movement and collective bargaining. This is not good, especially if it's exchanged for voluntary recognition of the union. It certainly sets a precedent that working people need to be concerned about."

"Hargrove is creating CAW-employer associations," added Wayne Fraser, Ontario-Atlantic director of the United Steelworkers. "What's to stop other employers, especially Magna competitors, from rightfully asking the CAW for the same no-strike right."

Hargrove said it wouldn't be possible for other auto-parts companies with a union to demand the same provision. However, a non-union employer could get a similar arrangement, he said. "Invite us in."

Hargrove recognizes the need for his business union to adapt to modern business practices, mergers and acquisitions to expand the base of capital (union dues). This began when CAW raided SEIU for its members, claiming it was doing it in the name of democratic social unionism. Which got CAW temporarily removed from the CLC. AUPE in Alberta followed CAW's lead and left the AFL and CLC declaring itself an indepedent union, with support from Buzz.

Neither of these moves were not about democracy or workers rights, since both unions have hired staff and their own management structures. Rather it was about money. In the CAW's case busting a rival union and gaining its members, in AUPE's case retaining affiliation fees they could use themselves.

Now Buzz has gone even further with the potential of 20,000 dues paying workers with a forced dues check off, the Rand Formula, and no right to strike, he will be able to use those funds to balance the books as more attrition hits the auto sector and more of his members retire.

It's a cynical and shallow motive but one that should be expected by business unions that no longer see their purpose as overthrowing capitalism but as getting their members the best deal they can under capitalism.

Once upon a time unions like CAW and others called themselves Social Unions
somehow different from their American International business union counterparts. They were about fighting globalization and neo-liberalism. Buzz has repeatedly claimed he is left wing. Yep the left wing of capitalism.

Today the CAW as I predicted, is all about adapting to globalization and neo-liberalism in order to give Canadian corporations a fighting chance in the world market.

Oct 19, 2007	Sam Gindin	The CAW and Magna: Disorganizing the Working Class
Through the 1980s and 1990s, as the attacks on past working class gains intensified, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) was widely recognized – not just in North America but abroad – as standing at the forefront of working class resistance. With the Magna-CAW Agreement signed on October 15, 2007, the CAW now seems at the forefront of working class desperation and defeat...

This is not unlike the recent mergers of the International Transportation and Steel unions and other international unions that are facing declining memberships and lack of bargaining power.

Once again the unions show they are merely an extension of capitalism not an alternative to it.

That alternative exists and it is Revolutionary Syndicalism that was birthed with the IWW over a hundred years ago.

The employing class and the working class have nothing in common."
Preamble to the IWW Constitution

"When the working class unites, there will be a lot of jobless labor leaders."
Eugene Debs, 1905 speech to the IWW Convention

See:

Unions the State and Capital

Global Labour in the Age of Empire

WHITHER SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?
THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM, LABOUR AND THE NDP
A SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Will Canadian Labour Accept Free Trade?

Business Unions Sell-out B.C. General Strike

Nationalism Will Not Stop North American Union

This is Class War

CAW To Leave CLC?

Sniveling NDP

Labour Abandons the NDP

Unite the Left

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Buzz Hargrove,
Liberals, unionization,
CAW, Canada, auto, automobile, Frank Stronach, Magna, business unions, auto parts

Alberta Reds

And it ain't just our necks. Take that conservative revisionists, you know who you are. Southern Alberta was the origin of union organizing in Alberta and Western Canada at the beginning of last century laying the foundation for Western Canadian Industrial Unionism.

Alberta Labour History Institute Visits Southern Alberta Foundation of the Union Movement in Western Canada

Edmonton: A provincial labour history group, the Alberta Labour History Institute (ALHI) will be in Medicine Hat for three days this week to promote labour history as key aspect of the industrial development of the Medicine Hat area.

ALHI will be in the Medicine Hat area from Wednesday to Friday, October 10-12 to conduct Oral History interviews with labour leaders and community activists. In addition, they will participate in activities organized by the Medicine Hat Clay Industries Historical Society, including a noon luncheon for former clay industry employees at the Museum on Thursday, and a presentation to students at the Eagle Butte School in Dunmore on Friday.

The visit to South-Eastern Alberta is the first stage in a series of community visits across the province as part of a five-year project leading up to the centennial of the Alberta Federation of Labour in 2012.

Entitled ‘Project 2012’, the mission will gather stories about work and working people to ensure that labour and its long history in each area of the Province is preserved for students, academic researchers, historians and others. Videotaped interviews will be conducted with local workers, and pictures, materials, and other artifacts will be collected to add to the story.

