Thursday, March 29, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
The Dam Bursts? The Air Canada wildcat
In the evening of Thursday, March 22, federal Minister of Labour Lisa Raitt disembarked at Toronto's Pearson Airport to three Air Canada ground crew slow-clapping her in response to her back-to-work legislation against the Air Canada ground crew, baggage handlers, mechanics and pilots on March 14.
Air Canada suspended the three workers as Raitt called them "animals" in the process. Shortly thereafter, Air Canada around 150 ground crew began a wildcat strike and took to marching through Terminal 1 (domestic) chanting "Fire Lisa Raitt" and demanding the suspensions be lifted. By Friday morning, dozens of workers at Pearson and across Toronto joined the protest which had grown to over three hundred. More recent videos show a CUPE 966 Flying Squad bus at Terminal 1 and support from CAW workers as well.
The wildcat then spread to Pierre Trudeau airport in Montreal, Jean Lesage in Quebec City, and Vancouver International. In terms of disruption, National Post reports 77 cancelled flights at Pearson, 15 in Montreal and 4 in Quebec City. Leading Tory cabinet minister and President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement was held up on the tarmac at Halifax for two hours on Friday morning as well and when he arrived at Pearson in Friday morning he was heckled by workers.
Raitt couldn't make up her mind about what to do. On the one hand, she appeared to backing out of the dispute stating that it was a matter between the workers and Air Canada, even though she was responsible for back-to-work legislation against unionized workers of a privately-owned company threatening a lock-out. Then she also made pretty clear threats stating that if the Industrial Relations Board declared the wildcat "illegal", individual workers would fined $1000/day and the union $100,000/day.
Union reps from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, representing ground crew, baggage handlers, and mechanics, also weighed-in, urging workers to go back to work. Whether this was to save face publicly given the financial threats of a CIRB ruling, or a more pernicious effort to curb rank-and-file militancy, is unclear at this point.
It appears that as of early afternoon this Friday - less than 24 hours after Raitt landed in Toronto - the wildcat is over. The three suspensions have become suspensions with pay. Workers have returned to work although apparently a handful are still out. Mainstream media is reporting that 37 workers were fired for the action and also immediately reinstated, but this is disputed by an on-the-ground report that they were merely disciplined.
As the wildcat seems to be coming to an end, Lisa Raitt's riding office in Milton, Ontario has now been occupied and police are now on the scene. People have called in, filling her voicemail with angry comments and slow clapping to the point that the voicemail is now full.
Updates and links will be provided as more information emerges. I'll also try to provide some preliminary analysis dealing with the context of the wildcat and the balance of forces between the federal state, employers (private and public), unions, and rank-and-file workers.
Most information is from online coverage in the Toronto Star, CBC and National Post, and a union organizer who got to Pearson on Friday and has contacts among the ground crew.
The wildcat then spread to Pierre Trudeau airport in Montreal, Jean Lesage in Quebec City, and Vancouver International. In terms of disruption, National Post reports 77 cancelled flights at Pearson, 15 in Montreal and 4 in Quebec City. Leading Tory cabinet minister and President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement was held up on the tarmac at Halifax for two hours on Friday morning as well and when he arrived at Pearson in Friday morning he was heckled by workers.
Raitt couldn't make up her mind about what to do. On the one hand, she appeared to backing out of the dispute stating that it was a matter between the workers and Air Canada, even though she was responsible for back-to-work legislation against unionized workers of a privately-owned company threatening a lock-out. Then she also made pretty clear threats stating that if the Industrial Relations Board declared the wildcat "illegal", individual workers would fined $1000/day and the union $100,000/day.
Union reps from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, representing ground crew, baggage handlers, and mechanics, also weighed-in, urging workers to go back to work. Whether this was to save face publicly given the financial threats of a CIRB ruling, or a more pernicious effort to curb rank-and-file militancy, is unclear at this point.
It appears that as of early afternoon this Friday - less than 24 hours after Raitt landed in Toronto - the wildcat is over. The three suspensions have become suspensions with pay. Workers have returned to work although apparently a handful are still out. Mainstream media is reporting that 37 workers were fired for the action and also immediately reinstated, but this is disputed by an on-the-ground report that they were merely disciplined.As the wildcat seems to be coming to an end, Lisa Raitt's riding office in Milton, Ontario has now been occupied and police are now on the scene. People have called in, filling her voicemail with angry comments and slow clapping to the point that the voicemail is now full.
Updates and links will be provided as more information emerges. I'll also try to provide some preliminary analysis dealing with the context of the wildcat and the balance of forces between the federal state, employers (private and public), unions, and rank-and-file workers.
Most information is from online coverage in the Toronto Star, CBC and National Post, and a union organizer who got to Pearson on Friday and has contacts among the ground crew.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Or does it explode?
