David Lasby of Imagine Canada will discuss the recently completed mapping of Ontario's social economy that combines nonprofits, co-operatives, credit unions, and other community organizations.
Using data taken from the first-ever census of Ontario co-ops, credit unions and caisses populaires, Mark Ventry from the Ontario Co-operative Association will discuss the social and economic impact of the province's co-op sector, what census information surprised On Co-op, and what the data confirmed.
Sherida Ryan of OISE/University of Toronto will discuss Ontario organizations that meet the broad definition applied to social economy enterprises and that rely on internet-based technology to achieve their organizational objectives, their similarities to traditional social economy enterprises, use of information technology and their understanding of an online social economy enterprise.
Wednesday, January 16, 2007, noon - 1:30 pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Room 12-199, 12th floor, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto
This event will be simultaneously webcast (see our website for details).
For more information, see http://sec.oise.utoronto.ca/english/lectures.php
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
This Holiday Season, Buy Union
Union members, college students, and all kinds of folks are doing the right thing by deciding to wear clothing made under decent conditions, in union shops instead of sweatshops. Click on the links below to find union-made, sweat-free suppliers.
Visit www.shopunionmade.org to buy items from artwork to chocolate, from books and clothing to clocks, computers, and vacation packages.
While you're planning your holiday trips, please visit our Union Hotel Guide (www.unitehere.org/hotelguide) and stay in UNITE HERE hotels across North America.
At Justice Clothing we don't think fashion should hurt. Justice Clothing's mission is to support democratic principles, workers' rights and economic sustainability through the sale and distribution of goods manufactured by workers protected by collective bargaining agreements. http://www.justiceclothing.com
Visit www.shopunionmade.org to buy items from artwork to chocolate, from books and clothing to clocks, computers, and vacation packages.
While you're planning your holiday trips, please visit our Union Hotel Guide (www.unitehere.org/hotelguide) and stay in UNITE HERE hotels across North America.
At Justice Clothing we don't think fashion should hurt. Justice Clothing's mission is to support democratic principles, workers' rights and economic sustainability through the sale and distribution of goods manufactured by workers protected by collective bargaining agreements. http://www.justiceclothing.com
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
LABOUR DAY SEPTEMBER 2007: Reviving the Labour Movement Through Reviving Class Solidarity
by Socialist Project Labour Committee
As Canada and Ontario's labour movement marches in this year's Labour Day Parade it does so with something to celebrate: an increase in the provincial minimum wage. That victory, all the more significant for victories being so rare in recent times, was partial – amongst other things it is only being phased in over three years – but all victories for working people are partial. Why this achievement merits special celebration is that:
- It materially matters for hundreds of thousands of workers.
- It demonstrated the exciting possibilities of creating spaces through which immigrant workers and youth could express their frustrations and mobilize to improve their conditions.
- It opened a new door through which the unionized labour movement – in various stages of crisis since the Days of Action – might be revived: supporting the struggles of non-union workers because it is both the morally right thing to do and because it contributes to uniting and building the working class as a potential social force agent.
What next?
That victory poses a number of questions. First what will the labour movement now do to build on this momentum? One option is to move on to fight for improvements in other standards (such as paid time off). Another is to raise the ante and get unionization itself more clearly on the agenda. New minimum standards are themselves an opportunity to do so because in many cases, these minimum standards are not enforced. And so there is a powerful opening for the need for a union just to get what the law allegedly guarantees you. A further campaign might be to take on the 'temp agencies' – parasites that live off the back of workers – and restore this function to public agencies providing a social service.
Second, having experienced the potentials of collective action at the community level, how can the labour movement strengthen these capacities? One step is internal: if we really want to make some organizing breakthroughs, we will have to overcome our sectionalism (divisions over who 'gets' new members) and develop an effective degree of cooperation that puts workers and the movement first. Another is external to formal unionism: there are groups like the Workers Action Center in Toronto that currently provide services to non-union workers (and have been long-time activists in the struggle for raising the minimum wage); they should be encouraged and supported in expanding their work.
What about the people on welfare?
A third question relates to the shameful conditions of those members of the working class who, for various reasons, are currently not in the workforce or only marginally attached and who consequently depend on welfare. Welfare rates are today 40% lower in purchasing power than they were when the Conservative government launched its own version of the 'War on Poverty' in the mid-90s (and they were hardly overgenerous before then). This too must be of fundamental concern to all working people simply because of the injustice it exposes in how we treat those with disabilities, single mothers trying to raise a family on their own (poverty rates are stunningly higher for women and 280,000 Ontario children live in families who rely on social assistance), and workers who have been laid off (such as those now benefiting from the higher minimum wage but at risk of not getting full-year employment or seeing rising housing prices and the lack of affordable housing eroding any gain they thought they made). Furthermore, the low standards brought on by unemployment represent pressures to stay at any job, no matter how poor the pay and conditions and no matter how sick you might be. And this can't help but increase pressures on standards for other workers.
A coalition of anti-poverty and related groups is planning a protest this fall (September 26) to profile their plight as the Ontario election takes place. Their goal is to 'raise the rates' (bring the $10 minimum wage forward and return welfare and disability rates to their former levels with a 40% increase), build affordable and accessible housing, and access without fear to government services for non-status immigrants. This coalition – Toronto Anti-Poverty (TAP) – is committed to continuing that struggle after the election. For organized labour, the question is where do we stand? Will we identify the fight against poverty as not just a matter of charity, but a dimension of solidarity against all the manifestations of exploitation and injustice working people experience?
We have no alternative
It is crucial, in all our struggles, to recognize that we are not simply fighting against 'bad policies', but something deeper. Governments seem to have concluded that capitalism in its present phase can only reach and maintain the profits it needs by: a) limiting 'diversions' to those not in the labour market and therefore not contributing to profits; and b) keeping those in the labour market insecure and fragmented from each other – insecure about their jobs, increasingly cut off from essential services, and struggling to survive on their own rather than collectively. This will not be fundamentally changed unless we can mobilize in a way that scares them the way they have worked so hard to scare us. Real change will only come if we reject their cramped and debilitating vision of what is possible and develop the solidarity, structures and capacities to move towards an alternative vision. Their own mantra of 'there is no alternative' within capitalism is essentially an admission that capitalism has itself become a barrier to human progress and that we 'have no alternative' but to challenge capitalism itself. •
This article was originally published in The Bullet, a Socialist Project e-bulletin.
Friday, September 7, 2007
TORONTO STAR: Textbooks economical with words about co-ops
Jack Quarter, Daniel Schugurensky, Erica McCollum and Laurie Mook
Sep 5, 2007
A recent study conducted through the Social Economy Centre at the University of Toronto raises questions about the narrow focus of business and economics textbooks in Ontario's high schools.
The research by professor Daniel Schugurensky and MA student Erica McCollum of OISE/ University of Toronto, examined the contents of 22 business textbooks containing 11,375 pages currently used in Ontario high schools.
In general, these textbooks had very little about non-profits and co-operatives.
When all of the materials referring to co-operatives were totalled, they amounted to 35 pages, or 0.3 per cent of the 11,375 pages in the 22 books.
For non-profits, this amounted to 107 pages, or 0.9 per cent of the total pages. In other words, there is not a lot about these types of organizations within the business texts used in Ontario high schools.
A similar study in 1995 (by professor Jack Quarter and then PhD student Alison Davidson also of OISE/UT), upon which the current study was based, had strikingly similar findings.
Not much has changed in the past 12 years with regard to the treatment of co-operatives and non-profits in business textbooks in Ontario.
Do these types of organizations have a place in business textbooks and business programs?
Arguably, these organizations are not in the mainstream of the business world, but they do have a significant impact upon the economy. A survey of the non-profit sector undertaken by Statistics Canada in 2003 (the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations) found that there were 161,000 incorporated non-profits in Canada, about half of which had charitable status registrations.
The same survey estimated that non-profits had revenues of $112 billion, employ 2 million people (54 per cent full-time), and have a volunteer labour force estimated to be another 1 million full-time equivalent jobs (about 2 billion hours).
The stereotype of non-profits is that their revenues are unearned (donations and grants), but the Statistics Canada survey indicates that 35 per cent is earned through the marketplace; in fact, there are a significant number of non-profits that compete successfully in the market with private sector firms (for example, the YMCAs).
Likewise, the stereotype of co-operatives as small and economically insignificant is belied by the data. For instance, the Co-operatives Secretariat, a federal government agency, reported that in 2003 approximately 9,200 co-operatives brought in $35.8 billion of revenues and employed around 155,000.
Agriculture co-operatives, although having declined in importance due to the demutualization of some of the largest ones, were still marketing and processing a large share of farmers' production, notably in poultry, dairy and hogs. Two co-operatives are among the top 12 corporations in the food and beverage-manufacturing sector in Canada.
Moreover, eight non-financial co-operatives are among the top 500 corporations in Canada; two of these are among the top 100 corporations.
Le Mouvement des caisses Desjardins, the umbrella organization for credit unions/caisses populaires in francophone Canada, is the largest employer in Quebec and, with a workforce of more than 39,000, is the sixth largest financial institution in Canada with assets of $118 billion in 2005.
These organizations, a group that we classify as part of the social economy, provide flexible, sustainable and innovative approaches to achieving social and economic objectives.
Although they are not the mainstream of the economy, they employ and train people, create economic growth, provide social support, foster community development, and have valuable assets.
Furthermore, they mobilize large numbers of volunteers who contribute to these organizations but whose contributions are typically ignored in conventional accounting.
These organizations are critical to our diverse Canadian landscape, yet the business and economics textbooks of our high-school students and future leaders are strikingly silent about them.
Our research has focused upon the approved textbooks in Ontario's high school business and economics courses.
We haven't reviewed the major business programs in universities, but we know the terrain there is also relatively barren. Something is missing!
Jack Quarter and Laurie Mook are co-directors of the Social Economy Centre at the University of Toronto; Daniel Schugurensky is director of the collaborative graduate program in community development at the University of Toronto, and Erica McCollum is completing her MA at OISE/UT.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Sep 5, 2007
A recent study conducted through the Social Economy Centre at the University of Toronto raises questions about the narrow focus of business and economics textbooks in Ontario's high schools.
The research by professor Daniel Schugurensky and MA student Erica McCollum of OISE/ University of Toronto, examined the contents of 22 business textbooks containing 11,375 pages currently used in Ontario high schools.
In general, these textbooks had very little about non-profits and co-operatives.
When all of the materials referring to co-operatives were totalled, they amounted to 35 pages, or 0.3 per cent of the 11,375 pages in the 22 books.
For non-profits, this amounted to 107 pages, or 0.9 per cent of the total pages. In other words, there is not a lot about these types of organizations within the business texts used in Ontario high schools.
A similar study in 1995 (by professor Jack Quarter and then PhD student Alison Davidson also of OISE/UT), upon which the current study was based, had strikingly similar findings.
Not much has changed in the past 12 years with regard to the treatment of co-operatives and non-profits in business textbooks in Ontario.
Do these types of organizations have a place in business textbooks and business programs?
Arguably, these organizations are not in the mainstream of the business world, but they do have a significant impact upon the economy. A survey of the non-profit sector undertaken by Statistics Canada in 2003 (the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations) found that there were 161,000 incorporated non-profits in Canada, about half of which had charitable status registrations.
The same survey estimated that non-profits had revenues of $112 billion, employ 2 million people (54 per cent full-time), and have a volunteer labour force estimated to be another 1 million full-time equivalent jobs (about 2 billion hours).
The stereotype of non-profits is that their revenues are unearned (donations and grants), but the Statistics Canada survey indicates that 35 per cent is earned through the marketplace; in fact, there are a significant number of non-profits that compete successfully in the market with private sector firms (for example, the YMCAs).
Likewise, the stereotype of co-operatives as small and economically insignificant is belied by the data. For instance, the Co-operatives Secretariat, a federal government agency, reported that in 2003 approximately 9,200 co-operatives brought in $35.8 billion of revenues and employed around 155,000.
Agriculture co-operatives, although having declined in importance due to the demutualization of some of the largest ones, were still marketing and processing a large share of farmers' production, notably in poultry, dairy and hogs. Two co-operatives are among the top 12 corporations in the food and beverage-manufacturing sector in Canada.
Moreover, eight non-financial co-operatives are among the top 500 corporations in Canada; two of these are among the top 100 corporations.
Le Mouvement des caisses Desjardins, the umbrella organization for credit unions/caisses populaires in francophone Canada, is the largest employer in Quebec and, with a workforce of more than 39,000, is the sixth largest financial institution in Canada with assets of $118 billion in 2005.
These organizations, a group that we classify as part of the social economy, provide flexible, sustainable and innovative approaches to achieving social and economic objectives.
Although they are not the mainstream of the economy, they employ and train people, create economic growth, provide social support, foster community development, and have valuable assets.
Furthermore, they mobilize large numbers of volunteers who contribute to these organizations but whose contributions are typically ignored in conventional accounting.
These organizations are critical to our diverse Canadian landscape, yet the business and economics textbooks of our high-school students and future leaders are strikingly silent about them.
Our research has focused upon the approved textbooks in Ontario's high school business and economics courses.
We haven't reviewed the major business programs in universities, but we know the terrain there is also relatively barren. Something is missing!