This material will be posted on the ALHI website at www.labourhistory.ca which was constructed two years ago as part of Alberta’s Centenary. An education project with Aspen Foundation is being developed for integration into the Alberta Social Studies curriculum for Grades 1 to 12.

ALHI President Dave Werlin says these trips are dedicated to highlighting the profile of workers and their organizations throughout Alberta.

“This is why this volunteer labour history institute was started about 10 years ago by trade unionists, community activists, librarians, archivists and historians,” said Werlin, “We realized that someone had to take the initiative to preserve and publicize the story of Alberta’s working people, otherwise it would be lost forever - a critical but untold part of Alberta’s history.”

“People in Alberta may remember some of the strikes that took place in the Medicine Hat area years ago. What many don’t know, however, is that 100 years ago, this whole area was the hotbed of union organization in Western Canada. Really, this is where it all started.”

“Medicine Hat must be of particular interest to anyone engaged in labour history because it was one of the first fully industrialized centres in this Province. Manufacturers and government policy makers seized upon the natural resources and other advantages this area had to offer for industrial development, and it was no surprise that workers’ organizations quickly followed.”

It was in Lethbridge, another Southern Alberta city, that the Alberta Federation of Labour was formed, when about 25 railway workers, meatpackers, construction tradesmen, public workers, coal miners and farmers met in 1912 to form an organization through which they could work for political and social reform. This is why ALHI decided to start its community visits in this part of the province.

-30-

SEE:

Alberta Labour History Institute Web Launch

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labour, Edmonton, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, labour-history, history, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, IWW, OBU, labourweb

No Boom For Canadian Workers

What Time Is It?

Time For the Four Hour Day.

Employees burn while the economy booms With Canada's unemployment rate hovering at its lowest level in 30 years, you'd think all would be harmonious in the labour market. But while more of us are working, a new study from the Canadian Policy Research Networks shows many of us aren't happy with the quality of our jobs. Despite the current economic boom, real wages have increased only slightly since 1980. And it's also becoming more difficult to balance work and home life.One in five Canadians are dissatisfied in that regard, a 20 percent increase from 1990 to 2001.Working overtime is part of that equation. Almost a quarter of those questioned reported working overtime, and about half of that extra work was uncompensated. Teachers lead the way in unpaid overtime, at 34 percent. And work schedules are problematic as well. Both long work weeks and short work weeks are on the rise, meaning some workers have no time, while others are always strapped for cash.

Only one in three Canadians is ”very satisfied” at work and the country will face difficulties attracting new workers, according to a study published on Monday.

“It should be of concern that only about one-third of all workers are very satisfied with their jobs and that fewer than one in five employees are very positive about multiple dimensions of job quality,” the Canadian Policy Research Network said in its report.

“The report provides solid Canadian evidence that the nature of a job and the environment in which people work are critical to achieving employee satisfaction,” the report’s author Graham Lowe wrote.

What workers want: It's time to raise the bar

My research for a Canadian Policy Research Networks report, "21st Century Job Quality: Achieving What Canadians Want," examined dozens of job-quality measures to reach this conclusion. The biggest change since the early 1990s has been a 45-per-cent decline in unemployment. However, the hiring binge has not increased the proportion of full-time, continuing jobs.

Precarious employment persists. While more people work shorter weeks, the longer work week (more than 40 hours) has increased. Employers have been slow to adopt or offer flexible hours and schedules, something workers of all generations want. Information technology, and growing concern for the environment, should make telecommuting an easy move, but if this happens at all, it usually involves unpaid overtime on evenings and weekends. Basic benefits are being cut back, notably employer pension plans and supplementary medical insurance.

SEE:

Productivity and Wages

$63.90 Per Hour

The End Of The Leisure Society

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Canada, work, leisure, working hours, leisure time, overtime, Veblen, crisis of leisure time,
workers, variable costs, labour, labor, Marx, variable capital, labour theory of value, social-factory, proletariat, capital, capitalism, profit, working conditions, service workers

The Return of Child Labour

Child labour and the ten hour day were supposed to be things of the past like unions. Unions were created to end child labour and fight for the eight hour day, today they are needed more than ever among the vast majority of unorganized workers.

Teens are taking on a very adult 50-hour workweek

Researchers tallied the hours that teens aged 15-19 spent at school, doing homework, working part-time jobs and doing chores, and found that they did an average of 7.1 hours of unpaid and paid labour per day in 2005. That adds up to a very adult 50-hour workweek.

