by M. Gouldhawke
From ‘Face To Face With The Enemy’, September 2007, a Vancouver anarchist newsletter
“Workers rarely strike when it suits them. They usually strike when it is convenient for capitalism.”
– B. Traven, The White Rose, 1929
As a march of striking city workers approached Vancouver’s city hall on August 29, a group stopped a city vehicle and somebody slashed one of its tires. This person wasn’t arrested, according to the corporate media. At the beginning of the month, the city told the media that they’d suffered $5,000 worth of damage (so far) to city vehicles due to slashed tires and other sabotage.
There have also been picket lines set up at a private club and a movie theatre that were offering to take other people’s garbage. But the city is certainly looking cleaner than one would expect. Managers can be seen daily doing their workers’ jobs and undermining the strike. It seems that other so-called volunteer clean-up operations are going ahead unchecked.
One guy actually followed through on an idea that probably occurred to a lot of us. He dumped his garbage at city hall’s doorstep.
Mostly, the current city workers strike is not about money (at least not in the short term), as the city’s propaganda war in the media portrays it. It’s more about the city’s desire to privatize (contract-out) jobs, meaning more money and control for the city in the long term. For the librarians, it’s also about pay equity for women. The city says it wants ‘flexibility’, meaning that they want to be able to twist workers into whatever shape they please, like a pretzel. The workers, at least, are refusing that.
For a long time now, a union strike hasn’t been what it used to be, and that’s because unions aren’t what they once were. The bosses deduct the dues from the workers paychecks and hand them to the union. In turn, the union bureaucrats promise to keep the rabble in line. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the bureaucrats help impose the contracting-out of jobs at Telus and the hospitals, against the wishes of, and the struggle waged by, the unions’ own workers. ‘Screwed by our own [leaders], said the picketer’s sign outside a Victoria hospital the day after her union leaders sold her out and agreed with the BC government that wages and jobs should be cut. Still, a lot of workers kept up the strike that day back in 2004, against their own union’s orders.
Most people seem content to simply wait-out the current Vancouver city strike, including the city government and the union heads. For the negotiating parties, this may be the strategy of both sides. Wear down the workers until they agree to a crappy contract. The union bureaucrats keep getting their ‘dues’ and the city gets their flexibility and their ‘labour peace’ for the 2010 Olympics, at the expense of the workers of course. But there is an old union saying that hardly anyone might remember, “the longer the picket line the shorter the strike”. In other words, ‘solidarity.’
“It’s pretty clear the Olympics aren’t for us. They are 10 days for the business community and upper-middle-class people. There’s no doubt that people on the street are taking the big hit.”
– Mike Gillan, 56, street cleaner, quoted in the Vancouver Sun, July 21, 2007
See also:
Civic workers divided in vote to end Vancouver strike (CBC News, Oct 09, 2007)
Long Live the Wildcat Strike
by M.Gouldhawke
From ‘Face To Face With The Enemy’, Vancouver Anarchist Publication, June 2004
“A kick in the stomach to imposed rules, a way out from the fraudulent limits of union negotiations, an effort that, for once, has tried to start from self-organization and not from the policy tables.”
– Which War, an Italian anarchist publication, 2004
For a few days in April and May of this year, BC was swept up in a wave of wildcat strikes, a contagious rebellion that came to life on the basis of true solidarity. When the Liberals tried to legislate an end to a legal health care workers strike, the limits of tolerance quickly disintegrated and action soon followed.
From BC Hydro workers to transit employees and even a few non-unionized construction workers, solidarity wildcat strikes put serious pressure on the government and could have defeated their legislation.
Even for those of us among the unemployed, the wildcat strikes were a welcome occurrence, because any breakdown of normality and routine creates an opportunity for us to meet each other on the streets and discuss our collective rebellious possibilities. Every wildcat strike, every direct action, provides valuable lessons in class struggle — experience than cannot be gained in any other way.
Most of us were not surprised by the negotiated deal that prevented the General Strike since we’d run up against the soft police of the union bureaucracies many times before. The situation was almost a repeat of “Solidarity” in 1983.
What did catch us off-guard was the workers’ direct defiance of their own union’s orders, the near General Strike in the town of Quesnel, the students’ refusal to go back to school.
What remains to be seen is whether or not an independent, self-organized workers struggle will develop and build a momentum to effectively confront the current economic reality we all live under.
It’s largely a matter of using our solidarity as a weapon, breaking out from the narrow limits the unions would like to confine us to and further illuminating the inherent structure of the unions, the dead weight of their bureaucracy and their class alliance with the bosses.
A struggle to simply replace the managers of the unions would get us nowhere. But on the other hand, a project based of self-organization could be a real chance for us to steal back our wounded dignity and decide for ourselves the kind of life we want to live.
Wildcat Strikes Sweep Across BC (2004)
by M. Gouldhawke (2004)
Despite a sell-out deal signed between the Liberal government and the leaders of the BC Federation of Labour and Hospital Employees Union (HEU) which derailed a General Strike, several wildcat strikes took place on May 3. The deal will still mean 15% percent wage cuts, 600 layoffs, and a longer work week for health care workers, along with continued privatization.
Solidarity wildcat strikes have swept across this province in response to an attempt by the government to legislate an end to a legal province-wide health care worker strike against pay cuts and layoffs.
A reverse-order chronology:
May 4 –
– Eight high school students in Prince Rupert walked out of a class and marched to City Hall and then to the hospital in solidarity with health care workers.