Jack Quarter and Laurie Mook are co-directors of the Social Economy Centre at the University of Toronto; Daniel Schugurensky is director of the collaborative graduate program in community development at the University of Toronto, and Erica McCollum is completing her MA at OISE/UT.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Immigrant nonunion workers in a Chicago factory: Victory on the picket line
August 17, 2007
LEE SUSTAR and ORLANDO SEPULDEVA report on a victorious strike by immigrant workers in Chicago who walked out over threats to terminate them based on immigration status--and the implications of this struggle for the labor and immigrant rights movement.
THE REMARKABLE struggle of immigrant strikers at South Chicago’s Cygnus Corp., a nonunion soap factory, ended August 10 as improbably as it began two weeks earlier--with dozens of workers jammed into a temporary staffing agency’s office, voting on the spot to accept the agency’s offer to send more than 100 back into the plant without penalty--and with the threat of termination withdrawn.
The Mexican immigrant workers prevailed over a plant management backed up by its parent company, Marietta Corp., a large manufacturer of private-label soaps and detergents for huge retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Walgreens. Marietta, in turn, is controlled by Ares Management, a private equity firm worth $16 billion.
Striking Cygnus therefore meant striking Corporate America, a struggle with impossibly long odds.
Nevertheless, there was no hesitation when workers decided to strike over management’s plan to terminate anyone whose immigration status couldn’t be verified by August 10.
Cygnus had used Social Security “no-match” letters--notification from the government that the Social Security numbers on file don’t match those given by employees--to threaten the jobs of Cygnus’ few permanent workers.
For their part, the temps were told that the company was switching to a new agency, and workers would have to reverify their status. Similar threats loom for immigrant workers across the U.S., as the government implements new rules in which no-match letters can be used as grounds for termination of employment, or worse.
Already, employers across the U.S. have begun using no-match letters as a pretext to fire workers. Cygnus management no doubt felt it could do the same, having long kept workers toiling for minimum wage or a bit more, and with no benefits.
Instead, the company faced a near-total strike, spirited picket lines and growing solidarity, including a promise of support from organized labor. A strikebreaking operation fizzled, and more and more trucks left the Cygnus plant without loads. The handful of people still working inside the plant passed word to strikers about plummeting production.
So nearly two weeks after provoking the walkout, management invited permanent employees in for four hours of negotiations that ended in an offer: Would they come back to work for the old rates of pay, with all threats of termination withdrawn?
The workers didn’t say yes. After all, they weren’t in negotiations for themselves, but as the chosen representatives of all the strikers. They told Cygnus boss John White that they’d get back to him once they reported to the rest of the workers.
Manuel, a permanent employee, proposed a meeting in a nearby public park to discuss the deal. There, Edith, a permanent employee and strike leader, put it this way: “There are no permanent and temporary workers--we are all workers.”
Martín Unzueta, the organizer of the Chicago Workers Collaborative and an adviser to the workers, proposed a solution: showing up the following morning at 7:30 a.m. at the temp agency, Total Staffing, to demand the same deal as the permanent employees had received. The workers would return to work together--or not at all.
It turned out that the temp agency, Total Staffing, had prepared a letter offering individuals the opportunity to return to work at Cygnus. But for the temp workers--who comprised 110 out of the 118 workers in the plant, even though many had been on the job for years--the deal wasn’t quite done. It had to be voted on first.
As they made a unanimous show of hands in the office on Chicago’s South Side, all a flustered Total Staffing manager could do was order reporters and solidarity activists to get out. The manager didn’t dare ask the permanent Cygnus employees to leave, however. They remained to discuss the offer with the temps, vote on it, and, afterward, exchanged congratulations.
One striker, Julia, explained how unity among the Cygnus workers and solidarity from others led to victory. “We went on strike, you could say, with our eyes shut, but now we know that there are people who we can count on,” she said. “Y que los demás no piensen que no se puede, porque si se puede--let no one think that it can’t be done, because it can be done.”
As Ignacio, a temp worker who’d been working in the plant for 11 months, put it, “One of the lessons is that unity makes us strong. Even if we were simple employees, we made a big company tremble and move. This victory is for us workers, but also for all the working class and for all the community groups that were here supporting us.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN FACT, community support for Cygnus workers first took shape more than a year before the strike, when they made contact with young immigrant rights activists in the South East Chicago Committee for Immigrant Rights (SECCIR).
One SECCIR activist, Olga Bautista, had worked in the accounting department at Cygnus in 2004. Two years later, she passed out leaflets in the parking lot to build support for the March 10, 2006, mass immigrant rights march that sparked a wave of similar mobilizations across the U.S.
One of Cygnus’ permanent employees, Edith, took a flyer and asked for suggestions on how to deal with the no-match letters that the company had received a few months earlier. Bautista put her in touch with Unzueta of the Chicago Workers Collaborative, which focuses on immigrant workers’ rights.
Unzueta contacted the company and informed them that the no-match letters were not intended to indicate immigration status, and required no action on their part. Management let the issue drop.
Cygnus workers, meanwhile, began organizing. Many attended the March 10 protest, and almost all of them turned out for the follow-up protest on May Day 2006, as Edith negotiated with management to give workers the day off in exchange for a Saturday workday to make up for lost production. “We even had a bus pick them up at the plant to take them to the march,” Bautista recalled.
Over the next few months, workers discussed problems in the plant--not just low wages, but unsafe working conditions. According to one worker, management issues only gloves, but not masks or work boots, to workers who mix chemicals to manufacture detergents and soaps.
The unlabeled storage tanks outside the plant contain many toxic chemicals, which often spill out of vats and create noxious fumes and slippery floors. According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, six workers were taken to hospitals last December 18 after a hazardous material got on their skin.
Smaller-scale accidents are routine, a worker told reporters on the picket line. He pointed to chemical burns not only on his forearms, but his chest and stomach, where acid had burned through his street clothes. “They have the masks, but they don’t give them out,” he said. Another worker complained that only one person in management in the plant was authorized to call an ambulance in case of emergencies.
Another simmering grievance was racism and discrimination. Workers in the plant complain that Mexicans were treated badly by management and had to endure open racist abuse. One woman was demoted from a supervisory position because she couldn’t speak English; her pay was cut.
So as this year’s May Day protest approached, the mood at Cygnus was different. Workers were more confident, and they began asking for a raise. Management took a tougher line, saying no to any negotiated time off for workers to attend the march this year.
A few weeks later, Cygnus’ new human resources manager, Mary Ann Vasquez, told permanent employees that they would have to clear up the no-match letters. At the same time, she informed temporary workers that they’d have to switch from Total Staffing to a different temp agency, Staffmark, and verify their immigration status in doing so.
Anyone who failed to comply would be terminated by the August 10 deadline. The workers’ response: an indefinite strike.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE CYGNUS plant is an unlikely place to become a focal point of labor solidarity. Never unionized, it is located literally at the southern edge of the Chicago city limits, sandwiched between two highly active freight railroad lines that regularly back up local traffic.
Semi-trucks loaded with freight and cartage haulers on their way to nearby landfills are often forced to wait 20 or 30 minutes for trains to pass. When they’re finally able to roll, the drivers, well behind schedule, hit the accelerator hard, kicking up great clouds of dust as they rumble past the plant without a glance.
But on July 30, it all looked different. Surprised drivers looked down on an improvised picket line, with homemade signs and chants. Many waved and honked to show their support.
Each day after, the picket line was better organized--a schedule worked out, donated food and drinks distributed, a bullhorn to amplify chants. Activists from a number of organizations walked the line--including the Chicago Workers Collaborative, SECCIR, the Juan Diego Community Center, the International Socialist Organization and individual immigrant rights activists.
The owner of the house next door to the plant, himself a Mexican immigrant and factory worker, allowed workers taking a break from the sun-scorched picket line to sit on his shaded front steps, store their supplies and use his bathroom.
Strikers soon produced a leaflet explaining to drivers who were delivering to Cygnus that a strike was on, and asking them not to cross the picket line.
One nonunion driver, an African American, felt compelled to make his delivery. But he later came to walk the line and pledge his support, identifying the immigrant rights movement with the civil rights struggles of decades past. His presence had a visible impact on strikers, especially since Cygnus management had played the race card by hiring African Americans as strikebreakers.
In more than a few cases, however, Teamster drivers caught sight of the picket line, took a leaflet and drove on without making deliveries, to the cheers of strikers and their supporters.
And on August 1, the second workday of the strike, organized labor appeared on the picket line itself in the form of four business representatives from International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 8. The union had gotten a call about the strike from Ramón Becerra, an official of the Chicago Federation of Labor, who is also a leader in the Chicago chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.
Becerra learned of the strike from Jorge Mújica, a journalist, labor organizer and leading figure in Chicago’s March 10 Movement, the coalition central to the area’s mass immigrant rights marches. Mújica, like Unzueta, had become an adviser to the strikers and moved to enlist union support.
The difficulty was that District 8 had no Spanish speakers on staff. But with Mújica interpreting, union business representative Karl Sarpolis made it clear that the union supported the workers. “We know how these companies discriminate against minorities,” he said, leaving behind a petition to join the union. When he returned two days later, 90 workers had signed up.
In a picket-line meeting, the workers elected a provisional bargaining committee in case the union was successful in getting management to negotiate, and decided to hold a meeting with the union the following Saturday, August 4, at the Juan Diego center on the East Side.
Some 60 workers turned out to meet with IAM District 8’s directing business representative Carl Gallman, along with Sarpolis and Armando Arreola, a business rep from IAM Local 701 and a native Spanish speaker who had been sent by his local president, Bill Davis, to provide additional support.
Gallman, a veteran of the IAM’s glory days in the 1970s, recognized what was in front of him: a roomful of determined, militant strikers. The union was willing to try to organize the plant--permanent and temporary workers alike, he said. “We’re going to help you, whether or not you join the union,” he declared.
The union officials and the workers had independently come to the same conclusion: First, negotiate to get everyone back to work, and leave wages and conditions for later. After Gallman and the other IAM officials left, Mújica chaired the meeting, as workers discussed how to improve picket lines and organize support.
Even though these mostly minimum-wage workers had gone a week without wages, and of course had no strike benefits, no one complained. The highly focused discussion was all about how to take the struggle forward. Afterward, solidarity activists began to say out loud what they had barely begun to think: The strike could actually win.
The victory, as it turned out, was not the result of organized labor’s support. The following Monday, the IAM’s Gallman called Cygnus to speak to management and claim the right to represent the workers. While this certainly added to the pressure on management, his message wasn’t returned, and matters went no further.
The Democratic presidential debates in Chicago, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, offered an additional chance to enlist labor support. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka took a copy of the fundraising letter, expressed sympathy and said the federation’s organizing department should follow up. Linda Chavez-Thompson, the federation’s executive vice-president, said the same. Local Chicago labor leaders also showed interest.
In the end, however, the workers won without much material support from unions, where the organizing machinery is often rusty and, even in the best cases, takes time to gear up.
A notable exception was United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 881, which pledged $500. In hindsight, solidarity committee members realized they should have taken up a collection directly from the 17,000 union members who attended the AFL-CIO-sponsored debates.
But while labor was slow to move, the workers’ own organization developed daily.
Two days after meeting with the IAM, several workers rallied alongside Dunkin Donunts workers fired after receiving no-match letters; that evening, 30 turned out to meet with labor lawyer Chris Williams, who provides legal resources to the Chicago Workers Collaborative.
On August 8, workers’ morale got a boost when the Chicago Tribune made their struggle the top story on its front page, adding to widespread coverage in the Spanish media. A delegation from the Juan Diego community center managed to get into the plant to demand negotiations with workers, succeeding where a previous attempt failed.
That same day, several workers joined dozens of supporters at a fundraiser organized by the Cygnus Workers Solidarity Committee, which had itself formed four days earlier. More than $1,300 was raised, including the UFCW donation--money that was quickly turned into bags of groceries for hard-pressed strikers’ families.
Just as notable, though, was the character of the event itself, which linked immigrant rights and labor activists in an evening filled with music and interspersed with emotional speeches by strikers and supporters. Performers included Chuy Negrete, a well-known singer; the dance group Azteca Nahuil; and Iván Resendiz, a young classical guitarist. The event ran late as the crowd sang folk songs from the Mexican Revolution and the labor movement.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THAT SAME evening, the workers’ chosen negotiators sat down for several hours with a representative from Cygnus’ parent company, Marietta Corp.
Edith, the strike activist, said he presented himself as a neutral arbitrator prepared to settle the dispute. But Edith and the rest of the workers didn’t buy it. They said they would negotiate only in the presence of their attorney, Chris Williams.
At a picket line meeting the following day, the workers reiterated their demands: Everyone would come back to work, or no one. No agreements would be made in the bargaining sessions. Workers would vote together on whether to accept any management offer.
“That’s the Mexican tradition,” explained Jorge Mújica. “A negotiating committee is not a signing committee. When there’s a strike, workers declare themselves to be in permanent assembly,” voting on whether or not to accept management’s offer.
Although none of the leading strike activists had any experience in unions in the U.S. or Mexico, workers were acting in that tradition. “Everyone has an uncle, a brother, a cousin who has done this,” Mújica said.
As the ensuing four-hour negotiations wore on, it became clear that management was ready to throw in the towel. Loading docks were vacant, trucks left the gates empty, and a huge spill of dishwashing soap washed out into the parking lot, a mess that would cost at least a couple of hours of production, according to the workers.
