[L-I] Open Letter to Fred Muzin (Hospital Employees Union executive)

Open Letter to Fred Muzin.

Dear Fred:
	You and I are not friends by any means, but I have known you from your 
work and spoken highly of you for a long time now. Perhaps you are 
wondering why I am singling you out to speak to in this public manner. For 
that, a bit of background is in order.
	From the moment I first became aware of who you were, I must say that I 
was quite impressed. You were a leader of a trade union who knew just what 
this government here in BC-- the most reactionary provincial government in 
Canadian history-- had in store  for the Hospital Employees Union, and for 
health care itself. I saw in you something I was deeply respectful and 
hopeful for. I saw-- in a giant sea of trade union leaders who wanted to 
retreat in the face of 9-11, who wanted to isolate the trade union movement 
from the grassroots movements and activists, who wanted to speak the 
language of compromise and single issue politics-- a (dare I say it) Trade 
Union Bureaucrat who knew that the struggle of his union was a part of a 
struggle that covered so many other struggles.
	You also walked the walk. Here's my short synopsis of my observations of 
you over the last few years. I first noticed that you were the loud, angry 
TUB who accepted an invitation from the Anti Poverty Committee to speak at 
perhaps the greatest day of resistance to this government: June 12, 2002. 
You were not just on target with your criticisms of Liberal attacks on 
health care, you were speaking about all of the other issues that day. You 
were representing your union (as an executive that was automatic), but BC's 
labour movement did not mobilize people for that action, the action where 
we who protested Gordon Campbell stopped him from speaking at an art 
exhibit opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Afterwards, even in the 
climate that BC has produced over the Campbell years, you didn't apologize 
for having been there when a group of “uncouth” activists (on both sides of 
a perimeter fence, including blasts of pepper spray outside the fence and 
police tackling of demonstrators inside) said with their actions that they 
would try and stop Campbell nearly anyway possible.
	A few days after that, I was off to the Calgary mobilization against the 
G8 meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta. Again, by siding with the 
“anti-globalization” movement, you took sides that many in the labour 
movement work unpaid overtime to avoid taking. And when I and some friends 
returned and attended a “report back” that called for a new approach and 
new militancy in our resistance to neo-liberalism, you put yourself as a 
direct contact on our planning list. This was while you were speaking at 
the event, the only TUB to do so in the whole city. That seemed to speak 
volumes to me as to who you were, despite the precarious position you held. 
I saw a man of principle that could be trusted. From that point on, 
whenever I saw you, I took note.
	A couple of months later, Gordon Campbell was speaking at the Pan Pacific 
Hotel downtown on almost no notice. As is often the case in such 
situations, only local grassroots activists (spearheaded by the APC again) 
responded politically in such a short space of time. You were asked to 
speak to a crowd that might have numbered 40 or 50. You did, you connected 
up the issues and you did so passionately. I recall at that demonstration 
having a conversation with another unaffiliated self-described 
revolutionary about how we both would be proud to stand beside you on any 
issue, any podium and hear any words you had to say. Having personally 
watched as TUB's around the planet retreated in the face of 9-11, who 
politically attacked “uncontrollable” elements after the assassination of 
Carlo Giuliani in Genoa Italy (July  2001) and who left a series of 
activists in the streets to face the full might of the state in the “Battle 
of Seattle”-- breaking a promise to bring the demonstration to the same 
point, such praise from my cynical mind was real and very rare, if not 
worth all that much to anyone in any case.
	The reason I gave such praise so easily is that I thought you were as rare 
as could be: a TUB who knew the real issues, who knew his and his unions 
real allies, and who knew what form the struggle would have to take in 
order to not only protect his members, but to protect health care in BC and 
across Canada.
	On Halloween 2002, again my respect elevated. You were not asked to speak 
at a rally that mostly student groups had organized against the proposed 
Free Trade Area of the Americas. Not only that, but the demonstration was 
horribly underachieving. It was small and somewhat uneventful. You 
attended, unlike others, and simply wandered through the small crowd. You 
spoke to me specifically about the problems that your union and the health 
care system itself in BC were about to face. By lending your support to the 
struggles others organized, you made me believe that you understood 
solidarity and that dealings with you would not be, like so often is the 
case, a one-way show of solidarity.
	But all of these events were only the beginning of my respect. On November 
22 of the same year, you and others of the HEU leadership tried to force 
the hand of the BC Federation of Labour, and tried to make others 
understand the urgency of the struggle that the HEU was facing. You went to 
the first attempt to “contract out” laundry for cleaning in Alberta and, 
even with that weasel Chris Alnutt, you blocked the van trying to leave-- 
forcing the RCMP to arrest the lot of you. It was a plea for help, a cry 
for attention to what was being done to the health care system, and it was 
a brave move by a trade union leadership. Most TUB's have proven, time and 
again, that they would rather save their own skins than take real risks. 
Myself and many others outside the trade union leadership were further and 
deeply convinced that we had a real working class fighter, a person to 
trust, a person to line up with on the barricades.
	And to be more than fair, most of the rest of the Trade Union Bureaucracy 
couldn't care less for your plight. After all, would Bureaucrats like Jim 
Sinclair really want to put it all on the line for the people who clean 
bedpans, change sheets and do such menial shit work? A leader of the BC 
Federation of Labour has paid his dues they would think to themselves, the 
HEU was not the union they were going to lay it all on the line for. 
