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Arts/Review

Assault on unions: sign of major change?

THE ASSAULT ON TRADE UNION
FREEDOMS. By Leo Panitch and Donald
Swartz. Garamond Press, Toronto, 1988.
133 pages. Available at the People’s Co-op
Bookstore.

When Bill 19 struck down the Labour
Code of B.C. and replaced it with the Indus-
trial Relations Act of 1987, it marked a
qualitative change in the attitude of the cap-
italist state to trade union rights in the post-
war period.

Since the 1944 legalization of union
security, through federal Order-in-Council
P.C. 1003 and the province’s first provincial
labour relations regulations adopted the
same year, legislation has been used to con-
trol the labour-capital conflict. Henceforth,
those conflicts were waged within a legisla-
tive framework that, although often excep-
tionally repressive, still facilitated the
existence and growth of trade unions.

The post-war institutionalization of
labour into bourgeois democracy reached
its pinnacle with the NDP’s 1972 Labour
Code, crafted by Paul Weiler. Weiler’s
book, Reconcilable Differences, which
recounts the story of the Labour Code and
its legal and political basis, is the textbook
version of the so-called “social contract.”

The increasing attacks on trade union
rights since the return of the Socred coali-
tion in 1975 culminated in the Industrial
Relations Act, which reversed the premise
of all previous labour law since 1944. The
new law is a framework inspired by neo-

conservatism and the restructuring of capi- --

tal which sets out to diminish’ trade
unionism as an economic and social force.

Faced with this premise, the labour
movement has taken the unprecedented
step of declaring official defiance of the law,
through its boycott of the Industrial Rela-
tions Council.

Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz in their
new book, The Assault on Trade Union
Freedoms, describe this process as the pass-
ing of an era of “consent” and the consoli-
dation in the 1980s of a new era of

* “coercion” in labour relations.

This book deepens and adds considera-
bly to the analysis of the attack on labour by
showing that the changing role of the state
in labour relations is a Canada-wide phe-
nomenon affecting all jurisdictions. Panitch
and Swartz have woven into their analysis
the record of the federal government and
the Supreme Court in labour relations in
each province. What emerges is the full pic-
ture which verifies the assertion that we are
now at “the end of the era of free collective
bargaining in Canada.”

The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms is
the first serious and comprehensive study of
the changing character of state intervention
in labour and capital relations, and it will be
warmly received in the labour movement
and referred to often.

The primary features of the new era are .

described as a “permanent exceptionalism”
which excludes a constantly growing section

-of workers from basic rights — primarily

the right to strike — and a “new ideology”
which seeks to impose the priority of capi-
tal’s needs over labour in all aspects of
labour relations and law.

Part I of this book is a revised edition of a
previously published monograph, “From
Consent to Coercion,” published in 1985. It
traces the end of free collective bargaining
to the federal wage control programs in the
1970s introduced by the Trudeau govern-
ment. These were followed by mandatory
public sector restraint programs in almost
every province, and the 1982-1984 federal
“6 and 5” program.

In Part II, Panitch and Swartz describe
the consolidation of the attack on collective
bargaining which culminated in the Supreme
Court decision of 1987 that the right of free

10 « Pacific Tribune, June 15, 1988

SS ee

association guaranteed by the Canadian
Charter of Rights does not provide trade
unionists with the right to strike. The
detailed description of the court ruling and
its implications, together with excerpts from
the dissenting minority views of two judges,
are particularly valuable to an appreciation
of trade union rights in Canada today.

Since that Supreme Court decision, the
record shows that the courts and govern-
ments have acted in tandem. And Panitch
and Swartz bring the record remarkably up
to date.

The federal government’s attempt to bust
the strike of the postal workers with scabs,
the new and more coercive terms of federal
back-to-work legislation against railway
workers, longshoremen and postal workers,
and new provincial legislation such as
B.C.’s Bill 19, are surveyed.

The categories of “consent” and “coer-
cion” used by Panitch and Swartz to des-
cribe the evolution of relations between the
state and the organized working class are
quite useful, but also tend to limit the analy-
sis of state-monopoly policy.

The authors repeat several times that
neither the era of consent or coercion are
exclusive, and that just as the coercive pow-
ers of the state have been used against
labour in past decades, labour retains cer-
tain institutionalized rights today.

But we must also ask: is it only that the
emphasis has shifted from consent to coer-
cion, or has the premise of labour law and
state interference in labour relations under-
gone fundamental change?

