Mark Ferguson, the president of CUPE local 416, which represents 6,000 outside municipal workers in Toronto, emerged Sunday morning to announce that his bargaining team and the City of Toronto had reached a tentative settlement, preventing a lockout that was to commence that same day. This was despite months of threats and “bullying”, as Ferguson labelled the city’s tactics as late as Friday.
Very little details have yet emerged of the agreement, but it is probably safe to say that Toronto outside workers are significantly worse off today than they were last week.
Chances of a deal looked extremely slim as recently as Friday afternoon. At that point, Ferguson appeared before the press to announce that the city had tabled a “final” offer that attacked almost every single provision in the expired contract — no job security for anyone employed less than 22 years with the city, attacks on every single health benefit, and even attacking lunch scheduling! The comprehensiveness of the attacks was astonishing. On top of this, management said they would take the unprecedented move of imposing this contract on the workers if there was no deal by Sunday morning. In addition to the imposition, the employer would refuse to collect union dues until the union signed an agreement.
CUPE 416’s leadership offered up astonishing concessions of their own. The most notable were that the union leadership presented a three-year wage freeze for its members, along with stripping away job protection for any employees with less than five years’ worth of service with the City of Toronto. However, even these significant handouts were roughly rejected by Toronto deputy mayor Doug Holyday as being insufficient.
If this was not enough for Rob Ford and his allies, then we must seriously ask, how much did the union give up to reach a settlement?
Ford and Holyday were in a jubilant mood following Ferguson’s announcement of a deal on Sunday morning, claiming that this was a “good contract for the taxpayers.” Ferguson was forced to admit that the union felt forced to make “numerous concessions”. He went on to say:
“Throughout the process we have provided the City with many efficiencies and creative solutions to extremely difficult problems. There is no doubt that our members are making sacrifices. We are going to keep working to finalize a deal that gives the city flexibility and affordability while still delivering great public services.”
There is no doubt that Toronto civic workers want to continue to do their jobs, and that many enjoy their work. But, this is becoming increasingly difficult to do when governments and bosses are intent on ending jobs and paying workers the bare minimum that they can get away with. No one ever wants to go out on strike but it is a necessary tool to show the boss where real power lies. By giving in to concessions this time around, the City of Toronto will be emboldened to ask for more cuts in the next round of bargaining. It is crucial to strike a militant attitude, and to mean it, if the union leadership is to defend its members’ jobs. Otherwise, Mayor Ford and his allies will get their wish in privatizing civic workers’ jobs.
On Monday morning, the Toronto Star claimed that an unnamed source had told them that the union and the City had agreed to take away the job-security language in the contract for all workers employed less than 15 years, affecting about 30% of outside workers. If this is true, this is a horrific sellout of these workers by the CUPE leadership, which undermines the confidence of Toronto workers to fight back against Rob Ford’s austerity, and sets a pattern for public sector austerity across Canada.
Ever since he was elected mayor, Ford has put unionized public workers in his crosshairs in his hunt for “gravy”. Time and time again, Ford has said that the city had too many workers on the payroll, and that privatizing and outsourcing could yield all sorts of savings. His desire was that he could trim 7,000 workers off the city’s payroll, roughly 14% of the city’s workforce. Again, if the numbers coming out are true, his deal with CUPE 416 would go a long way in allowing Ford to meet his targets.
But, it is not just the thousands of outside workers who now have to fear for their livelihoods. This deal will also affect negotiations with inside and library workers, as well as other public sector workers across the country.
This will certainly embolden the Ontario provincial government, which has commissioned a report by former TD chief economist Don Drummond to look at how the provincial government can best implement austerity in Ontario. Foreign credit agencies have already threatened Ontario with a credit downgrade if the provincial government doesn’t do more to tackle the $16-billion provincial deficit. Coming out of an election where he eked out a minority government, Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty has attempted to tread carefully so far. However, he must be feeling much more confident today seeing that the labour leadership in Toronto failed to mobilize much of a fight back against the draconian Rob Ford cuts. It is very likely that the provincial budget that will be tabled in March will include much harsher and bolder cuts to the province’s services and jobs.
Settling only invites further aggression
The Canadian ruling class must be over the moon with how easily Rob Ford was able to settle with CUPE 416. The fear, up until now, has been how the Canadian bosses could implement capitalist austerity without incurring the same sort of wrath from workers as we have witnessed in the Arab world and in Western Europe.
