INTERNATIONAL LABOUR/ANARCHOSYNDICALISM:

LATEST SPANISH GENERAL STRIKE A HUGE SUCCESS:

March 29th saw a one day general strike in Spain that eclipsed previous general strikes in magnitude if one is to judge by the drop in energy consumption, often the best way of estimating the impact of general strikes on the economy as a whole. According to this measure this strike was much more popular than that of September 2010 being actually the largest in 30 years in Spain. There are actually quite important differences between this event and previous strike protests in Spain. Not only was this the largest demonstration of working class resistance to state plans in Spain. It was also set against a background of conservative governments in both Spain and the Catalan region.

Even more importantly this strike was not a project of the so-called "majority unions", the UGT and the CCOO. As far as I can determine the date of this strike was more or less set originally by the "nationalist" unions in Euskadi and Galicia. This timing was then agreed to by the CGT and then by the other libertarian unions (the CNT-FAI, CNT-Catalunya, Solidaridad Obrero). The UGT and CCOO were late comers to the endorsement. It happened only after they could gain nothing by their preferred method of bureaucratic negotiation.Then they "signed on" at the last moment. This had its effect. Not only were the so-called majority unions very much a minority vis-a-vis the local unions in Galicia and Euskadi. In several places in Catalonia the gatherings of the UGT/CCOO were less numerous than that of the libertarian unions (who allied themselves to a rainbow of community groups).

No doubt looking at the country overall the UGT/CCOO "mafia" are still the most popular unions in Spain, and their turnout was higher overall than that of their libertarian and nationalist competitors. Still, the very fact that they have lost the initiative and have to play catch-up is significant. In previous general strikes the libertarian unions tailed the UGT and CCOO.

What does this mean ? When I look at this from over here in Canada where anarchists in unions are a tiny minority it is easy to be sceptical. I think the fact that the socialist (UGT) and so-called "reformed" communist (CCOO) unions are still a majority amongst Spain's workers is still very significant. Yet....looking at the buildup to the general strike (in my case mostly info from the CGT and the CNT-AIT) I get the distinct impression of watching "people who know what they are doing and have a plan". The libertarian unions, especially the CGT, took the evidence of the past (previous general strikes) and distilled it into a plan for opening a new front against the conservative government. They have also understood very clearly that politics is a process rather than any sudden conversion. Hence the plans already mooted for a two day general strike in the future.

Personally I think is is an historic opportunity for the libertarian unions in general and the CGT in particular. Anarchosyndicalism has always contained an Utopian element with the advent of "libertarian communism" easily following the "general strike". This easy stepwise proposal has been repeatedly disproved in history. In order for the anarchosyndicalist unions to become even major competitors with other unions, let alone usher in a free society, they first have to prove that their tactics are more effective in the here and now in advancing the rights of workers. Spain today is a perfect example of where this is possible. The "program" of the libertarian unions is actually very circumcised- opposition to the austerity of the conservative government. Prove that more militant libertarian tactics are better than the treacherous negotiations of the UGT/CCOO, however, and all sorts of possibilities open up.

What will happen in the future ? Who knows. Yet I see the actions of the Spanish anarchists as great evidence that libertarians in at least one country understand their task as a process that requires planning and intelligence.

AMERICAN LABOUR CHICAGO:

SECOND PLANT OCCUPATION WINS IN WINDOW FACTORY:

About four years ago workers at what was then Republic Windows and Doors kept their workplace open by occupying the plant. This led to a reprieve which enabled an alternative operator to be found. At the time there was discussion about re-opening as a producer co-op, but this suggestion was lost in the shuffle, and a buyer 'Serious Materials' was found. The new owner, however, was rather lackadaisical about finding markets, and the factory was once more in financial difficulty. Serious decided to close and loot the plant. The workers responded once more by occupying the premises, ensuring the machines stayed where they are. In the end management relented and agreed to a 90 day extension in which it is hoped a new operator will be found.

The workers were joined by other UE, members and others from Occupy Chicago, and they called the bluff of a group of police sent to evict them. This demonstrates once again the effectiveness of workplace occupation as a tactic to bring stubborn bosses to the bargaining table. Such actions should be much more common than they are today. It is also an obvious conclusion that the most stable and enduring resolution of such disputes would be the establishment of producer co-ops. This would hopefully become a goal for labour in ordinary times and not just when a firm is in financial crisis.

For now here is the story of what happened from Labor Notes.

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UE Occupies Chicago Window Plant Again, and Wins Reprieve

Members of the United Electrical Workers won another reprieve for a Chicago window factory, re-occupying the plant they famously held in 2008.

UE Local 1110 members took over the Serious Materials plant yesterday after being told by local management that the factory would close immediately.

When they were confronted with the same news in 2008, workers voted unanimously to occupy their workplace, guarding the machines at the former Republic Windows and Doors for six days until the major creditor, Bank of America, released $1.75 million in wages and benefits owed the workers.

Republic sold the plant to Serious and workers celebrated as the first sit-down strike in years won a favorable settlement in the teeth of the great recession.

This week’s plant closing came with no warning. The union got a call from the boss that he wanted a meeting, but he wouldn’t say why. Officers and UE staff were summoned to the offices of the notorious union-busting law firm Seyfarth and Shaw at 9 a.m. yesterday.

There executives said they would close the plant, effective immediately. Workers would be put on leave while management dismantled the window-making machinery and shipped it to the company’s other plants in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Workers would be paid what they were owed under the WARN Act, which requires employers to provide notice 60 days ahead of plant closings and mass layoffs. (The penalty for violations is up to two months of pay and benefits.)

But the provisions typically only apply to businesses that would lay off 50 or more.

Illinois has a stronger law, which requires notice when 25 or more full-time employees will lose their jobs, and gives the director of the state labor department the right to investigate the company’s books.

Management provided nothing in writing to back up its promises.

Union officers—Armando Robles, Ricky Maclin, and Vicente Rangel—and staffers spent three hours arguing with management that the closure was unacceptable. Serious had a legal and moral obligation to do more to try to save the jobs, they said.

“We wanted to find a buyer,” said UE rep Leah Fried, “but they were not interested. They said it was not an option.”

Meanwhile, the Serious workers were building windows inside the plant.

February is not a big time for demand for windows, and their numbers were down to 38 after a recent layoff. Only 75 of the original 240 workers had ever been called back after Serious bought the plant from Republic.


All Out

President Robles and Fried left the meeting with management Thursday and began calling laid-off workers, asking them to come to the plant. At 2 p.m., the end of the shift, 50 workers met to discuss their options.

Robles presented them soberly: Do nothing, or fight—stay and occupy the plant again. Without much hullabaloo, matter-of-factly, the members voted unanimously to occupy.

They had no food, no sleeping bags. Workers and leaders immediately started to phone fellow workers, allies, and the media. They called the local alderman and asked others to alert the mayor’s office. Occupy Chicago came with tacos. Stand Up Chicago arrived.

Workers from other UE locals, including recently organized railroad van drivers, were there. Republic workers who’d never been called back to Serious but who still came to union meetings were there. The crowd inside grew to 65 and outside to 100.