Also See:

Temp Workers For Timmies

Better Late Than Never

The Labour Shortage Myth

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Canadian Labour Blogging

Uncorrected Proofs has a three part article on the Labour Movement in Canada and Quebec and its response, or lack of response, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Part One

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Chater of Rights and Freedoms - Part Two

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Chater of Rights and Freedoms - Part Three

Relentlessly Progressive Economics reports on Buzz Hargrove's take on Kyoto; and comments on the conflict between Small Business and Unions; Why small independent businesses should be pro union


Daily Dissidence reports on the six month long Credit Union workers strike in Ontario; COPE 343 Strike Update

Ken Chapman addresses the issue of safety on the job in Alberta, or lack thereof...Workplace Deaths Increasing in Alberta - Improved Literacy is Part of the Solution.

And since today is May Day check out these Posts at Progressive Bloggers.


See:

Happy May Day

Day of Mourning

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anarchy, anarchism, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, historyworkers, injuries, assault, crime, work, labour, labor, May Week Labour Arts Festival, Redmonton, service workers, Canada, May Day, MayDay, May Week, Edmonton, unions, Alberta,

May Day Lotta Continua

May Day the International Workers Day and the Struggle Continues (Lotta Continua)

As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past. Rosa Luxemburg 1894

Nigerian workers: still searching for succour

Today, the first day of May, otherwise called Workers Day in Nigeria, no longer has any meaning to many a Nigerian worker. It is doubtful if the workers understand the significance of the day as one set aside to recognize the valour and sacrifice of the creators of the nation’s wealth. The average Nigerian worker does not see any need for the celebration of his contribution to nation building or for his efforts to ensure that the country of his birth becomes prosperous so that he can live an assured life in future. The day to him now provides the opportunity to show the world the level of his impoverishment

FOR some time now, the May Day celebration has become a day for wilful display of anger by Nigerian workers against their employers, both government and private. Nowadays, industrial unions of both the public and organized private sectors look forward to the Workers Day to publicly vent their spleen against the soulless establishments that have grounded the nation’s social machinery that would have ensured and enhanced the quality of life in the nation. As such, the venues of the Day’s celebrations across the country are usually rally grounds where the workers loudly bemoan their pitiful conditions and declaim the nation’s rulers for making the lives of Nigerian workers laborious.

THAT the venues of May Day rally have been turned into agitation ground is an indication of the virtual collapse of the nation’s social structures and the erosion of the lives of the nation’s teeming masses. The Nigerian worker has made a singsong of his pitiable social conditions. He is one of the poorly paid workers (if not the poorest) in the world. There has not been any time his take-home pay has been made adequate by his employer to give him the much needed lifeline. In spite of his resourcefulness, experience and contributions he is hardly able to live from hand to mouth.

BUT as most social scientists like Adam Smith have postulated, the real wealth of any nation is not in the tangible resources like gold, silver or crude oil. The wealth of a nation is not in the quality or arability of its land. The real wealth can only be found in the quality of its human resources. A highly cultivated human resource, in terms of good and quality education, highly enhanced salary package and functional social amenities, will, without doubt, be highly motivated and resourceful and very productive. Conversely, a workforce that is poorly remunerated will only produce a very low yield. In both cases, the society is at the receiving end. In other words, the quality (and lack of it) of any workforce will translate into the prosperity (and otherwise) of that particular society.

THE fact that Nigeria has enjoyed unqualified status among the “scum of the earth” shows the extent to which its people have been degraded and dehumanized. The nation is ranked among the poorest countries of the world in spite of its enormous natural resources; it holds an un-exalted position as one of the most corrupt nations in the world and as one of the most looted nations, looted and raped by its own citizens. What all this shows is that the nation has not invested adequately in its human resources and this has made it possible for the emergence of the uncouth and rogue leaders who raped and looted the nation’s essence and still got away with their crimes. The failure to cultivate good citizenship has made possible the collapse of the nation’s economic and social structures and led to the creation of criminals in both low and high places. The result of this is the present collapse of the nation’s social structures.

And in an ironic twist of fate the original Lotta Continua in Italy were the subject of a political witch hunt in the Seventies and Eighties. Like the Strega of Old.

