New Book: Trade Unions and Canadian Democracy

Next Year Country Books is pleased to announce our first publication.

- NYC

As Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party is posed to launch yet another attack on Saskatchewan workers and their unions through their "Labour Law Review",  Lorne Brown's Trade Unions and Canadian Democracy provides a timely historical perspective on the role labour has played in the fight for democratic rights.

Submitted by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour to the Court of Queen's Bench when challenging Bills 5 and 6, Brown reviewed the role of labour in promoting and defending worker's rights and democracy in Saskatchewan and Canada.

This short book is essential reading for labour and civil rights activists.

Click HERE to purchase the book.

Preface to Trade Unions and Canadian Democracy

This overview of the relationship of organized labour to the political economy results from a case heard before Mr. Justice Dennis Ball of the Court of Queen’s Bench in 2011. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) and intervener unions challenged the constitutionality of the Public Service Essential Services Act (PSESA) known as Bill 5 and an Act to Amend the Trade Union Act (Bill 6) passed by the Wall government in 2008. It was argued that both Acts violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by interfering with the right to strike.

I was retained by the SFL as an “expert witness” because of my experience as a labour historian. This essay constitutes my submission to the Court. The submission was unchallenged by lawyers for the Wall Government and the employers who defended the legislation.

On February 6, 2012 Justice Ball ruled that the Public Service Essential Services Act (Bill 5) was unconstitutional in that it “infringes upon the freedom of association of employees protected by s. 2 (d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. He found amendments to the Trade Union Act (Bill 6) to be constitutional. While Justice Ball found the PSESA to be unconstitutional he suspended his ruling for twelve months with direction to the provincial government to make amendments to the legislation.

The overview provided in this submission tends to be somewhat limited in scope because of the exigencies of what was required for the case before the Court. However, I think the essay provides a useful introduction to the important role trade unions have played in defending the interests of not only their own members but of all working people and Canada in general. Indeed trade unions have played a major role in building and defending both political democracy and social and economic security. Medicare, Public education, universal suffrage, public pensions, statutory and annual paid holidays, hours of work, health and safety regulations, minimum wages, employment insurance, pay equity legislation are a short list of the many benefits Canadians enjoy thanks to more than a century of trade union struggle.

Trade unions, the welfare state and indeed democracy itself are now under constant attack. We must be ever mindful that an attack on trade unions is an attack on democracy.

Lorne A. Brown
Regina, Saskatchewan
August 2012

Lorne Brown is Professor Emeritus at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. His research specialties include labour history and civil liberties.

Out of province investors may be eyeing our pastures

Trevor Herriot's Grass Notes
September 12, 2012

Ten or twenty years after these signs disappear who will own the pastures?  

The Saskatchewan government says it wants to sell the federal pastures (until recently known as the PFRA or Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Association pastures) to local farmers. Ag minister Lyle Stewart says that they intend to sell the pastures one by one to the “patrons groups” made up of the cattle producers who have been grazing them.

That sounds so reasonable and nice, tugs at those strings we all keep in our stubblejumper hearts. What could be better than local Saskatchewan people banding together to gain control over the land that they need to raise their livestock? It’s almost like those first agricultural co-operatives we remember fondly from before the days of Viterra and NAFTA.

But hold on here. The price of land in this province is leaping well beyond the reach of the small to medium sized family farms that the Sask Party claims to embrace in its messaging. And the prices are expected to go higher. It’s tempting to blame the galloping land prices on the current government but unfortunately the Sask Party doesn’t have a corner on messing up the conditions small farmers depend on to make a living.

The “New” Saskatchewan: Oklahoma North?

By Simon Enoch
CCPA, Saskatchewan Office
September 14th, 2012

Of the litany of proposed changes contained in the Saskatchewan government’s Consultation Paper on the Renewal of Labour Legislation inSaskatchewan, the most pernicious is the suggestion that employees be allowed to opt out of paying union dues, yet still recieve the full benefits of union membership. This idea is dangerously reminiscent of U.S. right-to-work (RTW) laws that already pervade the American south and have recently been propsed in northern states like Wisconsin and Indiana.

If this is the direction the current government wants to move, then it is incumbent that the people of Saskatchewan recognize what the adoption of RTW laws entail, because it will not only effect union members, it will effect all workers in our province, unionized or not.

