The economic crisis is hitting Canadians hard, and particularly workers in Ontario. Just this past January, Ontario shed over 80,000 jobs, with worse losses still to come. General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford are set to make further crippling job cuts in order to qualify for government aid, and are now threatening to gut autoworkers’ pension plans.
There isn’t a single economic sector in Ontario that isn’t being affected by the economic crisis. The manufacturing sector has been in crisis for years but the finance and service sectors, which have been holding up the Ontario economy for the last five or six years, are in turmoil too. Even the low-paying telemarketing and retail jobs that many poorer workers have had to depend on are now drying up. In January, the unemployment rates in cities like Toronto and Oshawa each shot up by more than a half percentage point, to 8.2 and 8.7%, respectively.
Up until now, the workers facing the greatest brunt of the cuts have been in the private sector. However, this is all set to change with the upcoming Ontario provincial budget where Premier Dalton McGuinty is set to unleash a full-scale attack on public sector workers. Even though McGuinty and the Liberals were largely elected through the support of some of the most powerful Ontario unions (especially the CAW, the nurses, and the teachers), for the past four years we have been explaining that when push comes to shove, the Liberals would act in the interests of their backers – the bosses of Ontario.
For their first four budgets in power, the Liberals emphasized little bits and pieces to placate the working class. The ruling class in Ontario were clearly not happy with the way in which McGuinty and the Liberals were running the province. If it had not been for John Tory’s gaffe of trying to get the government to fund religious schools, it is unlikely that McGuinty would have won a majority in the last provincial election.
In the wake of the economic crisis, a new Dalton has emerged. This Dalton talks about restraint, tightening the government purse, and making Ontario more competitive for business. This Dalton, unlike the old Dalton, is also not afraid to legislate striking workers back to work when the bosses are incapable of defeating the workers. This is the Dalton that the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national business paper) has been waiting for over the last five years.
As we have covered in this paper for the last couple of years, Ontario workers have begun to wake up from the defeats of the Days of Action and the attacks from the Mike Harris Tories. The province has had a number of militant strikes and occupations, many of which have resulted in victory for the workers. Now, with the economy in the toilet, the bosses have demanded that the government intervene in their struggles to put the boot to the workers.
The recent government intervention in the strike by teaching assistants and contract faculty at York University show the new resolve that the Liberal government has in defeating the workers’ movement. Aside from the TTC strike last April, the Liberals had been very wary of appearing too anti-worker, largely because they depended upon the support of several key unions to get elected in 2003 and 2007. However, in this strike, the York University administration (and by extension, the province) made it very clear to the striking workers that there was no money to be had. The smear campaign in the corporate press declared that in the face of the economic crisis, these workers had no right to be demanding wage increases and better working conditions; instead, they should simply be grateful that they had a job!
This is certainly the tactic that will be employed by both the provincial government and their allies at the municipal level this year – there is no money to spare (at least for workers), and you’ll be lucky to keep your job. Most public sector contracts are going to be up for negotiation this year and governments have already begun to threaten the unions. The provincial government bullied the elementary school teachers to accept a deal or risk losing everything, while a similar situation arose with the Toronto District School Board. The TDSB demanded to increase unpaid work time for Toronto teachers and threatened to rip up their recently signed contract if the teachers didn’t accept. Toronto Mayor David Miller has already warned the various CUPE locals that represent most municipal employees in the city that in their contract negotiations this summer, they shouldn’t expect any pay raises due to the financial crisis.
We do not expect the workers to take these attacks lying down. After years of accepting cuts and restraint while in a boom, workers will not be happy if they are forced to take the brunt of the crisis. In Greece, France, Britain and many other European countries we have seen strike waves erupt in response to government cutbacks. It is likely that a similar fight back will emerge in Canada, and especially Ontario, in the coming period.
In the midst of all of these planned attacks, the Ontario NDP is holding their leadership convention. This is an excellent opportunity for the party to rejuvenate itself and become the political voice for the workers’ fight back in Ontario. Unfortunately, the party has squandered many recent opportunities (including siding with both the Liberals and Tories in legislating the TTC workers back to work). The federal NDP under the leadership of Jack Layton have gone from being tied with the Liberals midway through the last election, to polling just above 10% after the coalition fiasco. Layton did not win himself any more support by appearing in front of the Toronto Board of Trade and calling for unionized workers to sacrifice their wages in order to protect the jobs of other workers!
It is not the workers’ fault that the global economy has collapsed. It is the fault of capitalism and the pursuit for profit that has caused the overproduction of goods and the credit bubble. The Liberals and Tories, along with the bosses and the corporate media, have been trying to convince everyone that it must be workers that bear the burden of fixing mistakes made by the ruling class. The NDP must stand up to these lies. It should be leading the struggle for factory occupations and nationalization of any closed factories, which must then be placed in the control of its workers and run for need rather than profit. In Venezuela, the workers’ movement has declared, “Factory closed, factory occupied!” This should be the same slogan used in Ontario and across Canada.
The NDP’s support of the striking York University workers was clearly felt on the picket lines. If the NDP were to come out more vocally for all of the struggles being waged by Ontario workers at the moment, and propose a socialist program to answer all of the problems being faced by workers in the midst of the economic crisis, the NDP could actually challenge for power. In the last provincial election, less than 58% of eligible Ontario voters bothered to vote. The main reason is that none of the parties presented a platform that resonated with workers, youth, women and immigrants. If the NDP spoke to these people, it would be very easy to triumph over the reactionary attacks of the likes of Dalton McGuinty and John Tory. This is what all workers, both within and outside the NDP, need to be demanding of the NDP leadership.