LOTTA CONTINUA

Italy has always had a particularly active political Left and in the late '60s and early '70s an extraparliamentary faction that descended into propagandist violence. In the so-called Hot Autumn of 1969, a bomb exploded in the Agricultural Bank in Milan, killing 16 people. An anarchist railway man, Giuseppe Pinelli, was taken in for questioning by the police. Three days later, Pinelli (immortalized in Dario Fo's play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist) fell to his death from the window of the police commissioner Luigi Calabresi's office. The police claimed suicide but the Left accused them of murder. In 1972 Calabresi was shot dead in front of his home. The far-left Lotta Continua claimed it was an act of proletarian justice but many think right-wing extremists were involved. After almost 16 years of silence, an ex-militant of Lotta, riven with guilt, gave himself up, claiming responsibility for the murder. Leonardo Marino then implicated the leadership of Lotta in the affair.

Carlo Ginzburg, a noted and respected historian, draws on his work on witchcraft trials in the 16th and 17th centuries to dissect the state's case in this late-20th-century show trial. He has written a provocative and passionate book that casts a detailed look at the facts of the case, facts that when presented here cast serious doubt on the judgments reached in Italy early in 1999.

Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice. Translated by Antony Shugaar. New York: Verso, 1999. There is a sort of general democratic interest in showing how a concrete trial functions. --Carlo Ginzburg, Liberation (October 9, 1997) Social conflict in Italy during the late 1960s and early 1970s had a particular breadth and impact. Radical-left movements like Lotta Continua championed factory occupations and large demonstrations and saw the Communist Party and labor unions as stifling the workers' revolutionary project. ^1 Elements within the state responded with "the strategy of tension": exceptional police brutality and an instrumental approach to extreme-right violence (the cause of more deaths than extreme-left violence), often carried out sub rosa in conjunction with state secret services and intended by some to destabilize the state and create the basis for an authoritarian regime. In the mid-1970s, Italy promulgated a series of exceptional laws that bolstered police powers at the expense of individual rights and gave a special place to informers; increased the time an individual could be held in preventive detention; and made individuals of the same group liable for the same sentence despite differences in individuals' actions. ^2 Faced with declining expectations for revolution, factions [End Page 135] of the extreme left turned to vanguard party terrorism.

Ginzburg regards the convictions in the Calabresi case as the 20th century equivalent of the witchcraft and heresy convictions under the Inquisition. The contemporary Italian courts, he says, cared just as little for the evidence as the 16th and 17th century Catholic ones: Suspects could affirm their crimes, deny all or remain silent, and all these possible responses were regarded as evidence of their guilt. The Calabresi judges ended up believing the informer, Leonardo Marino, despite the dozens of problems Ginzburg cites with his story, any one of which, he says, should have created more than the shadow of a doubt and led to acquittal.

Ginzburg, a specialist in probing sixteenth-century inquisitorial records and
writing micro histories of the victims, uses court documents to scrutinise the
notorious May 1990 conviction of his friend of thirty years, the journalist Adriano
Sofri. Founder and leader of the radical left-wing group Lotta Continua from the
1960s until its dissolution in 1976, Sofri, along with his two co-defendants, was
pronounced guilty of the 17 May 1972 murder of the police superintendent Luigi
Calabresi, widely believed to be responsible for the death under interrogation of an
accused suspect three years earlier. Almost the entire case against Sofri rested on the testimony of one former Lotta Continua militant, Leonardo Marino. After a second career as an armed robber, Marino confessed in 1987 to a parish priest and in 1988 to three carabinieri offices his role as the driver in Calabresi’s assassination; he also named his former Lotta comrade Ovidio Bompressi as the murderer and two others, Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostafani, as the authors of the deed (pp. 8–11). Despite his long-delayed declaration of guilt as well as important errors and inconsistencies in his testimony, Marino’s accusations were never seriously challenged.

Ginzburg, although a renowned investigator of non-elites under pressure from
forces from above, was uninterested in Marino or his astrologer companion Antonia Bistolfi. While deftly demolishing Marino’s testimony, Ginzburg neglected to examine the bases of the ex-thief’s repentance, which had so powerful an impact
on the court.

Instead, Ginzburg’s main subject is the presiding judge Antonio Lombardi, who
‘with a clear conscience’ and ‘absolutely no doubt’ pronounced the ‘complete
reliability [of] Marino’s statements’ (p. 103). Although acknowledging that historians and judges share the practice of contextualising their evidence, Ginzburg demands a far higher threshold of proof from the figure handing out sentences and berates Lombardi for his reckless and illogical leap in validating Marino’s questionable story and condemning Sofri (pp. 110–18).

