Category Archives: BC Politics

30 Years Ago: British Columbia On The Brink of A General Strike

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by Andrew Chernoff

Thirty years ago, the provincial government of the day and British Columbia workers of all stripes: union and non-union; private sector and public sector, were galvanized in a common cause.

Rod Mickleburgh, writing for the Globe and Mail on November 1, 2008, on the 25th anniversary of Operation Solidarity, wrote of that highly volatile time in BC labour history and B.C. politics as follows:

IT WAS THE NIGHT THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA STOOD STILL

Behind the drapes of Premier Bill Bennett’s golden-carpeted, Kelowna living room, the Premier and union leader Jack Munro were engaged in extraordinary, head-to-head bargaining to stave off what was getting closer to an all-out general strike.

More than 40,000 government employees were already toughened by nearly two weeks on the picket line. Tens of thousands of teachers and other education workers had been out for a week. And B.C.’s vital ferry system was just hours from being shut down as the next wave in an escalating strike strategy to combat a government onslaught against public-sector unions, social services and human rights that even Mr. Bennett had called doing the unthinkable.

Finally, with the clock ticking toward midnight, the gruff-talking Mr. Munro stepped out on the Premier’s darkened patio to announce that a deal had been reached. The few paltry details of the so-called Kelowna Accord contained little sign of government give, with vague promises of consultation, a commitment to keep money saved by the teachers’ strike in the education system, and no reprisals. But that was enough for Mr. Munro, supported massing of extra-parliamentary opposition to an elected government in this perennially polarized province’s history.

“They were truly amazing days,” recalled labour-relations expert Mark Thompson at the University of British Columbia. “I knew I was watching history right there. The sheer size of the protests has never been close to being matched, before or since. I’ve been here 37 years and I’ve certainly never seen anything like it.”

Years later, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the movement’s demise in Kelowna, few who were part of it have forgotten, and emotions over why and how the strikes were called off remain as raw as if events unfolded yesterday.

“No, they sure as hell haven’t forgotten,” groused Mr. Munro, who became the target of bitter denunciation both inside and outside the labour movement for his role in negotiating peace.

Yet the former president of the then-powerful International Woodworkers of America is unrepentant over the decision to end the walkouts and the reluctance of his and other private-sector unions to join in.

“It was a serious, serious problem. It would have been a goddamned mess,” he said. “You had all these people passing motions for a general strike and none of them was in a union.

“In retrospect, it was a hell of a call. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. … But a lot of people were pretty mad at me.”

The only mistake Mr. Munro will own up to is talking to Mr. Bennett on his home turf. “It was weird,” he said. “We should have gone to a neutral place, in a hotel or something like that. But everyone was in such a hurry.”

There are those who believe the protests that banded together as Operation Solidarity, inspired by the Solidarnosc fight-back against Communism [sic] in Poland, were a high-water mark for B.C. trade unions, never to be approached again.

That viewpoint is shared by Art Kube, the rotund, dedicated trade unionist who headed Operation Solidarity and became the leading public figure of the anti-government crusade. “I wish the thing had turned out better. It would have given the labour movement in the entire country a lot more courage,” he said. “There’s a saying that you never really lose a strike, but at the same time, the labour movement became a lot more conservative afterwards.”

THE MOVEMENT BUILDS

But what a time it was.

Thousands of people who had never before been part of a union were galvanized to join the struggle, believing it was for social justice, not bread-and-butter labour issues. For the first time, unions, community groups and activist organizations set aside their many differences and banded together in common cause.

Over the course of the summer and into the fall, Operation Solidarity captured the public’s imagination. Organizers packed 25,000 people onto the lawns of the legislature. “This is bigger than the Queen,” said one admiring police officer.

More than 40,000 union members booked off work one day in August and crammed into creaking Empire Stadium. Two months later, just as observers were writing off Operation Solidarity in the face of government intractability, they gambled on one last protest, knowing that a flop would mean surrender.