It was most evident in Egypt but was also seen a few months earlier in the UK student demos that led to the delightful images of an occupied, vandalized, terrorized Conservative Party HQ in downtown London. And now interviews with protesters at Occupy Wall Street are showing once again that students are at the forefront of a new anti-austerity, pro-liberation sentiment that is emerging as a new anti-capitalist movement as equally inchoate, diverse and confusing as the one we loved and hated between Seattle and 9/11. And let's not forget that the Capitol Building occupation in Madison was spearheaded by the University of Wisconsin's teaching assistants' union.
The age of neoliberalism has seen a marked rationalization of the industrial sectors which once employed vast numbers of "traditional"/manual/blue collar workers - auto, steel, forestry, mining, manufactured consumer goods (furniture, clothing, shoes, etc). At the same time, the welfare state, which ballooned as an employer in the post-war social compromise, has been under sustained assault in terms of working conditions and employment. The elements of the welfare state - education, health, social services, etc - which emerged only as conciliatory measures to appease the uppity and well-organized masses, have been shaved, constrained and in some cases eliminated. What remains is under constant downward pressure of real wages, the elimination of full-time jobs through mass casualization.
Meanwhile, the service sector has ballooned as employer in relative terms. Unlike the manufacturing and resource sectors which were heavily unionized through the 1930s and 1940s, and the militant public sector unionizations of the 1960s, the retail sector was never fully unionized for a variety of reasons, such as the general neglect of largely female workforces by male-dominated unions during the 1940s and 1950s as well as the anti-communist union purges of the late 1940s and 1950s which eliminated swathes of union activists who refused to elevate consolidation above organizing.
The result in the 2010s is a decimated private sector unionism concurrent and related to deindustrialization. In addition is a highly-unionized public sector now suffering from, at least in Canada, nearly two decades of sustained provincial and federal austerity measures (producing sizable working-class opposition movements in Ontario during the mid-90s and in BC, Newfoundland and Quebec in the early 2000s). And with the new federal government we've already seen the attacks on postal workers, airline workers and likely the St.Lawrence Seaway workers who might walk on Monday.
Meanwhile, the service sector balloons but does so through part-time, minimum-wage work with minimal if any benefits. The centralization and concentration of service sector jobs is best represented by Wal-Mart but taking place at Shoppers Drug Mart and Zellers (who have moved into selling food), Loblaws (now selling clothes), and so on. The ugly big-box avenues are the new main streets of neoliberal suburbia. These big box stores employ several hundred people at a time - often more than most factories these days.
Amidst all this, the massification of post-secondary education continues apace. It's explosion in the late 1950s and especially the mid-1960s has not really abated. Enrollment continues to rise every year while universities struggle to expand their physical infrastructure (on the backs of students through ever-increasing tuition fees which make up a higher percentage of university operating budgets than ever before - about 50%). In fact, the neoliberal era, with its return to capitalism's classic boom-bust cycle, has made post-secondary education a means of sapping up the unemployed and underemployed in conjunction with the annual waves of 17-year olds beginning their university degrees given the largely unacknowledged reality that the BA of today is really yesterday's high school diploma.
A highly-educated - or more accurately, highly-credentialized - army of twenty-somethings increasingly have nowhere to look for full-time, well-paying jobs. Private sector jobs of this sort have largely dried up while the public sector is increasingly uncertain in offering such a future with the never-ending dual threats of cyclical layoffs and mass layoffs. Yet, the service sector continues to provide work, some work, easy work, mindless work that offers little future, little hope in achieving something remotely similar to the life promised by a university degree or simply what one would expect from the world of work. The only real good jobs remain in increasingly distrusted, polarizing and ethically-dubious sectors like the tar sands, business, commerce, and law.
The long-term options for graduates as well as those continuing through graduate school are increasingly bleak. This is combined with the interrelated disintegration of credibility of government, media, police and business. Throw in the looming prospects of another economic crash and ongoing climate change, and it should be no wonder that a generation of students might begin rebelling against big business, big finance, the police and the state - and already doing so in a much wider, comprehensive manner than the students of the 1960s. The fusion of student actions with the remnants of organized labour - as witnessed by the Transit Workers Union backing Occupy Wall Street - is a far cry from the "Hard Hat Riot" of 1970 when construction workers violently attacked an anti-war student protest at Wall Street and Broad Street. And we should note that the rebellions are not just about desperation, they're also about hope - and not the branded bullshit on Obama's brain - but the rejection of Johnny Rotten's lament about "No Future" and embrace of Joe Strummer's "The Future is Unwritten."
The age of neoliberalism has seen a marked rationalization of the industrial sectors which once employed vast numbers of "traditional"/manual/blue collar workers - auto, steel, forestry, mining, manufactured consumer goods (furniture, clothing, shoes, etc). At the same time, the welfare state, which ballooned as an employer in the post-war social compromise, has been under sustained assault in terms of working conditions and employment. The elements of the welfare state - education, health, social services, etc - which emerged only as conciliatory measures to appease the uppity and well-organized masses, have been shaved, constrained and in some cases eliminated. What remains is under constant downward pressure of real wages, the elimination of full-time jobs through mass casualization.