UE regional president Carl Rosen called Serious’s CEO Kevin Surace at headquarters in California and asked, “Do you really want to go this route? If it comes to it, we’ll be dragged out and arrested.”

Fried wondered if Serious understood who they were dealing with. “These are people who won’t take this lightly,” she said. “They take this personally. They need jobs. And the political climate has changed. Now there’s a whole Occupy movement that was inspired by us. We’re sort of ground zero of Occupy.”

Meanwhile, local management called the police. A half dozen cops informed the workers that they had five minutes to decide whether to leave peacefully or get arrested.

They didn’t make good on the threat, but they refused to let the pizzas provided by Stand Up Chicago inside until a local pastor intervened, as local TV news cameras whirred. “Let the workers eat!” chanted the crowd.

The cops backed off but wouldn’t let anyone leave and then go back inside.

By 5 p.m. a crowd had gathered outside. Occupy Chicago started to raise tents, showing how a culture to prepare and stick it out has developed since the last occupation, Fried said. The cold rain started to freeze.

Inside, workers played dominoes and tried to watch the coverage on an old, snowy TV. They had plenty of donated food—enough to share with their supporters outside.

Negotiations shifted when corporate decision makers got on the phone. Management in California took over, apparently deciding they didn’t want a big showdown.

At 1 a.m., a tentative agreement was reached that met all of the workers’ concerns. The plant will remain open, making windows, for 90 days. That’s in writing.

Serious is committed to finding new ownership. Local union leaders are also interested in the possibility of a worker-run enterprise and are talking with consultants who specialize in converting factories to co-ops.

Serious said it had never been able to get a foothold in Chicago and Midwest markets. Workers for years had offered help and suggestions, to no avail.

“We started the morning with the plant closing and ended the day with work and a chance to save our jobs,” said Robles. “We are committed to finding a new buyer for the plant or if we can, buy the place ourselves and run it. Either way, we are hopeful.”

VISIONS:

THE PRODUCER CO-OP OPTION:

There are basically two types of cooperatives, consumer and producer. The former is a mutual aid society of purchasers banded together to get the best possible value for their dollar by cutting out the capitalist middleman. By banding together the members of such co-ops not only avoid value draining intermediaries but also get the advantage of size and bulk purchasing power, something beyond the capacity of singular households. The most visible consumer co-ops in Canada are the gasoline co-ops active in most provinces, but this option is hardly restricted to the automobile. There are such things as food co-ops, hardware co-ops, health care co-ops and even "funeral co-ops" across the country. Our credit unions are essentially consumer co-ops, and the recent spate of financial crises has demonstrated at least one way in which such local, member controlled, institutions are better and more stable than the banks.

Cooperation, however, is not restricted to consumption. Across the world people are setting up producer co-ops, also known as worker co-ops. In this case the members are the workers of a business who own and control their workplace. In a Canadian context a good source of information about this matter is the website of the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation. In many ways this enterprise model is a living example of a model of what anarcho-syndicalists have advocated for over a century. That is that a workplace should be the property of and be controlled by those who work in said location. What is different from the traditional view of the syndicalists is that worker co-ops that are set up today have to operate within a market economy. This goes against the grain of the traditional syndicalist view which is anti-market. How to reconcile these two viewpoints is a discussion for another time.

What is important here is to note that the worker/producer cooperative model of business has been gaining more and more attraction and implementation in the last few decades. Many studies have demonstrated that worker co-ops are more efficient than a traditional business model where management either bullies, bribes or bullshits workers to produce more more efficiently. In a producers' co-op the workers are the owners and direct beneficiaries of the success of the business. They have a natural incentive to be both more efficient and more productive.

The existence of this option which is actually a real and immediate way of freeing oneself from authority has always been a matter of debate in libertarian socialist circles. What is interesting is just how attractive this model has become outside of the anarchist ghetto. Here, for example, is a recent article from the Vancouver Province about the co-op option.

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Consider worker co-operatives
By Benjamin Gillies

As Canadians got back to the old grind last week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives had a rather intriguing statistic for them.

By mid-afternoon on that day, our country's top 100 CEOs had already made over $44,300, what it takes the average citizen an entire year to earn.

In fact, the policy centre notes, these elite men and women took home an average $8.4 million in 2010, 189 times more than our mean national income.

Dialogue over this type of economic disparity has been ongoing for thousands of years - from Plato, who believed the income of the highest paid in a society should never be more than five times that of the lowest paid, to last year's Occupy movement.

Most recently, the major proposal for curbing inequality among many progressive politicians is for the government to raise taxes on wealthy citizens and corporations.

Those on the right of the political spectrum vehemently oppose such an approach, however, arguing that to bur-den the companies we look to for job creation is a short-sighted strategy that can only leave us worse off as businesses head to lower-tax jurisdictions.

Undoubtedly, conservatives have a point that we rely on companies to generate employment. Yet, they overlook the fact that while corporations do provide jobs for Canadians, this is not actually their main objective. Their goal is profit maximization, and stockholders can even sue managers for making decisions that hurt the bottom line.

Directors are therefore forced to do whatever is necessary to increase returns, even when their actions are detrimental to workers. Over the past 30 years, for example, executives have used the threat of outsourcing to squeeze major concessions out of employees.

Improving the financial position of the majority will always remain problematic when we acquiesce to the need for profit above all else. It is time Canadians adopted a more holistic perspective on economic inequality, and examined the potential of an alternative business model - the worker co-operative.

Though worker co-operatives are relatively well-developed elsewhere (Spain's famous Mondragon Cooperative has been rated by Forbes magazine as one of the 10 best places to work in Europe), they remain marginal here, in no small part because they do not mesh well with North American corporate law.

Nevertheless, in today's economic climate they offer a number of enticing benefits. Like conventional corporations, co-operatives are private, for-profit enterprises.

What sets them apart is workers, not outside investors, fully own the company. These owner/employees keep all profits, instead of seeing them distributed to stockholders who often have little connection to the business other than their initial investment.

Through a one-worker, one-vote system, members are responsible for steering the company, either directly through general assembly votes or, more commonly, by electing a board of directors.

Because members have a vested interest in the success of the business, studies show they work harder and require less supervision, leading to better productivity and long-term survival rates above those of conventional companies. Co-operatives operate within the market, while providing greater worker empowerment and a more equitable distribution of revenue without government intervention - which ought to appeal to those on both the political left and right.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/business/Guest+column+Consider+worker+operatives/5965733/story.html#ixzz1jIjBcr30

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But what really is a worker co-op ? Here straight from the horse's mouth is the definition that the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation applies.

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What is a Worker Co-op?
Worker co-operatives are businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by the members. The main purpose of a worker co-operative is to provide employment for its members through operating an enterprise that follows the Co-operative Principles and Values. When new employees join the business, after a successful probationary period they are encouraged to apply for membership. The worker co-op is, in principle, designed to provide benefits not just to the founding members but also to all future employee/members.

