CANADIAN LABOUR/CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-SUDBURY:

LINCHPIN ON THE VALE INCO STRIKE:

The following item is from the Ontario anarchist site Common Cause/Linchpin. It's written by a local Sudbury resident and gives a critical perspective of the issues involved in the strike and the actions of the Steelworkers. Molly's comments follow at the end of the article.

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Nickel, Neoliberalism, and Nationalism:

By guest writer Scott NeighAugust 1, 2009
More than 3300 employees of mining giant Vale Inco are on strike in Sudbury, Ontario, and in other Canadian communities to defend decades' worth of gains. Beyond that, the strike by members of Locals 6500 and 6200 of the United Steel Workers of America also raise important questions about how unions orient themselves towards their communities and towards the nation-states in which their members live.

There are a number of "very provocative issues for the men" in the company's demands, according to a 21-year veteran of Inco's transportation division who requested to remain anonymous when interviewed at a picket line in the Sudbury community of Copper Cliff.* He pointed out, "There's absolutely no monetary raise in this contract" and no expectation by the members that there would be one, given the low price of nickel and the state of the global economy.

However, he said, "We're not going to go back thirty years." He pointed to hard-won victories in past strikes, including the massive one in 1978-79 -- "My dad went on strike for 9 months... They fought real hard for this thing." Key issues include pensions, seniority rights and what is called the "nickel bonus."

For the moment, the company is not touching the pension plan of current retirees and workers, which pays a guaranteed, regular amount upon retirement. However, it is demanding that all new hires starting in 2010 be enrolled in a plan in which the amount paid in is defined but the actual amount that workers receive when they retire is not, and depends heavily on fluctuations in the stock market.

The same worker quoted above calls it a "lose-lose situation" in which the current workers have the choice of agreeing and knowing "we've sold out the next generation" or standing up and fighting and getting labelled "spoiled union workers" by anti-union voices in the media.

The nickel bonus is an additional payment beyond base wages received by employees only when the price of nickel is above a certain level, with the amount of the bonus proportional to the price. This mechanism was won in the 1980s at a time when the company was doing poorly. According to a striker who gave his name only as "Gates," who has worked for the company for 22 years, this was accepted by workers in lieu of a raise, and he thinks that if the company wants to tamper with it they should raise basic wages in exchange.

"They're not taking it away from us," he continued, "but they're dangling the carrot so far from the end of our noses that we can't reach it" by significantly raising the price at which the bonus kicks in.

The attack on seniority rights would prevent workers from bidding for other jobs within the company any more than once every three years. This would lead to situations in which workers with decades of seniority might be laid off before newly hired workers.

Given these company demands, workers in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ontario, voted more than 85% in favour of strike action. Vale Inco workers in Voisey's Bay, Labrador, will also be on strike starting at the beginning of August.
The Company
In 2006, Canadian-based transnational Inco was bought by Brazillian mining transnational Companhia do Vale Rio Doce (CVRD) and renamed Vale Inco. The company's position so far in the strike, in this case voiced by company spokesperson Cory McPhee, has been that "until the union accepts the fact that change is required for our business to be competitive in all price cycles, there's little for us to talk about." They are also blaming costs associated with environmental regulations for the need to cut other expenses.

The CEO of Vale, Roger Agnelli, has gone so far as to describe mining operations in Sudbury as economically "unsustainable," a comment that some company spokespeople have since claimed was taken out of context.

Another anonymous picketer, this one with three and a half years of experience with Inco, argued, "There's been no explanation of how we have become an 'unsustainable' industry in the last three years," when Vale decided it was good business to spend $19 billion to buy Inco. He pointed out that Inco was managing to make money with significantly lower nickel prices just a few years ago.

He continued, "They want to never have a loss. That's not realistic in the mining industry." He said that the history of Inco has been one of occasional losses alternating with periods of huge gains. In the current market, the company is going to briefly lose money "unless we come in here and do volunteer work."