Instead, upwards of 60,000 people marched through the Vancouver streets to surround a downtown hotel where the governing Social Credit Party was holding its annual convention, the city’s largest-ever political demonstration. Equally impressive rallies were held throughout the province, drawing thousands of protesters in such Socred strongholds as Williams Lake, Kamloops and Prince George.

The explosion had been set off by a breathtaking series of 26 bills, introduced one by one in the legislature on a single, unforgettable day in early July. They wiped out the province’s human-rights commission and rent-review office, tightened government control over school boards and colleges, watered down medicare, dropped government enforcement of employment standards, and extended wage controls indefinitely.

The most contentious legislation, Bills 2 and 3, gutted union contracts in the public sector, giving employers the power to fire workers without cause or regard to seniority. Many were let go that very day.

Operation Solidarity took off immediately. Independent Canadian unions sat down with their bitter rivals in the B.C. Federation of Labour. Gays and lesbians discussed strategy with church groups. One prominent activist lawyer was heard to say that his practice was going to seed. “All I do is go to meetings,” he said.

“We had book clubs. We studied. We smoked too many cigarettes. We drank too much beer,” remembered Frances Wasserlein, a prominent member of a new protest group, Women Against the Budget. “I also recall a lot of pacing and talking at the back of union halls. There were disagreements, but everyone listened.”

Activist poet Tom Wayman, who subsequently denounced the Kelowna Accord in a long bitter poem called The Face of Jack Munro (“How could it occur/that direction of our struggle/shrank to one man…”) said the atmosphere was infectious.

“There was a feeling throughout B.C. that something was happening, that everything was up for grabs. People stopped talking about sports and what was on TV last night. It was heady stuff.”

For many, the emotional highlight of the entire campaign took place during the rally at Empire Stadium. After every nook and cranny seemed to be filled, in came the rousing band of the Vancouver firefighters, followed by hundreds of uniformed firefighters marching in step. A roar erupted from the crowd that seemed to go on forever.

“The firefighters risked a huge set of consequences by walking out. Yet there they were,” said Ms. Wasserlein, still moved by the memory.

The opposition NDP, meanwhile, staged round-the-clock filibusters in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the bills. At one point, as tempers frayed, party leader Dave Barrett was dragged out of the legislature by two sergeants-at-arms, who dumped him in the corridor on his rear end.

CHAMPAGNE AND BITTERNESS

It took until late October for the government to blink, just a bit. By inserting his savvy deputy minister Norman Spector into exhaustive contract negotiations covering the 40,000 members of the B.C. Government Employees Union, Mr. Bennett signalled that he was open to exempting unions from the onerous provisions of Bill 2 and Bill 3.

Still, there was no agreement and the BCGEU hit the bricks on Nov. 1. A week later, the teachers went out, while negotiations continued at the B.C. Labour Relations Board to get the BCGEU a contract and prevent further walkouts. British Columbians held their collective breath.

Diane Woods, a vice-president of the BCGEU and one of the first workers to be fired, said everyone was conscious of the high stakes involved. The tension was palpable.

“It was pretty scary being in that room and thinking what we were involved in. I don’t think anyone went through it all without some tear-shedding. I know I broke down from emotion and exhaustion several times.”

On the afternoon of Nov. 13, the BCGEU and the government concluded a new collective agreement. Firing without cause was gone. While the BCGEU celebrated with champagne, social activists wondered what would happen to their concerns during Mr. Munro’s dramatic meeting with Mr. Bennett.

Basically, they ended up with nothing. When push came to shove, it was a union show. Late in the game, activists learned the hard truth that union leaders were not prepared to sacrifice their members’ paycheques for non-union matters.

“The community, the labour movement. It was all so powerful,” Ms. Wasserlein said. “We were getting stronger and stronger every day, and then it was trashed. What a waste.”