Meanwhile, the grassroots activists didn't mind selling out the mostly 
women and heavily people of colour HEU-- they were busy trying to “Stop the 
Olympics” and other campaigns that were worthy enough, but not rooted in 
the working class itself. Throughout this period, you must have wanted to 
scream, to pound your shoe like a Soviet leader, to scale Grouse Mountain 
and make people understand that the struggle the HEU was about to go 
through (the Liberal government made no secret that your union was in their 
sights a long time ago) was tied to the struggle for the rights of the 
poor, unemployed and homeless to full, decent and free health care. It was 
tied to the rights of all trade unions to decent agreements that respect 
them as working people, and to all unions to collectively bargain. I am 
just one of the many who didn't see that at the time. For this, you are not 
only forgiven, we all owe the members of the HEU an apology for not 
“getting it” sooner. We will all pay for this error.
	These reasons and many more are why I write this open letter. I write this 
because you have taught me much by my observations of you over the years, 
and this last week has been no exception. We all, painfully, are already 
aware of most of the events of the past week, beginning on April 26. After 
over a year ago the members of the HEU refused to approve a deal that was 
much better than what was ultimately legislated, they had gone on the 
picket line to fight against the imposed contracting out of jobs, the speed 
ups on shift, the 15% pay cut and more. They were taking a stand, and as 
the government of BC started to ratchet up the rhetoric, other rank and 
file union workers across the province all started to see that this attack 
was not only on the HEU, not only on health care, and not only on the 
public sector. It was an attack on the very right of unions themselves to 
bargain collectively. So when Bill 37 was introduced it was mere seconds 
before not only did you and the other HEU leaders take the cue from your 
increasingly militant rank and file and defy the back-to-work legislation, 
but wildcat strikes began all across the province. It's hard for me not to 
go into this in detail, because such actions are so rare, so beautiful and 
so full of the promise of a better day that I am loathe to not mention it 
all again. After all, even some construction workers left their unorganized 
job site and joined an HEU picket that day-- and were fired, without 
reason, of course. Perhaps you could have said at least a public word about 
them, the workers who gave up their livelihoods in a show of solidarity 
along class lines?
	I will stop recounting the actions of the three days before black Sunday 
night. Suffice to say, when the IWA, CUPE, BCTF and so many small and large 
union locals from so many different trades all show solidarity, it is only 
because the rank and file of these unions force their hand. Almost every 
picket was started from below, and begrudgingly accepted from above, after 
the act was il fait accompli. 	
	The BC Fed had to scramble. Men like Jim Sinclair do not like the idea of 
the working class they think they run _leading them_ into history. They are 
terrified of the motion of the working people beneath them, and so should 
they be. Working people are not about protecting their summer homes, their 
SUV's, their privileged positions vis a vis their own members. We working 
people, in or out of a union, are in desperate need of a decent health care 
system, a real living wage, protection from the whims of authoritarian 
bosses and draconian economics. You had spoken and even acted like you 
understood that so many times that when I heard the fix I didn't merely 
think-- I *knew* you were one of the dissenting voices. I knew you wouldn't 
act to destroy the greatest act of solidarity that the working people of BC 
had ever coddled together, like a run away train-- because it came from 
below. I was completely certain that you were not like that Jack Munroe 
clone Sinclair who would help privatize health care to save his own skin. I 
was certain that the prerogatives of the NDP, Carole James and her “open 
letter” to Gordon Campbell and the Fed were at complete logger heads with 
the TUB who had stood for so much more. When I was first told that you were 
part of the executive that had sold out their own union, the workers and 
people of the entire province to save their own pathetic little careers, I 
said I didn't believe it.
	But then I saw the vote call. 13 for the betrayal, 7 proudly against. The 
names are out. You could have voted no and the Fed would still have sold 
you out-- 12 -8 has the same exact result. Besides, I think all of us know 
that brother Sinclair would have done anything he had to do in order to 
scuttle the chance that the political situation would stop being Liberal 
vs. NDP, but provincial governments vs. the working class. I was rather 
stunned to see that of you.
	You are off the role call of those who should be trusted. You are no 
longer anything other than a Quisling to the working people-- you served up 
far more than just your own members. Then, you made excuses; pathetic, 
ugly, sad little excuses. I have long ago learned that Trade Union 
Bureaucrats were not to be trusted as a whole. I learned when the tear gas 
wafted through the air of Seattle and I had just turned 24 that big labour 
leaders like Jim Sinclair and John Sweeney will do anything to grassroots 
activists, to the basic causes of the working people, and they will always 
get away with it until the day we make all traitors pay and reclaim the 
society that was built, on stolen Native land, by the stolen labour of the 
working class. In that much, I learned nothing new watching you turn this 
last week when you were really pressed to the wall.
	But I learned something far more important. Perhaps this might seem a 
little extreme, dear Fred, but I learned that once a Trade Union 
Bureaucrat, always a Trade Union Bureaucrat. Or, better put, once a 
parasite always a parasite. How does it feel to know, after all of your 
fine work, that this is what you will be remembered for?

Yours without any fond regards,
and in the greatest of contempt.



Macdonald Stainsby.
unorganized worker,
proudly raised by a single mother of the BCTF, local 41, Burnaby.


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



_______________________________________________
Leninist-International mailing list
[email protected]
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international