>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Communist Party of Canada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: People's Voice - April 1-15, 2000
>
>PEOPLE’S VOICE ON-LINE
>
>ARTICLES FROM THE COMMUNIST PRESS IN CANADA
>
>(These articles below are from the April 1-15/2000 issue of People’s Voice,
>Canada’s leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the
>source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low
>income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers -
>$25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People’s Voice, 706 Clark Drive,
>Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
>
>______________________________________________________________________________
>
>In this Issue:
>
>1/ CPC LEADERSHIP PREPARES NEW PROGRAM
>2/ COMMUNISTS PLAN APRIL 15 "DAY OF ACTION"
>3/ ONE UNION IN HEALTH CARE labour column
>4/ THE SOURCE OF THE FARM CRISIS
>5/ UNPAID WORK, CHILDCARE AND CAPITALISM
>6/ THE KOSOVO SCORECARD: ONE YEAR LATER
>7/ THE "BATTLE IN SEATTLE" MOVES TO WASHINGTON
>8/ NEW CONFRONTATIONS BUILDING IN ECUADOR
>9/ FEDERAL LIBERALS OPENED DOOR FOR KLEIN'S BILL 11 health care
>
>************
>
>1/ CPC LEADERSHIP PREPARES NEW PROGRAM
>
>THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA is closer to adopting a new program, after a
>March 17-19 meeting of the party's Central Committee in Toronto. The CC
>meeting also finalized plans for this spring's party campaign against
>capitalist globalization, and laid preliminary plans for the CPC's Central
>Convention at the start of next year.
> The CPC's 1971 program, The Road to Socialism, was being updated
>during the late 1980s, until the collapse of the European socialist
>countries and a sharp split in the CPC.
> Since the Communist Party began to rebuild in 1992, one of its top
>priorities has been to develop a new program, based on the principles of
>Marxism-Leninism and taking account of the reversals suffered by socialism
>at the start of the 1990s. At the CPC's 32nd Convention (Vancouver,
>December 1997), delegates instructed the incoming leadership to circulate
>the draft of a new program for wide discussion well before the 33rd
>Convention. That draft is now in the final editing stage, and will be
>printed in April.
> Most of March CC meeting was devoted to an in-depth debate on the
>draft program, which will present the Communist viewpoint on the present
>domestic and world situation, and on the way toward a socialist Canada.
> There was a strong consensus among the two dozen Central Committee
>members around the basic contents of the draft. The document gives a
>detailed analysis of "capitalist globalization" - the present phase of the
>world imperialist system - and the neoliberal attack against working people
>by corporations and governments.
> Despite the setbacks to socialism a decade ago, the draft program
>says, world capitalism still faces a deep-going structural and systemic
>crisis. Far from being proof of its strength, the savage neoliberal assault
>against unions, social programs, and democratic freedoms shows that the
>transnational corporations are struggling to halt a long-term decline in
>their overall rate of profit.
> In Canada and other countries, the draft program points out, the
>result is a growing trend towards larger, more unified struggles by working
>people against right-wing governments and greedy corporations. Several
>chapters of the draft program present the CPC's approach to building broad
>alliances for real change, leading in the direction of a people's
>government and a socialist Canada.
> Another key chapter deals largely with one of the most difficult
>matters facing the working class in Canada, the "national question." The
>CPC was the first political party in Canada to recognize the national
>rights of Quebec and the First Nations, and the draft program updates the
>party's proposals to resolve this crucial issue in a democratic way.
> Debate on the draft will begin immediately in party clubs across
>the country, and in a series of summer schools, conferences, and other
>forms. A regular program discussion bulletin will be published leading up
>to the 33rd Convention.
> The party's immediate focus will also include the second part of a
>campaign against capitalist globalization, following up on its
>participation in the "Battle in Seattle" late last year. On April 15,
>Communist Party clubs and committees across Canada will hold public events
>targetting various corporations. These actions will be part of the CPC's
>contribution to the protests against the International Monetary Fund
>meetings taking place in Washington the following week.
> In his report on recent political developments, CPC leader Miguel
>Figueroa spoke about the party's ongoing struggle against undemocratic
>sections of the Canada Elections Act, and the federal government's March
>2-3 appeal of parts of the CPC's 1999 legal victory against these sections.
>A ruling on the appeal is not expected for some time.
> Figueroa also stressed the need to begin preparations now for the
>next federal election, updating the CPC's platform and considering how many
>candidates to nominate, especially if the Elections Act still requires
>parties to nominate 50 candidates to become eligible for full registered
>status.
> The CC meeting also heard reports on some of the most promising
>areas of recent Communist political activity.
> Since its December 1999 convention, the Parti Communiste du Québec
>has recruited sixteen new members (including eight women), and PCQ members
>played an important part in the February protests against the Bouchard
>government's phoney "Youth Summit."