To create their worker co-op, members combine their skills, interests and experiences to achieve mutual goals such as creating jobs for themselves, providing a community service and increasing democracy in the workplace. The variety of enterprises operating as worker co-ops is very broad. Virtually any enterprise can be organized as a worker co-operative. The worker co-op idea can work for you if you have a marketable product, start-up capital and a plan for organization and growth.

Each member pays a membership fee, or purchases a membership share, and has one vote no matter how many shares they own. Through the democratic governance of the co-op, all members have equal opportunity to affect the way the business is run and to offer input on the decisions affecting their everyday work lives. Because they develop the policies that determine the co-operative’s daily and long term operation, trust, communication and co-operation are vital to the co-op’s success. The co-op’s assets are collectively owned and surplus earnings are allocated to the workers according to the bylaws and policies established by the co-op,often in proportion to hours worked by members and with limited return on shares and member loans.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Worker co-ops differ substantially from conventional businesses. Conventional businesses’ primary aim is to make profit for the owners who may be - but in many cases are not - employed by the business. Such an owner’s voting control and share of profit is based on the amount of money invested, not for any services that they provide the business. This is a fundamental difference, as in conventional businesses the ultimate authority rests with a single individual, or with a small group,and the business decisions are based upon maximizing their benefit as owners. Any profit sharing with the workers or with the broader community is at the owner’s sole discretion.

In summary, worker co-operatives are a radical break from conventional businesses. The worker co-op’s primary goal in operating an enterprise is for service to its employees and its community rather than in service to the owners of capital. The goal is to provide the best possible employment conditions for the members and to provide the customers and community with a service or product at a fair price that meets their needs and leads to a sustainable community.

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One of the advantages of the worker coop model is that it is an open option at any time. During revolutions it becomes almost a necessity as worker councils keep production happening despite the absence of the old bosses. It is also an option in decidedly non-revolutionary situations and in all the stages between these extremes. Rather than being a "plan z" when an enterprise is shutting down it should be a predetermined goal of the labour movement. In relation to that it is heartening to see the present collaboration of the Spanish Mondragon co-ops and the North American United Steel Workers.

In certain situations that are short of "revolution" the movement of workers to occupy and take over a business abandoned by an owner is not as difficult as trying to salvage a business that is insolvent in an otherwise healthy economy. The following article from the Upside Down World website discusses what happened in Argentina during its economic crisis in 2001.

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Occupy, Resist, Produce: Worker Cooperatives in Argentina

Written by Benjamin Dangl
During the economic crisis of 2001, when politicians and banks failed, many Argentines took matters into their own hands. Poverty, homelessness and unemployment were countered with barter systems and grassroots, micro-credit lending programs. Community groups were created to provide solidarity, food and support in neighborhoods across the country.

Perhaps the most well known of these initiatives was the recuperation of bankrupt factories and businesses which were occupied by workers and run cooperatively. There are roughly two hundred worker-run factories and businesses in Argentina, most of which started in the midst of the 2001 crisis. 15,000 people work in these cooperatives and the businesses range from car part producers to rubber balloon factories. Two recuperated businesses with stories that are representative of this movement are Hotel Bauen and the Chilavert book publishing factory.

Hotel Bauen

Hotel Bauen first opened during the military dictatorship in 1978 when Buenos Aires hosted the World Cup. From that time onward, the hotel was a meeting place for big businesses owners, people connected to the dictatorship, and politicians such as former Argentine President Carlos Menem. Ironically, since the worker takeover in 2003, Hotel Bauen has been a meeting place for left-leaning activists groups and union members. Recently, the city's subway workers went on strike and much of their decision making and organizing was coordinated from the hotel.

Marcelo Iurcovich ran the hotel for years until 1997 when he sold it to Solari, a Chilean company. In 2001 the hotel went bankrupt and on December 21st, Solaris fired all of its workers. The majority of the ninety employees went without work for twelve to fourteen months. "Our decision to take over the hotel wasn't capricious," explained Horacio Lalli, a member of the hotel's cooperative. "A lot of the people here were fathers and mothers of families. There was no work. We had to do something, so after a lot of meetings we decided to take the hotel back."

On March 21, 2003 after a meeting in Chilavert, one of the first worker-run factories in the city, Hotel Bauen's workers gathered at night at the intersection of the streets Corrientes and Calloa in downtown Buenos Aires. They walked the short distance to the hotel and entered the building. Cheers filled the air. The lights were switched on. Workers hugged each other and wept. They had succeeded in the first step of the recuperation process: occupation.

Yet the hotel was far from being in working condition. A lot of the material and equipment had been sold by the previous owners or stolen. The workers still faced months of cleaning and repairing in order to get the hotel back on its feet. "Throughout this time businesses and students in Buenos Aires helped us out by gathering money for us so we could eat," Lalli explained. "Yet we were afraid the hotel bosses would come back and kick us out. This period of time was full of fear."

It took the workers until August of 2004 to reopen the hotel. To this day, a verdict has not been reached and the fate of the hotel remains in the hands of the judge. According to Lalli, the judge will probably decide that the workers need to pay rent or buy the business from the previous owner.

In the meantime, the hotel is back in business. Though it is still not entirely in working order, it is a bustling center for political and cultural events and generates enough profit to keep the operation going. The workers are running their business as a cooperative. Not everyone receives the same salary, but all major decisions are made in assemblies attended by all the hotel's workers.

Fabio Resino has been working at the hotel since it was taken over by the workers in 2003. "If the hotel had been run as a cooperative for all these years it would not have closed," he explained. "There was a lot of corruption and bad management with the previous owner. You could ask all ninety people that work here today and they'd all respond that they prefer this system to working for one boss. It takes more time this way, you have to work for more hours with fewer resources, but it's worth it."

"Before, we worked for a boss," he continued. "Now we work for ourselves. And when it is a cooperative you want to work better because it is your business, your own process. Before workers were numbers. Now we are people."

Chilavert

The Chilavert book publishing factory is located outside the center of Buenos Aires in a quiet neighborhood. On the front of the building is a colorful mural which contains the slogan of the recuperated business movement: "Occupy, Resist, Produce."

The factory itself is divided into offices, a kitchen, a cultural center and a large area full of printing and book binding machines. The machines vary in age; some of them are from the 1950's, and the newer ones are from the 1970's. When I visited, people of all ages were in the factory, either working or helping to organize community events. One woman was working in the cultural center on the second floor; another was sorting articles for a journal Chilavert produces. A musician stopped by to use the computer to print a flier for one of his concerts. Teenagers who worked in the factory as interns listened as another worker explained the intricacies of book layout and design. Towards the end of the day, dozens of people showed up for salsa classes in the cultural center. The factory had a festive, communal feel to it, but work was still going on and the machines were printing away. While I was there, a book of poetry and a science text book were being published.

When the factory was started in 1923 it was called Gaglianone, after the family who ran the business for decades before the worker takeover. After the takeover, the workers renamed their factory Chilavert, after the street it is on. Gaglianone was well known in Buenos Aires as a producer of high quality art books and materials for the major theaters in the city. However, in the 1990's the business had less work and a lot of the equipment was sold off, salaries were lowered and people were fired. In April of 2002, the factory closed its doors.

