The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.8           March 1, 1999 
 
 
Communist League In Canada Charts Course Toward Working-Class Fighters  

BY MICHEL PRAIRIE
MONTREAL - The Central Committee of the Communist League in Canada met here January 23-24 to decide on the next steps to deepen a course aimed at repoliticizing its work in the industrial unions. This is possible because of the deep change over the last two years in the self-confidence and fighting mood of the working class in this country, after years of retreat of the labor movement. Elected leaders of the party's trade union work and branches in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver were at the meeting.

At its previous meeting in October, the Central Committee concluded that the new rise in labor resistance and combativity across Canada over the last year and a half, made it possible and necessary to launch an effort to rebuild concentrations of socialist workers in the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). A special emphasis was put on rebuilding a national fraction in UNITE from its current concentration in Montreal only.

Participants in the January 23-24 leadership meeting concluded that a revolutionary shift in this fraction-building work is needed to catch up with the actual developments in the class struggle and to build fighting units of the communist movement in the industrial unions. They decided to launch a concerted, focused effort to simultaneously rebuild a national fraction in UNITE and build a new national fraction in the pork- and beef-packing section of the Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).

This is open to every party member to join in, even if it means dismantling established presence of communist workers in the CAW, the IAM, or the USWA. Rebuilding and transforming these fractions into fighting units will be a by-product of the effort by the party as a whole to build national fractions in UFCW and UNITE.

The importance of building a nationwide concentration in the garment industry was highlighted two days before the leadership meeting when 1,300 UNITE workers at Iris, a major stocking company in Montreal, struck for their first contract. This came barely three weeks after the victory by 4,000 UNITE workers in Montreal against an attempt by the men's clothing manufacturers to impose a major wage cut.

"Over the last year," Joe Young explained in the main report to the meeting, "the Iris workers, 80 percent of whom are Haitian, walked out before they even had a union, won accreditation with UNITE, and are now on strike."

Growing layer of working-class fighters
Young began by describing elements of the ongoing labor resistance in Canada, which forms the objective basis of the radical organizational moves proposed in his report.

"At this time," he said, "there are two hard fought battles going on in the meatpacking industry, where bosses are trying to impose wages and working concessions similar to those at Maple Leaf last year" after a four-month strike and lockout. Eight hundred workers were on strike at Quality Meat in Toronto, a pork processing company. Near Montreal, 560 workers at two Olymel-Flamingo poultry plants, members of the Confederation of National Trade Union (CSN), were also on strike.

On January 12, Young noted, "workers at Quality Meat voted at 58 percent to continue their strike, despite the ambivalent stance of the union officials. At Flamingo, the bosses announced they would close the Joliette plant, and tried to break away the workers at the nearby Berthier plant by offering them a wage freeze instead of wage cuts of about $2.50 an hour. So far, the workers at Berthier have refused to abandon their brothers and sisters at Joliette." On January 29, workers at Quality Meat voted to end their strike.

Young also described how the previous week, the whole town of Chandler in the Gaspé peninsula was shut down by a two- hour general strike led by the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) local at the Abitibi-Consolidated mill. The strike was in response to a company announcement that 200 jobs will be lost. These workers were part of a victorious five-month strike by 4,500 CEP workers in 10 plants in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland that beat back the company attempt to end company-wide bargaining. "This is significant," the communist leader said, "because the refusal of the Chandler workers, unlike those at the Trois-Rivieres mill, to go back to work last summer despite company threats to close the plant was a major turning point in the strike. This is one example of the cumulative impact that labor battles began to have on the workers involved."

It is impossible for the ruling class in Canada, Young said, to close the political space that exists and prevent groups of workers from getting to know each other, broadening their scope, and fighting for others.

Annette Kouri, a USWA member in Montreal, described the recent activity of an Abitibi-Consol worker who communists met during the strike in Shawinigan, two hours northeast of Montreal. "Since the end of the strike," she said, "he joined a group of foundry workers involved in a hard fought strike in nearby Grand-Mere. He visited their picket line and has build solidarity with the strike, including raising funds, in his local."

John Steele, an IAM member in Toronto, reported that two communist workers from Toronto had visited a pork farmer in Stratford January 23, after meeting him at a demonstration by hundreds of pork producers in Toronto December 1 to demand immediate government relief in face of the devastating free fall of hog prices. This farmer was especially interested in discussing more about the Maple Leaf and Quality Meat struggles, both of them involving hog processing workers. Through the course of the visit, he bought a subscription to the Militant and issue no. 4 of the Marxist magazine New International, featuring the article "The Fight for a Workers and Farmers Government in the United States."

In his report, Young stressed that the Communist League was at the initial stages of working with such fighting workers and farmers.

Fractions must reverse a job trust tone
"While this has been unequal," Young explained, "the branches of the party have progressed in terms of organizing to be part of the fights in their region and build solidarity." This is reflected in increased regional travels and higher sales of the Militant on picket lines, at plant gates where communists work, in working-class communities, on campuses, and at various political events like the protests against the U.S.-British bombing of Iraq in December.

Where there has been the less headway though is through joining these fights through the fractions of the league in industrial unions. "This has a direct impact on what we do when we go to the picket lines," said Young. "It is harder to go there as fellow union fighters seeking to build solidarity."

These limits, Young stressed, "are a reflection of the job trust tone and activity of our union fractions under the impact of years of retreat of the labor movement. For many of us, our job has become a job, instead of a political assignment. We go to work and do little politics. These are jobs where we feel comfortable, where we are in a relative privileged situation either on the level of wages or the kind of work we have to do, where it is not so hard to get time off."

This routinized and nonpolitical functioning is reflected in low sales of the Militant and Pathfinder books on the job, as well as the fact that as of the time of the Central Committee meeting, no member of the CAW, IAM, or USWA fractions had changed job to get in UNITE or in a plant with another communist worker.

By adding the UFCW, Young said, "communists consciously turn ourselves toward one section of the working class in Canada that has faced some of the most brutal attacks by bosses and mounted some of the biggest labor battles over the last years. In doing so, we will revitalize our turn to industry, repoliticize our fractions, and recruit."

In the discussion, Vicky Mercier, an auto worker near Toronto, explained the difference it would make in the Quality Meat strike to have communists working in the industry. Following a discussion in the Toronto branch on the perspective of building a UFCW fraction in the area in mid- January, four members volunteered to lead this effort. Since the Central Committee meeting, other members in all three branches have also volunteered.

"This course," Young said in his report, "is the only way for the Communist League to help the Young Socialists recruit and take the next steps to become a Canada-wide communist youth organization. The best young fighters are attracted to the working class because they are looking for a force that can change the world."

Young concluded his report by projecting a course toward the fullest participation from Canada of party and YS members, supporters and contacts, as well as of fighting workers and revolutionary-minded youth in the April convention of the SWP in San Francisco. This effort will include a collective study of the political resolutions contained in New International no. 11 on "U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War." This political preparation will be made easier in Quebec where French is the language of politics with the upcoming publication of Nouvelle Internationale no. 6, the French- language translation of this issue of the magazine.

 
 
 
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