The Sell out of TUB's (again).

This reply to Aaron turned into a mini essay on the recent class struggle 
in BC. For your pleasures...

[email protected] wrote:

> against privitizing our healthcare. Does anyone know of any other grassroots 
> media coverage on this besides indymedia-vancouver. If so please let me know. 

go here:
www.generalstrikenews.ca
www.resist.ca
---
May 03, 2004.

Today, after three days of the most beautiful sunshine, I awoke to 
rainfall. It was clear that this was no accident. As if the important 
lesson to be had was to illustrate exactly how unions *really* operate, the 
rank and file workers had brought this province, through nothing but 
spontaneous actions, to the brink of a general strike. Wildcat strikes 
began almost immediately following the legislated agreement forced upon the 
Hospital Employees Union (HEU) and back to work legislation-- legislation 
that aimed to eliminate thousands of jobs, start contracting out 
(privatizing) many different positions, and forcing a pay cut of 15%. The 
level of this attack on the HEU was the only thing that the "deal" 
changed-- it is now to be phased in over a couple of months, as called for 
by the beloved social democratic NDP. The number of positions being 
contracted out has been reduced and capped (pending another legislation, 
one would imagine).

	The last few days wandering around Vancouver were utterly surreal. 
Everywhere I went, it was totally clear that the population (on both sides 
of the equation) were thinking of themselves in class terms. In some 
'mundane' daily situations, strangers began (though limitedly) to speak of 
one another as brother and sister. The Vancouver District and Labour 
Council (VDLC) hadn't even got it together to hold a MayDay rally-- or even 
    call one-- until the second week of April. I know this, because I was 
working on the small MayWorks festival where they were considering taking 
advertisements for our ads in the program (they eventually did, but the 
size of the demo-- over 10 000-- had a wee bit more to do with the 
escalating class struggle than it did our program).

	Right from the moment that many hours drive away small locals started 
going on wildcat strikes, the buzz and almost irreversible escalations 
began. Labour in BC was about to flex it's muscle and reclaim the society 
which it had built.

	Most of the striking workers were public sector. Announced for strike 
action today had supposedly been the BC Teachers Federation, the Canadian 
Union of Public Employees, many small unions and independent locals, and 
even the ultra reactionary Industrial Wood and Allied workers union were 
prepared to start rotating strikes throughout different regions of BC.

	During all of this action, the BC Fed was conspicuously silent. The terror 
that was running through their veins at the thought of two things: Workers 
organizing in such a fashion as to render them irrelevant threatened their 
domination over the working class itself, and also the concept of 
envisioning a situation where labour was on one side, and the government 
(including the Liberals, NDP and others) on the other destroys the basic 
reason for being of men like Jim Sinclair: to get the NDP elected to 
Victoria's Legislative Assembly. The jostling was never made apparent to 
the public or the population of workers who weren't "in the know", ie., on 
the inside of the top echelons of the Trade Union Bureaucracy.

	April 30: While myself and the rest of the small MayWorks collective were 
hosting a cabaret and people were invited to come and speak on behalf of 
the HEU, where dozens of concerned activists (both union and non) spent 
hours making flags calling for the general strike the next day at the VDLC 
rally, the new leader of the New Democratic Party showed us that she isn't 
really that new at all. Releasing the document the night before the "final 
phase" of the negotiations we were to learn about today, Carol James called 
for a 15% pay cut to the HEU, with the Health Employer getting the right to 
"outsource" (privatize for crappy pay, etc) "only" 600 positions, and end 
any retroactive reclamation of the 15% cut from the April paycheques. Thank 
God for the NDP! We are all much safer.

The buzz was in the air the entire weekend of MayDay festivities. Due to 
other MayWorks duties, I missed the large labour rally. But the main 
question I asked was answered. Was the mood angry? You bet it was. And to 
have over 10 000 workers from various trade unions show up to a rally with 
little to no publicity and called horribly late was a massive victory.

Sunday was much of the same: Many other activist events went by the wayside 
(ones that had been long planned), and people all put their collective 
energies into working towards and for the general strike. The list of who 
was going to go out only grew during the day. Hydro workers had been 
sporadically wildcat striking since Thursday.

Well, the sell-out was announced by the government and the TUB Jim 
Sinclair, BC's head labour bureaucrat. The sell-out was not something that 
many of us didn't expect, but the rapidity and the total betrayal still has 
my head spinning. The James plan, that is, the NDP plan, was followed to 
the full. Chris Alnut and the HEU leadership completely sold their workers 
out and have since gone into hiding. They have turned off their cell phones 
and completely made themselves invisible, let alone unavailable.

This morning I started off for work, but at the last moment I called in 
"busy" and headed to the hospital, having heard that the lines were still 
up. The line at Vancouver General ended up being one health care worker and 
a lot of people who would spend their coffee breaks outside. The bosses had 
spies coming out as well, looking for trouble to fire people. At noon, a 
public/non-media meeting was held. The rank and file were very angry and 
some people were openly calling for Jim Sinclair's head and far more. The 
lesser ranked TUB's who did show up were intimidated by it all. Some were 
planning to go to the head office of their union and picket that, others 
wanted to go to the Fed itself and [expletive] Sinclair.

I am uncertain as to what happened at the closed meeting that was called 
later in the afternoon. But Quesnel and much of Vancouver Island saw shut 
downs today, and no one has called anything off from the rank and file. 
Having the basic point of collective bargaining taken away, and now taken 
again by the leadership of the HEU, one pissed off worker said: are we ever 
going to get to vote on this? Or else what is the point of being in a 
union? Why did we carry out illegal job action?

Such good questions deserve answers. However, the simplest answer is the 
one that is almost too simple to point out. This all happened because the 
workers of the HEU, very heavily women and people of colour, took a stand 
at the grassroots level and forced the hand of the leaders. That inspired 
much in the way of spontaneous workers actions across the province. It was 
sold out when the institutionalized, well-fed, ultra job secure, summer 
house in country owning Trade Union Mis-leaders got in front of the train 
and took it off the rails.

We did not have a pre-revolutionary situation. We have just experienced 
people feeling their social power and some very important lessons-- lessons 
that the Sinclair's and Allnuts do not want learned. Very simply, that the 
number one barrier to the movement of the working class to reclaim its own 
is right there-- at the head table during all the speeches and songs about 
solidarity, sitting smugly and waiting for the fawning applause. Today, 
when Sinclair's name was spoken, it did not include applause. He was 
called, quite simply, a class traitor.

The struggle is not over, but it would be miraculous to see it reversed, 
the union members in the HEU do not have an alternative structure or social 
base to turn to. The betrayal, not the defeat, was the clear pain that I 
saw on many faces today, stunned at what had been done by "their" leaders. 
But there really is no surprise. That's the nature of the Labour 
Aristocracy, wedded to economistic approaches and in desperate need of the 
preservation of their (parasitical) position-- they think of themselves as 
shepherds, taking the flock to the promised land.

But the flock got more than a trifle uppity in the last week, and the 
herder himself Jim Sinclair or his loyal little border collie Chris Alnut 
couldn't get the flock back in the pen. They took over the field, and they 
were going to leave the farm all together, and go over the mountain. And 
when we all could taste that promised land, even a tiny bit of it, Sinclair 
and Alnut worked as hard as they could to close the gate and sell the whole 
farm to Campbell and the [neo] Liberals-- lest the beasts get loose.


-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
		--Brecht.


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