The authors clearly argue that there is a
fundamentally new situation facing labour,
but they give only scant attention to the
objective bases for the policy. shifts in
monopoly-capital. A fuller treatment of the
important changes in the capitalist econ-
omy and the present economic and political
objectives of monopoly-capital would add
new dimensions to Panitch’s and Swartz’s
analysis, and drive home the answer to what
has changed.

A case in point would be the trend to
de-unionization and the attacks on union
security. These are mentioned in The
Assault on Trade Union Freedoms, but

‘Panitch’s and Swartz’s main concern is the

use of coercion in labour disputes as it

affects the right to strike.

They show this main concern ina full and
detailed description of controls on public
sector unions and the government’s ven-

_ detta against the Canadian Union of Postal

Workers in particular. A similarly full
assessment of the de-unionization of the
construction industry in western Canada
would have complemented and added to
their analysis, and perhaps posed some
further far reaching questions about the
nature of the new era facing labour.

In the final chapter, Panitch and Swartz
examine the ability of the labour movement
to respond to the new challenges and they
reach conclusions that could, and should,
be the subject of many books.

The first is the need to break with the
restrictions of “legalism,” the framework of
institutionalized business unionism which
has kept the labour movement within strict
limits for 40 years and has dissipated ‘its
class consciousness.

The second conclusion is that labour
should advance political strategies, parlia-
mentary and extra-parliamentary, to assert
its rights and achieve what cannot be won
through collective bargaining alone.

The last is that the labour movement
adapt to the new era by strengthening its ties
to the membership through more demo-
cratic unions, enhancement of the role of
women, and education to imbue the move-
ment with socialist principles.
: — Fred Wilson

———

labour.

|

RCMP at Building Trades strike in B.C., 1986 ... new era of state suppression of

Women’s fight in S. Africa

An internationally acclaimed play set
to debut in British Columbia in July adds
for Canadian audiences a fairly unique
perspective on the struggle for an
apartheid-free South Africa.

You Strike the Woman, You Strike the
Rock utilizes songs, mime and dance to
put across the message that to be both
black and a woman in the racist state is to
be doubly oppressed.

The play is named for an Aug. 9, 1954
uprising in which the largest gathering of
women at the time protested the inclu-

Rambo III ‘embarrassment’

Rambo producers, who use Soviet
bashing and war mongering panic to
make big bucks, are themselves in a
panic about the Soviet troop withdrawal
from Afghanistan, just when Sylvester
Stallone is “invading” that country in
Rambo III. As a result, according to
Reuters, the producers have told their’
employees to avoid any mention of
Afghanistan in relation to the film, which
at US $63 million is the most expensive
movie ever made. Reuters also reported
that the Rambo III coming attractions

Soviet covers primaries

We’re used to typical U.S. treatment
of things Soviet, and the Soviet media in
particular. But with the spirit of glasnost
prevailing, some American media outlets
are lightening up, and now the Public
Broadcasting System offers a new, good-
natured look at the trials and successes of
a Soviet journalist in the United States.

KCTS Channel 9 will present ’Dear
Comrades’, an installment of the PBS
Good Morning America series in which
the exploits of Vladimir Dounaev,
Washington correspondent for Vremya
magazine, are covered as he in turn cov-
ers the presidential primaries in Iowa.
Promising to show both humour and

sion of women in the country’s notorious
pass laws. :

The play’s Canadian debut is at Hartl-
son Festival for the Arts, July 9-10, fol-
lowed by an appearance at the Vancouver
Folk Music Festival at Jericho Beach
Park July 15-17. From there it goes to the
Vancouver East Cultural Centre for 4
three-week run, July 19-Aug. 7. Tickets
for that venue are $10 Tuesday to Thurs-
day and Sunday, and $12 Friday and
Saturday. Phone the VECC, 254-9578,
or VTC, 280-4444,

have been booed and jeered in theatres
around the country. ;

Stallone, whose movie champions the
“cause” of the Afghan reactionary CIA-
backed feudal contra tribes, had no such
qualms about filming Rambo III in
Israel, where soldiers routinely massacre
Palestinians. “I got off the plane and
said, ‘Yeah, this is it,” mused Stallone.
“Tt feels like the kind of place where you
should make Rambo.”

— People’s Daily World

unique insights into “the changing
nature of Soviet media,” the 30-minute
show airs Thursday, June 23, 7:30 p.m.
and again on Sunday, June 26, 3 p.m. It’s
closed-captioned for the hearing im-
paired.

Pablo Neruda

KCTS features an award-winning
tribute to Chile’s greatest poet, Pablo
Neruda, on International TV: Burning
Issues. Made by exiled Chilean director
Antonio Skarmeta, it airs Tuesday, July
5, 11 p.m.

PHOTO — HOWIE SMITH