EDITORIAL

Tories declare class war, magnify the fightback

In the first two months of his majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved quickly to impose his austerity agenda.

First, the Tories delivered a budget calling for $11 billion in cuts to the public service, eliminating 80,000 jobs. Then they took on both private and public sector workers, announcing back-to-work legislation within 24 hours of Air Canada workers hitting the picket lines and postal workers facing a lockout.

Not only that but the Tories imposed on postal workers wages even worse than what Canada Post offered, an aggressive move designed to punish postal workers for striking and send a sign to other workers. Such a clear alliance between corporations and the state against such basic democratic rights as collective bargaining makes a collective fightback urgently needed.

As Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan said, “We cannot afford to stand back and allow the benefits, the wages, the pensions of the next generation to be whittled away at the whim of the Tory government. We have an obligation to pull workers together in concerted actions in city after city and province by province across this country. Stephen Harper has clearly thrown down the gauntlet to the labour movement; the question is: can we answer the call?”

People across Canada and Quebec have been inspired by resistance from Egypt to Wisconsin, and hope for similar resistance here. We’ve seen the beginnings: 10,000 mobilized to support locked-out steelworkers in Hamilton on January 26, 75,000 marched against austerity in Montreal on March 20, 10,000 rallied in Toronto against the Rob Ford agenda on April 9, and 4.5 million more from coast to coast voted for the NDP on May 2.

This mood set the stage for the postal fight: while the NDP filibuster showed how the Official Opposition can resist Harper in Parliament, actions outside showed how we can collectively fightback in the streets and workplaces.

The Fredericton Labour Council called for a national day of action to support both airport and postal workers. Labour, student and community groups occupied Tory offices in North Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa. Crucially, 200 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers briefly stopped working in solidarity with striking Air Canada workers.

These actions—and the solidarity networks that organized them—will have to be magnified in every workplace, campus and neighbourhood to resist the austerity agenda.