Unlike the Papon trial, where prominent historians gave contrasting views of the Vichy past, the Sofri trial was dominated by the judge’s and the prosecutor’s shared trauma of a decade of violence. Thus, The suspect, a railway worker named Giuseppe Pinelli, either fell, jumped or was pushed out the window of Calabresi’s office while under questioning about the bomb blast on 12 Dec. 1969 in the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Milan that had killed seventeen people and injured eighty-eight others. The subsequent official investigation showed that right-wing extremists, aided by the Italian secret services, had set the bomb.

Donald Reid, ‘The Historian and the Judges’, Radical History Review 80 (Spring 2001), p. 144, n. 4. Lotta Continua immediately denounced Calabresi for the murder; the incident was the subject of Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo’s play, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Marino gave the wrong color of the stolen car and incorrectly described the assassination route (pp. 22–5, 72–97). ‘I do not know what pushed Marino to lie. The psychological motivations . . . seem . . . wholly irrelevant.’ (p. 97). according to Ginzburg, much like the earlier inquisitors, they were all too ready to accept even the most defective confirmatory evidence.

To be sure, in writing as an advocate for the defence Carlo Ginzburg appears
to have suspended his own critical judgement. Not only are most witnesses in
criminal trials unreliable, forgetful and self-contradictory, particularly sixteen years after the event, but also key evidence is often missing.25 Nonetheless, The Judge and the Historian is itself an important historical document. Underlying Ginzburg’s approach is a spirited defence of old-fashioned historical inquiry against the postmodern challenge, as well as a strong assertion of the existence of proof and of truth (pp. 16–17).26 Moreover, a century after another flawed trial, Ginzburg’s J’accuse not only demonstrates how those in power continue to rewrite history (in this case holding Lotta Continua responsible for ‘the years of lead’) but also suggests disquieting links with Italy’s Fascist past (pp. 119–20)

A H/T to Terry Glavin


Also See:

May Week in Redmonton

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

The Origins and Traditions of May Day

Anarchist Mayor of Milan

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anarchy, anarchism, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, historyworkers, injuries, assault, crime, work, labour, labor, May Week Labour Arts Festival, Redmonton, service workers, Canada, May Day, MayDay, May Week, Edmonton, unions, Alberta,
libertarian, Italy, Fo, autonomous, marxism, anarchist, anarchism, Milan

The End Of The Leisure Society

Many Canadians probably feel as if they are working longer hours. Now, a new study by Statistics Canada finds they are right: Workers are spending more time on the job and less time with their families.

On average, workers had 45 minutes less time with their families on workdays in 2005 than they did almost two decades earlier, says the study released Tuesday. Most of that lost time is taken up by work.

While 45 minutes every day might not seem like much, the time adds up. Based on a 260-day work year, that means 195 fewer hours spent with the family in 2005 than in 1986. That's almost five, 40-hour work weeks.

From 1998 to 2005, the average work week in the active population increased from
44.6 to 46.3 hours, while leisure time declined from 31.5 hours to 29.5 hours,
effectively erasing two decades of gains on that front.
¨ Over the same period, fathers’ average work week increased from 49.1 to 53.2 hours
and mothers’ from 39.4 to 44.1 hours.
¨ During the 1990s, fathers increased the time they devoted to household chores and
care of the children, while mothers increased both their working hours and their leisure
time. But this trend toward closing the gender gap in caring and working came to a halt
in 2005.
¨ Parents with children under the age of five are the most likely to report being time stressed
– two-thirds of mothers and just over half of fathers.

The crisis of leisure time was a fixation amongst sociologists and popular culture pundits, in the Sixties and Seventies we were promised a glorious future of the end of work, or at least a working week of twenty hours by 2000.

Instead the End of Work has become the End of Leisure and the extension of the exploitation of the masses by the extension of the working day and the work week.

Labor saving technologies were supposed to usher in the Leisure Society and in the 1960s the concern was what would we do with all the time on our hands? How delighfully naive. Labor saving technologies meant one person could do more! It was like the paperless office promise...about as practical as the paperless bathroom Yes, we will find work to do for all the idle hands.

Instead of the eight hour day and the forty hour week in Alberta we now have a 44 hour week, before overtime is considered. And we have many folks working more than one job, thus a longer work time. All this because capitalism is a failed dream for the vast majority of workers. And in a grand case of irony the Leisure Studies program at the University of Calgary was canceled due to budget cuts.