The scabbing operation had descended into farce, with high-school aged youths swarming around a beleaguered Cygnus manager trying to sort out assignments during the afternoon shift change. Pallets loaded with dish soap had been dropped at crazy angles just inside the plant entrance, well away from the loading dock.
Security guards, who days earlier had blustered about arresting strike supporters, wandered about listlessly, ignoring two reporters who roamed the employee parking lot.
Management capitulated, and Total Staffing fell into line. The only outstanding issue at press time was the status of a supervisor who had joined workers on the picket line.
Even so, workers had won a victory with far-reaching implications for both the immigrant rights movement and the unions. “The labor movement has a lot to learn from these workers, because the labor movement can’t be strong if it sets immigrant workers aside,” said Martín Unzueta, who has met dozens of workers in recent years who want to organize, but can’t find a union to follow up. “The immigrant workers are ready to be organized.”
Like Unzueta, Jorge Mújica thinks the Cygnus victory can inspire further advances. “People remembered how to fight,” he said. “We’re used to having street demonstrations in Mexico all the time. But when people get here, they live hidden, very silent lives.
“But this whole process, from March 10 last year to May Day this year, is about showing that you can fight. It was after May Day this year that they asked for a pay raise. This wouldn’t have happened without the marches. If the workers hadn’t participated once or twice, they wouldn’t have gone on strike.”
Edith, the strike leader who organized workers to participate in the marches, said the struggle for better wages and conditions would continue. “I’m happy because while we started with fear, now we realize that we can do lots of things if we’re united,” she said. “If [the issue of the temporary workers] didn’t get resolved, we would have continued the strike, but with the help of everybody, because we have no union.
“The workers have to realize that they don’t have to be afraid, because here we taught them that unity is the way forward.”
Shaun Harkin contributed to this report.
-----------------------------
What you can do
Cygnus workers are still in need of financial support after surviving their walkout without strike benefits. Make out checks or money orders to the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (with “Cygnus workers” in the memo line), and send to: Cygnus Workers Solidarity Committee, c/o Chicago Workers Collaborative, P.O. Box 08048, Chicago, IL 60608. Call 773-653-3664 for more information.
From Socialist Worker Online - http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/640/640_06_Cygnus.shtml
LEE SUSTAR and ORLANDO SEPULDEVA report on a victorious strike by immigrant workers in Chicago who walked out over threats to terminate them based on immigration status--and the implications of this struggle for the labor and immigrant rights movement.
THE REMARKABLE struggle of immigrant strikers at South Chicago’s Cygnus Corp., a nonunion soap factory, ended August 10 as improbably as it began two weeks earlier--with dozens of workers jammed into a temporary staffing agency’s office, voting on the spot to accept the agency’s offer to send more than 100 back into the plant without penalty--and with the threat of termination withdrawn.
The Mexican immigrant workers prevailed over a plant management backed up by its parent company, Marietta Corp., a large manufacturer of private-label soaps and detergents for huge retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Walgreens. Marietta, in turn, is controlled by Ares Management, a private equity firm worth $16 billion.
Striking Cygnus therefore meant striking Corporate America, a struggle with impossibly long odds.
Nevertheless, there was no hesitation when workers decided to strike over management’s plan to terminate anyone whose immigration status couldn’t be verified by August 10.
Cygnus had used Social Security “no-match” letters--notification from the government that the Social Security numbers on file don’t match those given by employees--to threaten the jobs of Cygnus’ few permanent workers.
For their part, the temps were told that the company was switching to a new agency, and workers would have to reverify their status. Similar threats loom for immigrant workers across the U.S., as the government implements new rules in which no-match letters can be used as grounds for termination of employment, or worse.
Already, employers across the U.S. have begun using no-match letters as a pretext to fire workers. Cygnus management no doubt felt it could do the same, having long kept workers toiling for minimum wage or a bit more, and with no benefits.
Instead, the company faced a near-total strike, spirited picket lines and growing solidarity, including a promise of support from organized labor. A strikebreaking operation fizzled, and more and more trucks left the Cygnus plant without loads. The handful of people still working inside the plant passed word to strikers about plummeting production.
So nearly two weeks after provoking the walkout, management invited permanent employees in for four hours of negotiations that ended in an offer: Would they come back to work for the old rates of pay, with all threats of termination withdrawn?
The workers didn’t say yes. After all, they weren’t in negotiations for themselves, but as the chosen representatives of all the strikers. They told Cygnus boss John White that they’d get back to him once they reported to the rest of the workers.
Manuel, a permanent employee, proposed a meeting in a nearby public park to discuss the deal. There, Edith, a permanent employee and strike leader, put it this way: “There are no permanent and temporary workers--we are all workers.”
Martín Unzueta, the organizer of the Chicago Workers Collaborative and an adviser to the workers, proposed a solution: showing up the following morning at 7:30 a.m. at the temp agency, Total Staffing, to demand the same deal as the permanent employees had received. The workers would return to work together--or not at all.
It turned out that the temp agency, Total Staffing, had prepared a letter offering individuals the opportunity to return to work at Cygnus. But for the temp workers--who comprised 110 out of the 118 workers in the plant, even though many had been on the job for years--the deal wasn’t quite done. It had to be voted on first.
As they made a unanimous show of hands in the office on Chicago’s South Side, all a flustered Total Staffing manager could do was order reporters and solidarity activists to get out. The manager didn’t dare ask the permanent Cygnus employees to leave, however. They remained to discuss the offer with the temps, vote on it, and, afterward, exchanged congratulations.
One striker, Julia, explained how unity among the Cygnus workers and solidarity from others led to victory. “We went on strike, you could say, with our eyes shut, but now we know that there are people who we can count on,” she said. “Y que los demás no piensen que no se puede, porque si se puede--let no one think that it can’t be done, because it can be done.”
As Ignacio, a temp worker who’d been working in the plant for 11 months, put it, “One of the lessons is that unity makes us strong. Even if we were simple employees, we made a big company tremble and move. This victory is for us workers, but also for all the working class and for all the community groups that were here supporting us.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN FACT, community support for Cygnus workers first took shape more than a year before the strike, when they made contact with young immigrant rights activists in the South East Chicago Committee for Immigrant Rights (SECCIR).
One SECCIR activist, Olga Bautista, had worked in the accounting department at Cygnus in 2004. Two years later, she passed out leaflets in the parking lot to build support for the March 10, 2006, mass immigrant rights march that sparked a wave of similar mobilizations across the U.S.
One of Cygnus’ permanent employees, Edith, took a flyer and asked for suggestions on how to deal with the no-match letters that the company had received a few months earlier. Bautista put her in touch with Unzueta of the Chicago Workers Collaborative, which focuses on immigrant workers’ rights.
Unzueta contacted the company and informed them that the no-match letters were not intended to indicate immigration status, and required no action on their part. Management let the issue drop.
Cygnus workers, meanwhile, began organizing. Many attended the March 10 protest, and almost all of them turned out for the follow-up protest on May Day 2006, as Edith negotiated with management to give workers the day off in exchange for a Saturday workday to make up for lost production. “We even had a bus pick them up at the plant to take them to the march,” Bautista recalled.
Over the next few months, workers discussed problems in the plant--not just low wages, but unsafe working conditions. According to one worker, management issues only gloves, but not masks or work boots, to workers who mix chemicals to manufacture detergents and soaps.
The unlabeled storage tanks outside the plant contain many toxic chemicals, which often spill out of vats and create noxious fumes and slippery floors. According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, six workers were taken to hospitals last December 18 after a hazardous material got on their skin.
Smaller-scale accidents are routine, a worker told reporters on the picket line. He pointed to chemical burns not only on his forearms, but his chest and stomach, where acid had burned through his street clothes. “They have the masks, but they don’t give them out,” he said. Another worker complained that only one person in management in the plant was authorized to call an ambulance in case of emergencies.
Another simmering grievance was racism and discrimination. Workers in the plant complain that Mexicans were treated badly by management and had to endure open racist abuse. One woman was demoted from a supervisory position because she couldn’t speak English; her pay was cut.
So as this year’s May Day protest approached, the mood at Cygnus was different. Workers were more confident, and they began asking for a raise. Management took a tougher line, saying no to any negotiated time off for workers to attend the march this year.
A few weeks later, Cygnus’ new human resources manager, Mary Ann Vasquez, told permanent employees that they would have to clear up the no-match letters. At the same time, she informed temporary workers that they’d have to switch from Total Staffing to a different temp agency, Staffmark, and verify their immigration status in doing so.
Anyone who failed to comply would be terminated by the August 10 deadline. The workers’ response: an indefinite strike.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE CYGNUS plant is an unlikely place to become a focal point of labor solidarity. Never unionized, it is located literally at the southern edge of the Chicago city limits, sandwiched between two highly active freight railroad lines that regularly back up local traffic.
Semi-trucks loaded with freight and cartage haulers on their way to nearby landfills are often forced to wait 20 or 30 minutes for trains to pass. When they’re finally able to roll, the drivers, well behind schedule, hit the accelerator hard, kicking up great clouds of dust as they rumble past the plant without a glance.
But on July 30, it all looked different. Surprised drivers looked down on an improvised picket line, with homemade signs and chants. Many waved and honked to show their support.
Each day after, the picket line was better organized--a schedule worked out, donated food and drinks distributed, a bullhorn to amplify chants. Activists from a number of organizations walked the line--including the Chicago Workers Collaborative, SECCIR, the Juan Diego Community Center, the International Socialist Organization and individual immigrant rights activists.
The owner of the house next door to the plant, himself a Mexican immigrant and factory worker, allowed workers taking a break from the sun-scorched picket line to sit on his shaded front steps, store their supplies and use his bathroom.
Strikers soon produced a leaflet explaining to drivers who were delivering to Cygnus that a strike was on, and asking them not to cross the picket line.
One nonunion driver, an African American, felt compelled to make his delivery. But he later came to walk the line and pledge his support, identifying the immigrant rights movement with the civil rights struggles of decades past. His presence had a visible impact on strikers, especially since Cygnus management had played the race card by hiring African Americans as strikebreakers.
In more than a few cases, however, Teamster drivers caught sight of the picket line, took a leaflet and drove on without making deliveries, to the cheers of strikers and their supporters.
And on August 1, the second workday of the strike, organized labor appeared on the picket line itself in the form of four business representatives from International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 8. The union had gotten a call about the strike from Ramón Becerra, an official of the Chicago Federation of Labor, who is also a leader in the Chicago chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.
Becerra learned of the strike from Jorge Mújica, a journalist, labor organizer and leading figure in Chicago’s March 10 Movement, the coalition central to the area’s mass immigrant rights marches. Mújica, like Unzueta, had become an adviser to the strikers and moved to enlist union support.
The difficulty was that District 8 had no Spanish speakers on staff. But with Mújica interpreting, union business representative Karl Sarpolis made it clear that the union supported the workers. “We know how these companies discriminate against minorities,” he said, leaving behind a petition to join the union. When he returned two days later, 90 workers had signed up.
In a picket-line meeting, the workers elected a provisional bargaining committee in case the union was successful in getting management to negotiate, and decided to hold a meeting with the union the following Saturday, August 4, at the Juan Diego center on the East Side.
Some 60 workers turned out to meet with IAM District 8’s directing business representative Carl Gallman, along with Sarpolis and Armando Arreola, a business rep from IAM Local 701 and a native Spanish speaker who had been sent by his local president, Bill Davis, to provide additional support.
Gallman, a veteran of the IAM’s glory days in the 1970s, recognized what was in front of him: a roomful of determined, militant strikers. The union was willing to try to organize the plant--permanent and temporary workers alike, he said. “We’re going to help you, whether or not you join the union,” he declared.
The union officials and the workers had independently come to the same conclusion: First, negotiate to get everyone back to work, and leave wages and conditions for later. After Gallman and the other IAM officials left, Mújica chaired the meeting, as workers discussed how to improve picket lines and organize support.
Even though these mostly minimum-wage workers had gone a week without wages, and of course had no strike benefits, no one complained. The highly focused discussion was all about how to take the struggle forward. Afterward, solidarity activists began to say out loud what they had barely begun to think: The strike could actually win.
The victory, as it turned out, was not the result of organized labor’s support. The following Monday, the IAM’s Gallman called Cygnus to speak to management and claim the right to represent the workers. While this certainly added to the pressure on management, his message wasn’t returned, and matters went no further.
The Democratic presidential debates in Chicago, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, offered an additional chance to enlist labor support. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka took a copy of the fundraising letter, expressed sympathy and said the federation’s organizing department should follow up. Linda Chavez-Thompson, the federation’s executive vice-president, said the same. Local Chicago labor leaders also showed interest.
In the end, however, the workers won without much material support from unions, where the organizing machinery is often rusty and, even in the best cases, takes time to gear up.
A notable exception was United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 881, which pledged $500. In hindsight, solidarity committee members realized they should have taken up a collection directly from the 17,000 union members who attended the AFL-CIO-sponsored debates.
But while labor was slow to move, the workers’ own organization developed daily.
Two days after meeting with the IAM, several workers rallied alongside Dunkin Donunts workers fired after receiving no-match letters; that evening, 30 turned out to meet with labor lawyer Chris Williams, who provides legal resources to the Chicago Workers Collaborative.