Meanwhile, the service sector has ballooned as employer in relative terms. Unlike the manufacturing and resource sectors which were heavily unionized through the 1930s and 1940s, and the militant public sector unionizations of the 1960s, the retail sector was never fully unionized for a variety of reasons, such as the general neglect of largely female workforces by male-dominated unions during the 1940s and 1950s as well as the anti-communist union purges of the late 1940s and 1950s which eliminated swathes of union activists who refused to elevate consolidation above organizing.
The result in the 2010s is a decimated private sector unionism concurrent and related to deindustrialization. In addition is a highly-unionized public sector now suffering from, at least in Canada, nearly two decades of sustained provincial and federal austerity measures (producing sizable working-class opposition movements in Ontario during the mid-90s and in BC, Newfoundland and Quebec in the early 2000s). And with the new federal government we've already seen the attacks on postal workers, airline workers and likely the St.Lawrence Seaway workers who might walk on Monday.
Meanwhile, the service sector balloons but does so through part-time, minimum-wage work with minimal if any benefits. The centralization and concentration of service sector jobs is best represented by Wal-Mart but taking place at Shoppers Drug Mart and Zellers (who have moved into selling food), Loblaws (now selling clothes), and so on. The ugly big-box avenues are the new main streets of neoliberal suburbia. These big box stores employ several hundred people at a time - often more than most factories these days.
Amidst all this, the massification of post-secondary education continues apace. It's explosion in the late 1950s and especially the mid-1960s has not really abated. Enrollment continues to rise every year while universities struggle to expand their physical infrastructure (on the backs of students through ever-increasing tuition fees which make up a higher percentage of university operating budgets than ever before - about 50%). In fact, the neoliberal era, with its return to capitalism's classic boom-bust cycle, has made post-secondary education a means of sapping up the unemployed and underemployed in conjunction with the annual waves of 17-year olds beginning their university degrees given the largely unacknowledged reality that the BA of today is really yesterday's high school diploma.
A highly-educated - or more accurately, highly-credentialized - army of twenty-somethings increasingly have nowhere to look for full-time, well-paying jobs. Private sector jobs of this sort have largely dried up while the public sector is increasingly uncertain in offering such a future with the never-ending dual threats of cyclical layoffs and mass layoffs. Yet, the service sector continues to provide work, some work, easy work, mindless work that offers little future, little hope in achieving something remotely similar to the life promised by a university degree or simply what one would expect from the world of work. The only real good jobs remain in increasingly distrusted, polarizing and ethically-dubious sectors like the tar sands, business, commerce, and law.
The long-term options for graduates as well as those continuing through graduate school are increasingly bleak. This is combined with the interrelated disintegration of credibility of government, media, police and business. Throw in the looming prospects of another economic crash and ongoing climate change, and it should be no wonder that a generation of students might begin rebelling against big business, big finance, the police and the state - and already doing so in a much wider, comprehensive manner than the students of the 1960s. The fusion of student actions with the remnants of organized labour - as witnessed by the Transit Workers Union backing Occupy Wall Street - is a far cry from the "Hard Hat Riot" of 1970 when construction workers violently attacked an anti-war student protest at Wall Street and Broad Street. And we should note that the rebellions are not just about desperation, they're also about hope - and not the branded bullshit on Obama's brain - but the rejection of Johnny Rotten's lament about "No Future" and embrace of Joe Strummer's "The Future is Unwritten."
Monday, October 11, 2010
Slavoj Žižek on Higher Education
Excerpt from Slavoj Žižek's "A Permament Economic Emergency" in New Left Review 64 (July/August 2010)
The state of permanent economic emergency does not mean that the left should abandon patient intellectual work, with no immediate ‘practical use’. On the contrary: today, more than ever, one should bear in mind that communism begins with what Kant, in the famous passage of his essay, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, called the ‘public use of reason’: with the egalitarian universality of thought. Our struggle should thus highlight those aspects of the current ‘re-structuring’ that pose a threat to trans-national open space. One example would be the EU’s ongoing ‘Bologna Process’, which aims to ‘harmonize the architecture of the European higher education system’, and which is in fact a concerted attack on the public use of reason.
Underlying these reforms is the urge to subordinate higher education to the task of solving society’s concrete problems through the production of expert opinions. What disappears here is the true task of thinking: not only to offer solutions to problems posed by ‘society’—in reality, state and capital—but to reflect on the very form of these problems; to discern a problem in the very way we perceive a problem. The reduction of higher education to the task of producing socially useful expert knowledge is the paradigmatic form of Kant’s ‘private use of reason’—that is, constrained by contingent, dogmatic presuppositions—within today’s global capitalism. In Kantian terms, it involves our acting as ‘immature’ individuals, not as free human beings who dwell in the dimension of the universality of reason.
It is crucial to link the push towards streamlining higher education—not only in the guise of direct privatization or links with business, but also in this more general sense of orienting education towards the production of expert knowledge—to the process of enclosing the commons of intellectual products, of privatizing general intellect.
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