https://iclfi.org/pubs/wt/3/swindle
For the last couple of years, unionized workers across Canada have demonstrated a willingness to stand up against the relentless attacks of the bosses in all sectors of the economy. Public services, transport and manufacturing have all seen labour battles that could have turned the tide in favour of the working class and the oppressed. But at each turn, the pro-NDP and pro-Liberal union bureaucracies have proven a deadly obstacle to victory, while the bulk of the Marxist left has had nothing to offer but empty cheerleading for “the struggle” and a complete abdication of any fight against the current misleadership of labour.
Communists seek to intervene in the class struggle to show that the way to advance the immediate interests of the proletariat requires a struggle against the treacherous pro-capitalist leaderships of the unions. With our modest forces, the Trotskyist League in Quebec and Canada has sought to do just that, gaining us a hearing among key sectors of the working class.
In August 2023, we presented a way forward during the powerful longshore strike in the Port of Vancouver against the cynical maneuvering of its “militant” leadership. Our leaflet “The ILWU Can Still Win!” pointed out that in this crucial industry, “nothing will be gained without a decisive, unrelenting battle against both the BCMEA [employers’ association] and the government.” Instead, the ILWU bureaucracy called off the strike without a vote from the membership and caved in when Trudeau directly intervened, accepting a deal which they had themselves rejected a few days earlier!
In the spring of 2024, Toronto transit workers in CUPE 2 and ATU 113 were poised for strike action against the city bosses and the provincial Ford government. But the union leaders set strike dates weeks apart, then signed last-minute deals that do nothing to stop the relentless privatization attacks by the transit bosses all across the GTA and beyond. We reprint below our leaflet “Toronto Needs a Solid Transit Strike” which points to some of what should have been done to win.
Most recently, the Teamsters rail unions at both CN and CPKC were ordered back to work by the Trudeau government via its Canada Industrial Relations Board. The bureaucracy complied without a fight, simply taking its “grievances” to the Federal Court of Appeal, yet another avenue to swindle rail workers. Our leaflet “Rail Workers: Keep the Initiative!” poses a revolutionary challenge to this defeatist course.
As attacks by the bosses will only continue and increase in the coming period, class-conscious workers need to seriously take stock of the current dismal condition of the labour movement in this country and fight for a different course. For our part, we are committed to continue intervening with a revolutionary alternative in the struggles to come.