On August 8, workers’ morale got a boost when the Chicago Tribune made their struggle the top story on its front page, adding to widespread coverage in the Spanish media. A delegation from the Juan Diego community center managed to get into the plant to demand negotiations with workers, succeeding where a previous attempt failed.
That same day, several workers joined dozens of supporters at a fundraiser organized by the Cygnus Workers Solidarity Committee, which had itself formed four days earlier. More than $1,300 was raised, including the UFCW donation--money that was quickly turned into bags of groceries for hard-pressed strikers’ families.
Just as notable, though, was the character of the event itself, which linked immigrant rights and labor activists in an evening filled with music and interspersed with emotional speeches by strikers and supporters. Performers included Chuy Negrete, a well-known singer; the dance group Azteca Nahuil; and Iván Resendiz, a young classical guitarist. The event ran late as the crowd sang folk songs from the Mexican Revolution and the labor movement.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THAT SAME evening, the workers’ chosen negotiators sat down for several hours with a representative from Cygnus’ parent company, Marietta Corp.
Edith, the strike activist, said he presented himself as a neutral arbitrator prepared to settle the dispute. But Edith and the rest of the workers didn’t buy it. They said they would negotiate only in the presence of their attorney, Chris Williams.
At a picket line meeting the following day, the workers reiterated their demands: Everyone would come back to work, or no one. No agreements would be made in the bargaining sessions. Workers would vote together on whether to accept any management offer.
“That’s the Mexican tradition,” explained Jorge Mújica. “A negotiating committee is not a signing committee. When there’s a strike, workers declare themselves to be in permanent assembly,” voting on whether or not to accept management’s offer.
Although none of the leading strike activists had any experience in unions in the U.S. or Mexico, workers were acting in that tradition. “Everyone has an uncle, a brother, a cousin who has done this,” Mújica said.
As the ensuing four-hour negotiations wore on, it became clear that management was ready to throw in the towel. Loading docks were vacant, trucks left the gates empty, and a huge spill of dishwashing soap washed out into the parking lot, a mess that would cost at least a couple of hours of production, according to the workers.
The scabbing operation had descended into farce, with high-school aged youths swarming around a beleaguered Cygnus manager trying to sort out assignments during the afternoon shift change. Pallets loaded with dish soap had been dropped at crazy angles just inside the plant entrance, well away from the loading dock.
Security guards, who days earlier had blustered about arresting strike supporters, wandered about listlessly, ignoring two reporters who roamed the employee parking lot.
Management capitulated, and Total Staffing fell into line. The only outstanding issue at press time was the status of a supervisor who had joined workers on the picket line.
Even so, workers had won a victory with far-reaching implications for both the immigrant rights movement and the unions. “The labor movement has a lot to learn from these workers, because the labor movement can’t be strong if it sets immigrant workers aside,” said Martín Unzueta, who has met dozens of workers in recent years who want to organize, but can’t find a union to follow up. “The immigrant workers are ready to be organized.”
Like Unzueta, Jorge Mújica thinks the Cygnus victory can inspire further advances. “People remembered how to fight,” he said. “We’re used to having street demonstrations in Mexico all the time. But when people get here, they live hidden, very silent lives.
“But this whole process, from March 10 last year to May Day this year, is about showing that you can fight. It was after May Day this year that they asked for a pay raise. This wouldn’t have happened without the marches. If the workers hadn’t participated once or twice, they wouldn’t have gone on strike.”
Edith, the strike leader who organized workers to participate in the marches, said the struggle for better wages and conditions would continue. “I’m happy because while we started with fear, now we realize that we can do lots of things if we’re united,” she said. “If [the issue of the temporary workers] didn’t get resolved, we would have continued the strike, but with the help of everybody, because we have no union.
“The workers have to realize that they don’t have to be afraid, because here we taught them that unity is the way forward.”
Shaun Harkin contributed to this report.
-----------------------------
What you can do
Cygnus workers are still in need of financial support after surviving their walkout without strike benefits. Make out checks or money orders to the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (with “Cygnus workers” in the memo line), and send to: Cygnus Workers Solidarity Committee, c/o Chicago Workers Collaborative, P.O. Box 08048, Chicago, IL 60608. Call 773-653-3664 for more information.
From Socialist Worker Online - http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/640/640_06_Cygnus.shtml
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
THE CRISIS IN MANUFACTURING JOBS: STRUGGLING FOR ANSWERS
by Labour Committee, Socialist Project
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), spurred on by initiatives from the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), United Steelworkers (USW) and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), has moved to place Canada’s devastating loss of manufacturing jobs on the national agenda.
Judging from the CAW, where the campaign has, by spring 2007, been more developed, the enthusiastic membership response seems to have breathed some new life and hope into the union. It is clear that a good many local leaders, disheartened with the never-ending demands of concessions and frustrated with waiting for the next corporate threat or devastating announcement, have been anxious for such fightback campaigns.
But will the campaigns deliver?
Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet050.html
The Socialist Project seeks to bring together individual workers and intellectuals, as well as groups and movements, who share an anti-capitalist orientation. Our intent is to offer some hopefully constructive ideas, and contribute to an open discussion with labour activists about how we can move ahead.
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), spurred on by initiatives from the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), United Steelworkers (USW) and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), has moved to place Canada’s devastating loss of manufacturing jobs on the national agenda.
Judging from the CAW, where the campaign has, by spring 2007, been more developed, the enthusiastic membership response seems to have breathed some new life and hope into the union. It is clear that a good many local leaders, disheartened with the never-ending demands of concessions and frustrated with waiting for the next corporate threat or devastating announcement, have been anxious for such fightback campaigns.
But will the campaigns deliver?
Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet050.html
The Socialist Project seeks to bring together individual workers and intellectuals, as well as groups and movements, who share an anti-capitalist orientation. Our intent is to offer some hopefully constructive ideas, and contribute to an open discussion with labour activists about how we can move ahead.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Supreme Court Recognizes Labour Rights
From Rabble.ca:
In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada has reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining.
by Duncan Cameron
Fundamental labour rights, pursued historically, and recognized under international conventions, must be respected in Canada, according to the highest court in the land. In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada has reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining complements and promotes the values expressed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms according to this major judgment recognizing the role of trade unions cannot be repressed “in a free and democratic society.”
The Supreme Court decision struck down key provisions of Bill 29, introduced five years ago by the Gordon Campbell Liberals as part of a plan to contract out and privatize B.C. health services. The decision not only overturns lower court judgments, more importantly it rewrites its own Supreme Court jurisprudence on key issues of labour rights.
The Canadian labour movement can now look forward to a brighter future in pursuing collective bargaining rights on fundamental workplace issues; this landmark Supreme Court reinterpretation recognizing labour rights can be drawn upon to bring employers to the negotiating table. The Court states that collective bargaining is necessary for workers “to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work.”
Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is explicit. “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: a) freedom of conscience and religion; b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and d) freedom of association.”
However, in an important trilogy of labour cases decided by the Supreme Court in 1987, five years after the adoption of the Charter, freedom of association was severely limited. Justices argued that through association, individuals could protect their rights as individuals, but did not gain any additional rights i.e. the right to bargain collectively.
Choosing its words carefully, last week the Surpreme Court overruled the labour trilogy exclusion of collective bargaining as a necessary part of freedom of association: “None of the reasons provided by the majorities in those cases survive scrutiny.”
The justices cite the testimony of an acting Liberal minister of justice on the impact of the then-proposed Charter who said the right of association included the right to collective bargaining and that is was not made explicit in the draft Charter for fear of weakening other rights of association such as those for community groups.
The majority decision, six justices concurring, and one partially dissenting, provides an historical overview of the development of industrial relations in Canada that draws upon the work of labour historians, labour law specialists and government commissions to outline the context for the explicit recognition by the Supreme Court of labour rights to collective bargaining as a fundamental freedom.
While the Hospital Employees' Union, and the British Columbia Government Employees Union can celebrate a victory for all Canadian workers, the (mostly) women who lost salaries, benefits, severance pay and jobs through layoffs were not offered remedies by the court decision. Instead the B.C. government has one year to make illegal sections of its legislation comply with the court ruling.
This ruling has a legacy: it will imprint on the legal system at every level and each jurisdiction the recognition of labour rights as fundamental rights. According to the court: “Human dignity, equality, liberty, respect for the autonomy of the person and the enhancement of democracy are among the values that underlie the Charter … All of these values are complemented and indeed, promoted, by the protection of collective bargaining in s. 2(d) of the Charter.”
Contrary to the charge of judicial activism leveled by the B.C. government against the Supreme Court, its judgment creates no new rights. In its ruling, the court points to collective bargaining as predating the establishment of particular labour relations regimes in Canada, and existing well before the Charter recognized the fundamental right to association.
The court acknowledges what was won through strikes, and related struggles — a legally enforceable right for unions to bargain collectively with private employers. The court cites legal scholars Judy Fudge and Harry Glasbeek: the union right to bargain was recognized by the federal government in wartime, by order-in-council PC 1003, and subsequently incorporated into provincial legislation. The Court refers to an article by CUPE research officer John Calvert to illustrate that only in the 1970s were collective bargaining rights extended to cover public sector workers.
The Court notes that though labour organizations first appear in Canada at the end of the 18th century: “From the beginning, the law was used as a tool to limit workers’ rights to unionize.” This judgment recognizes that labour rights are part of the values protected by the Charter; that Canada has signed international conventions and has thus recognized labour rights under international law; that historically collective bargaining is integral to the right to association; and, finally, that the Supreme Court itself was wrong not to admit that the guarantee of freedom of association extends to collective bargaining.
Section one of the Charter: “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Governments wanting to deny labour rights have argued they could be reasonably limited under the law. Since the Supreme Court decision recognizes labour rights as a part of a free and democratic society, from now on restrictions on collective bargaining on workplace issues will be most difficult for lower courts to justify.
Duncan Cameron is associate publisher of rabble.ca. He writes from Vancouver.
Original Article
Full text of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Health Services case: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2007/2007scc27/2007scc27.html
In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada has reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining.
by Duncan Cameron
Fundamental labour rights, pursued historically, and recognized under international conventions, must be respected in Canada, according to the highest court in the land. In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada has reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining complements and promotes the values expressed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms according to this major judgment recognizing the role of trade unions cannot be repressed “in a free and democratic society.”
The Supreme Court decision struck down key provisions of Bill 29, introduced five years ago by the Gordon Campbell Liberals as part of a plan to contract out and privatize B.C. health services. The decision not only overturns lower court judgments, more importantly it rewrites its own Supreme Court jurisprudence on key issues of labour rights.
The Canadian labour movement can now look forward to a brighter future in pursuing collective bargaining rights on fundamental workplace issues; this landmark Supreme Court reinterpretation recognizing labour rights can be drawn upon to bring employers to the negotiating table. The Court states that collective bargaining is necessary for workers “to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work.”
Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is explicit. “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: a) freedom of conscience and religion; b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and d) freedom of association.”
However, in an important trilogy of labour cases decided by the Supreme Court in 1987, five years after the adoption of the Charter, freedom of association was severely limited. Justices argued that through association, individuals could protect their rights as individuals, but did not gain any additional rights i.e. the right to bargain collectively.
Choosing its words carefully, last week the Surpreme Court overruled the labour trilogy exclusion of collective bargaining as a necessary part of freedom of association: “None of the reasons provided by the majorities in those cases survive scrutiny.”
The justices cite the testimony of an acting Liberal minister of justice on the impact of the then-proposed Charter who said the right of association included the right to collective bargaining and that is was not made explicit in the draft Charter for fear of weakening other rights of association such as those for community groups.
The majority decision, six justices concurring, and one partially dissenting, provides an historical overview of the development of industrial relations in Canada that draws upon the work of labour historians, labour law specialists and government commissions to outline the context for the explicit recognition by the Supreme Court of labour rights to collective bargaining as a fundamental freedom.
While the Hospital Employees' Union, and the British Columbia Government Employees Union can celebrate a victory for all Canadian workers, the (mostly) women who lost salaries, benefits, severance pay and jobs through layoffs were not offered remedies by the court decision. Instead the B.C. government has one year to make illegal sections of its legislation comply with the court ruling.
This ruling has a legacy: it will imprint on the legal system at every level and each jurisdiction the recognition of labour rights as fundamental rights. According to the court: “Human dignity, equality, liberty, respect for the autonomy of the person and the enhancement of democracy are among the values that underlie the Charter … All of these values are complemented and indeed, promoted, by the protection of collective bargaining in s. 2(d) of the Charter.”
Contrary to the charge of judicial activism leveled by the B.C. government against the Supreme Court, its judgment creates no new rights. In its ruling, the court points to collective bargaining as predating the establishment of particular labour relations regimes in Canada, and existing well before the Charter recognized the fundamental right to association.
The court acknowledges what was won through strikes, and related struggles — a legally enforceable right for unions to bargain collectively with private employers. The court cites legal scholars Judy Fudge and Harry Glasbeek: the union right to bargain was recognized by the federal government in wartime, by order-in-council PC 1003, and subsequently incorporated into provincial legislation. The Court refers to an article by CUPE research officer John Calvert to illustrate that only in the 1970s were collective bargaining rights extended to cover public sector workers.