The stage appeared to have been set for an epic confrontation between Ford and his council allies on one side, and the labour movement, along with community allies, on the other.
As we commented in our editorial to the present issue of Fightback, the times have changed and it is absolutely vital that the labour leadership realize that there will be no return to the “good old days”. It is no longer enough to simply negotiate for a few more dollars in the next collective agreement. In the era of crisis capitalism, the ruling class needs to impose the harshest of austerity measures, and negotiations today will be the fiercest of battles to defend jobs and the right to organize workplaces.
But, governments are hampered in their ability to impose austerity. Their financial needs are conditioned by the question of how many cuts are workers going to tolerate before they fight back. As has been shown in Western Europe, the capitalist class is having problems implementing austerity as revolutionary situations are prone to develop, as we are presently seeing in Greece. Even in Toronto, there was a sector of the ruling class that was uncomfortable at the ham-fisted zeal that Rob Ford was demonstrating in pushing through the austerity agenda, precisely because it was generating a mass mobilization against cuts and privatization.
Ford, who had been elected in a populist landslide less than 18 months ago, has seen his popularity plummet. When first elected, he appeared to be unstoppable. Now, with mass opposition from all corners of the city, Ford’s program was vulnerable. Just over two weeks ago, Toronto city council was forced, under public pressure, to overturn $19-million worth of cuts to public services. Although this was a fraction of the $300-million worth of cuts that were tabled, it was still an important symbolic victory that was only achieved because of mass organizing through the labour movement and community allies. A year ago, even this victory would have appeared to be unthinkable.
Unlike the 2009 civic workers strike, it appeared that a significant percentage of the public was on the side of the workers this time around. There is an increasing understanding from all workers, not just those organized in unions, that austerity is going to affect them all. Moreover, the sheer vindictiveness of the cuts astonished those who thought the good times would return after the 2008 recession.
For months, we have been saying that the labour leadership needed to make a call, and begin organizing, for a one-day general strike to reverse the Rob Ford cuts. This could have given the movement a collective awareness of its strength, as well as decisively showing the politicians what would happen to the city if workers exercised their strength. It is quite conceivable that the recent budget could have been overturned by councillors fearing for their political lives, not to mention the dangers of a much more radical turn occurring within society.
Furthermore, it could have sent a message to the bankers and bosses across the country: if they wanted to implement their austerity, they would have to face one hell of a fight on their hands.
Instead, the message that is now sent out is that they have little to worry about. If governments and the bosses employ enough threats, you can intimidate the labour leadership who will be willing to settle for concessions in order to get a few crumbs off the capitalist table.
But, it is too soon to write the epitaph to the Toronto civic workers’ labour struggle, yet. There may be a chance that the workers refuse to ratify this agreement that robs many of them of their jobs. Why should they sign a deal that will send many of them to the unemployment office? There is also the possibility of them replacing the current leadership with one that is more willing to fight to defend their jobs and benefits.
In the short term, these events may demoralize some sections and boost the confidence of the bosses and their representatives in government. However, looking forward, the Canadian working class will not continue to accept these cuts and attacks lying down. The anger amongst the masses is palpable; the only thing missing from the equation at the moment is a leadership that reflects the rank-and-file’s anger and is willing to stand up for the membership’s rights. It is only natural that eventually, workers will be able to elect a leadership that is much more in tune with their demands.
The leadership of the labour movement will tell workers that in reaching this deal, they had no choice. This is false. They may also say that workers were in too weak of a position to fight the City’s position. This is also false. The partial defeat of Rob Ford in the Toronto budget shows that the right wing are already cracking under mass pressure. If the defence of civic workers was made part of a wider struggle in defence of decent services and jobs for all workers then this could have been the focal point of a mass struggle that ended with bringing down the Ford regime. The workers are strong and the Ford regime is deeply hated – all that is needed is a leadership that is not afraid to go head-to-head with corporate interests to defend the conditions of workers generally.
In the meantime, we urge CUPE 416 workers (and their brothers and sisters in CUPE 79 and local 4948) to reject the tentative contract with the City of Toronto. It is possible to defend the right to decent jobs with decent pay, and not to have to sell out our livelihoods. The only way to defend our standards of living is if we are not afraid to demonstrate our power.
No sellouts!
Vote “No” to removing job security!
No concessions to capitalist austerity!
For a fighting labour movement!
