This program is supported by the Liberals, NDP, Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois and Greens. Unifor, the main auto workers’ union, and the entire Canadian Labour Congress bureaucracy, are also fully on board with it. The unions have lobbied the Trudeau government to open the spigot and offer the auto companies however much money they demand to build new plants or retool current operations. This goes hand in hand with their imposition of concessions-filled contracts on workers, so as to attract investment and protect the “global competitiveness” of Canadian capitalism.
The unions are fully integrated into the war plans of Canadian imperialism and are party to the cross-border conspiracy with the Biden-Harris administration to suppress the class struggle across North America. Top Unifor and CLC officials have held closed-door meetings with Trudeau and Biden government officials to discuss their North America-wide efforts to smother worker opposition to their joint program of austerity and war.
Statements by the likes of Unifor President Lana Payne are in keeping with the position taken by United Autoworkers president Shawn Fain, who has taken to appearing in public with t-shirts picturing B-52 bombers and invoking the “arsenal of democracy” to underscore his union’s support for Washington’s policy of world war. His reference is to the unions’ role in smothering working-class opposition during World War II so that American imperialism had peace on the home front as it fought savagely against its imperialist rivals for world domination. This illustrates perfectly the part the UAW and Unifor intend to play in the rapidly emerging third world war on behalf of the ruling class in Washington and Ottawa.
“Canada can and must protect auto and manufacturing jobs here in this country, which thousands of workers rely on for their livelihoods,” Payne declared in a statement welcoming the new tariff. “There is no justification to trade away high-paying, high-skilled jobs for cheap high-carbon intensive vehicles build [sic] under deplorable working conditions. Our union welcomes the Canadian tariff that matches the U.S. to present a united front in support of the auto sector and the communities that benefit from it. We must all remember that cheap comes at a very high cost—a cost to good Canadian jobs and communities.”
Payne and her fellow union bureaucrats are championing a “united front” with governments that are readying for war with China, back the genocide against the Palestinians to the hilt, and have instigated and are relentlessly escalating a bloody war with Russia. They seek to pit Canadian workers against their Chinese brothers and sisters in a race to the bottom, while offering up their labour to the global auto giants for exploitation. This poisonous nationalism fans the flames of the war fever being whipped up by all the major powers.
Instead, workers must fight to unite with other workers internationally, who are exploited by the same transnational conglomerates and face the same threat of being dragooned into war. The allies of Canadian auto workers are not among the Canadian bosses and their political representatives in Parliament, but among workers in the US, China, Europe and everywhere else. Together they must wage a common fight against imperialist war and to secure quality jobs and public services for all through the reorganization of the world economy along socialist lines.
Stay informed. Sign up to our Autoworker Newsletter.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66d905943cde4cbfa16a63e71c9ad7bc&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsws.org%2Fen%2Farticles%2F2024%2F09%2F05%2Fhlbs-s05.html&c=17290855590423079064&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-09-04 13:26:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