Cliff Andstein, now at the Canadian Labour Congress but then the chief negotiator for the BCGEU, agrees that the final settlement was a bitter pill for Solidarity’s activist coalition. But he sees a deeper significance in the struggle, despite the disappointment of the final outcome.

“This was the first qualified success on the continent in combatting or confronting that Reaganomics, Thatcherism ideology that was everywhere at the time,” Mr. Andstein said. “It gave heart to the public sector in other provinces. It sent a signal to people that fighting back was possible.”

As for Art Kube, who famously told Mr. Munro over the phone at the Premier’s house to “get the hell out of there,” there are plenty of good memories, but regret at not accomplishing more.

“It came in like a prairie wildfire, and it went out like a prairie wildfire,” he said. “We simply didn’t have the clout.”

THE CONTROVERSIAL BILLS, ONE BY ONE

Operation Solidarity was spawned by a series of 26 bills introduced by the Social Credit government on a single afternoon, July 7, 1983. Opponents saw them as a concerted attack on trade union, social and individual rights in the province:

Bill 2 wiped out the right of unionized government employees to negotiate such basic issues as major overtime, scheduling, hours of work, seniority and job security.

Bill 3 gave public employers the right to terminate employees “without cause,” regardless of seniority.

Bill 5 eliminated rent controls, closed down the Rentalsman’s office that reviewed landlord-tenant disputes and allowed landlords to evict tenants at will.

Bill 6 gave extraordinary control over local school-board budgets to the minister of education.

Bill 8 dissolved the Alcohol and Drug Commission.

Bill 9 declared regional district plans null and void, permitting individual municipalities to ignore regional planning.

Bill 11 extended the government’s wage-control program for the public sector indefinitely, allowing wages to be determined by an employer’s “ability to pay.”

Bill 15 increased the sales tax from 6 to 7 per cent.

Bill 18 reduced pension entitlements for employees who are laid off.

Bill 19 gave the government widespread control over the B.C. Institute of Technology, erasing student, faculty and staff representatives on the BCIT board.

Bill 20 extended government control over community colleges, including course content and budgets.

Bill 21 disbanded a legislative committee that scrutinized Crown corporations.

Bill 23 eliminated mandatory vehicle inspections and closed motor-vehicle testing branches across the province.

Bill 24 allowed doctors to opt out of medicare, while at the same time restricting how much doctors in the system could bill. User fees were increased and opportunities for doctors to “extra bill” were enhanced.

Bill 25 ended the life of the Harbours Board.

Bill 26 wiped out the Employment Standards Board, transferring complaints over labour standards to the courts.

Bill 27 abolished the Human Rights Branch and the Human Rights Commission. Staff were fired immediately, ordered out onto the street, their keys snatched from them before they left. A clause banning “discrimination without reasonable cause” was missing from the new Human Rights Act.

Bill 28 centralized control and authority over borrowing by government and Crown corporations.

Long Time NDP MLA Corky Evans On Today’s BC NDP

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By Richard Hughes, on August 14th, 2013  http://richardhughes.ca/

The BC Liberals scored a surprise upset and were re-elected as the government of BC on May 14th, 2013

Since that time members, supporters and pundits along with some current and former MLA’s have been speaking up questioning the so called middle of the road positioning.

There has been a growing chorus challenging the current entrenched leader Adrian Dix, who has so far refused to resign for the good of the party.

Members and supporters from across the NDP universe are calling for a new leader.  Yes, Adrian Dix must step down soon.

More importantly, I think, is that there be a major change away from the ‘Liberal Lite’ approach that has concentrated power and control at the centre while the membership and local constituencies have been marginalized.

Long time Nelson Creston MLA and Cabinet Minister Corky Evans had this to say about the challenges facing the BC NDP.

Former NDP MLA Corky Evans

Former NDP MLA Corky Evans

August 10, 2013

A few days ago Corky Evans wrote the following letter to a friend. Permission has been granted to share with those seeking to reinvigorate the BC NDP as a movement.