In addition, workers point out that two of the three biggest rollbacks demanded by the company have absolutely nothing to do with making the company profitable during economic downturns. Eroding seniority rights has little directly to do with profitability, and nickel bonuses are not paid at all during bad times.

Possible insight into Vale Inco's deeper goals comes from a former Inco executive quoted anonymously in a recent Globe & Mail article, who said, "They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labour situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past."
Critical Solidarity?
For many union officials and some workers, as well as plenty of commentators and letter writers responding to local news outlets, the non-Canadian ownership of the company is a key issue and the strike is frequently being framed in patriotic terms. The emphasis, in many of these instances, shifts focus from the company's treatment of workers to its "foreignness." While this appears to have resonance for some, others in the community have deep misgivings about this strategy, as well as concerns about the long-term approach of the leadership of Local 6500 in relating to other unions and other struggles for social justice.

Gary Kinsman, a Professor of Sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, is one of the people with these misgivings. He is a long-time activist himself and has written extensively on Canadian social movements, including co-authoring Mine Mill Fights Back, a book about an important strike in 2000-2001 by the other main union of mine workers in Sudbury, Mine Mill/Canadian Auto Workers Local 598.

He said of the current strike, "I certainly support it. I certainly don't want those workers to be defeated." He sees the situation as Inco "taking advantage of the economic crisis to impose a series of rollbacks." A loss by Local 6500 would be "a bad precedent for other mine workers and other workers more generally."

However, he is skeptical of the choice made by the union leadership to organize much of its rhetoric around nationalism. "It doesn't actually make sense, because Inco itself, when it was not foreign owned, was doing horrible things to these workers. It's about class and capital, not foreign companies." He pointed to unions in the United States, which have made extensive use of flag-waving and foreigner-blaming rhetoric, but have failed to prevent the decimation of the manufacturing sector or the historic decline of the strength of industrial unions south of the border -- "American nationalism hasn't got those workers anywhere."

Instead, he urged strategies that emphasize international solidarity among workers. Nationalist rhetoric, he argued, "sets up a precarious position if you are trying to build long term relationships among working-class people around the world in the context of global capitalism." As one small example of what might be possible, he pointed to Mine Mill/CAW Local 598's success during its 2000-2001 strike in building relationships with a Norwegian union that resulted in a sympathy strike at a plant in Norway owned by the same company.

Steps in this direction are already being made in the context of the current strike, with the recent signing of a strategic partnership agreement between the international leadership of the Steel Workers and the leadership of the Brazilian CUT, to provide unspecified support for workers in negotiations with Vale. However, Kinsman worries that these efforts may be undercut by the extensive use of nationalist rhetoric to mobilize support in Canada: "'Canadian equals good, foreign equals bad' -- that sets up a precarious position if you are trying to build long term relationships among working-class people around the world in the context of global capitalism."

Local 6500 also has a very mixed relationship with other unions and with struggles in the community. Its very existence is because of a major raid on the Mine Mill local in the 1960s, which at that point was an independent, left-leaning organization that represented all mine workers in Sudbury. "There are still reverberations of that split today," according to Kinsman -- people who won't talk to one another, for instance, and people who refuse to read the Sudbury Star, which supported the raid by Steel so many years ago.

The massive strike in 1978/79 by Local 6500 was under a more progressive leadership, and it won important gains. Along with contract improvements, the magnitude of the workers' struggle forced Inco into a number of measures to try and salvage its reputation, such as making major investments in initiatives to re-green the city of Sudbury. The strike also lead indirectly to the opening of French and English women's centres in the city, the expansion of employment opportunities for women at Inco, and the federal government's decision to locate the national taxation centre in Sudbury to diversify the local economy.

However, the progressive leadership of the Local in that era was soon marginalized. During the Days of Action campaign against the Conservative provincial government of Premier Mike Harris, Local 6500 used its dominance at the Sudbury and District Labour Council to prevent that body from sponsoring the Sudbury Days of Action. This furthered splits between private and public sector unions and between the labour movement and community movements in the city, in the context of a longer term trend in which Local 6500 has done very little to support other forms of struggle in the community.