Despite the name, “right-to-work” laws are no guarantee of a job, if anything they are a guarantee of smaller paycheques for workers, more punitive management styles, unsafe work environments and lower standards-of-living.

Why Lake Winnipeg's Degradation is a Prairie-Wide Environmental Calamity

By Jim Harding 

No Nukes
September 11, 2012

Industrial-agricultural contaminants and Regina’s poorly treated sewage are degrading the Qu’Appelle Valley lake chain. This is a microcosm of a much larger and more devastating trend on the prairies. Waterways in southern Saskatchewan are part of the huge Lake Winnipeg drainage basin which covers one million square miles stretching across the three Prairie Provinces, part of Ontario and four US states. What’s happening downstream from Regina’s sewage, in the Qu’Appelle lakes, is happening on a more massive scale further downstream, as more pollutants from the vast Great Plains Basin go into Lake Winnipeg.

LAKE WINNIPEG

Lake Winnipeg is the 10th largest freshwater lake on earth; it’s now better known as the most chlorophyll-polluted lake on the planet. Massive algae blooms, covering up to 15,000 square km, now “strangle” Lake Winnipeg. These have increased by up to 500% since 1900. The eutrophication degrades aquatic biodiversity and creates deadly blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) which has increased a thousand-fold just since the 1990s. Canada is not just getting a bad environmental reputation for the tarsands; Lake Winnipeg is among the most ecologically-compromised of the world’s great freshwater lakes.

Captain Naphi and the great white mole

Miéville returns to the YA field with an homage to Moby Dick

BY YUTAKA DIRKS

BRIARPATCH MAGAZINE
SEPT. 1, 2012

Railsea
By China Miéville
Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 2012

China Miéville’s first novel for young adults, Un Lun Dun, was a playful and pun-filled deconstruction of classic fantasy tropes. With Railsea, Mieville returns to the YA field, this time playing it fairly straight.

The book pays homage to the classic seafaring adventure novels of Robert Louis Stevenson and Herman Melville’s masterpiece Moby Dick. But in place of roiling water and wooden ships, Miéville drops the reader into a post-apocalyptic world of dirt and steel. There are two layers to the sky and four to the world. The upsky is a toxic place filled with huge, dangerous air beasts. The downsky is the breathable air, stretching from the base of the highlands – which hold their own terrors – to the habitable lands of the continents. Below lies the flatearth, on which sit the twisting tracks and ties of the railsea, which rests above the caverns and beast trails of the subterrestrial.

The origin of the railsea is unknown. Some say the gods put down the train tracks or that they extruded from the ground like exposed fossils. Others say that the rails were written “in heavenly script, that people unknowingly recited as they travelled.”

Why the community pastures must not be sold

Trevor Herriot's Grass Notes

September 6, 2012

Mule deer on native grassland, by Hamilton Greenwood

There are many disturbing elements to the Saskatchewan Government’s plan to sell the more than 700,000 hectares of grassland habitat and grazing lands (see recent posts here), but the one that I think is most shocking of all is that Canadians no longer seem to even notice when the Government of the day sells off a massive piece of the Commons to private interests.

We sleepwalk while our elected leaders, following their blind faith in the private sector and the marketplace, sell the farm to avoid costs and bring revenue into a treasury that perhaps is not collecting as much potash revenue as they had projected.

If we do not speak out against this kind of action, the Brad Wall government is justified in believing its own ill-founded assumptions: i.e. environmental protection and policy is a hindrance to economic growth, and the economy comes first and if that means other things have to suffer, well that’s just the way it is. (Read Paul Hanley's excellent piece in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix this week for some thoughts on how the pastures might end up in the hands of out-of-province capital.)

The Strange Story Of The Man Behind 'Strange Fruit'

BY ELIZABETH BLAIR
NPR MUSIC

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EnlargeCourtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol

Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set.

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September 5, 2012

One of Billie Holiday's most iconic songs is "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of a lynching. But they might not realize that he's also tied to another watershed moment in America's history.

The man behind "Strange Fruit" is New York City's Abel Meeropol, and he really has two stories. They both begin at Dewitt Clinton High School, a public high school in the Bronx that has an astonishing number of famous people in its alumni. James Baldwin went there. So did Countee Cullen, Richard Rodgers, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Neil Simon, Richard Avedon and Ralph Lauren.

