pdf - Canadian Association of Labour Media

Volume 1, No. 1
www.calm.ca
September 1, 2013
the amp
the amp is a publication of the Canadian Association of Labour
Media (CALM). This issue is from the first convention of Unifor.
Naomi Klein calls on Unifor to fight for green
labour revolution
By Martin Lukacs
Naomi Klein urged members at the founding
convention of Unifor to take the lead in ushering in
a green labour revolution, setting out a bold vision
to reverse the damage of the neoliberal
era and create just and dignified work
while simultaneously protecting the
environment.
But Klein said that rejecting the neoliberal agenda
is not enough – the labour movement needs a
compelling vision of its own.
“We can’t just reject their lies. We need truths so
powerful that their lies can’t survive contact with
them. We can’t just reject their project. We need our
While the pipeline might offer short-term
construction jobs, it would also lead to
big private sector profits and devastating
public costs for future environmental
damage. But spending that same money
on public transit, building retrofits and
renewable energy would create at least
three times as many jobs – as well as a
safer future.
“If Unifor becomes the voice for a boldly
different economic model, one that
provides solutions both to the attacks on
working people and the attacks on the
earth itself, then you can stop worrying
about your continued relevance,” Klein
said.
To achieve this would require “breaking
every rule in the free-market playbook.”
Workers are facing a classic example
of the tactic Klein documented in her
book, The Shock Doctrine, whereby
right-wing interests systematically
exploit crises – whether economic shocks,
natural disasters, or wars – to impose
pro-corporate policies. These policies –
deregulation, cuts to social spending and
privatization – do not solve underlying
problems but only enrich a small elite.
She suggested a key demand could be
“energy democracy,” which would entail
the creation of new crown corporations in
energy and a democratically controlled,
decentralized energy system operated in
the public interest.
She encouraged union members to
consider direct action, rather than
waiting for the government to act.
Mass mobilizations responding to
austerity in Canada and in Greece, Spain,
and the United States have unleashed
a more radical imagination, mobilized
massive numbers, and developed new
kinds of democratic organizing, but have
had difficulty achieving their aims.
These movements need the durability that only
organized labour can provide, she argued.
“They need your institutional strength, your radical
history, and perhaps most of all, your ability to act
as an anchor so that we don’t keep rising up and
disappearing again,” Klein said. “We need you to be
our fixed address, our base, so that next time we are
impossible to evict.”
Klein said that alliances with community groups and
social movements – already initiated by the CAW
at Port Elgin last November 2012, when a hundred
activists from across the country met and dialogued
with labour representatives – is an important start.
It would also require expanding those sectors of work
that are low carbon, like personal care,
sanitation and service sector workers.
Klein cited a Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives report that compared the
public value from a $5 billion investment
in a pipeline – like the Enbridge Gateway
– to the same amount of money invested
in green industrial development.
The best-selling author argued that
climate change is not a threat to jobs, but
is instead the most important tool and
argument against the austerity agenda
that is working neither for people nor the
planet.
“We’ve occupied Wall Street and Bay Street and
countless other streets. And yet the attacks keep
coming,” Klein said.
Addressing climate change will require a revival
and reinvention of the public sphere, with clean and
affordable transport, energy efficient housing, major
investment in infrastructure – a transformation that
could create millions of new, high-paying jobs.
own project.”
Klein called Stephen Harper’s main project
“extractivism,” a single-minded natural resource
extraction agenda for which he has sacrificed the
manufacturing base of the country and attacked
worker’s most basic collective rights.
Klein’s argument is that climate change is an
argument vividly demonstrating the failutre of this
logic of continual extraction and profit.
“[Climate change] is a powerful message – spoken in
the language of fires, floods, storms and droughts –
telling us that we need a whole new economic model,
one based on justice and sustainability,” Klein said.
She suggested that solutions to climate change are
already at the heart of many of the labour movement’s
existing demands and in fact “vindicate much of what
the left has been working towards for decades.”
“Next time they close a factory making
fossil-fuel machinery – whether cars,
tractors, or airplanes – don’t let them do
it,” she said. “Do what workers are doing
from Argentina to Greece to Chicago:
occupy the factory. Turn it into a green worker co-op.
Go beyond negotiating a last, sad severance. Demand
the resources – from companies and governments – to
start building the new economy right now.”
Klein also stressed the importance of alliances with
Indigenous communities who she called the “biggest
barrier” that Harper faces to “his vision of Canada as
an extraction and export machine – a country-sized
sacrifice zone.”