Despite these misgivings, in the context of the current strike, Kinsman said, "I think it's important to join picket lines and show support for Steel. But I think in the name of solidarity we need to ask them to get out and support our struggles."

With the strike only two weeks old, the impact on the community has so far been minimal. According to the picketer who gave his name as "Gates," "So far, from what I can tell, the community is backing us up 100%." However, his sense is that things are just getting warmed up: "It's going to be a long one."

Scott Neigh is a writer, activist, and parent who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, visit scottneigh.blogspot.com.

Written for Linchpin.ca, a media project of Ontario anarchist organization, Common Cause. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Linchpin.ca editors or Common Cause.

*Editor's note: Linchpin.ca strives to print the names of persons interviewed whenever possible in keeping with journalistic standards. That all the workers interviewed in this article chose to remain anonymous speaks to the vulnerability of even unionized workers to reprisals from powerful employers.

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MOLLY NOTES:

It is, of course, disturbing that the Steelworkers initially adopted a very nationalist tone in their statements, especially considering that this is hardly the first strike against Inco and that the company was just as rapacious when it was Canadian owned. Personally, however, I think I detect a softening of this attitude as the fact of international solidarity on the part of workers from Brazil has become more prominent. The Steelworkers are actually party to international agreements with unions in countries other than Brazil that call for mutual support in disputes in one country or the other. As to expecting the Canadian government to do anything, not just in terms of the present Harperites but even with Iggy at the helm- well that is a forlorn hope. Personally I think that the nationalist tone will recede even further as the strike goes on. It's unrealistic. What was even more unrealistic, in my opinion, were pronouncements by the union at the beginning of the strike that it would be short because Vale Inco's stockpiles of nickel were low. That little piece of optimism has flowed under the bridge and is already halfway to Hudson's Bay. As to the previous actions of the Steelworkers, well this strike will hopefully be a learning experience for the membership if not necessarily for the leadership. At least one public service union has already joined the Steelworkers on the picket lines. Such an example will hopefully be remembered and repaid in the future.

TIBET:

WHAT DOES "FREE TIBET" MEAN TO YOU:

The following is reprinted from Anarkismo.Net. It concerns our way of viewing what is happening in Tibet today, and how anarchists should view these events. Not that I agree with everything here concerned as to "emphasis", but I really think this is a valuable contribution for thought and debate.

Molly

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What Does "Free Tibet" Mean for You?

by Laure Akai

Friday, Mar 28 2008, 12:45pm

The struggle to be free is one that is commendable and deserves our sympathy. At this time when the state is committing brutal violence against a people, solidarity and action is needed and in fact, around the world well-wishers have expressed their outrage at the situation in Tibet. Protest movements have been calling for "an end to cultural imperalism", "freedom", even for "crushing the oppressor" and are united in such slogans and demands. Yet what if Tibet were to gain independence from China?

The question of national liberation is a complicated one. Discrimination, destruction of culture and community are forms of repression which are often seen in the contest of nation against nation instead of in the context of the ruling classes against the subjugated. Thus national liberation movements of all kinds tend to create the illusion of a mass common interest against an oppressor which is always external. "Self-determination" is too often a slogan which really means establishing the right of the elites of a given nation to exert power and influence, both economic and political, over those who would be subjects of a new nation state.

The struggle to be free is one that is commendable and deserves our sympathy. At this time when the state is committing brutal violence against a people, solidarity and action is needed and in fact, around the world well-wishers have expressed their outrage at the situation in Tibet. Protest movements have been calling for "an end to cultural imperialism", "freedom", even for "crushing the oppressor" and are united in such slogans and demands. Yet what if Tibet were to gain independence from China?