Dear Steve,

Thank you for initiating the dialog about the state of our Party. 100 members with your commitment to change could save us.

We lost an election we could have won. This is not a particularly new phenomenon. The only difference between this one and many in the past was that the pundits and the press told us we would win. Otherwise, it was pretty much as we remember. We thought we could win. We didn’t.

Of course Adrian must go. His image has been damaged by attack ads the same way Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff were damaged by similar smear campaigns in the recent past. They were both fine people and they both had to leave so that their Party could move on, so must Adrian.

It would constitute huge failure however, if we, the membership, celebrated the departure of our Leader and believed our troubles were resolved.

The first Leader I ever ran for was Bob Skelly. Bob did a terrible job of campaigning. And, I don’t know, but I would wager, that in spite of his troubles he got more of the popular vote than we have received lately.

Indeed, we continue to decline regardless of who we chose as Leader. Getting rid of the Leader is sometimes necessary but it solves nothing except allowing folks to feel that they can begin again.

The only way I can think of to describe our problem is to say the Movement that we were has become the Institution that we are.

The same thing happens to every religion as it turns into a church, every political movement that outlives it’s vision, every business that grows big enough to forget what it started out to accomplish.

The Pope dies, the CEO gets paid to leave, the Leader resigns, and the institutions that they led, precisely because they are institutions, survive and carry on as before.

It seems to me that a movement becomes an institution pretty soon after it spawns a number of people whose well being, financially or psychologically, is dependent on the survival of the organization, rather than it’s success.

And survive we do.

We survive even if our Leadership candidates sign up bogus membership to get nominated.

We survive even if we cannot attract enough voters to grow or win.

We survive when we have nothing to say to citizens who are not already committed to our way of thinking.

We survive even when we have to get someone else to pay our President.

The people who increasingly dominate positions of leadership electorally or in the Party do not need to win elections for them to remain secure. So secure, in fact, that there are those among us who have never held a job that wasn’t, essentially, political.

Please do not misunderstand my intent. I do not wish to denigrate the folks who dedicate their lives to make us function. They Are Us.

Our problem is not ”who” they are, it is that they exist in critical mass and their voice is perceived to be our voice and their voice is not interesting. It is an institutional voice. It is pretty much like listening to the Ford Motor Company or the BC Medical Association.

I remember when one of the Leaders I worked for asked some guys many of us know to purge our Party of the troublemakers (that was not the word he used.)

They did a good job. We got Slates so the people we didn’t like couldn’t serve in Executive positions. We got Mike Muffins (members with nothing to say who stand in the line at the microphone) at Convention so they couldn’t speak. Candidates got a Message Box and were told not to say what they thought and to stick strictly to only what they were given to say.

The “troublemakers” were sidelined and we became an effective, and boring, machine. Leaders and Leaders staff tell MLA’s what they can and cannot say and punish independent thinking Or, worse, speaking their mind. We are now a modern political machine, and we sound like one.

We are rarely, anymore, embarrassed. There is no blood on the floor at Convention. We have become a successful Institution and a failed Movement.

The contradiction in this analysis, if analysis it be, is of course that some of this organizational behavior is necessary and some of it even works.

In an age of television many believe that we cannot allow real debate at convention and we cannot have MLA’s saying what they think about stuff because everything, everywhere, is grist for the mill and can be used against us.

I remember the election when every Liberal candidate in BC, including Gordon Campbell, had a sheet of stupid things Corky Evans has said to quote from.

Of course, every quote on the page was taken out of context and was, to me, defensible. But in a time where the sound bite has replaced discourse as the way that people receive ideas, it can be argued that it is better to be boring than to risk being made to look stupid.

I do not know how to fix this. I could not write a tract entitled ”What is to be done,” because I do not know. The thing I do know, though, is that discussion is medicine for screwed up situations. Self-criticism can heal.

