When is the right time to stand for democracy and self determination?
There cannot be many Canadian trade unionists who are not concerned by the potential implications of Unifor’s withdrawal from the Canadian Labour Congress. Solidarity and a united working class movement are core principles and goals built into the DNA of labour activists.
But the reaction to the events around the trusteeship of UNITE Local 75 and the decision of Unifor to leave the CLC and offer Local 75 union members a Canadian home is forcing a re-examination of what solidarity actually means.
A widely held view of many activists is that this conflict within the movement comes at the expense of the front line struggles and exciting opportunities to make progress on worker rights, especially for precarious workers.
In Ontario where these issues are playing out, there is a sense that labour should be united on the line outside Tim Horton’s. Ontario’s new labour laws have expanded worker rights for the first time in decades, but the fight over the $15 minimum wage has already shown the need to go further towards sectoral organizing and bargaining rights for low wage and precarious sectors. Unions missing in action around these issues of justice and progress for workers will be judged harshly.
However the right of workers to democracy and self-determination is not and has never been subordinate to other struggles. Real solidarity demands that the members of Local 75 are seen and heard and not rendered invisible.
Local 75 members have said that their local union has been taken over by “an American invasion.” Their elected leaders were removed and democracy suspended. Decisions which belong to the members are now in the hands of US leaders with no standing or accountability in Canada. After two high-profile international trusteeships of Canadian locals within a year, it is appropriate to ask: when is the right time to take a stand for self-determination?
Every period of Canadian labour history has been defined by the distinct needs of Canadian workers to assert an independent path. And progress for Canadian workers has always intertwined democracy and self-determination.
The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike required an entirely unauthorized local democracy to create a unified strike committee that brought together organizers of the One Big Union and the local unions of the American Federation of Labour. They found themselves fighting both the Winnipeg business establishment and their US parent bodies that were opposed to the radicalism of the Winnipeg strike and the OBU secessions.
In the depression years, the US-dominated craft unions in the Trades and Labour Congress were in full retreat and largely ignored the struggles of the unemployed. It required the upstart Workers Unity League to break from the TLC and lead the key struggles of that decade. It is a matter of sharp debate outside Canada that their rank and file union democracies had to be sacrificed in order to have unity in the fight against fascism.
During the war years, the radical organizers of the Canadian labour movement were in the forefront of the CIO organizing drives in Canada’s emerging mass production industries. But less than a decade later they were victims of the Cold War and the US Taft Hartley Act that barred many of their leaders from entering the US or holding elected office in the international unions.
In the post-war period, the US labour movement and the Canadian movement moved apart over bargaining strategies. American industrial unions agreed to engage in concession bargaining at the expense of their industry and pattern bargaining models. Canadian trade union unity became defined by “no concessions” and railroad workers, energy workers, pulp and paper workers and autoworkers all separated from their American parent unions.
While these splits were to some extent negotiated, there was little solidarity across the border. When the pulp and paper workers formed the Canadian Paperworkers Union, they were immediately on strike against the Canadian industry without a dime in their strike fund.
In Quebec, the demand for self-determination had a specific national character, not only through openly sovereigntist trade union centrals. It was also expressed by a protocol within the CLC to respect Quebec rights and devolve self-government to the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ). In addition, construction workers left the International Building Trades and formed “FTQ Construction” to become the largest construction union in that province, bringing together 70,000 workers across craft lines.
An important force driving these events was the breakaway Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU) that mounted raids against international unions in the 1970s and 1980s. Building a strong base in Western Canadian resource industries and manufacturing in Eastern Canada.
The CCU raids were controversial and divisive, but they were part of the seismic events that changed the character of the Canadian trade union movement. By 1980, a majority of members now belonged to independent Canadian unions. This was by virtue both of the large splits that had taken place and the growth of the Canada’s public sector unions. In the 1990s and in the first part of the 21st century, Canadian media workers, printing trades workers, hospital workers and others would leave US unions to join Canadian unions.
In 1974, the Canadian Labour Congress attempted to broker a peace with the US unions by inserting “Minimum Standards of Canadian Autonomy” into the CLC constitution. Those measures required US unions in Canada to establish structures whereby Canadian members would elect an accountable Canadian leadership and set policy on Canadian affairs. Some of the large US unions did so, and have a significant measure of Canadian autonomy. However, many US unions did little and their Canadian members have no meaningful Canadian structure, ability to set policy or choose their leadership.
The events that defined Canada’s independent labour movement much more than mere history lessons now. We continue to have wide differences between the US and Canadian labour movements and there are a long list of reasons why Canadian workers need to make democratic, independent decisions. US labour support for punishing tariffs against Canadian industries accused of being subsidized by government programs is just one example. Different policies on environment, climate change, foreign policy and international solidarity are others.
Canadian workers are of course free to affiliate with an American union. Within the CLC, affiliation to US unions should be based on the union’s standards of Canadian autonomy, and the provisions of Article 4 that calls both for preventing raiding and providing workers a path to choose another union if they determine that to be necessary. However, there will be times when Canadian workers will be in a fundamental conflict with their US international unions.
When that happens, when is the right time for Canadian workers to fight for democracy and self-determination?
The shaping of our labour movement over the decades tells us that solidarity within Canada or across the border does not require a choice between democracy, Canadian self-determination and unity. Real solidarity takes place when democratic, independent unions find common cause on values and principles that uphold their true interests.