> Just as important, the Central Committee heard from organizers of
>the May 5-7 communist youth conference taking place in Toronto. From 30 to
>50 delegates are now expected to take part, sharing their experiences in
>the movements for youth rights, and making initial plans for the formation
>of a Canada-wide communist youth organization in about a year.
>
>________________
>
>2/ COMMUNISTS PLAN APRIL 15 "DAY OF ACTION"
>
>COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBERS and supporters will take to the streets across
>Canada on Saturday, April 15, picketing a wide range of corporate targets,
>and popularizing the CPC's call for a "People's Alternative."
> The actions are part of the second phase of a CPC campaign against
>corporate globalization, following up on events held last November around
>the Seattle WTO summit and the meeting of the Free Trade Area of the
>Americas held in Toronto.
> For both of those events, Communists across Canada worked with
>thousands of other activists to help build massive protests. The "Battle in
>Seattle" had a major impact on the WTO Summit, which collapsed in disarray
>after many member states refused to submit to pressures from the USA over
>new international trade and investment rules.
> Once again this spring, CPC members and clubs are working to build
>resistance to the corporate assault, including actions against the
>closed-door meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
>starting April 17 in Washington, DC, and the June 4-6 General Assembly of
>the Organization of American States taking place in Windsor, Ontario.
> Meeting in Toronto last month, the CPC Central Committee updated
>its planning for this campaign. The April 15 pickets will focus on the
>"worst examples of corporate greed, takeovers and sellouts" that threaten
>Canadian sovereignty, and which have resulted in massive poverty,
>homelessness, cuts to social programs, the increase in militarism, and
>attacks on democracy.
> In Vancouver, for example, party clubs from across the Lower
>Mainland will protest outside the Granville Street offices of Pacific
>Press, which publishes both local daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and
>The Province, part of Conrad Black's media empire. The huge profits from
>Pacific Press help subsidize Black's far-right National Post and his
>attempt to destroy unions at the Calgary Herald.
> The April 15 Day of Action will also help publicize May Day events
>being organized across the country by the labour movement and its allies.
> For more information on the April 15 CPC activities, and other
>protests against the IMF/World Bank meetings and the OAS General Assembly,
>contact the central office of the Communist Party of Canada, ph.
>416-469-2446, email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
>
>________________
>
>3/ ONE UNION IN HEALTH CARE
>
>"Labour In Action" column
> by Liz Rowley
>
>TEN THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT MEMBERS, or 98.75% of those who
>voted in eight Locals, can't be wrong. They're mad as hell at the Service
>Employees International Union, and they want out now.
> It's understandable when you look at the conservative history of
>the SEIU in North America. It was the only public sector union not to see
>red when Bob Rae's NDP government introduced the wage-cutting Social
>Contract legislation in 1993. It was one of the quietest unions during the
>Ontario Days of Action, when rotating strikes and protests rocked the
>Harris government.
> Furthermore, the contracts being signed in Ontario by SEIU,
>stewarded by employer-friendly wheeler-dealers like Ted Roscoe in Toronto
>(LU 204), were appalling. Massive cuts to hospital staff, speed-up, 12 hour
>shifts, the casualization of labour, became the norm across the province.
>For SEIU members, even the most basic servicing of local unions and
>policing of contracts became arduous efforts to just get phone calls returned.
> This situation led Ken Brown to run for SEIU Canadian Vice
>President in 1996. He won that election, on a platform of increased union
>militancy and fightback against neo-con governments and employers, coupled
>with the demand for autonomy, so that Canadian workers could control their
>own affairs in Canada.
> At the same time, reformers in the US section of the union were
>also getting elected. SEIU became a part of the progressive forces in the
>US labour movement pushing to mobilize, organize and activate labour in the
>streets, at the bargaining table, and in independent labour political
>action. A struggle was underway, on both sides of the border, to transform
>a business union with a history of class collaboration, into a fighting
>union with a future.
> Brown was able to make some progress on the autonomy issue. The
>Canadian section won the right to elect four officers to the 52-member
>International Executive Board, to establish a Canadian headquarters and
>research and organizing departments, and Canadian union publications.
> But for many, the process was too limited and too slow. In
>November 1998, Brown established the "November Group," whose purpose was to
>push the boundaries on autonomy. At their Canadian Conference meeting on
>Feb. 14-15, 800 delegates from English-speaking Canada rejected two
>autonomy options, both still requiring the agreement of the International
>to implement decisions made in Canada. Delegates also rejected proposals
>from the International for a dues increase to fund an organizing drive, and
>for a province-wide amalgamation of SEIU locals (to strengthen sectoral
>bargaining, according to some; to put the brakes on autonomy, according to
>others).