While our leisure time was supposed to liberate us in the recreation of ourselves from workers into the ultimate renaissance (hu)man it has simply created a literal cottage industry of consumers owning a second home and consuming capitalist recreation.

The leisure industry channels and organises our desires and enables optimum enjoyment, preferably in a second home. For while the first home excels in usefulness and efficiency, the second home symbolises all that is good in life. Here, on a carefully chosen sofa, we can finally take a breather from our busy lives, preferably in leisure wear and with a Bloody Mary. Here, we are far removed from bosses and technology, close to nature and our loved ones, and do only what we feel like doing.

When we think of leisure, we likely ponder pleasure in paradise, or we entertain the idea of being somewhat lackadaisical, perhaps in a sunny clime. We might not think of “leisure” as a topic of study per se and we probably give little thought to what researchers of leisure actually do outside of their leisure time.

“A lot of people cringe,” admits Don Dawson, acting chair of the Department of Leisure Studies at the University of Ottawa. “They wonder what I am talking about.”

In fact, what he is often talking about is a theoretical concept of leisure and utopia. And he talks about it formally in a presentation at the international Canadian Congress on Leisure Research in Edmonton in May. This topic represents the culmination of his 20 years of research into a diverse number of subjects — from his first major project in the early 1980s, which looked at the leisure activities of immigrants, to other interests such as sustainable tourist development in northern Québec, mentoring at-risk youth through recreation and family leisure activities.

Above all, Dawson suggests most outside observers have a very limited understanding of the field of leisure studies.

“What strikes people is the diversity,” he says. “The recreation field, for example, stretches from therapeutic recreation to eco-tourism, from sports to the arts, from the sociology of pleasure and leisure constraints to post-modernity and culture.”

He adds that the range of this field is huge, and has its own distinctive history and its trends. Over the past decade, for example, many investigators have concentrated on leisure constraints, the factors that have prevented people from enjoying their recreational activity. Similarly, others have examined the effects of leisure — not simply the personal benefits, but also social, community, economic and ecological impacts. More specifically, leisure studies has analysed tourism, which generates $50 billion worth of spending in Canada every year, leaving its mark on the country in many different ways.

We could have the leisure society if we wanted it. But Samuel Smiles won; our lives are ruled by a work ethic and a duty to consume ...

This is the contradiction of advanced or decadent capitalism as predicted by Marx in his Grundrisse; and by futurists today.

The black box economy is a strictly theoretical possibility, but may result where machines gradually take over more and more roles until the whole economy is run by machines, with everything automated. People could be gradually displaced by intelligent systems, robots and automated machinery. If this were to proceed to the ultimate conclusion, we could have a system with the same or even greater output as the original society, but with no people involved. The manufacturing process could thus become a ‘black box’. Such a system would be so machine controlled that humans would not easily be able to pick up the pieces if it crashed - they would simply not understand how it works, or could not control it. It would be a fly-by-wire economy.

Thorstein Veblen declared the existence of the leisure class at the end of WWI and the IWW declared that the four hour day could lead to full employment. Yet here we are almost a hundred years later and we are nowhere close to that liberatory experience instead we are going backwards to the future, forward to the past, working longer hours and ending up with the ten and twelve hour day. Something we fought to end in 1888.

Technology, automation, computerization, has not liberated us it has merely made us cogs in the cybernetic machine of modern capitalist society. And it is our bosses, our managers, and the professional class that continue to enslave us to their conceptions of life in their machine age.

And this is the Big Lesson: it takes workaholics to create, maintain and expand capitalism. As opposed to common beliefs (held by the uninitiated) – people, mostly, do not engage in business because they are looking for money (the classic profit motive). They do what they do because they like the Game of Business, its twists and turns, the brainstorming, the battle of brains, subjugating markets, the ups and downs, the excitement. All this has nothing to do with pure money. It has everything to do with psychology. True, the meter by which success is measured in the world of money is money – but very fast it is transformed into an abstract meter, akin to the monopoly money. It is a symbol of shrewdness, wit, foresight and insight.

Workaholics identify business with pleasure. They are the embodiment of the pleasure principle. They make up the class of the entrepreneurs, the managers, the businessmen. They are the movers, the shakers, the pushers, the energy.

Also see;

Black History Month; Paul Lafargue

Take Time From the Boss

Work Sucks

Time For The Four Hour Day

Tyrant Time-Tempus Fug'it

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Canada, work, leisure, working hours, leisure time, overtime, Veblen, crisis of leisure time,