Out of necessity and a desire to keep their place of work functioning, the workers decided to occupy the factory. At the beginning of the occupation, they clandestinely produced books, (as illegal occupants of the building, it was against the law to do so). After producing them, they snuck the books through a hole in the factory's wall and into the neighbor's house. Though the hole has since been repaired, Chilavert workers have proudly placed a frame around this exposed brick section of the wall.

A climactic moment came on May 24th 2002 when eight police patrol cars, dozens of policemen, eight assault vehicles, two ambulances and one fire truck showed up at Chilavert to kick the workers out. Though there were only eight workers occupying the building they were accompanied by nearly three hundred other people, including neighbors, students and workers from other cooperatives who were there to help defend the factory. The massive group intimidated the police and when it became clear that blood was about to flow from both sides, the police retreated. The workers had won.

Occupy, Resist, Produce

Candido Gonzalez worked at Chilavert for forty two years before participating in the worker takeover. After a recent heart attack he attributes to stress and overwork, he said he plans to take it easy. That didn't stop him from recently attending the fifth annual World Social Forum in Brazil and participating in a recent city-wide subway strike. Throughout my visit, he joked with many workers in the building and seemed perfectly capable of talking forever. Our interview lasted a couple of hours and though he focused on Chilavert, he touched upon everything from earthquakes to whiskey.

"Occupy, resist and produce. This is the synthesis of what we are doing," Candido said, as he passed me a glass of iced tea. "And it is the community as a whole that makes this possible. When we were defending this place there were eight assault vehicles and thirty policemen that came here to kick us out. But we, along with other members of the community, stayed here and defended the factory."

He recalls this fight with tears in his eyes, "It is normal for you to fight for yourself, but when others fight for your cause it is very emotional."

Part of the local economy in the neighborhood depends on Chilavert for business. "We get our transportation, ink, food, coffee and paper - there is a paper factory fifteen blocks from here - all in this neighborhood. Chilavert helps the economy and if this factory closes, the neighborhood suffers."

Twelve people work at the factory and unlike other cooperatives in the city, everyone has the same salary. Major decisions are made in assemblies and community based activities play an important role in the weekly agenda. On the second level of the building there is a cultural center which is used for dance classes, movie screenings, discussions, poetry readings, parties and art exhibits.

Since the worker takeover, Chilavert has produced numerous books on social and political themes, with titles such as "The Unemployed Workers Movement," "What are Popular Assemblies?" and "Piquetera (Argentine activist group) Dignity."

"Every decision, every assembly, every book published, has something to do with politics," Chilavert worker, Julieta Galera explained. "The idea is to make books and works of art that have something to do with our political vision. There is a lot of prejudice against recuperated factories in Buenos Aires. People think we don't work hard enough. But Chilavert does some of the best work in the business."

Though Chilavert is one of the most famous of the recuperated businesses, its story is still unknown most Argentines. "We almost don't exist in the newspapers or the TV programs because we aren't with the government," Candido explained. "There are some two hundred recuperated, cooperative businesses in Argentina. That's not a lot compared to all the others that are not run this way."

Candido didn't think much of current president Nestor Kirchner, and didn't attribute Chilavert's success to any politician. "We didn't put a political party banner in the factory because we are the ones that took the factory. All kinds of politicians have come here asking for our support. Yet when the unions failed, when the state failed, the workers began a different kind of fight…If you want to take power and you can't take over the state, you have to at least take over the means of production."

Candido pointed across the room to a giant safe in the corner. Across the top of the safe was the name, Gaglianone. He laughed and shook his head. Perhaps that's where the old boss horded all of his money. "Now," Candido explained, pulling out a bottle, "this is where we keep the whiskey."

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Summing up it can be said that the producer co-op model is almost everywhere and always an option for labour. It should not be reduced to a salvage operation when a business is in trouble. In better times it should become a long range project of progressive unions. Rather than simply reacting to what the boss is doing unions should be active in gradually increasing their control of an enterprise. Pension funds are one source of the funds needed to do this. So are voluntary subscriptions and a dedicated portion of union dues. With labour at the table management would actually be far more reasonable in the wages and benefits area than they are in this age of cutbacks.

PERSONAL

MOLLY DEBATES THE INSANE

Most of Molly's "action" is now over at her Facebook site. Over there there is an interesting "debate" if you can call it such. The substance concerens the "torching" of a cop car by supposed anarchists at a recent demonstration about the rigged Russian election. Anarchists certainly took part in the demonstration against the rigged elections. What I await confirmation of, given the police set-up that led to the torching of three police cars in Toronto, is verification from the REAL anarchist organizations in Russia. We'll see. If it is true it is an act of stupidity. If not true it is one more example of how low the Russian government can sink.

PERSONAL:

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT PART 4:

As the various Occupy camps fall one after another (a proof of the need for organization ?) to the various authorities it is perhaps about time to reflect on why these protests have gathered the sort of support that "the left" has failed to gather for decades. There are a lot of reasons, and I hope to comment on them in the future. For now, however, let's examine one of the key factors behind the success of the protests.

One of the key reasons behind the success of Occupy is that they have chosen a path of non-violence. This doesn't mean that they are automatically morally superior. It does, however, mean that they are rational enough to chose the most effective tactics. This really comes under the heading of good advice such as, "don't fart loudly in Church". In other words there is a time and place for everything. It should be obvious, but for some it is not.

I only feel this is noteworthy because I have seen otherwise sensible people disparage the Occupy movement because (rhetoric coming now) "it can't defend itself, as evidenced by the police crackdowns". Such a statement ignores two things. One is the obvious structure of reality that some seem to have been detached from particularly in North America. The simple FACT is that the so-called "self defense" tactics as advocated by that defend the actions of something like the Black Block have failed every single time over and over and over. Not once, not twice, not even 50 times but 100% of the time every time they are tried. At its worst the police let the BB vandalize things for a short period of time for the necessary propaganda value. Then the BB disappears and lets their allies take the heat. At its "best" the BB always loses for at the end of the spectacle the police still control the streets. Proving that you're crazy and you want to lose endless fights is not "self-defense". Some have defined this sort of behavior as a characteristic of insanity.

This disparagement of the Occupy movement is written from an emotional viewpoint, and the best that I can do is advise holders of such opinions to go outside their social circles and see with their own eyes how the vast majority looks on those who appear to be innocent victims of police violence as opposed to gangs fighting the cops and always losing. To their credit the majority of people involved in Occupy recognize that they are doing politics and not psychotherapy. Some may be under delusions about how nasty the police can be. Others may have "moral arguments" for their non-violence, but I really think that at least a large minority and possibly a majority recognize that the picture of police attacking non-violent people is "the shortest way to the goal of gathering public sympathy".

FEMINISM/ CANADIAN LABOUR:

EQUAL PAY LAWSUIT SETTLED IN FAVOUR OF WORKERS- 28 YEARS LATER:

Here's an interesting item from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) about a lawsuit initiated 28 years ago demanding equal pay for equal work at Canada Post. I heard about this decision while driving about the city for work today. The internet and print reports add little to the initial report. Basically a 28 year lawsuit was recently settled over different wages paid to women as opposed to men decades ago. Well thanks guys ! There is a lot to be said both pro and con about this decision, but let us assume a sympathy for workers' position. All that Molly can ask is whether this matter would have taken 28 years to resolve if the workers in question had applied direct action ways of pressuring the government ie direct action? It's a thought to think. Here's the bare bones from the Cape Breton Post.