The Court notes that though labour organizations first appear in Canada at the end of the 18th century: “From the beginning, the law was used as a tool to limit workers’ rights to unionize.” This judgment recognizes that labour rights are part of the values protected by the Charter; that Canada has signed international conventions and has thus recognized labour rights under international law; that historically collective bargaining is integral to the right to association; and, finally, that the Supreme Court itself was wrong not to admit that the guarantee of freedom of association extends to collective bargaining.
Section one of the Charter: “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Governments wanting to deny labour rights have argued they could be reasonably limited under the law. Since the Supreme Court decision recognizes labour rights as a part of a free and democratic society, from now on restrictions on collective bargaining on workplace issues will be most difficult for lower courts to justify.
Duncan Cameron is associate publisher of rabble.ca. He writes from Vancouver.
Original Article
Full text of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Health Services case: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2007/2007scc27/2007scc27.html
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Voice Your Choice in the Corporate Hall of Shame 2007!
Which of these corporations are the most abusive, manipulative and harmful? You decide.
Vote for the three nominees that deserve to be inducted this year—or use your votes to write in another corporate candidate. You can even post comments about why these corporations should be inducted. We’ll announce the three new inductees in June, so check back then, but vote now and spread the word to other voters.
Corporate Hall of Shame
Vote for the three nominees that deserve to be inducted this year—or use your votes to write in another corporate candidate. You can even post comments about why these corporations should be inducted. We’ll announce the three new inductees in June, so check back then, but vote now and spread the word to other voters.
Corporate Hall of Shame
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Feminism at Work
Published on Solidarity (http://www.solidarity-us.org/)
Feminism at Work
Created 03/03/2007 - 11:50am
Author(s):Lynne Williams
Story Body:
AS FEMINISTS WE often focus our attention on the effects gender inequality has on women. And while this inequality still exists and requires our unwavering attention, as socialist feminists we also focus on the effect this inequality has on our ability to organize a class conscious movement, where our differences do not impede our ability to act collectively against capital.
I have been a committed feminist since early in life, but these politics were reinvigorated when I began working as a technician in a predominantly male workplace. Being a feminist in theory is much different than being a feminist when some guy is shaking the 18-foot extension ladder you are working on; it requires a different relationship to your goals.
In my early years, though I did face real material struggles, my feminism was largely ideological, for me it took place in arguments and was often about being right. In my work as a rank-and-file activist, my socialist feminism has become more defined and concrete. It is about building solidarity among my coworkers which is not only “right” but also actively builds the kind of solidarity it takes to enforce and reproduce socialist-feminist politics.
It means, for example, confronting the ladder shaker but also building a network of fellow activists who simultaneously confront the ladder shaker and make it impossible for other ladder shakers to do their thing without answering to the collective.
Approaching organizing in the workplace this way is an essentially socialist-feminist strategy: 1) understanding that gender does not only happen when sexism or heterosexism happens but in every moment that adherence to gender roles trumps class solidarity; 2) understanding gender and the ways it is used to organize society and the work we do; 3) understanding that gender is not only about liberal demands for individual equality but also about radically redefining the potential for individuals to be fully liberated; 4) understanding the centrality of our gender roles to developing radical class consciousness, leadership and movement; 5) finally, it is about including the tradition of socialist feminists’ insights and politics into our strategies as organizers.
1. Gender does not only happen when sexism or heterosexism happens.
Gender is not only an issue at work for queers and women. We need to be explicit about this in order to keep every discussion from being only about individual people’s struggles (which are real and deserve attention) to also include the politics and culture of the workplace as a whole.
Gender As Health Risk
One way that gender affects all workers explicitly at my job is around workplace safety issues. In an almost entirely male workplace, organizing around workplace safety involves having a complicated understanding of gender politics and a specific set of skills for navigating them.
Specifically, the guys I work with will often not work safe unless there is another issue at stake. We will do job actions which rely on enforcing safety regulations only if somebody is suspended for something else, being off the job for example. Safety issues on their own, and not as a strategy for slowing productivity, are ignored. Working safe is essentially for “wimps.”
This “macho” attitude persists while safety issues at work are huge. I work in manholes, where the safety issues range from risk of immediate injury to longterm health risks from exposure to dusts and gases. My co-workers essentially police each others’ masculinity and effectively enforce management’s approach to on the job injuries, claiming they are always the employees’ fault.
Management actively denies what union activists know, that the hazards exist at work because of how work is organized, that workers themselves do not create these hazards. Nonetheless management successfully claims that we’re not careful enough while climbing rusty ladders, lifting 300-pound manhole covers, or driving trucks without working turn signals. Hyper- masculine workplace culture affirms management’s claims.
My co-workers say injured workers aren’t strong enough or smart enough to navigate these hazards. Consequently the union membership has no active demands or positions around safety. All of the union’s gains regarding safety equipment and procedures have basically become a nuisance or seen as compromising masculinity.
Management makes safety equipment available for liability reasons and uses safety violations as a way to discipline workers. In my workplace safety, previously a union victory, has become a tool of management.
Because of this dominant workplace culture, organizing for more effective and widespread safety measures at work is also organizing against some of this staunchly hetero-normative masculine behavior. Convincing people that “unsafe for one is unsafe for all” does not compromise their individual worth, only management’s increasing productivity demands.
Organizing with the goal of redefining what is valued on the shop floor, not hypermasculinity but collective engagement in class struggle, is essentially a socialist-feminist project: a project that strengthens the collective power of all workers, regardless of gender identity, by undoing the centrality of those individual gender identities to how we work, how we relate to the union, how we define the union, and ultimately to what we think is possible in the world.
What we as socialist feminists believe is that it is possible, necessary, to live a life in which you are not constantly struggling to meet the standards of oppressive gender roles, and that individual struggle must not interfere with our collective project of building working class power.
Gender, Social Organization and Liberation
2. Gender is used to organize society.
Understanding gender roles plays such a central role to organizing in my workplace because hypermasculinity is such a big part of the dominant culture there. In reality, there is actually extreme variety in gender and sexuality, and every worker’s relationship to those identities gets lost in this dominant culture.
Though I want to recognize and understand this workplace culture, I do not want to essentialize any aspect of gender or sexuality. Some of the people I work with are not as macho; there are some women, there are macho women, there are serious union activists who derive their macho pride from yelling at the boss and not from working unsafely, and there are much more passive characters, etc.
I am trying to say that the diversity of the working class, which is truly infinite, is not made apparent by the dominant cultures in our workplaces and our unions. These cultures are often a response to how work is organized, which is not by the class, or to how union life is organized, which is not often enough by the class. Therefore, gradually chipping away at the homogenous and destructive force of patriarchy and homophobia in these places makes the way for real and lasting change.
The more and more we organize together and have each others’ backs at work around safety issues, the more the very terms of how to be a successful “guy” at work change. This strategy also makes more space for people who are not “guys.” The more successes we have as a shop, the more solidarity there is.
After months of organizing with this socialist-feminist understanding at the core, my whole shop is getting closer to working safely for our own sake. Increasingly, there is not as much to prove as before, and what was perceived as a defense of gender is not as necessary.
What we are now defending is our collective rights to a safe workplace, reclaiming that tool from management. We have had only some success with this at my shop, but the amount of convincing it takes to get people on board has decreased drastically, which is a sign that solidarity has increased.
3. Gender is about radically redefining the potential for liberation.
Some of the success of the feminist movement has been the creation of rules for behavior and legal recourse for people who encounter discrimination and hostility on the job. These rules are valuable and are the consequence of a very real and brave fight by people of color, queers and women on the job.
Without a politicized union membership, however, these rules do not get integrated into the core of what solidarity looks like. And without anti-racist, feminist and queer organizing in the workplace, there is not the collective commitment to confront these violations of union solidarity. Management, afraid of lawsuits, essentially enforces these rules around sexism, homophobia and racism.
It is our job as activists, especially in the workplace, not to allow these victories of the movement to be turned into the very things that undo our movement. We need to redefine the terms of what it means to be union, what it means to be human. It is our job to intervene effectively in all of these manifestations of racism, sexism and homophobia on the job. It is also our job to do this in a way that builds solidarity and doesn’t simply scold offending union members, which is precisely how management undoes our solidarity.
This is the difference between a socialist- feminist approach to building a collective that can demand and enforce the rights of all union members, and a liberal approach to simply safeguarding individual rights.
A socialist-feminist approach is not only more effective in terms of building lasting structures and relationships to preserve the essence of feminist, queer and anti-racist demands, but it makes more sense. It creates situations where we are asking people to step up and have each others’ backs, not to step down and get out of the way because they just don’t get it. It demands that people be their best for the sake of their coworkers, for the sake of the union. It builds relationships and responsibility to the collective.When building one-on-one relationships, which are the building blocks of bigger organizing, socialist-feminist politics is decidedly different from liberal politics and it makes a difference when you’re talking with people on the job.
People hate “liberals” — partly due to racism and sexism and homophobia and seeing liberals as representing minorities only — but I think all of that masks the fact that people really hate liberalism because it has failed to change the world in ways that make a difference for the class.
Liberal politics depend on the class for support but work in opposition to the class, privileging individual mobility and individual citizenship. Radicalism places all of these individual struggles in the context of how capitalism alienates us from each other and ourselves. People “get” radicalism because radicalism accounts for all of people’s struggles under capitalism. They want to support each other and be supported — “an injury to one is an injury to all” — and if we don’t support each other we’re all more vulnerable.
Placing workplace struggles in this context is a radical project. Understanding how gender plays a role in alienating people from each other and themselves is a socialist-feminist project. Socialist feminism is also an approach to organizing because it understands the role gender plays in developing the class conscious of workers as well as understanding the personal as political. And this is radical.
There’s a personal and emotional connection that people have to feel to trust each other, to take risks on the job, to undo the privileges of whiteness, maleness, heteronormativity, being a productive worker — organizing is fundamentally building trust, about caring for and about each other, about creating a place where the class takes care of each other for common struggles against all of the effects of capitalism.
These personal politics play out while organizing around workplace issues and in informal social interactions away from work. Occasionally people go out, drink, open up to each other, and we as human beings who struggle with the ways capitalism organizes our lives on and off the job share our stories with each other about our needs for respect and care, our needs to respect and care.
We don’t necessarily build on these conversations upon returning to work the next day. But we share an understanding that we are in this together because of our struggles, not in spite of them, and challenging each other to be fuller people is part of our project as a class.
In all of this formal and informal conversation, issues of gender, sexuality, race, the war, how we organize our personal lives, relationships and work are constant. Being a socialist feminist helps to understand what people say, and why they say it.
When people talk about stuff they want to assert the value of the choices they have made in life, the sacrifices that they’ve made. And people are brilliant, insightful, creative and sincerely trying to understand this mess capitalism has made of our lives. They are interested in engaging with and arguing about all of these issues and desire for these struggles to be taken seriously.
As radicals, as socialist feminists, we do take all of these personal struggles seriously. It is at the core of what we believe. The effects of capitalism on our identities and how we organize our lives are sometimes traumatic.
We do not reduce our politics to only these personal struggles, but we incorporate them into our understanding of the world and our approach to organizing. This is appealing to people. This is socialist feminism.
Becoming Organizers
4. Our gender roles are central to developing radical class consciousness.
If this can be seen as one of our goals in the workplace, and in the world, we need to approach it as activists. We need to earn the respect and trust of our coworkers, our community. This is no small task. Our approach to being good organizers is also derived from our socialist feminist tradition. We integrate our understanding of the centrality of our gender roles in developing political consciousness with our methods for building democratic movements. Individual identities are fragmented under capitalism, there are unrealistic standards for living under this gendered order, and the wholeness of our humanity takes a backseat to surviving under capitalism.
I experienced this myself when I started at my job. I kept looking for opportunities to talk to other workers as a worker about the contract, the wages, working conditions, union, and management, but instead found people most interested in personal life — theirs and mine.
I mistakenly thought this focus on being workplace activists, focusing on what material demands we had in common, had to happen at the expense of my other identities, which were not heteronormative and therefore, I mistakenly thought, were distracting from our commonality as workers. I was struggling with how to integrate my sexuality and gender identity with my identity as a workplace activist. I was worried about making my sexuality an issue, but people seemed to be more fixated on obsessing about their own sexuality and gender than about mine.
The people I worked with were, in a funny way, more socialist feminist than I was, integrating their work and after work lives, being moved completely by both experiences. They challenged me to do the same, to be myself comfortably. Coming out ended up making me closer to people, not more alienated as I wrongly suspected. I was challenged by my coworkers and my broader politics to understand the workplace as being about more than work, as being about our whole experience in life.
One of the ways my socialist-feminist politics played a role in how I handled coming out at work is that I started out understanding that everyone has experience as a gendered and sexual person — and everyone in some way or another struggles with these identities, and with insecurities. So I didn’t see myself as unique or different from the straight men I worked with in that way. It also forced me into the unfamiliar place of knowing myself to be the “one” in “an injury to one is an injury to all” and the less familiar place of allowing the “all” to be my coworkers.
When I realized that being more of who I am on the job was the key to being able to establish trust and solidarity, it brought me back to my socialist-feminist politics in a way. As an activist, I took what I perceived as a risk to let people know more about myself. Coworkers respected this honesty and saw it as respectful, and together we effectively established a deep trust. This interpersonal politics is part of our socialist- feminist understanding of what is political, but also a socialist-feminist strategy for organizing.
