What the union meant by “minimizing disruption” was a proposal that would deprive workers of the immense power they would enjoy by striking together and divide them arbitrarily by employer, even as the rail bosses collude to impose concessions and implore the government to illegalize any worker job action.
A “staggered” strike deadline would allow the rail barons to pick off workers at CN or CPKC in isolation before moving on to the remainder of the workforce a few weeks later, all under the cover of the “fair and equitable” bargaining approved by the TCRC. This method has been used by Unifor and its Canadian Auto Workers predecessor for decades to divide autoworkers at the Detroit Three by selecting a “target company” during each round of bargaining that sets a “pattern” for workers at all three companies. This tactic has facilitated the enforcement of round after round of concessions.
For their own reasons, the companies’ rejected the TCRC’s proposal for “staggered” deadlines. Confident in the cowardice and complicity of the Teamsters bureaucracy, they prefer to use the common contract extension deadline and the threat of continent-wide economic disruption to prevail on the union-backed Trudeau government to intervene and take the lead in enforcing their attacks on rail workers’ health and safety.
Earlier this year, Teamsters Canada President François Laporte joined a meeting with the US ambassador to Canada, Labour Minister O’Regan and other union leaders, convened at the behest of President Joe Biden. The meeting was a cross-border conspiracy to suppress the class struggle in Canada and the United States. Washington and Ottawa have worked together to suppress powerful strikes by West Coast dockworkers and to keep autoworkers across North America divided along national lines when their contracts expired simultaneously last year.
There is immense anger among rail workers, who want to make up for years of concessions by the TCRC and the surging cost of living across Canada. CN and CPKC workers must prepare to take strike action as soon as possible, instead of leaving the initiative in the hands of the companies in the form of a lockout or binding arbitration. But to do so, they must recognize that they are in a political fight against the rail bosses and the entire ruling class, which is determined to make rail workers bear the burden of the deepening economic crisis and the imperialist war effort around the world.
In 2022, CP Rail workers established the CP Workers Rank-and-File Committee to advance their interests independently of the union bureaucracy and to set out a strategy to defeat the union-government-corporate conspiracy. This initiative must be revived, uniting workers at CN and CPKC to take control of the contract fight and place power in the hands of the rank and file. A genuine fight for what rail workers need, and not what the companies declare they can afford, will put the rank and file in direct conflict with the union-Liberal-New Democratic Party governmental alliance and its cross-border conspiracy with the Biden administration.
A successful struggle by Canadian rail workers must therefore include a direct appeal for support from their brothers and sisters in the United States and Mexico. CPKC boasts that it operates the first and only single-line rail network connecting Canada, the US and Mexico. The CN network meanwhile connects Vancouver in the west and Halifax in the east to the port of New Orleans in Louisiana. A Canadian rail workers rank-and-file committee would work to break down the national divisions which the unions and the companies enforce on workers even as they ensure the free flow of goods and capital across borders. It would also endeavour to broaden the struggle to other sections of workers across Canada, who confront the same attacks and are the social force that can stop the ruling elite’s onslaught for austerity and war in its tracks.
All rail workers who are interested in this perspective should fill out the form below. The WSWS will provide all assistance necessary in forming and building a rank-and-file committee as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
Sign up for more information about how to join or build a rank-and-file committee in your workplace
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Publish date : 2024-08-12 11:47:00
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