OTTAWA (CP) —

The Supreme Court has handed the Public Service Alliance of Canada a victory in a marathon dispute over pay equity with Canada Post.
Topics :
Canada Post , Supreme Court , Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
In a rare ruling from the bench Thursday, the justices unanimously found for the union in a case that began a generation ago.

PSAC claimed in August 1983 that women were being discriminated against under the Canadian Human Rights Act because they made less than men in comparable Canada Post jobs.
After more than a decade of hearings, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2005 that the crown corporation had violated the act and awarded back pay and interest of about $150 million.

But the Federal Court of Appeal set aside the tribunal’s decision, saying the finding of discrimination was not supported.

The justices said reasons for their decision will be available later.

PERSONAL

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT PART 3

As I've mentioned before, both here and on my Facebook page, the very fact that the movement has refused to set up a list of demands to the power elite is a source of strength not weakness. What the Occupy movement is is a widely based challenge to the very power of that elite to direct society. It is not a delegation ,cap in hand, for whatever meagre reforms the elite my offer. The very lack of clarity that the movement is accused of is actually a formidable strength.

A consequence of this refusal to limit the movement's meaning to a shopping list is the amazing fact that the Occupy movement has touched the "Populist Chord" that the traditional left has been unable to play upon for decades. Looking at the participants one sees a broad cross section of society, and the "99%" slogan has caught on with a population not yet ready to camp out themselves. I have noticed a truly remarkable absence of the usual lefty private language and even the fractious "anti-isms" that doom most leftist movement. Those who have taken up this struggle obviously understand the value of unity, and they act accordingly. This has hardly been the case amongst the left of the last few decades, and it is a welcome breath of fresh air.

This lack of particular demands is actually quite unifying. The Occupy movement doesn't just demand a larger slice of the pie for groups a, b, and c. It says there is a whole different and better way to cook pies.

PERSONAL

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT (PART 2):

The first part of this series was published over at my Facebook page a little while ago. Yet a movement such as the 'Occupy' protests deserves far more than one comment. There is little doubt that this has become the most extensive political movement of the last century even if the number of participants says that it is not as intensive as many others. Yet, without plan, direction or control a worldwide movement has arisen that directly challenges class society worldwide. While anarchists, especially in Spain, have been at the forefront of this movement and while anarchist methods of organizing have become the accepted standard of the protesters it would be utterly false to say that this is solely an "anarchist movement". The central themes of the movement have been those that anarchism shares with a broad left consensus. The only "point of pride" is that anarchists have shown the way to a much broader constituency that actually extends far beyond the traditional left. This is "propaganda of the deed" at its best, without self-destructive violent acts, without the illusion of provoking an immediate uprising and without the arrogant supposition that the so-called "revolutionary vanguard" (cough, cough) are the posessors of all truth. In other words the Occupy movement is amazingly morally clean for a protest movement.

But one thing I would like to point out now is how what seems to external observers as a fault is actually a virtue. I am hardly the first to point this out, and I would like to refer the reader to the Bureau of Public Secrets website for a much more thorough discussion. What I refer to is a very frequent so-called "criticism" of the Occupy movement as to its lack of "specific demands" and it seeming to be a collection point for a wide spectrum of grievances. All that I can say to this criticism is that it is "true" but it misses the point entirely. The Occupy movement has arisen as a broad protest against the inequalities and injustices of our present class societies. OF COURSE every interest group and demand will attach themselves to such a broad based movement. Perhaps even some of their activists will recognize the fact that their grievances cannot generally be solved under the present socioeconomic system.

Thus they attach themselves to a movement that (metaphorically) goes for the jugular because of the insufficiencies of their single interest group/issue groups. Make no mistake about it, the Occupy movement has "gone for the jugular". What it presents in a world diluted manner is the challenge to the representative "democracy" that revolutionary movements have laid out for almost 150 years (since the Paris Commune) ie the challenge of "direct democracy". This goes far beyond any simple reforms. It is not the question of whether the billionaires will pay their fair share of taxes. It is a question of how ordinary citizens can have enough influence to prevent any such perversions of law occuring.

The Occupy movement merely seems incoherant because its goals are far removed from what is usually considered "politics" in our societies. Its basic message is not this or that reform but rather a totally new way of "doing politics". The Movement Is The Message.

PERSONAL:

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE STATE:

It's been many many years since I left my old home town. 48 if I count right. I left it at precisely the right time, when I was turning 13. Enough of "being one with nature". Time to get into some serious trouble. Which, of course, I found in the (cough) "beautiful" city of Regina. My purpose in what I write below is to show a life that was as "stateless" as possible, under harsh climatic conditions. A life that was endured and sometimes enjoyed by a diverse mixture of ethnic groups and not just some favoured "oppressed" group. Perhaps the town of my childhood memories doesn't deserve recording. Except for one salient feature. It was a town in an area that never had a functioning and overbearing government. Now it is true that most natives in this part of the world grew up under exactly the same conditions with the difference that they saw more of the cops than we did. They also suffered a lot more from the (triple cough) helping arm of the churches, something that simply couldn't happen in a town where there were 3 distinct churches and education was public and non-demoninational.

So let's start with the obvious ie the police. We saw the RCMP a grand total of one time in the 13 years I lived in said town. Did this mean that we were a community of saints. Obviously not. There was the usual vandalism and petty theft which the community found it could deal with far better on its own than by calling for the 'tender actions' of government. Not that the retaliation wasn't sometimes overdone, but short of cutting off fingers or toes any physical pain is preferable to being cast as raw material for socia1l workers to "reform". The one occasion where the state/government proved itself useful was when one farmer went nuts and killed his wife. He came down to the general store to surrender, and he sat there for the required hours until the RCMP felt it was convenient to pick him up.

I mention this just because it is the most obvious "state function" that comes to people's minds, right up there with firefighters and above education and health care. The point that I want to make is that many of the functions that government now performs were or are provided by other means in the not-so-distant past, Or a little bit beyond the city limits in most provinces where rural firefighting is on a volunteer basis. Many other things such as education or health care could easily be provided via cooperatives rather than government. Sometimes a person may recognize all of this but still draw the line at police and the "justice" system. It seems almost unbelievable that people could do without what radicals call "the oppressive arm of the state". It is, however, true that the vast majority of people in history have lived without police (unless you count the agents of the landlord coming to steal things), and there are those such as myself who grew up in such conditions ie it is a living memory.

This doesn't mean that I think some almost mythical revolution could abolish the need for police, courts and prisons overnight. If I were having coffee with a cop I would admit that people like him or her are needed in the near future. Yet I would also say that it is indeed possible to do without police. More than possible. It is a fact that I can remember in my own life. Yet a change in the way people in a neighbourhood act towards each other is a much more effective remedy for crime than more police even today. What anarchists, at least those in the broad majority tradition of anarchism is not a society without demands and rules. It is a society without a specialized caste who enforce such rules or in the case of our present society also enforce the rules of the more wealthy.