Understanding that we are all in all of our struggles together, a socialist-feminist organizing approach, led me to be a more effective organizer around those workplace issues I had initially focused on and continue to work on, now with the benefit the trust and support of my coworkers. This support goes both ways and contributes to the developing of leaders and activists on the shop floor. When I intervene on somebody’s behalf, they intervene on mine. We tap each other for support, and stand together on the shop floor.
Integrating a broader understanding of what moves people, a socialist-feminist strategy for organizing, leads to developing a culture where individuals are more willing to take risks as activists around shop floor issues, ranging from the way work is organized, safety issues, discrimination, the humiliation of being constantly managed, denied bathroom breaks, and the unbelievably long list of things that workers struggle around every minute of the day at work.
Building trust and developing relationships is necessary for organizing around workplace issues. But this process does not only happen because of “typical” issues. Our broader struggles under capitalism contribute to our ability and interest in fighting, to developing a consciousness that sees all of our personal struggles as connected, to see how these struggles affect all of our fights. Socialist feminism provides us with the political framework for organizing towards this goal.
5. The tradition of socialist feminism is included in our strategies as organizers.There has been a lot of focus on socialist-feminist process in building socialist organization. And I do think it is important to be explicit about this as a political process and decision. But I also do not want to overlook the fact that socialist feminist process is good organizing: listening more than talking, caring as a task and a goal, seeing consciousness as a kind of process in which everyone is equally responsible and engaged.
Socialism has a tradition; socialist feminism is part of that tradition. In my time as a rank-and-file activist I have learned so much about what moves me and my coworkers, how to effectively organize collective action, how deep and broad the range of things we struggle with under capitalism, as workers in our lives and at work. And I have also learned how enormously lucky I am to be aware of this larger tradition of struggle and thought.
Sometimes we assume that people’s lack of interest or commitment to these traditions is deliberate. I have learned that people are unaware of these traditions. The left has not been widely present in the workplace for a long time. Some labor leaders see the middle class as our goal, and while demanding more of the share of wealth we produce is not a horrible goal, we know as radicals it doesn’t touch the sheer inhumanity of capitalism.
Sharing this tradition and the lessons of these politics is an important part of organizing, sharing the potential for a different world, a different world that is informed by all of our insights into the failure of capitalism as a way of organizing life. And going about it in a way that understands people’s alienation from the processes of struggle itself is more effective organizing. At least it has been for me in modest shop floor activities. Building bigger more lasting organization with this foundation is a longer-term project.
There are many more opportunities to learn from this socialist-feminist approach to organizing because capital is constantly reorganizing our lives and work in ways that further alienate us from ourselves, each other and the very process of political change. For all the above reasons, I think a socialist-feminist process is the most effective way to build the power and collectivity needed by the class. And for the reasons above, I think the workplace is an important place to implement this strategy.
Only conscience resistance will effectively undo the institutionalization of gender roles and the obstacles they create for building-class conscious movements. Gender roles are institutionalized and interfere with building collective struggles, interfere with collective goals and identities. Socialist feminist process and goals are aimed at developing this conscious resistance.
Exerpt:
AS FEMINISTS WE often focus our attention on the effects gender inequality has on women. And while this inequality still exists and requires our unwavering attention, as socialist feminists we also focus on the effect this inequality has on our ability to organize a class conscious movement, where our differences do not impede our ability to act collectively against capital.
Source URL:http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/456
Feminism at Work
Created 03/03/2007 - 11:50am
Author(s):Lynne Williams
Story Body:
AS FEMINISTS WE often focus our attention on the effects gender inequality has on women. And while this inequality still exists and requires our unwavering attention, as socialist feminists we also focus on the effect this inequality has on our ability to organize a class conscious movement, where our differences do not impede our ability to act collectively against capital.
I have been a committed feminist since early in life, but these politics were reinvigorated when I began working as a technician in a predominantly male workplace. Being a feminist in theory is much different than being a feminist when some guy is shaking the 18-foot extension ladder you are working on; it requires a different relationship to your goals.
In my early years, though I did face real material struggles, my feminism was largely ideological, for me it took place in arguments and was often about being right. In my work as a rank-and-file activist, my socialist feminism has become more defined and concrete. It is about building solidarity among my coworkers which is not only “right” but also actively builds the kind of solidarity it takes to enforce and reproduce socialist-feminist politics.
It means, for example, confronting the ladder shaker but also building a network of fellow activists who simultaneously confront the ladder shaker and make it impossible for other ladder shakers to do their thing without answering to the collective.
Approaching organizing in the workplace this way is an essentially socialist-feminist strategy: 1) understanding that gender does not only happen when sexism or heterosexism happens but in every moment that adherence to gender roles trumps class solidarity; 2) understanding gender and the ways it is used to organize society and the work we do; 3) understanding that gender is not only about liberal demands for individual equality but also about radically redefining the potential for individuals to be fully liberated; 4) understanding the centrality of our gender roles to developing radical class consciousness, leadership and movement; 5) finally, it is about including the tradition of socialist feminists’ insights and politics into our strategies as organizers.
1. Gender does not only happen when sexism or heterosexism happens.
Gender is not only an issue at work for queers and women. We need to be explicit about this in order to keep every discussion from being only about individual people’s struggles (which are real and deserve attention) to also include the politics and culture of the workplace as a whole.
Gender As Health Risk
One way that gender affects all workers explicitly at my job is around workplace safety issues. In an almost entirely male workplace, organizing around workplace safety involves having a complicated understanding of gender politics and a specific set of skills for navigating them.
Specifically, the guys I work with will often not work safe unless there is another issue at stake. We will do job actions which rely on enforcing safety regulations only if somebody is suspended for something else, being off the job for example. Safety issues on their own, and not as a strategy for slowing productivity, are ignored. Working safe is essentially for “wimps.”
This “macho” attitude persists while safety issues at work are huge. I work in manholes, where the safety issues range from risk of immediate injury to longterm health risks from exposure to dusts and gases. My co-workers essentially police each others’ masculinity and effectively enforce management’s approach to on the job injuries, claiming they are always the employees’ fault.
Management actively denies what union activists know, that the hazards exist at work because of how work is organized, that workers themselves do not create these hazards. Nonetheless management successfully claims that we’re not careful enough while climbing rusty ladders, lifting 300-pound manhole covers, or driving trucks without working turn signals. Hyper- masculine workplace culture affirms management’s claims.
My co-workers say injured workers aren’t strong enough or smart enough to navigate these hazards. Consequently the union membership has no active demands or positions around safety. All of the union’s gains regarding safety equipment and procedures have basically become a nuisance or seen as compromising masculinity.
Management makes safety equipment available for liability reasons and uses safety violations as a way to discipline workers. In my workplace safety, previously a union victory, has become a tool of management.
Because of this dominant workplace culture, organizing for more effective and widespread safety measures at work is also organizing against some of this staunchly hetero-normative masculine behavior. Convincing people that “unsafe for one is unsafe for all” does not compromise their individual worth, only management’s increasing productivity demands.
Organizing with the goal of redefining what is valued on the shop floor, not hypermasculinity but collective engagement in class struggle, is essentially a socialist-feminist project: a project that strengthens the collective power of all workers, regardless of gender identity, by undoing the centrality of those individual gender identities to how we work, how we relate to the union, how we define the union, and ultimately to what we think is possible in the world.
What we as socialist feminists believe is that it is possible, necessary, to live a life in which you are not constantly struggling to meet the standards of oppressive gender roles, and that individual struggle must not interfere with our collective project of building working class power.
Gender, Social Organization and Liberation
2. Gender is used to organize society.
Understanding gender roles plays such a central role to organizing in my workplace because hypermasculinity is such a big part of the dominant culture there. In reality, there is actually extreme variety in gender and sexuality, and every worker’s relationship to those identities gets lost in this dominant culture.
Though I want to recognize and understand this workplace culture, I do not want to essentialize any aspect of gender or sexuality. Some of the people I work with are not as macho; there are some women, there are macho women, there are serious union activists who derive their macho pride from yelling at the boss and not from working unsafely, and there are much more passive characters, etc.
I am trying to say that the diversity of the working class, which is truly infinite, is not made apparent by the dominant cultures in our workplaces and our unions. These cultures are often a response to how work is organized, which is not by the class, or to how union life is organized, which is not often enough by the class. Therefore, gradually chipping away at the homogenous and destructive force of patriarchy and homophobia in these places makes the way for real and lasting change.
The more and more we organize together and have each others’ backs at work around safety issues, the more the very terms of how to be a successful “guy” at work change. This strategy also makes more space for people who are not “guys.” The more successes we have as a shop, the more solidarity there is.
After months of organizing with this socialist-feminist understanding at the core, my whole shop is getting closer to working safely for our own sake. Increasingly, there is not as much to prove as before, and what was perceived as a defense of gender is not as necessary.
What we are now defending is our collective rights to a safe workplace, reclaiming that tool from management. We have had only some success with this at my shop, but the amount of convincing it takes to get people on board has decreased drastically, which is a sign that solidarity has increased.
3. Gender is about radically redefining the potential for liberation.
Some of the success of the feminist movement has been the creation of rules for behavior and legal recourse for people who encounter discrimination and hostility on the job. These rules are valuable and are the consequence of a very real and brave fight by people of color, queers and women on the job.
Without a politicized union membership, however, these rules do not get integrated into the core of what solidarity looks like. And without anti-racist, feminist and queer organizing in the workplace, there is not the collective commitment to confront these violations of union solidarity. Management, afraid of lawsuits, essentially enforces these rules around sexism, homophobia and racism.
It is our job as activists, especially in the workplace, not to allow these victories of the movement to be turned into the very things that undo our movement. We need to redefine the terms of what it means to be union, what it means to be human. It is our job to intervene effectively in all of these manifestations of racism, sexism and homophobia on the job. It is also our job to do this in a way that builds solidarity and doesn’t simply scold offending union members, which is precisely how management undoes our solidarity.
This is the difference between a socialist- feminist approach to building a collective that can demand and enforce the rights of all union members, and a liberal approach to simply safeguarding individual rights.
A socialist-feminist approach is not only more effective in terms of building lasting structures and relationships to preserve the essence of feminist, queer and anti-racist demands, but it makes more sense. It creates situations where we are asking people to step up and have each others’ backs, not to step down and get out of the way because they just don’t get it. It demands that people be their best for the sake of their coworkers, for the sake of the union. It builds relationships and responsibility to the collective.When building one-on-one relationships, which are the building blocks of bigger organizing, socialist-feminist politics is decidedly different from liberal politics and it makes a difference when you’re talking with people on the job.
People hate “liberals” — partly due to racism and sexism and homophobia and seeing liberals as representing minorities only — but I think all of that masks the fact that people really hate liberalism because it has failed to change the world in ways that make a difference for the class.
Liberal politics depend on the class for support but work in opposition to the class, privileging individual mobility and individual citizenship. Radicalism places all of these individual struggles in the context of how capitalism alienates us from each other and ourselves. People “get” radicalism because radicalism accounts for all of people’s struggles under capitalism. They want to support each other and be supported — “an injury to one is an injury to all” — and if we don’t support each other we’re all more vulnerable.
Placing workplace struggles in this context is a radical project. Understanding how gender plays a role in alienating people from each other and themselves is a socialist-feminist project. Socialist feminism is also an approach to organizing because it understands the role gender plays in developing the class conscious of workers as well as understanding the personal as political. And this is radical.
There’s a personal and emotional connection that people have to feel to trust each other, to take risks on the job, to undo the privileges of whiteness, maleness, heteronormativity, being a productive worker — organizing is fundamentally building trust, about caring for and about each other, about creating a place where the class takes care of each other for common struggles against all of the effects of capitalism.
These personal politics play out while organizing around workplace issues and in informal social interactions away from work. Occasionally people go out, drink, open up to each other, and we as human beings who struggle with the ways capitalism organizes our lives on and off the job share our stories with each other about our needs for respect and care, our needs to respect and care.
We don’t necessarily build on these conversations upon returning to work the next day. But we share an understanding that we are in this together because of our struggles, not in spite of them, and challenging each other to be fuller people is part of our project as a class.
In all of this formal and informal conversation, issues of gender, sexuality, race, the war, how we organize our personal lives, relationships and work are constant. Being a socialist feminist helps to understand what people say, and why they say it.
When people talk about stuff they want to assert the value of the choices they have made in life, the sacrifices that they’ve made. And people are brilliant, insightful, creative and sincerely trying to understand this mess capitalism has made of our lives. They are interested in engaging with and arguing about all of these issues and desire for these struggles to be taken seriously.
As radicals, as socialist feminists, we do take all of these personal struggles seriously. It is at the core of what we believe. The effects of capitalism on our identities and how we organize our lives are sometimes traumatic.
We do not reduce our politics to only these personal struggles, but we incorporate them into our understanding of the world and our approach to organizing. This is appealing to people. This is socialist feminism.
Becoming Organizers
4. Our gender roles are central to developing radical class consciousness.
If this can be seen as one of our goals in the workplace, and in the world, we need to approach it as activists. We need to earn the respect and trust of our coworkers, our community. This is no small task. Our approach to being good organizers is also derived from our socialist feminist tradition. We integrate our understanding of the centrality of our gender roles in developing political consciousness with our methods for building democratic movements. Individual identities are fragmented under capitalism, there are unrealistic standards for living under this gendered order, and the wholeness of our humanity takes a backseat to surviving under capitalism.