If Unifor can achieve the social unionism promised
in its new constitution, Klein said that it would be an
inspiration to many and be a force to be contended
with.
“You will be on the front lines of the fight for the
future, and everyone else – including the opposition
parties – will have to follow or be left behind.”
Jerry Dias says
it’s time to “start
playing offense”
By Nora Loreto
In an inaugural speech that was punctuated by
several standing ovations, new president of Unifor
Jerry Dias called for a more aggressive organizing
approach.
Dias’ nearly hour-long first speech on Saturday
afternoon was, for many delegates, their first
introduction.
As a long-time activist within the CAW, Dias’ speech
had to unite delegates present from both sides of
Unifor. With references to industries traditionally
represented by both CAW and CEP, Dias tried to
strike the balance.
It helped that his mother was a member of the
Toronto
bookbinders
union, a former
CEP union. “If
my father is the
CAW and my
mother came
from CEP, I
guess that
rightfully makes
me Unifor,” he
said. The crowd
responded with
cheers.
Dias was first
elected at the
age of 20 as a
shop steward
for CAW at de
Havilland. His
father was a
CAW activist
and his wife was the vice-chair for the CAW local at
the Winnipeg airport.
His four children, who invited on stage during his
speech, are among the age cohort with the highest
unemployment rates in Canada. Referencing their
future, he argued that Unifor needs to fight for young
workers’ rights and protections.
“Society has betrayed the hopes and dreams of
our young people,” he said. “[Y]oung people are
getting screwed and they’re just not going to take
it any more.” He said that movements like Idle No
More, Occupy and the student strike in Québec
demonstrate that when young people are frustrated
and oppressed, they fight back.
Dias highlighted his passion for fighting violence
against women and said that Unifor should be a
strong advocate against violence against women: “It
isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a men’s issue too. It’s all
of our issues.”
Dias targeted the Harper government and reminded
delegates that the economic crisis of 2008 was
brought about by greed and a system of globalized
capitalism.
“The wealth is trickling up, austerity is trickling
down,” he said. “Rampant capitalism is on the
offensive even though they just screwed up so bad.
Old-style corporate greed caused the recession.”
Even beyond the latest recession, Dias argued that
the deterioration of people’s living standards was by
design.
“This decline is not the result of circumstances
beyond our control. This mess was the result of
choices. Growing inequality wasn’t an accident, it was
a choice. The cuts to EI were a choice, a choice that
forced people to leave their communities or take jobs
that pay even less.”
“Unifor is here because it’s time to stop playing
defense and start playing offense,” Dias ended, to a
last rousing, standing ovation.
Expectation, hope during launch of Unifor
By Nora Loreto
During the birth of a child, family
members gather around, filled with hopes
and dreams of their newest relation’s
future. Endless possibilities and joy fill the
room as everyone revels in the moment.
Once child-raising starts, the family
realizes just how much work it is to help
the child fulfill those hopes and dreams.
The birth of Unifor is not unlike the birth
of a child – and family allusions were
plentiful during the launch of the new
union.
The first day of convention was exciting.
The convention hall was abuzz as speakers
hit every note in perfect pitch with much of
the audience.
The schedule was thrown off course in
part due to problems with the electronic
voting devices, and candidates running for
national executive positions from the floor.
Delegates elected Jerry Dias as their first
president with 82 per cent of the vote.
CAW delegate Lindsay Hinshelwood
challenged Dias and made an impassioned speech
from the floor imploring CAW members to reject
concessions that sell out young workers.
With the schedule running late, the day’s keynote,
Naomi Klein, was moved until Sunday morning.
A speech by Allan Gregg, a former Progressive
Conservative pollster and TVO television
host, helped to frame the politics of the Harper
government as being deceitful and dishonest.
opposed by organized labour. “Unions will be judged
not by your achievements at the negotiating table but
by but what you do in the public square.”
Gregg passed through a whirlwind of decisions
made by the Harper government and argued that the
assault on reason waged by Stephen Harper must be
Much of the end of the day’s agenda couldn’t be
debated and was bumped to the agenda on Sunday
morning.
Tel: 581-983-4397
PO Box 10624, RPO Bloorcourt
Toronto ON M6H 4H9
Writing: Nora Loreto, Martin Lukacs
Editing: Nora Loreto, Martin Lukacs
Photography: Joe Sarnovsky
Layout: Nora Loreto Design: Natalia Saavedra