What anarchists propose is perhaps summed up by a very clumsy neologism ie the "smalltownization" of a society that presently lives mostly in cities. This is not some marijuana addled vision from the 60s and 70s where everyone has to "go back to the land" and "pretend" to be indpendent of the wider society. What it means is that urban neighbourhoods could grow to have many of the virtues of a small town (such as its ability to live without police) without some of the vices.

Not that my home town was any anarchist utopia by far. We were connected into the wider society by such things as electricity from Sask Power. The electrical grid came in on the same year as I was born. Before that the town had its own generator like most northern communities have even today. This was also the same year, ironically enough, that they took passenger service on the railway away from the town. I see no reason, however, why a crown corporation such as Sask Power couldn't be run as a cooperative. Many advantages actually. Similarily the Province paid teachers' salaries, something that was different from my father's time when teachers were paid by the local community. Another example of memory of a different life. We actually had a Provincial highway a couple of miles from town, but the road to town was maintained (or not) by the RM as were the dirt trails that led out to various farms.

Then, most importantly, we were connected to the wider society and hence to the state by the fact that our rural economy was built on the availability of gasoline (and also oil for the privileged few who didn't have to depend on wood in the winter). Can the universal availability of hyrdocarbon products be provided outside of the state or big business ? The answer is obviously yes as Co-op service stations are a constant feature of most of the western provinces of Canada. If it is done it is possible.

I have to admit that what I have said may seem like something conservative rather than radical, but I have to say that most "conservatives" are actually quite "progressive" in their desire to clear away all obstacles to the increase in power and wealth of the people they imagine are the "wealth creators". My vision is frankly reactionary in the desire to turn back the clock (or ahead if you like) to a different sort of politics and economy. I stand in the anarchist tradition of such people as Paul Goodman in his book 'Notes Of A Neolithic Conservative'.

More on this topic later.

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:
A TALE OF THREE COUNTRIES:


The usual historiography of anarchism traces its beginnings to the international socialist movement and the First International. Like most things in the social sciences this is only approximately true. The pre-International workers' movement in France, the most advanced on the European continent, generally held to a variety of anarchism called Mutualism. Still it is true that anarchism, for better or for worse, acquired most of its modern characteristics in the struggle against Marxism within the First International. This development is often portrayed as a stuggle between the Latin sections that held, more or less, to the ideas of Bakunin with the Marxoid German movement. The English trade unionists generally kept aloof from both factions.


This is, once more, approximately true. It was in the Latin countries (with the addition of Belgium- half Latin, Switzerland and the Netherlands) that the anti-authoritarian strain of the workers' movement gained purchase and laid the foundation for modern anti-statist socialism. Yet there was and is a wide difference between these countries as to the degree that anarchism 'caught on'. Why ?


I've just finished reading 'Bakunin and the Italians' by T.R. Ravindranathan, and it tells basically the same story as another book 'Italian Anarchism: 1864-1892' by Nunzio Pernicone. The Introduction and first chaper of yet another book, 'The French Anarchist Movement' by David Berry twells the story of early anarchism in France. Herein lies the question. Both France and Italy were much more likely to become the 'motherland of anarchy' than Spain was. France had the existence of a large mutualist labour movement as well as its tradition of revolution. Italy was the 'centrepiece' of the antiauthoritarian sections of the First International, and its early history of anarchism would seem to say that it should have become the centre. What if fact occured was that Spain went on to become the classic land of anarchism, ending up exporting it to much of the Spanish speaking world. The Italian movement while 'large' in a comparative sense never grew to the extent that the Spanish one did, and offered far less resistance to fascism in Italy than the Spaniards did in Spain. The French movement managed to escape its ghetto for a brief period in the glory days of the CGT, but was later to become a rump of its original self. Once more why ?


All three countries shared the same basic social structure ie a combative upper class, in the case of France and Italy one that rose to the top via previous revolutions or wars, and in the case of Spain an decaying aristocratic and clerical class. In terms of the difference between regions Italy was almost a carbon copy of Spain. The messogiorno was pretty well the same as southern Spain. Ther French situation was somewhat different insofar as most rural provinces were conservative after having their land hunger satisfied by the revolution of 1789.


So similar and yet so different. My own suggestion is that the difference came about via certain choices that the 'proto-anarchists' of that day made in different countries. In Italy as in France the choice of syndicalism was delayed by decades. The most prominant action of the early Italian anarchists were the comic-opera "insurrections" that they engaged in. To say thery were laughable understates the case. Meanwhile in Spain the anarchists were organizing strikes and actually "going to the people". Any premature insurrections in Spain in the late 1800s and the early 1900s were peasant rebellions that the leadership of the anarchists supported but not too much.


Let's put it another way. While the anarchist movement in France and Italy was mired ion tactics that were doomed to fail the Spanish anarchists did one salient thing. They organized the working class for bopth its immediate demands and for the eventual social evolution. This combination was something that eluded both the French and the Italians.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS:

I write these words in the context of what may be a "low point" of the uprising of Arab people for the sort of "democracy" that most of us in the western world take for granted. As I write this Saudi Arabian troops are commiting murder on protesters in Bahrain and the Gadaffi forces seem to be winning in Libya. One will have to see how the very belated "no fly zone" voted for by the UN Security Council actually plays out at this late date in the struggle. Certain pundits have expressed the opinion that Gadaffi expects that western powers will eventually come to terms with his possible victory because "they are whores for his oil". Very possible. In the case of Bahrain this is even more so as NO western power would be willing to challenge Saudi Arabia's actions.

Will the Arab revolutions lead to any essential change in the class structures of the countries involved ? I think that has pretty well be answered by the results of the "successful" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. In the first case a lot of the original kleptocracy supported by a newly invigorated police force (raises in pay ?) continues to rule and attacks a diminished opposition. In the second case efforts by the Egyptian working class have been met by repression on the part of the new government- a coalition of military officers who have financial interests in maintaining the present class system in Egypt MINUS Mubarak.

I most certainly intend to write more on this because it bears on very important questions that both proponents and opponents of "revolution" in the modern world rarely think about. So....more later.

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:
AGAINST TERRORISM:



The following article was recently published at the Anarkismo website. It comes originally from the Swiss platformist group Libertäre Aktion Winterthur. What the following provides is a little more context about not just the recent embassy bombings in Italy which have been discussed at this blog before and may be a complete police fabrication. What the following provides is a criticism of the whole romantic idea that terrorist tactics can be used to advance the cause of anarchism. Of course they can't, and such tactics have nothing whatsoever to do with what the anarchist movement aims towards. They are the acts of desperate individuals with little social connection who glom onto anarchism as an excuse for what they want to do. Anarchism is not the only ideology that has suffered, is suffering and will suffer from such "friends". What I find valuable in the following is that it is a clear and blunt repudiation of such nonsense without any hedging or throat clearing "apologies". The more real anarchists state their views in this way the sooner we will be clear of the terrorist parasites that live off the hesitation of the majority in the movement.
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No Solidarity with “anarchist” letter bombers
by Libertäre Aktion Winterthur law at arachnia dot ch

The question of violence has always been a hot topic in anarchist discourse. How can the oldest and rawest expression of power be combined with the teachings of an anti-authoritarian ideology? Can a revolutionary anarchist strategy contain violence?