I experienced this myself when I started at my job. I kept looking for opportunities to talk to other workers as a worker about the contract, the wages, working conditions, union, and management, but instead found people most interested in personal life — theirs and mine.
I mistakenly thought this focus on being workplace activists, focusing on what material demands we had in common, had to happen at the expense of my other identities, which were not heteronormative and therefore, I mistakenly thought, were distracting from our commonality as workers. I was struggling with how to integrate my sexuality and gender identity with my identity as a workplace activist. I was worried about making my sexuality an issue, but people seemed to be more fixated on obsessing about their own sexuality and gender than about mine.
The people I worked with were, in a funny way, more socialist feminist than I was, integrating their work and after work lives, being moved completely by both experiences. They challenged me to do the same, to be myself comfortably. Coming out ended up making me closer to people, not more alienated as I wrongly suspected. I was challenged by my coworkers and my broader politics to understand the workplace as being about more than work, as being about our whole experience in life.
One of the ways my socialist-feminist politics played a role in how I handled coming out at work is that I started out understanding that everyone has experience as a gendered and sexual person — and everyone in some way or another struggles with these identities, and with insecurities. So I didn’t see myself as unique or different from the straight men I worked with in that way. It also forced me into the unfamiliar place of knowing myself to be the “one” in “an injury to one is an injury to all” and the less familiar place of allowing the “all” to be my coworkers.
When I realized that being more of who I am on the job was the key to being able to establish trust and solidarity, it brought me back to my socialist-feminist politics in a way. As an activist, I took what I perceived as a risk to let people know more about myself. Coworkers respected this honesty and saw it as respectful, and together we effectively established a deep trust. This interpersonal politics is part of our socialist- feminist understanding of what is political, but also a socialist-feminist strategy for organizing.
Understanding that we are all in all of our struggles together, a socialist-feminist organizing approach, led me to be a more effective organizer around those workplace issues I had initially focused on and continue to work on, now with the benefit the trust and support of my coworkers. This support goes both ways and contributes to the developing of leaders and activists on the shop floor. When I intervene on somebody’s behalf, they intervene on mine. We tap each other for support, and stand together on the shop floor.
Integrating a broader understanding of what moves people, a socialist-feminist strategy for organizing, leads to developing a culture where individuals are more willing to take risks as activists around shop floor issues, ranging from the way work is organized, safety issues, discrimination, the humiliation of being constantly managed, denied bathroom breaks, and the unbelievably long list of things that workers struggle around every minute of the day at work.
Building trust and developing relationships is necessary for organizing around workplace issues. But this process does not only happen because of “typical” issues. Our broader struggles under capitalism contribute to our ability and interest in fighting, to developing a consciousness that sees all of our personal struggles as connected, to see how these struggles affect all of our fights. Socialist feminism provides us with the political framework for organizing towards this goal.
5. The tradition of socialist feminism is included in our strategies as organizers.There has been a lot of focus on socialist-feminist process in building socialist organization. And I do think it is important to be explicit about this as a political process and decision. But I also do not want to overlook the fact that socialist feminist process is good organizing: listening more than talking, caring as a task and a goal, seeing consciousness as a kind of process in which everyone is equally responsible and engaged.
Socialism has a tradition; socialist feminism is part of that tradition. In my time as a rank-and-file activist I have learned so much about what moves me and my coworkers, how to effectively organize collective action, how deep and broad the range of things we struggle with under capitalism, as workers in our lives and at work. And I have also learned how enormously lucky I am to be aware of this larger tradition of struggle and thought.
Sometimes we assume that people’s lack of interest or commitment to these traditions is deliberate. I have learned that people are unaware of these traditions. The left has not been widely present in the workplace for a long time. Some labor leaders see the middle class as our goal, and while demanding more of the share of wealth we produce is not a horrible goal, we know as radicals it doesn’t touch the sheer inhumanity of capitalism.
Sharing this tradition and the lessons of these politics is an important part of organizing, sharing the potential for a different world, a different world that is informed by all of our insights into the failure of capitalism as a way of organizing life. And going about it in a way that understands people’s alienation from the processes of struggle itself is more effective organizing. At least it has been for me in modest shop floor activities. Building bigger more lasting organization with this foundation is a longer-term project.
There are many more opportunities to learn from this socialist-feminist approach to organizing because capital is constantly reorganizing our lives and work in ways that further alienate us from ourselves, each other and the very process of political change. For all the above reasons, I think a socialist-feminist process is the most effective way to build the power and collectivity needed by the class. And for the reasons above, I think the workplace is an important place to implement this strategy.
Only conscience resistance will effectively undo the institutionalization of gender roles and the obstacles they create for building-class conscious movements. Gender roles are institutionalized and interfere with building collective struggles, interfere with collective goals and identities. Socialist feminist process and goals are aimed at developing this conscious resistance.
Exerpt:
AS FEMINISTS WE often focus our attention on the effects gender inequality has on women. And while this inequality still exists and requires our unwavering attention, as socialist feminists we also focus on the effect this inequality has on our ability to organize a class conscious movement, where our differences do not impede our ability to act collectively against capital.
Source URL:http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/456
Friday, April 13, 2007
CAW says 'insanity' of green movement is unfairly punishing auto sector
1 hour, 56 minutes ago
By Michael Oliveira
PORT ELGIN, Ont. (CP) - The Canadian Auto Workers union targeted the federal Conservatives and the "insanity" of the environmental movement Friday as delegates talked strategy with an election ever looming and an Ontario provincial vote less than six months away.
Although historically linked with the New Democrats, union president Buzz Hargrove invited Ontario's Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to speak and saved his criticisms for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and environmentalists who want the auto sector targeted to fight climate change.
The upcoming elections are fuelling a lot of rhetoric as politicians try to "out green" one another, Hargrove said.
"Politicians are running with it now because Canadians are saying it's a key issue in the upcoming election and it just infuriates me," Hargrove said in a wide-ranging address to delegates.
"We stand to lose 150,000 jobs in our auto industry if the insanity of this environmental movement is allowed to continue."
Canada is only responsible for about two per cent of the world's total greenhouse gas production and shutting down the entire country would barely make an impact, Hargrove said.
Still, Hargrove said the union is supportive of the Kyoto Accord - as long as timetables are flexible enough for industries to meet them.
Hargrove said he was impressed by McGuinty's recent statement that the auto industry shouldn't necessarily phase out gas guzzlers like SUVs because, realistically, they're not going away.
The manufacturers should instead try to make the vehicles more fuel efficient and environmentally sound because there's big money to be made if those innovations are developed, McGuinty said.
"Going green isn't necessarily about going small," McGuinty told delegates Friday, adding he wants that technology to be made in Ontario.
"It will be good for jobs and good for the economy."
A move away from supporting the NDP has worked well for the union, considering McGuinty has been "a great supporter of issues that are important to our union," said Hargrove.
"We have to work with whoever's elected to try to get policy in the best interests of members families and communities ... and the premier's done an incredible amount," he said.
While a few delegates quietly booed when the premier's name was announced, during question and answer periods they chose to attack Harper for not support their industry.
Hargrove also said the union will consider employing strategic voting whenever the next federal vote is held in an attempt to avoid a Conservative majority government.
The union says the manufacturing sector produces 18 per cent of the country's overall economic activity, but almost 333,000 jobs have been lost in the last four years and there's no evidence the slide is coming to an end.
Copyright © 2007 Canadian Press
By Michael Oliveira
PORT ELGIN, Ont. (CP) - The Canadian Auto Workers union targeted the federal Conservatives and the "insanity" of the environmental movement Friday as delegates talked strategy with an election ever looming and an Ontario provincial vote less than six months away.
Although historically linked with the New Democrats, union president Buzz Hargrove invited Ontario's Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to speak and saved his criticisms for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and environmentalists who want the auto sector targeted to fight climate change.
The upcoming elections are fuelling a lot of rhetoric as politicians try to "out green" one another, Hargrove said.
"Politicians are running with it now because Canadians are saying it's a key issue in the upcoming election and it just infuriates me," Hargrove said in a wide-ranging address to delegates.
"We stand to lose 150,000 jobs in our auto industry if the insanity of this environmental movement is allowed to continue."
Canada is only responsible for about two per cent of the world's total greenhouse gas production and shutting down the entire country would barely make an impact, Hargrove said.
Still, Hargrove said the union is supportive of the Kyoto Accord - as long as timetables are flexible enough for industries to meet them.
Hargrove said he was impressed by McGuinty's recent statement that the auto industry shouldn't necessarily phase out gas guzzlers like SUVs because, realistically, they're not going away.
The manufacturers should instead try to make the vehicles more fuel efficient and environmentally sound because there's big money to be made if those innovations are developed, McGuinty said.
"Going green isn't necessarily about going small," McGuinty told delegates Friday, adding he wants that technology to be made in Ontario.
"It will be good for jobs and good for the economy."
A move away from supporting the NDP has worked well for the union, considering McGuinty has been "a great supporter of issues that are important to our union," said Hargrove.
"We have to work with whoever's elected to try to get policy in the best interests of members families and communities ... and the premier's done an incredible amount," he said.
While a few delegates quietly booed when the premier's name was announced, during question and answer periods they chose to attack Harper for not support their industry.
Hargrove also said the union will consider employing strategic voting whenever the next federal vote is held in an attempt to avoid a Conservative majority government.
The union says the manufacturing sector produces 18 per cent of the country's overall economic activity, but almost 333,000 jobs have been lost in the last four years and there's no evidence the slide is coming to an end.
Copyright © 2007 Canadian Press
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
New Approaches to Lifelong Learning Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography of Studies Based on Data from the Research Network on New Approaches to Lifelong Learning
The Research Network on New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL), was developed to generate and disseminate knowledge related to lifelong learning in Canada. Between 1996 and 2002, this network was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
NALL undertook a wide array of research, networking and dissemination activities. The NALL network involved over one hundred members across forty-five research projects, including over 20 community partners (trade unions, equity groups, training boards and other community organizations), almost 70 academic researchers and collaborators, and over 20 university and college partners.
Over the course of the four years, NALL widely disseminated key research findings via academic publications, conferences and the NALL website (www.nall.ca), as well as creating assessment tools for the field.
The Research Network on New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL), was developed to generate and disseminate knowledge related to lifelong learning in Canada. Between 1996 and 2002, this network was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
NALL undertook a wide array of research, networking and dissemination activities. The NALL network involved over one hundred members across forty-five research projects, including over 20 community partners (trade unions, equity groups, training boards and other community organizations), almost 70 academic researchers and collaborators, and over 20 university and college partners.
Over the course of the four years, NALL widely disseminated key research findings via academic publications, conferences and the NALL website (www.nall.ca), as well as creating assessment tools for the field.
Work and Lifelong Learning Online Resource Base
Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base
Materials for Teaching, Research and Policy Making
The Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base (WALLRB) provides a wide range of bibliographic references and links to full-text sources of research on diverse forms of lifelong learning and diverse forms of work, with a primary focus on the relations between learning and work.
Sections on general theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are included as well as specific studies of different aspects of work, learning, work-learning relations and several other topics. The current version of the WALLRB focuses on materials from the 2000 to 2006 period, with a few earlier items.
The Resource Base can be downloaded in individual sections as PDF files.
http://wall.oise.utoronto.ca/resources/WALLRB.htm
Materials for Teaching, Research and Policy Making
The Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base (WALLRB) provides a wide range of bibliographic references and links to full-text sources of research on diverse forms of lifelong learning and diverse forms of work, with a primary focus on the relations between learning and work.
Sections on general theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are included as well as specific studies of different aspects of work, learning, work-learning relations and several other topics. The current version of the WALLRB focuses on materials from the 2000 to 2006 period, with a few earlier items.
The Resource Base can be downloaded in individual sections as PDF files.
http://wall.oise.utoronto.ca/resources/WALLRB.htm
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Call for Papers: "The Worker's Economy" U of Buenos Aires, July 19-21, 2007
The University of Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, the
Center for Global Justice and the Argentina Autonomista Project are
excited to invite you to:
The First International Gathering to Debate and Discuss Self-Management
"The Worker's Economy: Self-Management and the Distribution of Wealth"
July 19-21, 2007
University of Buenos Aires
217 - 25 de Mayo Avenue
Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Workers' struggles have reemerged with force in the last decade in numerous forms--union-based struggles, self-managed workspaces, rural movements, unemployed workers' movements.... These are responses to the hegemony of neoliberal globalization imposing itself throughout the world with absolutist pretensions after the debacle of so-called "real socialism."
At the same time, the old methods and strategies of struggle--class-based parties and traditional unions, amongst others--have by now shown themselves to be, at minimum, insufficient. Old debates and ideological frameworks are now in crisis. The dominant discourses used to describe the functioning of the capitalist world system can no longer explain quickly enough (never mind predict) the changes in this system that have been occurring over the past few decades, while popular struggles have had to create new paths without having a clear horizon in sight from which to map out a final destiny. And the plethora of means ever available for capitalism to respond to threats against it, as well as the sheer force and relentlessness of its repressive power, amply overcomes the popular sectors' capacity for change...with tragic consequences.
