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PSAC officials abandon strike
by Barry Weisleder
“While the details of how the union leadership killed a three-day
national strike are still emerging, this much is clear: The decision to put
the employer's
final offer to a membership vote and end job action is being widely
seen as a sell out by members”, writes Ian Shaw, president of Local 574 of
the Canada
Employment and Immigration Unit of the Public Service Alliance of
Canada (PSAC).
"‘Why are we going back to work?’ asked thousands of PSAC
members from the biggest single union bargaining unit of some 80,000 federal
workers on Oct. 15. The terms of the offer were in the same 2% -2.5 % range
rejected a week earlier, and include rollbacks in wages for select groups
amounting to $3000 in the case of fishery officers. It includes the loss of
language to protect leave for shift workers and those on compressed workweeks,
and a reduction in marriage leave provisions. The agreement will be for
four years, and therefore offer no job protection against the expected job
cuts of the departmental Program Review now underway.
“It strands thousands of contract workers, who have toiled for years
on short term contracts without the demanded permanent status after two
years service.” (This demand was won by an historic first strike of 60,000
Ontario public service employees in Spring 1996.)
Ian Shaw continues, “Due to the six to ten week window to conduct
the vote, members are being asked to participate in a vote (which will only
be completed days before the Christmas holiday) on the question of whether
or not they want to strike against cutbacks they were already striking
against!
“The only possible explanation for this ‘strategy’, which is not lost
on members, is that the union leadership was desperate to exit
negotiations, but reluctant to be seen accepting takeaways—so they suspended
the strike in the hope members will do the dirty deed out of a sense of
futility. This approach
was debuted by the PSAC National President Nicole Turmel in 2001, when
she put members back to work citing the impact of the public mood after the
9/11 attacks—despite the fact she had commenced negotiating the terms of
surrender on September 10, 2001, the day before the attack could have
provided the fig leaf.”
PSAC members who attended the monthly meeting of the Workers’
Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition on Nov. 18 in Toronto reported
that locals oriented toward the rank-and-file are coordinating a Vote No campaign,
to resume the struggle for a decent contract.
*This
article first appeared in the January 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper.
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