Meeropol graduated from Dewitt Clinton in 1921; he went on to teach English there for 17 years. He was also a poet and a social activist, says Gerard Pelisson, who wrote a book about the school.

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Evolution Of A Song: 'Strange Fruit'

In the late 1930s, Pellison says, Meeropol "was very disturbed at the continuation of racism in America, and seeing a photograph of a lynching sort of put him over the edge."

Meeropol once said the photograph "haunted" him "for days." So he wrote a poem about it, which was then printed in a teachers union publication. An amateur composer, Meeropol also set his words to music. He played it for a New York club owner — who ultimately gave it to Billie Holiday.

When Holiday decided to sing "Strange Fruit," the song reached millions of people. While the lyrics never mention lynching, the metaphor is painfully clear:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

In 1999, Time magazine named "Strange Fruit" the "song of the century." The Library of Congress put it in the National Recording Registry. It's been recorded dozens of times. Herbie Hancock andMarcus Miller did an instrumental version, with Miller evoking the poem on his mournful bass clarinet.

Miller says he was surprised to learn the song was written by a white Jewish guy from the Bronx. "Strange Fruit," he says, took extraordinary courage both for Meeropol to write and for Holiday to sing.

"The '60s hadn't happened yet," he says. "Things like that weren't talked about. They certainly weren't sung about."

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New York lawmakers didn't like "Strange Fruit." In 1940, Meeropol was called to testify before a committee investigating communism in public schools. They wanted to know whether the American Communist Party had paid him to write the song. They had not — but, like many New York teachers in his day, Meeropol was a Communist.

Journalist David Margolick, who wrote Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, says, "There are a million reasons to disparage communism now. But American Communism, one point it had in its favor was that it was concerned about civil rights very early."

Meeropol left his teaching job at Dewitt Clinton in 1945. He eventually quit the Communist Party.

And that's where the second part of Meeropol's story begins. The link is the pseudonym he used when writing poetry and music: Lewis Allan.

"Abel Meeropol's pen name 'Lewis Allan' were the names of their children who were stillborn, who never lived," says his son, Robert Meeropol. He and his older brother, Michael, were raised by Abel and his wife, Anne Meeropol, after the boys' parents — Ethel and Julius Rosenberg — were executed for espionage in 1953.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs had also been Communists.

EnlargeKeystone/Getty Images

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are taken to prison after being found guilty of nuclear espionage. They were subsequently executed.

The couple's trial and execution made national headlines, and there was also something of a salacious element, given that the Rosenbergs were a married couple. News accounts described it as "the first husband and wife to die in the electric chair."

At the time, the Rosenberg sons, Robert and Michael, were 6 and 10, respectively. News photographs of the boys show them dressed in suits visiting their parents in prison.

"They're these little boys and they're wearing these caps, and they look so young and so vulnerable. It's really a very poignant image," says Margolick.

Robert Meeropol says that in the months following his parents' execution, it was unclear who would take care of him and his brother. It was the height of McCarthyism. Even family members were fearful of being in any way associated with the Rosenbergs or Communism.

Then, at a Christmas party at the home of W.E.B. Du Bois, the boys were introduced to Abel and Anne Meeropol. A few weeks later, they were living with them.

"One of the most remarkable things was how quickly we adapted," Robert says. "First of all, Abel, what I remember about him as a 6-year-old was that he was a real jokester. He liked to tell silly jokes and play word games, and he would put on these comedy shows that would leave me rolling."

There is something else about Abel Meeropol that seems to connect the man who wrote "Strange Fruit" to the man who created a loving family out of a national scandal. "He was incredibly softhearted," Robert says.

EnlargeCourtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol

Anne Meeropol plays a song on guitar for her sons, Robert and Michael.

For example, there was an old Japanese maple tree in their backyard, which sent out many new seedlings every year.

"I was the official lawnmower," Robert says, "and I was going to mow over them, and he said, 'Oh, no, you can't kill the seedlings!' I said, 'What are you going to do with them, Dad? There are dozens of them.'

"Well, he dug them up and put them in coffee cans and lined them up along the side of the house. And there were hundreds of them. But he couldn't bring himself to just kill them. It was just something he couldn't do."

Abel Meeropol died in 1986. His sons, Robert and Michael, both became college professors. They're also both involved in social issues. Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children. And he says that even after all these years, he still finds himself unable to kill things in his own garden.

