It's a Disgrace...

Except, you see, if this was a real, as in "serious" labour movement, with real working class solidarity, there would not be an Extra Foods open anywhere in the lower mainland, and the entire labour movement would be behind it in more substantive picket line and "other" support ways than rhetorically.

This kind of poop has to be stopped. And if that means educating the other Extra Market workers, or other chain food store's workers to bring them on board, do it. They allow this store to be picked off and starved out in this way, they will pick them all off one by one. And that this union allows this, is a bloody disgrace.

It's a statement on the pathetic state of the trade union movement in our time, and the lack of real "solidarity" across the entire working class, in large part as this consequence of a failure of union leadership. And I don't care what "The Law" says... whatever it takes, get to it. Find that way around it, and get "the mass" in motion.

Nobody wants to be part of a losing cause, and right now, the labour movement is perceived as a "lost or losing cause". (Is that the real intent of this union leadership?)

Ever since the defeat of Operation Solidarity, by a betrayal of union leadership in 1983, there there has been a major loss of public support for unions, and a debilitating loss of credibility, and an ever greater self-serving direction taken on the part of the entire working class... drawing its conclusions from observing the behaviours of union leadership itself. How otherwise are workers to be expected to behave?

Unions have become a collaborative "part" of the system, and there needs to arise from within "labour", a movement to take their own class organization back, and have it serve them again, instead of the bosses.

This strike is NOT something to be proud of... especially that it has been allowed to drag on this long. It is something to be ashamed of. To hang one's head over.

It's a goddamn disgrace.

Am I surprised...

I read somewhere over the last few days, best as I can recall, that union membership in BC went from a high of approx 53% of all workers, I forget in what year, to a current figure, I believe 2009, of approx. 31% of all workers.

Am I surprised in light of this article?

No.

Great work by Commercial

Great work by Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1518 and their leadership. Their members are far better off today than they were 3 years ago. It's good they're looking after their members best interests instead of trying to fight ideological wars.

The actual figures...

The actual stats from an earlier article here in Tyee... which tells you, since 1983 and the betrayal of Operation Solidarity, (by y'all know who), what has actually happend to the trade union movement:

"In 1983, the percentage of B.C.'s work force in a union (a measure called union density) was at 45.3 per cent while by 2007 it had fallen to around 31 per cent, according to StatsCanada."

Which is bad enough a reflection of the ideology then and now prevailing at the leadership levels in the trade union movement, if we are all so much better off today. It all depends on how you measure it. It all depends on how you measure it.

And it is not likely, if a growing body of economists are right, that we are already in the early stages of a Depression, going to get better anytime soon... for our pocket books or the credibility of unions, and the current ideology that drives them. (They's gonna be picked off one by one, weakest working through to the strongest. With the last to go, turning out the lights as they leave being... the labour bureaucrats, probably in the public sector. The private sector is already practically de-unionized.)

all you gotta do is...

all you gotta do is get out and vote to change parties.

85% of people in BC find this so hard to do.

Why you ask.

Because it has not hit home for the majority yet and if it has they won't admit it.

Just keep ignoring the good changes we need and you will continue to suffer big time.

The choice is in our hands collectively to make the changes we need to have a better future.

Just ask the people who are suffering right now. The jobless, It is probably your neighbour or a stranger on the street or the people looking for spare change.

Good time for Change is in our hands, lets make the best of it.

Time to Withdraw Legitimacy...

"...all you gotta do is get out and vote to change parties." Luck.

Well, as many here will know already, my view of that "ideological" notion, shared by the union "bosses", is, "Hog swill."

Hell, the NDP can't even find the gumption to commit to removal of the HST or the FTA, let along significantly change the class balance of power currently prevailing at the bargaining table. They may tweak this or that, but seriously take on the issue of the balance of class power and economic democracy, or any other measure curtailing the license of Capital and its fascist ideology to wreck the economy... I ain't going to hold my breath.

Right now, they are more interested in "sneaking" their way into the Liberal Party, the historical party of the ruling class in this country, of another era. Indeed, right now, at about 15% in the last national poll, I believe it was, that I saw on Manbridge's political panel, the Greens were only just behind the NDP at 16%. (And yes, I know the snapshot weakness of these polls.)

Like the trade union "movement", which claim is a tad sick of a notion now itself, in this era of unions as business themselves, the NDP is as well rapidly losing all credibility with the working class. And unfortunately, understandably so. (The trade union nowadays is pretty much public servants and building trades in the construction industry. Outside of that they are gone, or like the UFCW, fading fast.)

I'm not going to vote for the NDP, for damn sure, and I urge others to not as well... or any of the other current parties to capitalism. It's time to start withdrawing legitimacy from this bullshit democracy. Already, just about half the electorate don't vote. Let's make it 80%...

It's time for the working class masses and the labour rank and file to start separating the wheat from the chaff here... the shit from the buckwheat.

Hmmmm...