> Instead, an emergency resolution was unanimously passed "to
>reaffirm the right of each Canadian Local Union to self-determination; that
>is the right to decide its own future, as it best reflects the interest of
>its membership and the local communities in which they live."
> Five days later, at a joint meeting of the eight Local Union
>Executive Boards, a resolution was unanimously passed "That this meeting
>will endorse the move to CAW-Canada and encourage all membership to vote
>CAW-Canada also."
> A day later, well attended stewards' meetings were convened and
>the motion was again unanimously supported. A vote by the membership of the
>eight locals was set for March 2.
> Enter the International Union, putting the locals into
>trusteeship, dismissing and charging close to 90 people (including
>stewards), and filing charges of raiding against the CAW.
> The Canadian Labour Congress has appointed an arbitrator to deal
>with the raiding charges, which appear to have some substance. CAW cards
>were released, and SEIU members have been signed up. The argument that the
>eight locals needed a ready-made home doesn't easily hold water. When the
>CAW separated from the UAW under stressful circumstances (to put it
>lightly), they didn't head into the Steelworkers or the Machinists, though
>a case could have been made that they were all metalworkers' unions.
> Instead, they formed the Canadian Autoworkers' Union, and worked
>out a fraternal relationship of equality and solidarity, one that has
>helped workers on both sides of the border and undermined the power of the
>auto giants.
> When UE and Mine-Mill split from their US-based Internationals, it
>wasn't to join the IBEW or Steel. The UE and Mine-Mill worked out an equal,
>voluntary partnership with their American counterparts that recognized the
>sovereignty of each, and created the conditions for an effective and a
>coordinated struggle against the corporations, to the advantage of workers
>in both countries.
> Could the SEIU in Canada have done that? We don't know, because
>the 90,000 SEIU members here were never offered that political option. Some
>will say it couldn't have been done. Maybe.
> On the other hand, autoworkers were made that offer by their
>Canadian union leadership, and they took it. In the process, they won the
>support of the broadest sections of the Canadian labour movement, and
>brought a new sense of unity, democracy and militancy to the trade union
>movement in Canada. They raised the bar in the US as well, contributing to
>the new militancy in the US labour movement today. This is precisely why
>many workers are attracted to the CAW.
> The CAW's untimely appearance in the SEIU events has less to do
>with its role as midwife at a difficult birth, than to its apparent
>self-perception as an all-embracing social movement to which jurisdiction
>does not apply.
> The largely Canadian public sector unions do not agree, nor do the
>international unions who feel threatened by moves towards autonomy and
>independence that look more like a caesarian section than a natural birth
>and delivery.
> The most natural place for health care and other public sector
>workers to go - if they leave SEIU - is another public sector union. But
>the best alternative would be a joint venture of all the health care unions
>fighting for Medicare, which could eventually yield one union, parented and
>birthed cooperatively by all the unions in this sector.
> Sweeping changes such as the declining industrial and
>manufacturing base in Canada require a new approach to organizing and
>jurisdiction - the emergence of one union in each industry and sector. That
>was the logic of the International Metalworkers' Federation which would
>have combined the UAW, USWA and IAM. The fact that this merger is still
>gestating means just that: it is still developing. But its time will come,
>because the every-union-for-itself alternative is mass suicide in the
>context of globalization and neo-liberalism.
> The members of each union must decide for themselves the best way
>to express their sovereignty, as English-speaking Canadian workers, and
>French-speaking Québécois. The essence is control over their own affairs
>and their future, whether through Canadian autonomy or Canadian unions
>(independence).
> In either case, sovereignty alone will be ineffective if the trade
>union movement is not also gripped with militant, class struggle policies
>and strategies, and an obsession to build a united and powerful movement
>around policies that can usher in real change and progress for Canadian
>workers.
>
>________________
>
>4/ THE SOURCE OF THE FARM CRISIS
>
>By Darrell Rankin,
>Manitoba leader,
>Communist Party of Canada
>
>FARM INCOMES ARE sliding below Depressionera levels despite the overall
>growth of the economy in the last five years, says a major study by the
>National Farmers Union. The rural population, already worse off than those
>who live in the cities, is getting poorer.
> So far, the crisis is centred almost entirely in Saskatchewan and
>Manitoba, where tens of thousands of small farm owners face imminent ruin.
> "If markets work, how do elected and corporate leaders explain the
>economic carnage on family farms?" asks the study. The Liberals, Reform,
>and NDP, and the pro-corporate media, blame the $362 billion (US) spent on
>farm aid, mainly by the USA, European Union and Japan, for the sharp drop
>in farm commodity prices.
> But the real source of the crisis, the NFU study finds, is "the
>direct result of dramatic market power imbalances between agri-food
>industry multinational corporations and the family farm that must do
>business with these firms."
> The study proves there is no relation between farm subsidies and
>
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