Speech on Mumia Abu-Jamal – January 26, 2019                  

        I would like to focus my remarks entirely on our comrade Mumia Abu-Jamal who has suffered for so very long.   This is entirely appropriate because we could now be at a critical turning point in Mumia’s 37 year-long battle for justice and against his wrongful conviction for the murder of Daniel Faulkner.  Consequently, the possibility of freedom for Mumia remains remote but clearly less so than it did just a year ago.

       Two developments clearly attest to this and show why this could be a turning point.  One is the December 27, 2018 decision by Judge Leon Tucker before the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.  Tucker’s decision allows Mumia and his legal representatives to reargue his appeal before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  This happened because the U.S. Supreme Court in a prior precedent setting case admonished the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania judiciary stating a fair trial requires that Judges not hear their own cases and decisions.  Therefore, they cannot sit in judgement on appeals of their own making.

      Judge Tucker correctly saw a conflict of interest having recognized that Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille should have recused himself from a hearing on Mumia’s appeal rights given that Castille was the Philadelphia District Attorney when Mumia was earlier appealing his wrongful conviction.  By not recusing himself Castille was effectively denying Mumia an impartial hearing consistent with Mumia’s constitutional rights and the judicial principle of procedural fairness. 

       Earlier Castille had also effectively denied Mumia his right to have a judicial hearing before an impartial person in 1995 by bringing the original trial court judge Albert F. Sabo out of retirement to hear Mumia’s only evidentiary hearing in 1995.  This sordid judicial history makes Tucker’s decision to order a fair hearing a real departure from what Mumia has experienced up till now. 

       Judge Tucker’s decision is actually the first favourable ruling in the 37 year long legal battle and persecution of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Mumia himself recognizes this.  In a message recorded from prison Mumia commented on the decision by remarking that the proceeding which resulted in Judge Tucker’s ruling marked the first time he has ever been in front of a Pennsylvania judge who was not paid for by the other side meaning by Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police.

      Nonetheless, two days ago the State appealed Tucker’s decision in what is an obvious attempt to block an appeal by Mumia from going forward.  At a minimum this will drag things out and prolong Mumia’s ordeal.  But if the State does not manage to block an appeal from going forward the way is open for a possible new trial in which the suppressed, manufactured and bought evidence that was used to wrongly convict Mumia could be exposed.  In other words, Mumia’s legal team could get the opportunity to reargue their case for Mumia in court armed with uncovered evidence of how he was railroaded in the original trial that resulted in his wrongful conviction and death sentence that was later reduced to life in prison.

      It is also very significant that this important legal development was followed just two weeks later by another development which one of Mumia’s past legal advocates, Rachel Wolkenstein, believes could shed new light on the police-inspired frame-up of Mumia.  Namely, on January 10, 2019 six boxes of legal files relating to Mumia’s case were discovered in an obscure Philadelphia storage room.  This means that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s prior representations to the courts that it had produced the complete files for the courts to review in Mumia’s case has been proven wrong.  Indeed, nothing in the Commonwealth’s database on Mumia’s case showed the existence of these six boxes of files of evidence.

       Rachel Wolkenstein believes this revelation could expose the actions of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and the Fraternal Order of Police in the handling of Mumia’s case.  This remains to be seen. 

       But there certainly is reason to believe the discovery of these files could unearth buried evidence helpful to Mumia’s case.  Logic and the history of this case would have it that this evidence would never have vanished as it did and remained unexposed in Discovery if it had served the purposes of the prosecution who remain hell bent on seeing Mumia die in prison.  In other words, this new evidence could expose prosecutorial misconduct of the type that has been so often exposed in the hundreds of cases in the U.S. in which the Innocence Project has succeeded in overturning wrongful convictions and having innocent and mostly persons of colour released from prison usually after many years of wrongful incarceration.

     So, given these two, related and potentially crucially significant developments in Mumia’s case there is now a compelling and obvious need for an immediate escalation of the international struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Renewed mobilizations in support of Mumia are arguably as, if not more, imperative than they have ever been precisely because if they are strong enough then they can lead to his exoneration especially subsequent to these developments.  This would spare Mumia from continuing to be subject to what amounts to a slow execution by having him remain incarcerated in a maximum security prison and persistently denied the level of medical treatment he so badly needs and deserves given his age and declining health.  We must act now to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

A Reflection on Unifor Leaving the CLC      Several months ago the National Executive Board (NEB) of Unifor violated Unifor’s constitution by holding a conference call to debate and vote on a motion to withdraw from the Canadian Labour Congress. (CLC)  This action violated the union’s constitution which it makes it clear that such a decision can only be made by the union’s Canadian Council.