Labour Day celebrated across the province

CUPE Saskatchewan
September 3, 2012

REGINA – Over 2, 000 people attended the Labour Day event held by the Legislative Building today in Regina enjoying the warm weather, free barbeque, entertainment and many booths offering prizes, treats and family friendly activities. Similar events were held across the province honouring the union movement’s dedication to improving working conditions and creating a better standard of living for everyone.

In Canada, Labour Day was first celebrated in 1872 when a strike by the Toronto Printers’ Union inspired a parade in support of their cause that grew to 10,000 people - one tenth of the city’s population. The printers were seeking a shorter work week at a time when working 12 hour or more every day of the week was common. Workers also faced harsh working conditions with very low pay and no legal protections or rights. When Labour Day was declared an official holiday in 1894, it was only the second holiday observed in a year.

Many of the benefits first won by unions are enjoyed by all workers today, including maternity leave, vacation pay and occupational health and safety laws. When unions stand up for fairness, they raise the bar for everyone

Radical left set for huge gains in Dutch election

By Steve McGiffen

SpectreZine

September 5, 2012

The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is not a social democratic or labour party, but the biggest radical left parliamentary party in Europe, with the exception of the Cypriot AKEL and, since the recent election, Greece’s Syriza.

Unlike either of those otherwise worthy formations, however, the Dutch SP has a very clear critique of the European Union.

It has opposed each and every EU Treaty, as well as the euro, and successfully campaigned for a “no’ vote in the referendum on the European Constitution.

The Beatles as Marxist Minstrels

MARXIST MINSTRELS: THE BEATLES WANT TO SEXUALLY HYPNOTIZE YOU INTO COMMUNISM!

By Amber Frost
Dangerous Minds
September 3, 20122012



If you’re like me, you can’t resist a good piece of moral panic red-baiting propaganda, especially when it’s directed at a social phenomenon that seems so chaste by today’s standards. As luck might have it, I recently came across the 1974 opus, The Marxist Minstrels: A Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music, by the good Reverend David A. Noebel.

Evangelical tracts denouncing rock ‘n’ roll, especially as related to either homosexuality or “race mixing,” aren’t hard to find if you scour antique shops in middle America, but as something of a connoisseur of the genre, I have yet to find a piece of literature that so succinctly combines the collective fears of old, white, crazy, Christian dudes. David Noebel, ordained in 1961, started his illustrious career with the above pamphlet, Communism, Hypnotism, and The Beatles. He saw the rise of Beatlemania as the result of Communist indoctrination via hypnosis (yup, just like the title), a thesis he developed more thoroughly in his 1964 book, Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, the Communist Master Music Plan. The book transitioned from The Beatles to folk artists, focusing on Bob Dylan, his colleagues, and their earlier influences. This is at least slightly more understandable, when one considers the political leanings of the folk movement, frequently with explicit anti-racist, pro-labor lyrics.

The Political Uses of Public Space: A Podcast of Craig Heron’s Talk on Labour Day Parades

ACTIVEHISTORY.CA
NOVEMBER 28, 2011

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Over the past few weeks, cities across Canada have evicted Occupy protesters from camping overnight in public parks. Opinion remains divided over the tactics of the amorphous movement. One lawyer recently defended the group by arguing in court that the occupation of Toronto’s St. James Park was a “physical manifestation of the exercise of … conscience.” In other words, the medium is the message. But some residents living in the area expressed that they felt threatened, and local businesses complained about a loss in revenue. A Toronto judge ruled that the reasonable limits clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms overrides the protesters’ particular means of freedom of expression. Last Wednesday, police evicted the final protesters from the park.

The use of public space for political protest has a long and contested history in Canada. Historian Craig Heron recently presented a timely talk entitled “Labour on the March: 150 Years of Labour Parades in Toronto.” He began his presentation by pointing out the Occupy movement’s uses of the street. For example, protesters in Toronto had used their bodies to form a “99” (as in “99 percent”) at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas Streets while media helicopters hovered above. People move through streets to communicate a message, Heron argued. Historically, parades have been an “extremely important form of mass communication,” and it was one way in which labour demanded respect within wider Canadian society during the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Heron’s talk comes from research for his 2005 book The Workers’ Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada, which he co-wrote with Steve Penfold. The talk is available here for audio download.