[Note: This communiqué is consciously not written in response to the most recent attacks in Rome on 23rd December [2010]. We question any anarchist link to these incidents, because – just like with the series of attacks in 2003 - the ominous “Federazione Anarchica Informale“ (FAI) has claimed responsibility. It is an unlikely coincidence that this group shares the same acronym as the Federazione Anarchica Italiana who distanced themselves clearly from the events in 2003 and suggested the “FAI” could well be a fake organisation. There are several examples in recent Italian history of false flag operations. One of them was the bombing of the Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969, which was commissioned by the state and blamed on the local anarchists. In the most recent “FAI” communiqué in relation to 23rd December, the final words - “Long live the FAI, long live anarchy!” - are rather atypical for a self-described “informal” organisation.]



The question of violence has always been a hot topic in anarchist discourse. How can the oldest and rawest expression of power be combined with the teachings of an anti-authoritarian ideology? Can a revolutionary anarchist strategy contain violence? We can assume that the libertarian way – which includes the expropriation of the current owners of the means of production and abolishing material privilege – will meet brutal resistance by those who see themselves robbed of commodities. Master-servant relations (inconspicuous or obvious) are always based on coercion. This always includes violence which we can only resist as a strong and revolutionary mass movement.

However, as conscious anarchists we shouldn't fall into the trap of letting the means become the ends. “Real anarchist violence is that which ceases when the necessity of defence and liberation ends. It is tempered by the awareness that individuals in isolation are hardly, if at all, responsible for the position they occupy through heredity and environment.” [1] These words by Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta haven't lost any validity since they were written almost 100 years ago. They prohibit us to injure or even kill functionaries within capitalism as part of a libertarian praxis simply for the role they play. We think this should be obvious to anybody with an anarchist understanding.

In recent months, events have taken place – also in relation to Switzerland – which have questioned this libertarian principle in the name of anarchism. We don't mean call-outs like “Schlag die Polizisten, wo ihr sie trefft” ('Hit the cops where you encounter them') that are plastered on walls and published on websites as acts of individual resistance. These texts might be rhetorically quite clever but the content is rather confused. Nor are we talking about the numerous solidarity actions for Billy, Costantino and Silvia, whose anti-civilisation ramblings we only find amusing. [2] However we can assume that people from these networks are supportive of actions, that go far beyond paintbomb attacks or slashing car tyres.

We are thinking about the letter bombs that have been sent to various institutions of the state, particularly to embassies, in recent months. Hoping to injure a high-ranking bureaucrat when opening the envelope, the bombs were meant as a form of revenge for the imprisonment of the three aforementioned activists. This kind of praxis doesn’t only demonstrate political stupidity, but also cowardice and inhumanity. In the best case because of naivety, or in the worst because of calculation, the senders were prepared to injure a simple clerk or a subordinate secretary. With these acts, the senders stand among ruthless criminals who, as servants of capital, have persecuted and killed members of the working class. These acts are not revolutionary but an expression of political reaction. Faced with the infamy of these actions, we can only conclude: No solidarity with the “anarchist” letter bombers – never! A few years ago left-radical groups had to be created by the state to convince the population of the need for more repression. It is tragic that things have become so easy for the European capitalist class.

It is difficult for all of us to react adequately to a political and social climate that is taking us, the exploited, to the brink of frustration. This shouldn’t, however, be an excuse to find sanctuary in the old illusion of the “Propaganda by Deed” and the desire to change society through individual acts of violence. The follow-on effects of such deeds will be repression, escapism and an even bigger hopelessness instead of an insurrection by the masses. It is also wrong for anarchists to use structurelessness as a modus operandi, as demanded by our “insurrectionary” comrades. If everybody is only responsible to themselves, individualist and unpredictable actions will be preferential, instead of creating a praxis of solidarity to constantly work towards the social revolution.

We can only resist the capitalist system together in an organised and goal-oriented class struggle. Theoretical unity and stringency in praxis, federalist structures and individual discipline are the qualities of anarchists who are fighting in the spirit of solidarity for the social revolution and not for total repression. The workplace and school, the neighbourhood and the community centre, the street and the refugee centre: these are the spaces of our libertarian agitation and the organisation of the struggle and not the columns of the bourgeois media, who are waiting to report about the most recent attack by people in revolt with sensationalist headlines.


End of December 2010
Libertäre Aktion Winterthur (Anarchist Action)


[1] From a text by Errico Malatesta. Full text available: http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/anok&violence_em.pdf [PDF 108kb]
[2] Billy, Costantino and Silvia were arrested in Switzerland in on 15th April 2010. It is alleged that they were attempting to bomb IBM in Zurich. They have been in jail since. More information: http://againstthewaiting.blogsport.de/


Related Link: http://www.libertaere-aktion.ch

CANADIAN LABOUR GATINEAU QUÉBEC:

SECOND ORGANIZED WAL-MART IN NORTH AMERICA:

A recent Labour Board decision has certified a Wal-Mart in Gatineau Québec as the second unionized Wal-Mart on the North American continent. The only other location now represented by a union is also in Québec in St. Hyacinthe. Previous attempts to unionize Wal-Mart in Québec and in locations as far afield as Texas and Weyburn Saskatchewan have been beaten back either legally or by the expedient of simply closing the outlet affected.

The latter is both a favoured threat and a favoured action on the part of Wal-Mart management. The largest example of this was when Wal-Mart decided to withdraw from the whole German market rather than tolerate unions in its stores in that country. The only country where Wal-Mart is happy to coexist with a unionized workforce is...China. In China's case the "union" is, of course, the official government controlled federation which takes its marching orders from the Communist Party. Nothing could be plainer in pointing out the ideological affinity of neo-conservative managerialism and it communist counterpart. Two sides of one coin.

This Board decision may benefit the workers involved only marginally as the wage increases stipulated were only minimal, and the biggest issue, the use and abuse of the part time system, remained outside the Board's decision. Still it shows that even the Wal-Mart colossus is not invulnerable. It is a shame that the unions involved in Wal-Mart organizing are not imbued with at least a minimum of the internationalism and industrial unionism of the anarcho-syndicalist unions or revolutionary syndicalist unions such as the IWW. Things would go much better then.

Be that as it may if you want to follow the misdeeds of Wal-Mart in more detail Molly can suggest the following sites: Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch. It`s almost a classic 'Perils of Pauline' series complete with evil top-hatted capitalist. A refreshing old fashioned morality play in an age when the corporate rulers more often than not adopt fuzzy "progressive" and "new age" public personae. Here`s the story from the CBC.

WMWMWMWMWM
Quebec Wal-Mart workers get rare union deal
Only one other North American Wal-Mart has a collective agreement

CBC News
The contract covers more than 150 employees at the store on Boulevard du Plateau in Gatineau. (CBC) Workers at a Wal-Mart store in Gatineau, Que., have won a new collective agreement, only the second at any Wal-Mart store in North America — but not everyone is celebrating.