     Significant opposition erupted in response to the NEB’s action.   Opposition was particularly evident in Unifor locals based in southern Ontario comprised mostly of autoworkers and auto parts workers.  Out of this opposition came a challenge to the NEB action by way of the filing charges with Unifor’s Public Review Board.To the surprise of many the Public Review Board ruled that the NEB’s action in withdrawing the union from the CLC was in fact done in violation of the union’s constitution.  The NEB’s action stood exposed as illegitimate and illegal.  This was unprecedented.

     Unprecedented and illegitimate though the decision was the NEB did not respond by doing the right thing and reversing the decision.  The immediate response was deafening silence and not the slightest acknowledgement of any wrongdoing.  The national leadership's formal response was to have the issue of the withdrawal from the CLC dealt with at the Unifor Canadian Council meeting in Halifax in mid-August.  It was ratified there with relatively little opposition.

      The ratification of this arbitrary decision was entirely predictable.  It was entirely predictable because no recommendation from a National President has been voted down at a Unifor or CAW national council meeting since 1992.  This is because these councils are effectively rubber stamps designed to give whatever decision or course of action the national leadership wants an appearance of having the support of the entire union.  It shows that Unifor like the CAW before it effectively functions like an anti-democratic, one party state.

      The consequences of this withdrawal from the CLC are evident in labour councils and provincial federations of labour across Canada.  Unifor has been frozen out of these bodies and vilified.  This has been particularly evident at the Niagara Regional Labour Council.  Its absence has had a crippling effect on these organizations and has left Unifor marginalized except when the Liberal Party finds it expedient to grant it status as a “stakeholder” when it serves their purposes.

       In this context Unifor dubiously proclaims ad nauseum that the CLC needs to be fixed.  But its leadership is unwilling to try to fix it from the inside and will not acknowledge that it can never be “fixed” from the outside.  Furthermore, the actions which brought us to where we are now illustrate that there is lots to be fixed in Unifor.  Sadly, the prospects for fixing Unifor are bleak at best and arguably non-existent given that it is an intrinsically undemocratic organization ruled by an entrenched, privileged and self-perpetuating bureaucracy.  Contemplation of the need to build new labour organizations from the base up has consequently become a practical necessity.

Commuted Value:  Context and Implications

       In their 2012 contract negotiations Ford then GM convinced Unifor to give retiring workers the option of taking the commuted value or lump sum equivalent of their defined benefit pensions instead of receiving a monthly defined benefit pension for the rest of their and their spouses’ lifetimes.  Since then a growing proportion of the workforce at GM have decided to take that option.

        Many workers see no problem with this.  They welcome getting a choice between the immediate payment of a large lump sum of money and a defined monthly pension for the rest of their life and the life of a surviving spouse.  But little is being said about the many problems that develop when growing numbers of workers opt to take the commuted value of their defined benefit pensions.  The most readily obvious is the possibility that the lump sum will be quickly spent leaving a retired worker and his or her spouse with no retirement income beyond very inadequate government pensions.

        Other less obvious but very real problems that arise when growing numbers of workers opt to take the commuted value of their defined benefit pensions.  One is that choosing this option generates a big windfall for employers who get to unload the “legacy costs” associated with defined benefit pensions.  Indeed, Unifor facilitated this growing windfall for them evidently without getting anything in return and later reinforced what’s now a trend rejecting defined benefit pensions by agreeing to defined contribution “pensions” for new hires.

       A less obvious problem when growing numbers of retiring workers take the commuted value option is that choosing it typically goes together with another choice.  The other choice is to start working for a new employer in order to continue to earn a wage which very often is a minimum wage or little better. 

      What’s wrong with this?  What’s wrong is that autoworkers fought in 1950 to win defined benefit pensions so that they have an income for life sufficient to live on without having to work.  It means the commuted value option is facilitating a situation where a great many “retired” autoworkers see a financial need to work for years and years after leaving the auto industry.  Significantly, this compounds the effect of the Ontario legislation that ended mandatory retirement at age 65 because it is similarly conducive to workers working till they die greatly benefiting employers.

