M-L-M Mayhem!

Here follows the second part of my analysis of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903's [CUPE 3903] strike in 2008-2009.   In the first part I discussed the general context of the strike as well as the internal dynamics, but here I focus primarily on how the two-line struggle that would define the vicissitudes of the strike, eventually leading to the triumph of the bureaucratic-right line, emerged in the months leading up to the Strike Mandate Vote. Although this might seem to be a boring history of a tiny local for most of my readers (those of us who spend a lot of time active within a local often start to imagine that our struggles are not as significant as we imagined), and I'm mainly reproducing this document because of the failure of the book to materialize and 3903 is about to enter bargaining again, I think the analysis is useful for a variety of reasons: 1) it demonstrates the need for something larger than trade union organizing; 2) it represents the lim

Several years ago, back when nearly all of my activism had become firmly embedded within the context of my union local, I remember a General Membership Meeting where we tried to pass a motion that would socialize graduate student research grants according to needs.  The argument was that graduate students who received grants, especially those who received the largest grants, did not receive this money because they were better  or smarter  than other students and that the privilege of social class (here broadly understood as intersecting with other oppressions) partially determined the way grants were parcelled out to supposedly "deserving" students.  Obviously my local, which was a local devoted to contract faculty and teachers assistants, did not have the ability to pass a motion that would affect the standards of our university employer; the motion was meant to be politically symbolic.  Unfortunately it failed to even be symbolic since several graduate students at the meeti

What follows is the first part of an essay I wrote around two and a half years ago at the end of the 2008-2009 Canadian Union of Public Employees [CUPE] Local 3903 strike in which I participated.  This strike turned out to be the longest in our sector and resulted in back-to-work legislation.  One of its motivating reasons was, like so many other strikes these days, the casualization of labour and thus the lack of job security in the midst of a recession. In any case the same local is entering its next bargaining term so I figured it was appropriate to post this essay (that was initially meant to be part of a post-strike book that failed to materialize), especially since I feel that some of the key insights many of us grasped at the conclusion of that strike, and that I tried to report in this essay, are now forgotten in this next round of bargaining–-a round which seems highly unlikely to produce a strike. One of the problems with participating in a labour strike is that, unless

A significant problem with the unionized or organized labour movement is its inability to communicate with the non-unionized and more exploited sectors of the working class.  We live in a society where being unionized is often a privilege, where the proletariat is not necessarily the workers operating in unionized spaces, and where the foundation for labour is most often precarious, casualized, and migrant.  There are large portions of workers who are excluded from the ranks of the unionized and for whom unionizing is not an immediate option.  Then there are the day labourers, the people who spend large portions of their lives relegated to the reserve army of labour, who nonetheless contribute to the functioning of capital but whose very nature of work, like many others, prevents them from ever being considered for a union drive. We already know that the ruling classes will go out of their way to insult, belittle , and assault every union movement, every strike, every moment where th

Last week George Robitaille, a Toronto Transit Commission worker, died of a stroke.  The reason his death was significant is that he was the target of an anti-labour and anti-union campaign last January.  A commuter took a picture of Robitaille sleeping on the job and this picture, after being posted online, went viral.  Pretty soon Robitaille was being used as an example of "the lazy union worker" and was mercilessly mocked by numerous mainstream news sources and Toronto citizens.  He was even compared to Homer Simpson and used as an example of why TTC workers were just greedy unionists who wanted to extort more money from the city of Toronto.  A recent Globe and Mail article suggests that his stroke was due, in part, to the stress caused by this reactionary campaign. The fact that Robitaille had worked for the TTC for 29 years and had an impeccable record, that he even saved the life of a commuter in the 1990s, and that was on heart medication at the time of his "la

Recorded in terrible student essays, recited ad nauseaum by your parents and highschool teachers, spewed like supposed epiphanies from acquaintances who think they are extremely clever... I have always found it annoying that some people will say things that are so banal, and that we've heard over and over, and yet think they have come to some unique and profound political insight.  So here follows my favourite of these idiot revelations. 1) "Unions were important, like, a hundred years ago but now they've outgrown their purpose." I last heard this one from one of my neighbours who, after a recent Toronto garbage workers strike, was offended by the fact that I was wearing a CUPE shirt.  This just after she was trying to tell me how "radical" she and her roommates were for shirking the man in their organic/local food movement.  The labour movement, I suppose, just wasn't radical enough. Apparently she didn't realize that her unique insight is the