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Following a four-hour debate, delegates to the Canadian Auto Workers Council
voted in Toronto on December 7 to endorse the union's 'Framework of
Fairness' Agreement with auto parts giant Magna. The company's
voluntary union recognition deal sees the CAW abandon the right to strike
and give up the election of local worker reps. in Magna plants in favour
of a 'selection' process in which management has an equal say.
Despite vocal opposition from CAW locals at GM Oshawa,
De Havilland aircraft in Toronto, the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, and the
bus drivers' unit in Oakville, over 80 per cent of the council's 800
delegates approved the arrangement that could bring up to 18,000 parts
workers into the union over the next ten years.
The CAW brass diligently played the guilt card ('why
would you turn away Magna workers now opting to join under the 'Fairness'
agreement?'), while stressing the need to bolster the union's thinning
ranks in the auto sector. At the same time the union tops
arrogantly dismissed the idea that precedents harmful to workers'
democracy and union independence are being set. The poisonous brew
was presented as a sweet elixir for a membership-starved movement.
Still, the CAW-Magna deal is scorned by most of the
labour movement. The Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents
over 700,000 affiliated workers, met in convention just eleven days
earlier in the same city and voted unanimously to condemn the
arrangement. (The CAW did not rejoin the OFL after it was
temporarily suspended from the Canadian Labour Congress in 2000.)
In other developments, OFL delegates voted to demand
the removal of all Canadian military forces from Afghanistan, and pledged
to mount a serious campaign (details unspecified) to compel the Ontario
Liberal government to remove legal obstacles to union organizing, to
increase funding for public health and education, and to improve living
conditions at nursing homes for the aged.
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