      The commuted value option is also having the unintended effect of severing large numbers of autoworkers’ relationship with the union that first negotiated defined benefit pensions in 1950.  Workers who take the commuted value of their defined benefit pensions rather than a monthly pension benefit have no option to have retired members’ union dues deducted from a monthly pension benefit.  Absent this very few workers opting to take the commuted value make the effort necessary to go to a union hall and pay union dues.   Consequently, they stop being members in good standing of their union. Thus, taking the commuted value option usually becomes synonymous with effectively ceasing to be part of the life of the union.

       This is a prescription for the eventual disappearance of viable retired workers chapters.  This is shown by the fact that in Unifor nearly every functioning retired workers chapter is comprised of autoworkers with defined benefit pensions.  Eliminate defined benefit pensions and retired workers chapters will vanish because defined benefit pensions are effectively the lifeblood of retired workers chapters.  Furthermore, insofar as retired workers chapters are invaluable reservoirs of history and experience within a union like Unifor that history and experience will stop being readily available to active workers who could benefit from it.

     These things define the context and implications of the commuted value option in auto.  They show that its widespread acceptance in Canada’s auto industry is consistent with and conducive to the ongoing retreat of Unifor as a social and economic force drawing its strength from both active and retired members and which should be focused on building on past gains like defined benefit pensions not helping them to disappear.   

Unifor Embracing the Ontario NDP?

         At last year’s Ontario Federation of Labour Convention Unifor found itself at odds with almost all the other unions present in not favouring unequivocal support of the New Democratic Party (NDP).  Yet, barely more than half a year later, Unifor finds itself effectively in line with those other unions in Ontario because its friends leading Ontario’s governing Liberal Party are tanking in the polls just three weeks before the June 7 provincial election.  Unifor is consequently being forced to come to terms with the fact that presently the Ontario NDP alone can stop the election of a majority government in Ontario led by Tory leader Doug Ford.

         That said a meaningful embrace of the Ontario NDP by Unifor would, in any case, effectively require that a lot of recent history be flushed down an Orwellian memory hole.  Indeed, there is nearly 20 years of this history starting with the CAW’s initial embrace of strategic voting at the end of the 1990s. 

        Some of this history would be very hard to forget such as when CAW President Buzz Hargrove gave a beaming Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin a CAW jacket in front of loudly applauding delegates to a CAW Council meeting.  Less well remembered was the time shortly afterwards when Buzz Hargrove introduced his good friend and then Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to another loudly cheering crowd at a CAW Council meeting in Port Elgin.  On that occasion Hargrove declared that Dalton McGunity was “doing a great job of giving good government to the people of Ontario.”  Much less well remembered was how the next CAW President Ken Lewenza openly supported right-wing Liberal Sandra Pupatelo in her unsuccessful campaign to succeed Dalton McGunity as Ontario Premier.

        During that long, sordid history of embracing strategic voting and leaders and would be leaders of the Liberal Party the union’s relationship with the New Democratic Party, which had once seemed unbreakable, was strained at best and hostile at worst.  Relations with unions which remained steadfastly loyal to the NDP were similarly problematic largely owing to the warming relationship between the CAW and then Unifor with the Liberal Party.

                                       What Now?

      The question immediately posed by the situation Unifor now faces in Ontario is whether these inconvenient truths about the past two decades can or will disappear down an Orwellian memory hole, particularly within Unifor, and be conveniently forgotten as if they had never existed?  The answer to that question is almost certainly no.

       The legacy of this history is certain to endure because this alignment with the NDP is limited to Ontario, momentary and specific to a situation which will cease to exist after the provincial election on June 7.  The hard truth of the matter is that although Unifor is ditching its Liberal friends in Ontario it is not about to ditch the Liberal Party elsewhere let alone renew the type of close relationship it had with the NDP before the late 1990s.  This is principally because the ongoing love affair between the national leadership of Unifor and the national leadership of the Liberal Party is evidently not being affected by the current, unique political moment in Ontario

       Faced with a politically weak, almost marginalized NDP federally together with the prospect of a 2019 federal contest for power between Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Andrew Scheer`s Tories Unifor is consequently certain to shun the federal NDP just as Unifor shunned the Ontario NDP until just weeks ago.  The politics of convenience will trump focused political consistency.  Likewise, nary a thought will be given to abandoned ideas about fundamentally changing society that were implicit in the forgotten CAW commitment to what it referred to as social movement unionism and which were never seriously promoted by the union within the NDP.