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The question of national liberation is a complicated one. Discrimination, destruction of culture and community are forms of repression which are often seen in the contest of nation against nation instead of in the context of the ruling classes against the subjugated. Thus national liberation movements of all kinds tend to create the illusion of a mass common interest against an oppressor which is always external. "Self-determination" is too often a slogan which really means establishing the right of the elites of a given nation to exert power and influence, both economic and political, over those who would be subjects of a new nation state.

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It is no coincidence that the "struggle to be free" is supported selectively. Individuals or larger groups of society may give precedence to one struggle over another for various reasons and in Europe and North America one can observe the existence of "causes célèbres" which are given both support by famous and powerful persons and disproportionate media attention (when compared to other analogous struggles). Causes célèbres are able to attract and mobilize people, gather ardent supporters for the cause. But not all social struggles or even human tragedy can qualify as a cause célèbre.

Causes célèbres are easily mobilized around those national liberation movements which are also (not coincidentally) related to establishing independence from the superstates created by so-called "communist nations". The brutal totalitarian nature of such states are joyously exposed with indignation by countries many of which even have equal atrocities on their account. Members of the American political establishment are quick to condemn human rights conditions in China and some even call for a boycott of the Olympics similar to that held in 1980, while Americans continue to kill civilians in wars for oil, support right-wing murderous paramilitaries, execute prisoners and financially support slave-like working conditions in factories around the world producing goods for American consumers. Few "concerned citizens of the world" were whipped into such a frenzy to demand a boycott of the Olympic Games in the US.

This is not to say that a reaction to the situation in Tibet is undue. Quite the contrary. However, I would like to pose a few questions for consideration.

The Tibetan situation is treated by many with, quite justifiably, a sense of urgency. In my city, at least three pickets have been held in the past week with large crowds in attendance and throughout the country, people mobilized instantly. We are being passionately implored to boycott the firm that is producing Olympic uniforms, to go to the Chinese embassy, to boycott Chinese goods and anybody who has been less than enthusiastic about this may be told they are supporting genocide. By comparison, many recent events have gone largely ignored in these parts, for example recent Turkish military actions against Kurds or, even more tragically, the ongoing and outrageous situation in Congo. How is it that over 5 million people have been killed in Congo over the last ten years and the great local activist masses have stayed passive, if not totally ignorant of the situation?

The answer is complex, and, unfortunately not very convenient. Tibetans can be easily portrayed as the ultimate victims. As some internet commenter argued, Tibetans are more deserving of our support (than Kurds) because they haven't been violent. I was asked "how many people have they killed" (in comparison to Kurds).

I don't think any historians are in a position to give an answer to this question. During the CIA-sponsored Tibetan resistance, surely tens of thousands of Chinese were killed, but supporters of the Tibet cause would argue that this was merely self-defense. Currently, some Tibetans have also taken part in random ethnic violence (in fact pogroms) which also tends to be justified by supporters of the cause as an appropriate reaction to Chinese settlement in Tibet. These types of episodes, if known at all, are easily juxtaposed by the dominant images of Buddhist monks, led by the Dalai Lama, as men of peace, a noble opposition to the violent and barbaric Chinese.

The creation of such images of peaceful, happy Tibetans is probably the result of a long-term PR campaign boosted by naive believers and well-wishers as well as government-sponsored propaganda. Few people care to know about the realities of the feudal system which existed in Tibet up until the second half of the twentieth century, nor do they wish to view "his holiness" the Dalai Lama as a human deity who lived in a huge palace, up kept and served by serf labour, a person whose prime interest was to maintain social servility and Tibetan elites. The social composition of Tibetan society played no role when the CIA supported the Tibetan resistance; its support was absent when it needed China as an ally and came when its political priority became "fighting the spread of communism".