A government arbitrator imposed the agreement, after negotiations between the union and retailer were judged to be going nowhere.

The contract covers more than 150 employees at the store on Boulevard du Plateau. It took three years for the United Food and Commercial Workers to unionize the store, and another two years to get the contract.

"We had a first assembly last night to present the first collective agreement that was imposed by the Labour Board of Quebec," said union member Matthieu Allard.

He said the collective agreement gives employees a grievance process, recognizes statutory holidays and considers seniority in determining working hours.

Wages will go up 30 cents an hour this year, and another 30 cents next year. None of the employees, however, would say how much an hour they make now.

The arbitrator modeled it on the contract at the Wal-Mart in St-Hyacinthe, Que., the only other store with such an agreement.

"It might not have been as much as we could have gained in a normal negotiation process, but it's a definite step forward," Allard said.

Some employees at the store think otherwise.

In the parking lot outside the store, Denise Barre said she and her coworkers are disappointed with a 30-cent-an-hour raise, especially when it means paying union dues.

She said only 13 of the 150 employees went to Wednesday night's meeting with the union, which she says shows employees aren't interested.

Barre said she doesn't need this contract.

She said Wal-Mart treats her well and gives her benefits.

In a statement, the company also pointed out that the arbitrator found its wages competitive with other retailers, and adopted the wage scale Wal-Mart proposed.

The union said employees at the store were concerned by Wal-Mart's previous actions at unionized stores, but the Gatineau location is busy, and they hope Wal-Mart will not close it

In 2005, Wal-Mart closed a store in Jonquiere, Que., days before an arbitrator imposed a contract for its employees. The employees took Wal-Mart to court over the closure but lost their case.

In 2008, Wal-Mart also closed a tire shop on Maloney Boulevard in Gatineau after its employees received union certification.

The new agreement has a start date back in 2008, which means the union will be back to negotiating next year.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/10/08/ottawa-wal-mart-deal.html#ixzz11vWkUx1U

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:
SWEDEN TURNS RIGHT:


Last week's national elections in Sweden returned the present right wing government to power and, most disturbingly, the extreme right made unprecedented gains. The following report from the Swedish anarchosyndicalist website Anarkisterna says it all, and it raises some important points.


Molly would add her two cents worth by noting the following. Despite the antique Marxist fantasy followed by all too many anarchists and non-Marxist socialists the advent of 'hard times' seems to have not led to any resurgence of left wing class based movements that fundamentally challenge the present social order anywhere in at least the developed world. If anything the right seems to be 'on the march' worldwide. Where left wing social movements opposed to further tightening of the screws have arisen the main thrust seems to have been an attempt to hold on to what little the lower classes already have, and a more or less implicit (sometimes quite explicit) endorsement of social democratic policies and parties. This despite the fact that in many countries, Spain and Greece come to mind, it is actually "socialist" parties that are doing the dirty work.


Meanwhile the general electorate remains quite cynical, perhaps rightfully so, and opts to vote in many cases for parties whose desire to shift wealth from the lower classes is explicit rather than implicit. This goes hand in hand with an increase in what may best described as the "political superstition" that somehow "immigrants" are responsible for the difficulties that ordinary people face in these hard times. How this can possibly be true is best left to the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists. Even if minorities are not "blamed" it may at least feel satisfying to work up a hate for something that can be so easily identified. The left, in general, offers no such easy fantasy. Its social democratic wing has long since abandoned any pretence to having so crude a thing as "enemies". Its orthodox communist wing has not only been disgraced by its history of being worse than the old order. Its idea of the enemy as the 'top-hatted capitalists' ( excluding government bureaucrats of course ) rings hollow in the modern world.


Too much of the rest of the left beyond the social democrats and commies spends its time tilting at the windmills of "isms" having abandoned all hope of a rational road to a better society. It takes a developed taste for either masochism or the 'one downmanship' of identity politics to find this sort of "politics" satisfying...especially as "the enemy" can easily be defined as something approaching 98% of the population. This is not politics. It is psychology gone cancerous.


The Swedish comrades end their article with some questions rather than with assertions. This is undoubtedly the best way to proceed. As an anarchist I am convinced that the anarchist tradition contains many of the ideas that are necessary to oppose the rightward drift of most of the developed world. I am not, however, so unrealistic as to suppose that either I or any wing of the anarchist movement today have a magic pocketful of 'solutions". What is sure is that the main opposition to the right has no practical plan. For anarchists the balancing act is an age old one, one of walking the fine line between collaboration (leftism under an anarchist name) and irrelevancy( either 'purism' or defining away the concerns of ordinary people to focus on 'psychoboo' ). Where the tightrope is depends upon both time and place. Let's hope there are enough political acrobats in our ranks.


Here's the article from Sweden.
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Where do we go from here?
On how to challenge rightwing racist class politics
Lördag 25 September

The elections of September 19th in many ways mark a sad turning point in Swedish history. Since of that date, Sweden joins the growing number of EU member states run by rightwing governments with the participation of the extreme right.

For the first time, a rightwing government was re-elected in Sweden. For the first time, a populist racist party, Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) – with roots in the extreme right scene – entered the Parliament. And for the first time a Nazi party gained entrance into a municipality. The leader of Svenskarnas Parti (Party of the Swedes) – formerly Nationalsocialistisk Front – got a chair in the small town of Grästorp.



The reaction to the election was swift: demonstrations in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm the following day gathered thousands of people, in Stockholm up to ten thousand. Numerous demonstrations have since taken place in different places and many more actions are planned for the coming weeks and especially for the grand opening of the Parliament.

Many people are appalled and outraged at the results of the elections. Bit by bit, the right wing government has been dismantling the welfare state, labour laws and social security systems, replacing them with the freedom of the individual consumer – thereby paving the way for the extreme right. But so have the Social Democrats, the Left and the Greens: By not challenging the politics of the government and putting forward a concrete red and green vision, the stage was set for the racists, posing as the sole alternative to the status quo.

The Sweden Democrats have rather successfully spread the myth of immigration as the one political issue none but them dares to address. This being far from true (quite the opposite, by being tough on immigration any politician comes across as determined and energetic), it nevertheless gained them a lot of attention. And even though being false, it still was a simple answer to a number of important questions: Why is society not as solidaristic as it used to be? Why are so many – especially young – people unemployed? Why is all this downsizing occurring?

Everything was played out to be the fault of “mass immigration”.

These questions are relevant to a lot of people in everyday life today, and so is addressing them. The anxiety is real, it is the result of precarious labour, money that is never enough, climate change that is being neglected, insecurity, frustration, violence and welfare cuts – in other words the results of political decisions. The question radical social movements have to ask themselves is how to address these issues and challenge these politics?

How do we turn protests against the Sweden Democrats into resistance against the racist class politics of the right wing government? And how do we transform our resistance into a constructive force – self organizing local communities and building strong popular movements?

Where do we go from here? Share your experiences with us!