        That mask is not just off.  It has been cynically discarded.  Opportunism prevails.   Unifor’s objective now is not to fundamentally change society.  Its objective is to be embedded in the corridors of power alongside the representatives of Capital as a “stakeholder``, as it has been in the current, doomed NAFTA negotiations.  That objective was first clearly set out when Unifor was founded.  Achieving it remains the order of the day.  

        Analyzing, exposing and challenging the agenda accompanying that objective will be a monumental task.  But analyzing, exposing and challenging it at every turn is imperative and must be consciously carried out as part of a much larger effort to forge a fighting labour movement in this country.

Unifor Holds First Townhall on Trade

       Close to one hundred people attended the first of a series of People’s Trade Agenda Town Halls sponsored by Unifor.  The event was held in Hamilton, Ontario on April 20, 2018.  The Council of Canadians co-sponsored the townhall.  The event featured speeches by Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians and Angelo DiCaro of Unifor’s Research Department.

       Maude Barlow was the main attraction.  This was reflected in the composition of the participants.  About three quarters of those in attendance appeared to be members and supporters of the Council of Canadians who had shown up in large measure to see Maude Barlow speak.  The turnout by Unifor members was small. 

      The most notable thing with respect to the participation in the townhall was who was not present.  Representatives of other unions were nowhere to be seen.  Both the Hamilton and District Labour Council and the Canadian Labour Congress were conspicuous in their absence.  So were representatives of the United Steelworkers.  This brutally demonstrated the consequences of Unifor’s departure from the Canadian Labour Congress.

        Unifor deserves credit for taking up the trade issue and seeking to engage as many people as possible about it particularly at this critical juncture when a revived Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is about to be implemented, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being renegotiated and Trump is erecting trade barriers.  Nonetheless, the impact of Unifor’s effort to address trade agreements is doomed to be negligible if the rest of the labour movement is going to deliberately stay away it did in Hamilton.  This, in turn, highlights the compelling need to end the split between Unifor and the rest of the labour movement in Canada. 

       This split must end.  It must end if for no other reason than to make it possible to build a movement capable of blocking trade agreements like the TPP and NAFTA insofar as these trade agreements are consciously designed to meet the needs of Capital via provisions synonymous with their being corporate bills of rights. 

      What is more, a powerful movement against these trade agreements must not only be built in this country.  It must be built together and simultaneously with efforts to build movements that resist these trade agreements in the U. S. and Mexico.  In short, there is a compelling need to forge what amounts to a powerful, multinational movement to stop these trade agreements and the agenda they are designed to facilitate.

        Discussion of the need for such a multinational movement and how to build it was lacking at the townhall in Hamilton.  It is imperative that the need for such a movement be seriously discussed at future Unifor townhalls and that the rest of the labour movement both participate in those events and support such movement building efforts regardless of Unifor’s relationship with the CLC.  The glaring need for such unity in action both within Canada and across North America demands nothing less.  In this context rank and file labour activists, local union leaders and community-based activists must boldly take the initiative by being at the forefront of efforts to forge this unity in action whenever possible and on the largest scale possible.

Injured Workers and the Austerity Agenda in Ontario

Speech to the Ontario Common Front in Niagara on January 12, 2013


Injured workers, their plight and their issues are rarely if ever
considered in relationship to the global austerity agenda and the
ongoing fight against it. Yet what is happening in Ontario
reveals there is compelling reason why they should be.

An analysis of what is happening at the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board (WSIB) in Ontario lays bare the obvious fact that the
trajectory of the changes being made at the WSIB to the overwhelming
disadvantage of injured workers parallel the trajectory of the
austerity agenda involving a process in which wealth is
systematically, brazenly being redistributed away from labour and
into the pockets of those who own and control capital.

So how is this evident in Ontario’s workers compensation
system? It is personified in a former bank executive named
David Marshall who was hired by Ontario’s Liberal government
to eradicate the WSIB’s so called unfunded liability; the
projected gap between revenue going into the WSIB from
employer premiums paid into the system and the projected
benefits to be paid out to injured workers by the WSIB.
Significantly this gap was caused by major cuts to the
premiums employers pay into the system. Yet Marshall’s
mandate is not to eliminate the gap by adjusting employer
premiums upward but by instituting a multitude of measures
slashing the various benefits paid out to injured workers. In
effect injured workers are being made to bear the burden of a
crisis created by concerted government efforts over the past two
decades to line employers’ pockets by slashing the WSIB
premiums they pay. This exemplifies wealth redistribution in
line with the austerity agenda.