The message box, on the other hand, is not discourse. It is poison, like drinking the cool-aid at Jonestown.

I’d like to see us cut everyone a little slack and see if we couldn’t be a bit of a movement again, a bit embarrassing at times but also interesting and current and vibrant and less controlled, less careful, less run by anybody in particular.

This isn’t about Adrian, who I am pretty sure knows what he has to do. It is about us as a Party with a diverse base of support. I doubt very much if we know the details of what it is that we have to do, but I believe we know the spirit of the changes needed. So we best talk.

Thanks,

Corky

Whipped: The Secret World of Party Discipline

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http://www.cpac.ca

Winston Churchill once said ” Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.

Governments, in democracies such as Canada, know that their hold on power is only as strong as their hold on the sitting members of their caucus. It is not unusual for MPs to find themselves in a position where they must decide between the wishes of their constituents and those of their party and it falls upon the party’s whip to ensure that the MPs’ choice is a simple one.

For example this past spring, in Ottawa, two MPs, Brent Rathgeber and Mark Warawa gained prominence when they took positions that were at odds to those of their party’s. While their deliberations were made public, more often than not, these discussions are often held behind closed doors and remain there, ensuring that the party’s image remains untarnished.

In Sean Holman’s documentary Whipped, the Mount Royal University journalism professor takes an in-depth look at how party discipline is enforced on the benches of the legislature in Victoria, B.C. Holman talks to former and current MLA’s and cabinet ministers about how they coped or were forced to cope to the demands of their party’s whip.

http://www.cpac.ca/eng/programs/cpac-special/episodes/whipped-secret-world-party-discipline

With B.C.’s job market stalled, it’s time for a jobs plan that actually works

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By Iglika Ivanova   August 14, 2013  http://rabble.ca

The latest B.C. job numbers reveal a picture of persistently high unemployment and stalled job creation. Since January, B.C.’s unemployment rate has been on a roller-coaster ride, down one month and up the next. All in all, there have been very few jobs created in 2013, far fewer than needed to employ our growing working-age population.

In fact, B.C. is a laggard in job creation this year, placing in the bottom three provinces in Canada. Only New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have created fewer jobs than us (they’ve actually seen job losses this year), while all other provinces have managed to achieve higher job growth.

This is a problem that requires governments — both federally and provincially — to take a more active position. Simply standing out of the way and waiting for foreign investors to create jobs is not going to do it; it’ll only mean that we’ll be stuck with persistently high unemployment for a long time, depriving young people of career opportunities, resulting in needless suffering of those who can’t find work, and slowing down our economy for years. We can’t afford to remain complacent.

The BC Jobs Plan isn’t going to do it. That’s because (as we’ve previously argued here), it doesn’t address the key underlying cause of our sluggish job creation — the lack of demand.

The reason why business isn’t investing and hiring more people is that the expectations for sales and profits are low. And that’s because B.C. consumers are spending less, weighed down by record high debt-levels, relatively high unemployment, family incomes that have stagnated for the last four years nationally and in B.C. have actually dropped since 2009, and a weak housing market that’s either heading for a prolonged slowdown or a crash in urban hot spots like Vancouver. None of these factors bode well for household’s new worth and future spending plans. It’s easy to see this creates a vicious circle — customers not spending means businesses don’t expand hiring, family incomes remain low, so customers spend even less.

Exporters are also having a hard time as China is slowing down, Europe is still fighting an economic slump that its own austerity policies brought on, and the U.S. is yet to recover.

To make matters worse, the B.C. government’s own policies, narrowly focused on reducing the deficit, have been working against the job market. Cost-cutting governments don’t buy things and reduce jobs (July marked the third consecutive month of job declines in the public sector for B.C.), so the slowdown continues.