The presentation was part of the 2011 History Matters lecture series, which gave the public an opportunity to connect with working historians and discover some of the many and surprising ways in which the past shapes the present. This year’s talks focused on two themes: labour and environmental history. Some of these presentations are now available in our podcast section. Stay tuned for recordings of subsequent talks from the series.

Clint Eastwood was right. Hollywood can be quietly, yet profoundly, conservative

By Tim Stanley 

The Telegraph

September 1, 2012

Dirty Harry captured the conservative mood of the early 1970s

Clint Eastwood got one thing right during his senior moment at the Republican convention: Hollywood isn’t all liberal. The first time Clint gained serious press attention in national politics was 1972, when he was invited by President Richard Nixon to attend his nominating convention in Miami. Nixon was a movie buff who understood the power of Hollywood. In 72, he wanted to use specific celebrity endorsements to shape the way that the public understood him. He wanted Democrats like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr to show that he was a centrist and he wanted Old Hollywood to evoke nostalgia for a happier, more traditional age. When Nixon held a meet-and-greet for actors at his West coast mansion, one guest called it “a cocktail party at the Hollywood wax museum.”

Commentators at the time were sniffy about Nixon’s Hollywood strategy precisely because its choice of symbols seemed so passé. The 1970s are remembered for experimental liberal film making – Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, All The President’s Men etc. The hot talent of the time was Left-leaning, even hippie – Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Warren Beatty. But Nixon understood that movie politics is just as diverse as its many genres. Individual movies can be interpreted in multiple ways. The Godfather was meant as an attack on hyper-masculinity and even a parody of Nixon, but it became part of a revival of white ethnic nostalgia. It could be argued that the Corleone family’s patriarchy offers a seductive alternative to bureaucratic welfarism.

Labour Day reminds us that union membership benefits Saskatchewan

CUPE Saskatchewan

Labour Day was Canada’s second official holiday when it was declared 118 years ago and, at the time, Canadian workers had unimaginably long work weeks and none of the benefits and improvements to the conditions of work we have achieved when celebrating Labour Day on September 3, 2012. In the lead up to Labour Day, CUPE is highlighting the work of unions.

“Unions pioneered through action, advocacy, and protest many of the improvements to workplace rights workers rely on today for protection and fairness,” says Tom Graham, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Saskatchewan. “Overtime pay, maternity leave, minimum wage, health benefits, access to decent pensions and health and safety laws are largely the result of unions. Saskatchewan people can count on unions and our members to continue our work advocating for a better standard of living for everyone.”

Graham points to a recent report released by the Canadian Labour Congress which concludes Saskatchewan’s union members contributed over $26.1 million each and every week to the provincial economy supporting local businesses and community services last year. In Regina, the contribution of union members in 2011 was an extra $7.3 million each week to the local economy. In Saskatoon, union members contributed an extra $8.5 million each week in 2011.

“Union membership is proven to benefit the economy of Saskatchewan by raising the purchasing power of the middle class translating into well over a billion dollars last year in support for local businesses, community services and bolstering the tax base for our province’s municipalities,” says Graham. “This Labour Day, let’s recognize the work of unions and their members in our economy and the proud history of unions in leading the way for better work and working conditions.”

Find a labour day event near you.

Labour Day 2012: Get ready to rumble

BY MORNA BALLANTYNE, STEVEN STAPLES

RABBLE.CA

AUGUST 31, 2012

Regina Labour Day parade, 1913

The Labour Day picnics and parades might be the calm before the storm for the labour movement this fall. On top of terrible job losses in manufacturing and resource industries, governments in Canada are sharpening their swords, preparing to do battle with the country's trade unions.

It's not just unions that should be worried. The lagging economy is failing all Canadians, whether in unions or not. Historically, the trade union movement has played a pivotal role in turning things around and raising living standards for everyone. But the political and bargaining strengths of unions are at one of the lowest points in decades, and opponents are preparing to take advantage of this weakened state.

In Ottawa, the Harper Conservatives have been drawing up war plans. When Parliament returns in a few weeks, a committee will be considering a Conservative private member's bill that would force unions to reveal unprecedented financial information, handing employers intelligence that could be used against their employees' unions.

Electoral Platform of Québec solidaire

Thanks to Socialist Project.

In the spirit of a resolution adopted by the 5th Congress of Quebec Solidaire, the positions in the platform are arranged thematically, following the alphabetical order of the French original, which does not denote a priority or order of importance.

Download pdf  HERE.