While the taking of State power has been the driving objective of political forces for more than a century now, more recently there have appeared compelling movements that, on occasion, have questioned such objectives for revolutionary action. At minimum, these movements distance their strategies and tactics from the aims of taking State power, recognizing the difficulties of such a task. But, as evidenced in various Latin American contexts, some popular movements with solid historical roots have ended up allying themselves with national governments swept into power via electoral triumph. And so, when they least expected it, these movements found themselves at times controlling key sectors of the State's administrative apparatus which, in turn, needed to be profoundly transformed in order to be oriented towards
grassroots-based policies.
Please send a 250-word (max) abstract by May 15, 2007, or any other correspondence to: ( in Spanish): fabierta@filo.uba.ar, (In English): UBA.selfmanagement@gmail.com
For more information about this conference please visit
http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/
or http://www.autonomista.org)
Center for Global Justice and the Argentina Autonomista Project are
excited to invite you to:
The First International Gathering to Debate and Discuss Self-Management
"The Worker's Economy: Self-Management and the Distribution of Wealth"
July 19-21, 2007
University of Buenos Aires
217 - 25 de Mayo Avenue
Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Workers' struggles have reemerged with force in the last decade in numerous forms--union-based struggles, self-managed workspaces, rural movements, unemployed workers' movements.... These are responses to the hegemony of neoliberal globalization imposing itself throughout the world with absolutist pretensions after the debacle of so-called "real socialism."
At the same time, the old methods and strategies of struggle--class-based parties and traditional unions, amongst others--have by now shown themselves to be, at minimum, insufficient. Old debates and ideological frameworks are now in crisis. The dominant discourses used to describe the functioning of the capitalist world system can no longer explain quickly enough (never mind predict) the changes in this system that have been occurring over the past few decades, while popular struggles have had to create new paths without having a clear horizon in sight from which to map out a final destiny. And the plethora of means ever available for capitalism to respond to threats against it, as well as the sheer force and relentlessness of its repressive power, amply overcomes the popular sectors' capacity for change...with tragic consequences.
While the taking of State power has been the driving objective of political forces for more than a century now, more recently there have appeared compelling movements that, on occasion, have questioned such objectives for revolutionary action. At minimum, these movements distance their strategies and tactics from the aims of taking State power, recognizing the difficulties of such a task. But, as evidenced in various Latin American contexts, some popular movements with solid historical roots have ended up allying themselves with national governments swept into power via electoral triumph. And so, when they least expected it, these movements found themselves at times controlling key sectors of the State's administrative apparatus which, in turn, needed to be profoundly transformed in order to be oriented towards
grassroots-based policies.
Please send a 250-word (max) abstract by May 15, 2007, or any other correspondence to: ( in Spanish): fabierta@filo.uba.ar, (In English): UBA.selfmanagement@gmail.com
For more information about this conference please visit
http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/
or http://www.autonomista.org)
Thursday, March 22, 2007
How Do Teachers Compare to Other Workers?
(originally published in Professionally Speaking, March 2007)
In 2004, the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) network conducted a large-scale survey of over 9,000 members of the Canadian labour force concerning their working conditions and learning activities. The survey was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
While the number of teachers included in the survey is not large enough to allow for interprovincial comparisons of teachers, the responses of teachers across the country can be compared with those of other occupational groups and to the labour force as a whole.
Among full-time employed workers (over 30 hours per week), the demographic profile of teachers is distinctive. The teaching force is older than the labour force in general, with nearly half (47 per cent) over 45. Similarly, nearly half (46 per cent) of all teachers have been working in the same type of job for more than 16 years. Teachers are also more likely to be female (75 per cent) and white (95 per cent) than most other occupational groups. Canadian teachers comprise a relatively stable, older, female-dominant and not very racially diverse occupational group.
Discretion on the job
In a knowledge-based economy, workers need increasing discretion to perform their jobs. But what do workers themselves think about their discretionary control of their jobs? Teachers are the most likely occupational group to say their jobs require a great deal of thought (89 per cent) and that they have a great amount of choice in doing their jobs (61 per cent). Teachers are especially distinctive in their majority belief (57 per cent) that they can always plan their own work, compared to less than a third of most other groups in the general labour force. In terms of employees' involvement in their work, teachers are the prototypical “knowledge workers.”
Changing conditions
The vast majority of Canadian workers think that work techniques and equipment, including computers and related software, have changed at least moderately over the past five years and about a third think they have changed a great deal. Canadian teachers are about as likely as other professional employees to acknowledge skill increases and changing work techniques in their jobs and more likely than either service workers or industrial workers. But they are somewhat more likely (45 per cent) than most occupational groups (less than 40 per cent) to express high levels of job stress. In response to questions concerning organizational change in employment conditions over the past five years, most workers state that they have witnessed significant organizational restructuring. Teachers are again distinctive in that the majority (64 per cent) report changes in terms of reduced numbers of employees within their workplaces, compared to only minorities (42 per cent or less) among other categories of workers.
Work hours
This survey confirmed findings of other studies concerning a recent trend in the hours of work in the Canadian labour force. After gradual declines in the length of the normal workweek for most of the 20th century, a growing polarization of part-timers and over-timers has been evident during the last few decades. The proportion of those working a previously standard 40-hour week has continued to decline, while the proportion of those working over 50 hours per week and those working fewer than 30 hours per week – typically without non-wage benefits – continues to increase. Around 20 per cent of teachers are now employed part-time, a proportion similar to that found in the general labour force. Meanwhile, the normal workweek of those in full-time employment (that is, 30 or more hours per week) is now about 45 hours. In our survey, full-time teachers – in line with what has become the Canadian norm – reported working an average of at least 45 hours per week.
But a more detailed national survey sample of teachers (Smaller H. et al, 2005) found that they work an average of 49 hours, including time spent after school hours in preparation and marking, extracurricular activities, reporting to parents, etc. Many recent studies of teachers' working conditions in Canada and elsewhere have established that teachers remain among the most likely of workers to do unpaid overtime. When asked more generally about their normal work week in the WALL survey, they were quite likely to have taken some of their unassigned duties for granted.
Along with most occupational groups teachers also do substantial unpaid housework, an average of 15 hours per week. But teachers have an exceptionally high rate (69 per cent) of involvement in voluntary organizations, compared to a minority of the general labour force. Teachers' volunteer work plays a vital but often unrecognized role in community sustainability. Teachers' extensive unpaid overtime work, their relatively high levels of job stress, and the extent of their volunteer work should be better understood by the general public.
Learning profiles
The WALL national survey asked a series of questions about ongoing learning – formal courses or workshops and informal study, whether self-directed or with a mentor. Teachers reported exceptionally high course participation rates – among the highest of all professional employees. The general survey found rates of over 80 per cent. With more in-depth probing 90 per cent of the teachers surveyed reported in-service training activities. These rates compare to about two-thirds of professionals and managers and less than 60 per cent among the general labour force.
In addition, over 90 per cent of teachers reported active engagement in informal on-the-job learning, marginally higher than other workers (about 80 per cent). Teachers are more likely (56 per cent) than most workers (42 per cent) to seek mentoring from colleagues, but their estimates of time spent in informal job-related learning and informal learning generally were similar to other occupational groups. Overall, teachers are more involved in combinations of formal and informal learning and spend more time in learning activities than most other general occupational groups.
The WALL survey findings offer some preliminary benchmarks for assessing the changing nature of adult work and learning in Canada. The comparisons of teachers to other Canadian workers could help the teaching profession in steering its future policies.
The WALL survey raises some immediate challenges:
We [teachers] need to make greater efforts to achieve a teaching force more demographically representative of the Canadian population.
We need to use the relatively high levels of discretionary control we have in our jobs and our very high rates of continuing education to exemplify and promote the kinds of high-involvement organizations required by a well-developed knowledge-based
economy.
But we should sound alarm bells because of relatively high staffing cutbacks in our schools, long hours and high levels of stress.
For complete questions and results see the full report, available at the Research Network on Work & Lifelong Learning, OISE/UT.
David W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and head of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work at OISE/UT.
Fab Antonelli is a member of the College and a doctoral student in sociology and equity studies at OISE/UT.
In 2004, the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) network conducted a large-scale survey of over 9,000 members of the Canadian labour force concerning their working conditions and learning activities. The survey was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
While the number of teachers included in the survey is not large enough to allow for interprovincial comparisons of teachers, the responses of teachers across the country can be compared with those of other occupational groups and to the labour force as a whole.
Among full-time employed workers (over 30 hours per week), the demographic profile of teachers is distinctive. The teaching force is older than the labour force in general, with nearly half (47 per cent) over 45. Similarly, nearly half (46 per cent) of all teachers have been working in the same type of job for more than 16 years. Teachers are also more likely to be female (75 per cent) and white (95 per cent) than most other occupational groups. Canadian teachers comprise a relatively stable, older, female-dominant and not very racially diverse occupational group.
Discretion on the job
In a knowledge-based economy, workers need increasing discretion to perform their jobs. But what do workers themselves think about their discretionary control of their jobs? Teachers are the most likely occupational group to say their jobs require a great deal of thought (89 per cent) and that they have a great amount of choice in doing their jobs (61 per cent). Teachers are especially distinctive in their majority belief (57 per cent) that they can always plan their own work, compared to less than a third of most other groups in the general labour force. In terms of employees' involvement in their work, teachers are the prototypical “knowledge workers.”
Changing conditions
The vast majority of Canadian workers think that work techniques and equipment, including computers and related software, have changed at least moderately over the past five years and about a third think they have changed a great deal. Canadian teachers are about as likely as other professional employees to acknowledge skill increases and changing work techniques in their jobs and more likely than either service workers or industrial workers. But they are somewhat more likely (45 per cent) than most occupational groups (less than 40 per cent) to express high levels of job stress. In response to questions concerning organizational change in employment conditions over the past five years, most workers state that they have witnessed significant organizational restructuring. Teachers are again distinctive in that the majority (64 per cent) report changes in terms of reduced numbers of employees within their workplaces, compared to only minorities (42 per cent or less) among other categories of workers.
Work hours
This survey confirmed findings of other studies concerning a recent trend in the hours of work in the Canadian labour force. After gradual declines in the length of the normal workweek for most of the 20th century, a growing polarization of part-timers and over-timers has been evident during the last few decades. The proportion of those working a previously standard 40-hour week has continued to decline, while the proportion of those working over 50 hours per week and those working fewer than 30 hours per week – typically without non-wage benefits – continues to increase. Around 20 per cent of teachers are now employed part-time, a proportion similar to that found in the general labour force. Meanwhile, the normal workweek of those in full-time employment (that is, 30 or more hours per week) is now about 45 hours. In our survey, full-time teachers – in line with what has become the Canadian norm – reported working an average of at least 45 hours per week.
But a more detailed national survey sample of teachers (Smaller H. et al, 2005) found that they work an average of 49 hours, including time spent after school hours in preparation and marking, extracurricular activities, reporting to parents, etc. Many recent studies of teachers' working conditions in Canada and elsewhere have established that teachers remain among the most likely of workers to do unpaid overtime. When asked more generally about their normal work week in the WALL survey, they were quite likely to have taken some of their unassigned duties for granted.
Along with most occupational groups teachers also do substantial unpaid housework, an average of 15 hours per week. But teachers have an exceptionally high rate (69 per cent) of involvement in voluntary organizations, compared to a minority of the general labour force. Teachers' volunteer work plays a vital but often unrecognized role in community sustainability. Teachers' extensive unpaid overtime work, their relatively high levels of job stress, and the extent of their volunteer work should be better understood by the general public.
Learning profiles
The WALL national survey asked a series of questions about ongoing learning – formal courses or workshops and informal study, whether self-directed or with a mentor. Teachers reported exceptionally high course participation rates – among the highest of all professional employees. The general survey found rates of over 80 per cent. With more in-depth probing 90 per cent of the teachers surveyed reported in-service training activities. These rates compare to about two-thirds of professionals and managers and less than 60 per cent among the general labour force.
In addition, over 90 per cent of teachers reported active engagement in informal on-the-job learning, marginally higher than other workers (about 80 per cent). Teachers are more likely (56 per cent) than most workers (42 per cent) to seek mentoring from colleagues, but their estimates of time spent in informal job-related learning and informal learning generally were similar to other occupational groups. Overall, teachers are more involved in combinations of formal and informal learning and spend more time in learning activities than most other general occupational groups.
The WALL survey findings offer some preliminary benchmarks for assessing the changing nature of adult work and learning in Canada. The comparisons of teachers to other Canadian workers could help the teaching profession in steering its future policies.
The WALL survey raises some immediate challenges:
We [teachers] need to make greater efforts to achieve a teaching force more demographically representative of the Canadian population.
We need to use the relatively high levels of discretionary control we have in our jobs and our very high rates of continuing education to exemplify and promote the kinds of high-involvement organizations required by a well-developed knowledge-based
economy.
But we should sound alarm bells because of relatively high staffing cutbacks in our schools, long hours and high levels of stress.
For complete questions and results see the full report, available at the Research Network on Work & Lifelong Learning, OISE/UT.
David W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and head of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work at OISE/UT.
Fab Antonelli is a member of the College and a doctoral student in sociology and equity studies at OISE/UT.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Welcome
Welcome to this portal, which provides access to a range of courses, resources, research projects and public activities on learning and work. They are centred at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada. Here you will meet a wide range of university faculty, graduate students, labour unionists, worker educators and literacy activists.
www.learningwork.ca
www.learningwork.ca
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