Labour

Labour Day 2014: A new mood to resist!

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There is a new mood in the Canadian labour movement – the mood to resist. This was the propellant at the May CLC Convention, where incumbent president Ken Georgetti was narrowly defeated, and a groundswell replaced the inertia of rest with the demand for action. The winner, Hassan Yussuff, was successful after adopting the action program of Hassan Husseini and the “Take Back the CLC” movement which captured the discontent that has been maturing for years. The defeat of Georgetti, moving Hassan Yussuff to the helm, the re-election of Barb Byers and Marie Clark Walker, and adding prominent CUPW activist Donald Lafleur, was the delegate mandate for militant action.

In Ontario, following the dormancy of the Samuelson years, the OFL under the leadership of Sid Ryan displayed concretely what can be accomplished if labour takes the bull by the horns and implements independent political action. There is no doubt that the decisive defeat of the Hudak Tories in the Ontario election was due in large part to the campaigning and mobilization of the labour movement. This was not just a defeat for a political candidate, but for the reactionary agenda of the “Right‑to‑work” pro-corporate movement. The blow struck by Ontario labour will weaken the whole anti‑labour agenda. Nevertheless labour is under siege across the country. From the BC teachers to Québec municipal workers to the Nova Scotia nurses, the pattern is the same. The corporate sponsored attack on social programs, pensions, education and Medicare is an assault on those who provide and defend those programs. Labour must not rest to relish success. The Ontario fightback should be a game plan for a major defeat of the federal Tories in 2015.

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TFWP “reforms” leave cheap labour strategy intact

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After a series of revelations about abuses of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Harper Conservatives have announced so-called “sweeping changes”. Their political aim is to prevent this scandal from becoming a major issue in the 2015 federal election, without reversing the cheap labour strategy demanded by big capital.

Canada needs policies to put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed. Instead, the Harper government uses temporary foreign workers as part of the drive against job and income security for working people. This includes the expanding use of casualized, temporary, non-union workers, paid minimum wages and without benefits. The drive to reduce labour costs and attain a flexible work force is creating a brutal system of modern capitalist slavery, a system which generates, and feeds off, a huge pool of working poor.

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Fête nationale du Québec – solidarité aux travailleuses et aux travailleurs

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Déclaration conjointe du Parti communiste du Québec (section du PCC) et de la Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Québec

Le Parti communiste du Québec et la Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Québec offrent leurs vœux de solidarité les plus chaleureux aux travailleuses et aux travailleurs du Québec à l’occasion de leur fête nationale.

Le peuple du Québec constitue une nation dont les droits sont niés au sein du Canada depuis la conquête de la Nouvelle-France par l’Angleterre en 1763, d’abord par les colonialistes britanniques et ensuite par la classe capitaliste canadienne. Comme la nation acadienne, les minorités canadiennes françaises des autres provinces, la nation métis, les Premières Nations et Inuit, la nation québécoise subit l’oppression nationale dans ce pays.

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Full solidarity with BC Teachers

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Yet again, the BC Liberal government has moved to attack the collective bargaining process and generate confusion and chaos across the provincial public education system.  The Communist Party of BC condemns Premier Clark’s “partial lockout” of BCTF members, which marks a serious escalation of her relentless attack against teachers and other education workers, and in fact against students, parents and the entire public school system in British Columbia. We call for full mobilization of the labour movement and its allies in defence of the BCTF. The recent protests by students in Chilliwack and other cites against the lockout, and the wave of public anger against the BC Liberal education cuts across the province, are indications that a wider resistance can be mobilized to defeat the government’s agenda. Such a broad fightback can and should become the starting point for a powerful struggle to roll back the entire Liberal assault on public services.

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May Day 2014: Our struggle for the future

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May Day Greetings

This May Day 2014, more than five years have passed since the US housing bubble burst and quickly spread to a global financial crisis, the most acute and dangerous since the 1930s. The neo‑liberal agenda of the main imperialist powers had exported a global movement of unregulated and unrestrained capital, free trade agreements, a gluttony of super exploitation, theft of public property and privatization of public services, provoking a crisis so acute in its scale and breadth that it threatened collapse.

The managers of imperialism could not repair their own damage so they bought themselves a temporary reprieve by plundering public property, expropriating public funds to rebuild bankrupted enterprises, transferring funding for social programs and superstructure from the public purse into their investment houses. They richly rewarded themselves, increasing military budgets, and corrupting markets to the extent that it has created a world unemployment crisis, terrible privation, hunger, disease and war.

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IWD 2014: “Equality for Women is Progress for All”

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For over a century, March 8 has been the international day to honour the women in all countries who strive to achieve full equality. On IWD 2014, the Communist Party of Canada sends our warmest greetings to all women in the fight against poverty, austerity, violence, misogyny and war. As the United Nations has declared for this year’s IWD, “equality for women is progress for all.”

Here, the ruling class claims that Canada is a country of equality, fairness and social justice. Yet recent years have seen huge struggles around issues such as access to education, pay equity, union rights, jobs, devastation of the environment, deportations of migrants. Women have played a leading role in the Quebec student strike, the Idle No More movement, grassroots environmental struggles, and defence of labour and social rights.

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B.C. Communists slam ferry service cuts

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“The decision by the British Columbia Liberal government and the BC Ferry Corp. to slash services on many so‑called `minor routes’, and to eliminate free sailings during Monday to Thursday each week for seniors, will cause enormous hardships to the people of this province, while bringing paltry benefits to taxpayers. In fact, these cutbacks will likely create economic losses far outweighing the supposed savings which are the justification for this announcement.

“We join with groups and individuals across British Columbia demanding the cancellation of these changes. In our view, the coastal and inland ferry system of BC must be treated as an extension of the highway system, i.e. as an essential public service for the people of this province, not as a `for sale’ operation geared to squeeze a profit out of each route.

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Communist Party Condemns Attack on Canada Post

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The Communist Party of Canada joins with the labour movement and its community allies in condemning the federal government’s unilateral decision to eliminate home delivery, raise postal rates, and cut thousands of jobs. While the “restructuring” announcement was made by Canada Post Corporation, these measures are orchestrated by the Harper Tories, as part of their overall agenda to privatize public services and to attack the rights and interests of organized workers.

If implemented, these changes would make Canada the first country in the world to completely replace door‑to‑door delivery of urban mail with the “community mail boxes” which were imposed despite major opposition in rural areas across the country. Those negatively affected will include huge numbers of pensioners and people with disabilities who will find it much more difficult to get their mail on a regular basis. The reduction of service levels and staggering price increases to begin next March will also devastate thousands of small businesses and charities which rely heavily on lettermail to maintain contact with customers and pay their bills. The bland reassurances of Canada Post and Harper government cabinet ministers that these are “minor problems” ring completely hollow.

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Down with the Omnibus Bill C-4!

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The Communist Party of Canada strongly condemns the new omnibus Bill C‑4 to implement elements of the March 2013 Conservative budget, changing many laws and containing an array of measures, including a fierce attack against the right to strike in the public service.

In particular, this bill now gives the government, as an employer, the exclusive right to determine which services, facilities or activities of the State it considers essential, depriving public employees of their right to strike. Currently, the determination of essential services is the result of negotiation between the employer and the union.

In addition, the bill provides that where the employer has said that at least 80% of positions are essential, the right to strike will be completely abolished and the dispute must be referred to arbitration. However, when the employer considers that less than 80% of services are essential, the employer will have a veto over the arbitration. The bill also provides that the arbitrator shall be required to place a preponderance of weight to employer demands.

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