The logical result is a more lucrative business climate
for employers causing declining living standards for
injured workers and more widespread poverty among them
as well as cuts in WSIB costs via intensified efforts to get injured
workers off of benefits and back to work with less and less
regard for injured workers’ physical wellbeing particularly by
employers.

One could go on at length with examples of how this is
unfolding. It is sufficient to limit onself to touching on one
pivotal example. Namely the dwindling compensation paid to
injured workers for permanent injuries.

Workers have gone from having a pre-1990 system of
pensions for life to compensate for injuries for life to a very
inferior system of Non Economic Loss (NEL) awards worth only
a fraction of what the pre-1990 pensions were worth and from
there to WSIB Operational Policy changes making it harder to
get NEL awards and now to policies making it much harder to
get increases in those awards to compensate for significant
deterioration in the condition of permanent injuries and finally
to unprecedented efforts to reduce the size and cost of NEL
awards ostensibly by taking into account non-occupational age
related changes in our bodies regardless of whether they were a
health problem prior to an injury or not.

Simply stated these changes slash the costs of compensating
workers’ for permanent injuries in order to help resolve the
fraudulent funding crisis of the compensation system caused by
government efforts to cut employer WSIB premiums.

To sum up the obvious implication of this one example of
wealth redistribution towards Capital is that the fight for just
compensation for injured workers must be more than integral to
the fight against the austerity agenda. It must be front and
centre in that fight. In waging it we clearly must fight to win.

Camaro Blues

GM’s mid-December announcement that the next generation Camaro will be produced in Lansing, Michigan not in Oshawa is cause for serious reflection among Canadian autoworkers. This relocation of production is simply a corporate restructuring event with GM is consolidating its rear wheel car production in one location with the exception of the Corvette.

Such restructuring events are hardly new. Recognizing this is a prerequisite for grasping its significance.

In 1995 GM engaged in the same kind of restructuring in St. Catharines by closing its foundry operation employing 1800 workers and consolidating foundry operations in Defiance, Ohio. Such downsizing decisions yield big cost savings and put the boot to the CAW by massively eliminating jobs. GM can easily do this because the free trade agreements which gutted the 1965 Auto Pact’s domestic production requirements were designed to facilitate unimpeded corporate restructuring and capital mobility.

Corporate restructuring is intrinsic to global capitalism. It defines the context for this event and reveals the theatrical nature of the CAW leadership’s anger and indignation in response to it never mind their protests at being shown a lack of respect. GM similarly blindsided the CAW by suddenly announcing the St. Catharines foundry closure decision.

The similarities don’t end there. That decision raised serious questions about the long term viability of the GM St. Catharines operations setting in motion their dramatic downsizing and continuing vulnerability. Likewise, ending Oshawa’s Camaro production means losing nearly a third of vehicle production and endangers the remaining operations by making them more costly. This underlies the CAW demand that GM compensate for the lost Camaro production with new equivalent work.

But this CAW demand is problematic. GM has repeatedly said it has no plans for new investments in Canada. These statements coupled with the Camaro decision call into question GM’s commitment to its Oshawa operations. Even if GM becomes receptive and allocates new work to Oshawa experience consistently shows new work will be more capital intensive employing far fewer workers. Furthermore, experience shows GM will exact a heavy price for new replacement work. Since the mid-1990s GM has successfully demanded sweeping CAW contract concessions particularly at the local level in return for new investment.

This practice of tying new investment to contract concessions has decimated the union’s strength and gutted decades of historic collective bargaining gains. The concessionary 2012 GM – CAW collective agreements heightened that regression and were not even tied to new investments.

In effect, the Camaro decision shows the CAW’s endless contract concessions have hardly secured a future for GM workers here and raises the specter of future concessions. Consequently, the immediate question facing GM workers in Canada is whether we will give more.

A larger political question is posed by the use of the public funds GM got in 2009 to avoid bankruptcy, and by the prospect of the Canadian government eventually selling its GM stock at a loss entirely at taxpayers’ expense. Should workers not see this as reason for taking control of the means of production in order to meet human need?