The bottom line is, the economy works better when the money is circulating around, and that happens when more people have jobs and livable incomes. When consumers aren’t spending and businesses aren’t investing, the government must step in. What’s needed is a boost in family incomes that will inject money in the economy.

While provincial government policy can’t fully compensate for the global economic slowdown, and the federal government is better positioned to engage in stimulus spending, provincial governments can certainly cushion the blows. Public investments can directly create jobs and boost incomes, but they can also attract and drive private investments in infrastructure and other areas that will meet community needs.

In fact, the smartest way out of the jobs crisis is to put some of our collective resources to work on serious social and environmental problems like climate change, poverty and the affordability crisis facing many families. This way, we will create jobs in the short term while improving quality of life and setting our province up with the basis for a robust and sustainable economy in the future.

I’m talking about investments in high quality, universal and affordable early child care and education, hiring more teachers to relieve crowded classrooms in our schools and provide the needed supports for students with special needs, and boosting funding to make post-secondary education and skills training accessible to all who need it.

Other ideas for boosting job creation and our economy include: investments in making our homes, schools and hospitals more energy-efficient (which will create jobs in construction, reduce energy consumption and help us meet our climate goals), and a large-scale reforestation program post the pine-beetle devastation to breathe life into many rural communities. Youth-focused initiatives should also be on the table, to deal with the massive underemployment plaguing that cohort.

There’s no shortage of ideas. The stumbling block is that an effective job creation strategy will cost money, and this goes against the B.C. government’s current narrow focus on immediate deficit reduction.

The way to move forward is to acknowledge that without more revenues, our government can’t effectively provide the kind of leadership that’s needed at a time of persistent joblessness. And since our current fiscal challenges are the result of years of tax cuts, we can begin to address them with modest tax increases on those who, to quote Finance Minister de Jong, “have a little more” (see here and here).

While slightly higher deficits may be needed in the short term, B.C.’s in a solid position to run deficits for a few more years. The key is taking some of the idle money, the money that businesses aren’t currently investing and consumers aren’t spending, and putting them to work for the B.C. economy.

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If you’re interested in looking at the numbers yourself, B.C. stats provides a good summary here and a detailed Excel spreadsheet here. For a detailed explanation of why our joblessness problem is worse than what the official unemployment rate would have you believe, see Jim Stanford’s excellent articles here and here.

West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association report urges B.C. to protect its foreign workers

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by Carlito Pablo on Aug 14, 2013   http://www.straight.com

Even though Canada’s temporary-foreign-worker program comes under federal jurisdiction, provinces have the power to protect labourers, a B.C. lawyer says.

Ai Li Lim is the executive director of the West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association. On August 10, her group presented a report on temporary foreign workers at a well-attended forum at SFU Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver.

“Yes, it’s a federal immigration program, but once the workers are here in B.C., they have to be—or they are, in theory—supported by B.C. employment standards,” Lim told the Straight during a break at the forum.

In the report, titled Access to Justice for Migrant Workers in B.C., the WCDWA outlined proposals to address “inequalities and gaps” in the program regarding the protection of workers. A number of these involve provincial legislation.

One recommendation is for B.C. to amend its Labour Relations Code to allow sectoral representation for workers in the absence of unions.

Another is for the province to look at Manitoba’s Worker Recruitment and Protection Act. This law provides a registration system for both employers and recruiters. It also prohibits the collection of fees from foreign workers in exchange for recruiters finding employment for them.

Although it is illegal in B.C. to charge workers for placing them in jobs, Lim explained that there are “loopholes” in the B.C. Employment Standards Act that allow recruiters to ask for “advertising” fees.

The WCDWA report also recommended strengthening employment standards to ensure a “more pro-active approach” to enforcement in sectors that rely on migrant labour.

Initial figures from Citizenship and Immigration Canada indicate that in 2012, 49,488 foreign workers arrived in B.C. out of a nationwide total of 213,516, the report noted. This makes the province the second-largest host of temporary workers, after Ontario.