Loblaws, again, eh?

Big surprise for anyone who remembers the strike that went on for nearly two years in West Van at the same Super-valu/Extra Foods. The union won some, the store won some, sort of, and the Wylies took retirement right after, so it was hard on everyone all round. But the store's still open and profitable, even at the improved wage rates

Methinks the ideological Maoists here are the board of Loblaws.

“Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.”
(from the Chairman hisself)

Union or not

It seems to me that Extra Foods used to be Super Valu which at one time was on a par with Safeway for wages and benefits. I think some of these employees may be from the original employer.

I had a friend who was, at the time, a new car salesman for a Japanese car dealer. He hated unions. Thought they were the cause of all business woes. He never could get it through his head that it was the union members who had the good paying secure jobs that were more likely to buy his products.

Now as union membership diminishes the gap is filled by drug money.

COMMIE PINKO UNIONIST'S

Don't they realize that they are standing against financial progress in this province. "Our Mr. Campbell" should recall the legislature, and pass a law so that "greedy" unionist will be stopped from trying to erode the profits of one of our "Great Canadian" corporate citizens.

We must all feel sorry for anti union Toyota salesman as the store owners have to tighten their belts and not buy those Toyota's for their grandchildren. Perhaps we should start a "Car Bank" where we can drop a little "Extra" as we leave Extra Foods, just to help out the owners and our poor disorganized car salesmen.

What about a "Gas Bank" to help the SUV drivers with the tax burden they are encountering at the pumps. I know. Lets prevail on "Our Mr. Campbell" to give those people a break on the "Carbon Tax" if they use more than the nominal amount of gasoline.

Aren't problems easy to solve when you have a Liberal Government and a tongue in your cheek?

rambling thoughts about work

Some of you may remember Evergreen press in South Vancouver as a place where union workers struck for ages?

Seems that only so-called essential workers have a chance to avoid long drawn out strikes?

Try telling the other workers that their job is not essential!

Every job is essential to that person, the time is long gone when one could claim that there are many more chimeny's smoking and whistles blowing.

In other words all contract negotiations are essential and since it takes so long to negotiate, they should start the next session as soon as the current one starts.

We are getting to be a nation where important things are being delayed for much too long! union negotiations are only one, court sessions another!

Perhaps the reasom is that too many long-winded individuals make a living talking about nothing?

There was a time when working meant producing something, watching movies and sitcoms today working seem to be standing at a watercooler somewhere.

either get out and vote or ...

either get out and vote or you are gonna get more of the same.

that is the only way change has ever cme about man.

maybe the nay sayers can actually get the balls to be an mla or mp.

it is easy my friend did it and loves it because he has turned from writing about change to actually helping make those changes.

any way you cut it be counted in or be counted out.

Bring It On... I'm Ready I

How much getting elected as an MLA, or MP for that matter, really counts as a contribution to the fight for "serious" social "change" and working class progress, we could really have a long drawn out discussion here about. But suffice it to say, that there is a difference of opinion and experience here about that "simplistic" notion.

And I ain't nobody's "true believer", prepared to get out and fight for the "party cause" on "faith" alone. And I don't care what "Party" you're talking.

But backing up to what Alive writes of... basically, the "ranking" of work into of greater and lesser importance... him I agree with. Society is complex, with many pieces and parts, which fail on any number of them. All "work" is important, or it wouldn't be there worth a dollar or lasting for very damn long... certainly not in the ruling class "free market" system. (Though there is lots of useless work there, that produces nothing of real sustenance value to society... the more as you draw closer to the top of the class structure.)

Let's see the bourgeois ideal "market investor" make a dollar if you remove the working class from his free market equation. Even the "burger flipper" at say, MacDonald's. He'd be there, in this world sans the worker, throwing his "paper" around, as might as well be ass wipe, for all the food, let alone Ferrari's or Mum's champagne its going to magically create out of nothing for his life style of the rich and famous.

Indeed, what is, all hinges around the presumption of those "lower class" types being there, doing the grunt and intellectual work that produces the products, the markets and the commercial transactions that result in his realizing his dollar to ownership and/or investment.
Remove "the worker" and you've got an "investor" stuffing paper down his gullet and up his ass trying to get some nutrition and satisfaction out of that.

We ALL deserve an actual "living wage" at least out of our labour. And if you want us, as "consumers", our other hat, out there in the market place, buying your shit, so that you can realize your investment buck, you might want to pay us better than that "minimum", even though it looks "technically" good on your bottom line. For when you don't pay us more than that "minimum", you get what you've got in the current "capitalist free market", too few dollars chasing too many goods, deflationary price pressures, and a "free market" in a constant state of crises, growing unemployment... and sliding into economic Depression.

Continued next post...

C'mon BC FED

It's time for the BC Fed and President Jim Sinclair to call for a general boycott of Loblaw's. Enough is enough. Support our fellow workers and force management back to table.