– At least two HEU members maintained a protest picket at the Burnaby headquarters of the union, but allowed workers inside so that strike pay could be issued.
May 3 –
– Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria General Hospital, Queen Alexandra Centre for Children’s Health, Glengarry Hospital, Victoria City Hall, garbage collection, 6am ferry sailing shut down and 7am delayed at Swartz Bay by secondary pickets, early morning busses prevented from going out by secondary pickets (service did not resume untill about 1:30pm, and then only at 65% percent), some schools picketed (including Victoria High, Reynolds Secondary, and Eagle View Elementary, with about 30% percent of students staying home), and pickets around the Hospital Employees Union office and the Ministry of Health.
– Pickets at Stelly’s Secondary School in central Saanich.
– St. Joseph’s Hospital in Comox.
– Surrey Memorial Hospital.
– St. Pauls Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital.
– Pickets at Burnaby Hospital Employees Union office.
– A small group of hospital workers set up pickets at a Langley hospital to protest the deal between the government and their union.
– 100 hospital workers on Saltspring Island maintained picket lines at the local hospital and seniors’ centre. Pickets at Long Harbour ferry terminal delayed 3:30pm sailing.
– Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, busses, garbage service, Naniamo Secondary School and other schools, school board office workers, school bus drivers (about a third of the district’s school busses didn’t run), building inspectors and planners, Departure Bay and Duke Point ferry workers
– Kelowna hospital workers tore up their picket signs and threw them at Ken Robinson, who sits on the local Hospital Employees Union executive. Pickets stayed up in defiance of the union’s back-to-work order. Some students disobeyed their parents and refused to go to school. About 27% percent of students didn’t show up for classes.
– One third of Kamloops students didn’t show up to classes.
– 3,000 Vernon students stayed home.
– Quesnel schools, mills, provincial government offices, city services, hospitals, school busses, grocery stores and liquor store. About 1,000 people demonstrated at the Quesnel Hospital in solidarity with the health care workers.
May 2 –
– Workers from all seven unions covering BC Rail walked out in support of the striking health care workers, shutting down all provincial rail service.
May 1 –
– Nurses wildcat strikes in Richmond and several hospitals on Vancouver Island.
– Striking health care workers picketed Norske Canada Pulp Mill in Campbell River. About half the workers walked out in a solidarity wildcat strike.
– Wildcat strike at Northwood Pulp and Paper Mill in Prince George.
– Juan de Fuca library in Greater Victoria area, and the Hartland landfill was shut down early in morning but opened later in the day.
– 5,000 to 10,000 workers marched through the streets of downtown Vancouver in the early afternoon as part of a May Day demonstration called by the BC Federation of Labour. A small anarchist contingent took part, some wearing masks and shields and flying black and black-and-red flags, chanting “General Strike!”
– At 4pm about 60 people took part in an unpermitted May Day march along Commercial Drive in Vancouver, chanting “We can’t wait untill the next election. General Strike! Insurrection!” and “No more pigs in our communities! Off the pigs/Burn ’em down!” and disrupting traffic at two major intersections.
April 30 –
– Vancouver City Hall, and the Manitoba Works Yard (garbage collection and city maintenance).
– First Tsawassen ferry sailing shut down.
– Victoria City Hall, Interurban campus of Camosun College, various schools, all seven Greater Victoria area libraries, transit yard cross-picketed by HEU members and supported by bus driver wildcat (shutting down bus service untill 10:15am), road workers, cleaners at schools and public buildings, some recrreation centres, and the city landfill.
– Schools in Saanich and Sooke.
– Municipal halls in Saanich, North Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, Colwood, and Sidney.
– Cowichan Valley school maintenance workers.
– Kelowna City Hall, Kelowna International Airport, the local land-fill, public works yard and the water treatment plant was down to essential service levels.
– 1,400 BC Hydro workers walked out, but the union was providing essential services. BC Hydro workers picketed on Main Street in Lilloet.
– Nurses wildcat strikes in Nanaimo, Comox, Port Alberni, Campbell River, Kelowna and Richmond.
– Schools in the Gulf Islands, Mid-Island and Kamloops school districts.
– Municipal workers in a number of Vancouver Island locations as well as Prince George (garbage collection, City Hall, pools/recreation centres, pulp mill workers), Quesnel, Dawson Creek, Pitt Meadows and Richmond.
– Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) workers in Nelson, Trail and Castlegar staged marches and demonstrations.
– CUPE workers in Dawson Creek walked out, shutting down a public pool and two ice arenas. Public works and parks staff also went on wildcat strike.
– Municipal workers wildcat strike in Delta, including city hall, recreation centres and swimming pools.
– City workers walked out in Burnaby, including city hall and other facilities.
– Bus maintenence workers walked out in Kamloops.
– Wildcat strike at the Swartz Bay BC Ferries terminal. BC Ferries workers refused to cross a secondary picket line and vocally supported the picketers. One sailing was shut down and another was delayed.
– Forestry/woodworkers in Duncan.
– Two saw mills and two CUPE locals in Quesnel.
April 29 –
– Workers from the Office and Professional Workers Local 378 walked out.
– 800 BC Hydro workers at the W.A.C. Bennet, Revelstoke and Peace Canyon dams walked out. BC Hydro applied for injunctions against wildcat pickets.
– Hospital workers in Kelowna, Pentincton and Vernon went on wildcat strike, including essential services, and organized independently from the unions.
