The opposition of the CUPE leadership to waging a genuine struggle for dockers’ demands and expanding the fight to other sections of the working class confronting similar conditions has allowed the port employers to go on the offensive. The Maritime Employees Association, the bargaining agent for shipping companies, announced in response to the overtime ban that it would not pay workers on incomplete crews that delay shipping. This is a massive provocation that effectively grants management arbitrary powers to determine who is paid by using all manner of scheduling tricks.
Danish shipping giant Maersk backed up the employers’ assault, announcing it would add a $2,000 surcharge to every container bound for Canada. Freight companies are already stating that many goods will be diverted to Vancouver or Halifax, allowing the shipping giants to evade any real harm from CUPE’s token overtime ban. The globally coordinated attacks on dockers by the profit-hungry shipping giants demonstrates that what Port of Montreal dockers require an internationalist and socialist perspective.
Over 4,000 education support workers vote on strike action across Edmonton’s schools
More than 4,000 education assistants, librarians, and custodians are voting on strike action this week in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta. The workers, who on average earn the poverty-level wage of $26,000 per year, are demanding their first pay raise in five years and have been working without a collective agreement since August 2020. Local statistics suggest that a living wage for the city is $45,000 per year.
CUPE Alberta president Rory Gill said that there would be “no safe way” to open schools if the strike goes ahead. This fact raises the opportunity for education support workers to appeal to their teacher colleagues to broaden the struggle for improved pay and conditions. Gill explained that most workers have a second job to make ends meet, with some even having a third or fourth job.
If a strike takes place, it will pit the low-paid workers in a direct conflict with the far-right United Conservative Party government led by Premier Danielle Smith. Last month, Smith’s government intervened to ban a strike by education support workers in Fort McMurray. With 1,065 education assistants, librarians, administrative workers, and custodians set to strike September 17, Smith’s government announced September 16 the establishment of a Dispute Inquiry Board, which bans strike action for 30 days while the government appointees work out a settlement.
Predictably, the Canadian Union of Public Employees has made clear in advance that it would not defy a government back-to-work order in Edmonton, stating merely that it would possibly launch legal action. Such challenges, which have become the union bureaucracy’s standard response to the innumerable back-to-work orders imposed over recent years by Canadian governments at all levels, invariably take years to meander through the courts. In the end, even if the workers are found to be in the right, these challenges never result in overturning the concessions imposed by the employers with the government’s strikebreaking assistance.
The union must give a 72-hour notice for strike action once the vote in favour by the workers in Edmonton is announced. A strike could therefore take place as soon as next week.
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Publish date : 2024-05-13 16:01:00
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