5. Building an Opposition

"The gloom in which so much of the left has been plunged in recent years is short-sighted. For everywhere one looks, there is ferment, with grievances expressed, demands made, rights affirmed ...[and] a good deal of it speaks a language which is well in tune with socialist aspirations".

Developing alternative policies is critical to any social movement. But the more fundamental issue is developing an alternative politics - the power to implement our alternatives. At this point in time, when we are very much on the defensive, the essence of an alternative politics is building an effective opposition.

This political insight has been grasped more clearly by the labour movement than by its political arm. As the labour movement searched for an effective response to the new corporate aggressiveness, a significant change occurred in its relationship to the NDP. It is no exaggeration to say that, over the past decade, the real political leadership within the left has shifted to the labour movement itself. It was the unions, along with other social activists outside the NDP, that understood the significance of the free trade debate and led the fight against it. It was workers who took on the corporate agenda and understood that concessions and cutbacks in social programs could not deliver prosperity. It was working people, their unions, and community groups - not the NDP - who conceived and carried out the remarkable city-wide protests in Ontario and mobilized anger in Atlantic Canada. And it is working class women, under the initiative of NAC and the CLC, that are now in the middle of an ambitious and exciting campaign to make the links between social cuts, the lack of decent jobs, poverty, justice, and dignity.

This is politics. It's politics as it should be and must be given what we're up against. It places issues on the public agenda and puts them in some context. It mobilizes frustrations and tries to channel them constructively. It forces a debate that goes beyond the normal bounds set by the media, and moves towards changing the political climate around us. It links the national and community interest to our rights and concerns, rather than that of the corporations. It brings new people into active participation against what is happening to them and their communities. It educates, reinvigorates, generates confidence, develops organizational skills.

Where does electoral politics fit into this? It's certainly true that electoral politics can't and shouldn't be left to the corporations. But our recent experience has also taught us that politics can't be left to the politicians. Politics must go beyond the vote or preparation for a vote. And electoral politics can only be relevant if it's not only backed by, but part of, an oppositional movement.

As those CAW activists who faded from the party return, that return can't be limited to getting back to "political business as usual". If we're going back in, it only makes sense to do so with a clear agenda on policy issues and, more important, a clearer sense of the kind of organizing party working people need. We have changed through our recent struggles. We must bring that change into the party, rather than leave it at the door.

6. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs ... and the Bankers.

Try and follow this logic: In order to lower unemployment, we have to make stockholders happy so they'll invest in jobs. But if there's any hint that growth and jobs are coming, stocks go down and Wall Street and Bay Street push for tightening the economy to slow it down. So good news becomes bad news and bad news becomes good news.

Whatever logic this has for capitalists, we can't shift the national agenda to a different logic just by setting out different policies. Until we can mobilize the kind of pressure that confronts them with real economic and political costs to their absurd logic, they won't consider conceding to any of our demands.

The role of alternative policies should therefore be seen in the context of establishing our credibility and mobilizing to build that necessary pressure and power. There are already many useful policy ideas around; we includedsome of them in the document to our last bargaining convention, the CLC and NDP have put forth some very constructive ideas ad there are excellent ideas, especiallyon dealing with the deficit, in the Alternative Budget co-sponsered by the labour movement.

The main policy issue we want to concentrate on in the next two sections is jobs. For working people no demand is more fundamental than the right to participate in the economy with a measure - however constrained - of independence and dignity. High unemployment wastes our individual potential and sabotages our collective ability to maintain valuable social programs. By way of the job competition and insecurity it engenders, unemployment also undermines solidarity and weakens the bargaining position of those working.

But the issue isn't just the number of jobs. As a union, we exist in large part to improve the nature of our jobs. So when we demand jobs, we mean the right to have decent jobs. Not too long ago (and particularly during the free trade debate) corporations, economists, editorial writers, and politicians asserted that economic restructuring was not to be feared but welcomed. The changes, they proclaimed, would in fact bring more of those decent, "upscaled" jobs. That didn't of course happen. In their single-minded drive for flexibility and profits, corporations:

• Made existing jobs worse through lean-(and mean)-driven work reorganization.

• Outsourced work, which down-scaled some of the best jobs (GM is only one example);

• Closed plants and offices with good jobs, moving them to non-union locations or outside the country (eg NorTel, the "Canadian" success story).

• Reduced the number of jobs with "normal" hours by increasing the proportion of part-time work, casual labour, and the level of overtime (what these apparently contradictory trends have in common is the flexibility they each give to the corporations).

This erosion of decent jobs has been reinforced by public policy. Behind the rhetoric of preparing Canada for the high-tech, high-wage economy of the next century, lies a set of policies structured to achieve a contrary theme: jobs by way of a poverty-increasing low-wage strategy. That's the common strategic thread in policies which: ensure a large pool of unemployed competing with each other; cuts to unemployment insurance and welfare to force people into any job; the introduction of compulsory work (workfare) at pay and conditions that can't be challenged; and the privatization and outsourcing of unionized public sector jobs to profit-hungry middlemen.

Isn't it interesting that the rich need positive incentives to get them to work harder, while raising the minimum wage for the poor is considered counter-productive and the only legitimate incentive for unemployed workers is to cut their benefits? (Surprising conclusion: it's better to be rich).

In it's early years social democrats took it for granted that corporations and the market could not and would not provide full employment at decent wages. If we wanted to address the jobs issue we had to talk about democratic planning - democratic because we wanted planning that addressed the needs of the general population, not corporate demands.