The campaign to free Tibet which sprung up in the 1980s was largely kick started through help from the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy. With such backing it had a good start to build grassroots movements and student groups which would later give it complete activist legitimacy. The Tibetans were a perfect subject that could be presented as the ideal victims: peace-loving, religious, wise, living in Shangri-La and viciously oppressed by the world's worst human rights abusers. Celebrity Buddhists and New-Agers helped segue this issue into the mainstream. Thus gaining its legitimacy through the mainstream media and having become a cause célèbre, thousands of people interested in peace and social justice around the world have taken up the cause. Some may envision the development of some sort of bourgeois civil society after Tibetan is free, while others maintain some idolized vision of spiritual Tibet and appear at pickets donning orange robes and carrying portraits of the Dalai Lama. And while this cause is picked up by the thousands, hundreds of equally urgent struggles remain unknown or are dismissed as the actors in these struggles fail to present themselves as the perfect victims. They may have been defined and portrayed to the world through the lens of the capitalist-dominated press or otherwise did not inspire enough empathy to mobilize support.

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The struggle for a "Free Tibet" may begin with a struggle against the Chinese police state - but it certainly does not end there. Self-determination is usually a code word for national determination, but real self-determination begins with self-management.

Can the movement in Tibet be transformed from a national liberation struggle into a social revolution? We have no evidence of such revolutionary tendencies although the information we receive tends to be filtered through the ideological lens of the liberal establishment. Recent experience has tended to show that people can throw off the yoke of a totalitarian communist state but, without experience in grassroots self-organization, and operating largely in a vacuum, such countries can develop into more-or-less democratic market economies run by economic elites, or they can develop into autocracies or rather undemocratic regimes such as one finds in parts of Central Asia.

The struggle for freedom in Tibet is thus not just a struggle against the Chinese state, but also a struggle against all the powers which would enslave the average Tibetan upon gaining nominal independence. The feudal order represented by the monks, the Dalai Lama and the children of the merchant class in exile cannot be allowed to take root again in that country.

One may be quick to point out that feudalism is not likely to be restored in Tibet but this does not mean that similar conditions cannot arise under different socio-economic regimes. Many workers find themselves in indentured servitude even in Western Europe, the US or the Gulf States where such an economic system does not technically exist. In factories throughout Asia, workers are treated as chattels, although their countries have achieved national independence. The chains of one ruling class were simply exchanged for those of another, the form of slavery merely modified.

"Free Tibet" cannot be reduced to religious freedom, freedom to associate in non-threatening civic organizations or other freedoms which are normally the rewards of democratic independence movements. Of course one cannot justify repression of such freedoms; even a critic of clericalism can condemn repression on the grounds of religious conviction and understand the impulse to fight against this. Yet all of these freedoms do not amount to a society where there is true popular control, where workers and communities cooperate to create social equity and where the financial and political elites are divested of their power, their means of exploiting and controlling people. This vision of "Free Tibet" is inspiring but, unfortunately one that is still lacking in the popular imagination.
Laure Akai
Article written for Anarkismo.net

CANADA:

SELLING OUT CANADA WHILE HARPER JOKES:

The Harper Index has a recent article on last Wednesday's news conference, called by the evil dwarf Stevie just to keep his opponents in the news media off balance. One of the subjects "discussed" was the "hollowing out" of the Canadian economy by American takeovers. While the evil dwarf cackled that "Americans may have cause to complain about Canadian-led takeovers of American companies" the actual story is quite different. In the article at the Harper Index they quote economists Mel Watkins on the actual figures. While in the first half of 2007 American companies acquired only 61 Canadian companies as opposed to 159 American companies acquired by Canadian takeovers, the value of the takeovers were $118 billion in the case of American acquisitions as opposed to only $28 billion of Canadian acquisitions.

This is in the context of proposals to revise Investment Canada rules to prevent Chinese takeovers for "reasons of national security"- as if American companies are not involved in American foreign policy, often to the detriment of Canadian interests. It is also in the context of limiting takeovers by foreign companies that are state owned. The article concludes with a lament that Molly cannot agree with, that "Canada is the only major producer of oil and gas which does not have a state-owned petroleum company of its own". Molly does not think this a laudable goal for many reasons, and its inclusion seems to her to be the sort of genuflection to traditional social democratic statism that has no place in the modern world.

But all told a good article. To read it in its entirety go to the link highlighted above.