Today, corporations and politicians inadvertently remind us that this is, if anything, even more true today. When they lecture us about "what we can't afford", while some two million people are denied the chance to do productive work and therefore provide "what we can't afford", what they're really telling us that we can't solve our problems within the confines of profit-driven and market-based decisions. The economic elite's lame attempts to justify their inaction ends up, instead, to expose the illogic and deep failure of the economic system they represent.

We can't move towards any kind of planning if the main decisions that affect the economy - the investment and flow of finances which determine the if, where, and kind of jobs we'll have - are left in the private hands of a minority. If we aren't ready to challenge the corporations and especially the financial sector on this issue, we can't possibly achieve the goal of decent jobs (or, it should be emphasized, any other goals like removing the constraint of the deficit on what kind of social programs we can have).

If the most important working class demand has been the right to a decent job, the second most important has been more time away from that job. The issue was usually not - as it is today - a matter of opening up jobs for others. More often it was about recapturing some time with family, time to read and develop oneself, and time to participate in the democratic and political life of the community.

In many ways, such issues should be of equal or more concern today, especially with changes in the role of women in the workforce, family responsibilities, and the obvious potential of the new technology. But the absence of available work has made the issue of work-time into an issue of jobs. And it's not just a matter of jobs for those unemployed; there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians stuck in part-time jobs who want their hours increased closer to full-time levels (that's why we talk about the "redistribution" of work-time, not just "reduced" work-time).

The responsibility for modifying work-time lies with the companies - they make the basic decisions that structure our choices. Moreover, public policy is actually reinforcing the polarization of work-time, rather than correcting it: The privatization of the welfare state (ie cutbacks in social programs and a greater dependence on company plans) increases the fixed costs of a worker to a company. This translates into:

• Companies preferring to work the existing workforce longer overtime hours rather than adding to their benefit costs by adding more workers.

• Or companies turning to part-time work, where unions and workers are unable to offer as much resistance to limiting benefits.

Similarly, cutbacks and restraint leave corporations uncertain about future growth and the uncertainty leaves them reluctant to hire new workers. Overtime becomes the alternative. The ceiling on UI premiums also means that after a certain (now lower) income is reached, no additional premiums must be paid - so companies face an incentive, rather than penalty, for overtime scheduling relative to new hires.

For workers, the erosion of public benefits like subsidized tuition costs, combined with the greater uncertainty over the future, intensify pressures to work the overtime. If we aren't able to convince workers that collective solutions make more sense (eg fight against the cuts) they'll look to the private solution of overtime. This happens even though, if everyone responds to concerns about their kid's future by working overtime, this ends up to be self-defeating: the overtime reduces the number of good jobs available.

It makes more sense, if we're thinking about equity and the future, to introduce penalties on companies using unnecessary overtime (eg a higher UI and WCB premium on those extra hours), or to cap overtime in communities where unemployment is high, or to introduce a paid education grant of two weeks for every worker. The latter would benefit the workers affected (eg a two week computer familiarizati on course), benefit to society as workers upgrade themselves and increase their technological literacy, and would create new job openings as the workers who are off are replaced (it would also mean thousands of jobs for educators currently facing cuts).

We can fight and lobby for these or other changes, but the reality is that unless we're fighting in the workplace for reduced work-time, better work schedules, and more worker control and flexibility over our time, to this issue will not be taken seriously and placed on the political agenda nationally. We have talked about this since the formation of our union in the thirties. We have made progress, but not the kind of dramatic breakthrough that truly changes our lives and affects job opportunities. The costs of delaying such a change are rising.

Conclusion: A Culture of Resistance

Building an effective opposition to the increasingly obvious failure of capitalism to address our needs starts with our own members. Unless workers experience the potential power of collective action in their own union, they will not have any confidence in more distant kinds of collective protests. Currently, the major issues at our base are working conditions, more control over our time, and outsourcing - issues which directly challenge management rights in the workplace. Preparing to take this fight on is therefore the most crucial part of building a more general fightback.

Our roots in the workplace emerged out of a stubborn resistance to the corporate definition of progress. We should not be defensive about this. We resist because, even if we don't always have complete alternatives, we know that their alternatives are no solution to our problems.

When we reject competitiveness, we're not denying that a strong economy is crucial. And we're not ignoring the reality of competitiveness as a constraint we'll have to deal with. But once this constraint becomes a goal, it dominates all economic and social decisions. What is good for competitiveness (like strengthening corporate power) is "good"; what is bad for competitiveness (like higher wages and more secure workers) is "bad". We resist this direction for good reason: it gets us playing on a terrain that will not only fail us (as we see every day) but also weaken us for future struggles.

Similarly, when we refuse to accept budget cuts, we're not denying the reality of debts and deficits. What we reject is the way the economic elite limits what is under discussion. Since they assume you can't touch the rich and powerful (hurts competitiveness, scares business), the only solution left is to take it out on us. When we resist, we're saying that another direction - one that includes justice and equity and so challenges privilege and power - must be found.

The point is that resistance is a strategy, and sometimes it is even the best strategy. When you fight back, you assert your independence, win the occasional battle, and slow down the other side. At all times, resistance represents a crucial step in keeping certain ideas alive and creating the possibility of building more developed strategies in the future.

Over the past two decades, our union resisted the pressures to get into line with the so-called new reality. During that time, we were joined in that resistance by other unions through mergers. Out of that experience, a "culture of struggle and resistance" grew within the union. That culture united us, kept us in motion, defined us as a union. How do we now expand and deepen this legacy as we search for new strategies and new responses?

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