Housing As A Right

Should housing be a right. That is the question. But the real question is what would that mean and how do we make it more than a token right but an actual effective right.

In North America we had this mythology that everyone could own their own home. That has never been true. The closest we have come is at the peak of unionization when unions brought much of the working class into the middle class. But then the capitalist owners of the means of production moved the means of production to low wage countries and left the auto industry as the remaining remnant of what was once an industrial economy. They then transformed the service industry to a piece-work model, much of it based on “apps” that pretended low wage workers were independent contractors not entitled to the protection of employment and labour laws. This returned us to a state where the dream of home ownership was limited to the wealthy and professional classes.

However this myth led governments to create tax advantages for home ownership that distorted the housing market leading it to be dominated by much larger than necessary energy wasting homes which contributed to the creation of urban sprawl.

So how do we create housing as a right for everyone.

If housing is actually to be a right then everyone one must have access to decent and properly maintained housing at an affordable cost. The private sector will not provide this.

North America needs to take a more European approach where public sector housing is not relegated to the poorest of the poor but is available to the general population. Funding needs to be provided to eliminate public housing waiting lists and provide necessary maintenance. Co-operative housing needs to be encouraged and facilitated with government assistance. Living in publicly provided housing has to be normalized rather than stigmatized.

Fortunately the solution to the funding problem is the same as the solution to all public expenditure programs. Society has the money, it is just improperly distributed through an economic and political system that has created excessive financial inequality. The answer lies in taxing corporations and the wealthy appropriately, especially the excessive wealthy.

The private sector can still play a role as long as they realize the slumlord model is no longer an option with affordable decent publicly provided housing available to everyone. And they must accept that with housing as a right no one can be evicted without somewhere else to go.

Imagining A Post Capitalist World

This is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis but an imagining of some of the features of a post capitalist world.

OK lets get this over with first. The first thing we will notice is the numbers we use to measure the success of a capitalist economy, GDP, GNP and economic growth will look bad. That is because the goals of the new economy will not be excessive production, consumption, energy waste and unsustainable growth. The new economy will be based on people not stuff. While our so-called standard of living will decline our quality of life will increase.

Because of higher minimum wages and a Guaranteed Basic Income everyone will have at least a comfortable modest life with adequate housing and all their basic needs met because there are enough resources to provide this when there is not excessive inequality and waste by the excessively wealthy.

Excessive inequality will be eliminated because of an aggressive progressive tax system based on the principle that everyone should contribute to the society/economy based on their ability.

Everyone, not just the very wealthy, will finally benefit from the use of machines to increase productivity and most drudge work will now be done by machines. The effect will be that everyone will have reduced working hours for a shorter period of their life. Work will no longer be a necessity to survive but something people crave for the fulfillment it brings to their lives.

Because of a societal decision all work requiring intelligence or decision making will be reserved for human beings.

Elimination of the exploitative capitalist practice of producing goods in low wage countries will see the elimination of excessive wasted energy transporting goods as most food will be produced within 100 kilometres of where it is consumed and other goods within 500 kilometres.

With increased time for themselves education will be an important part of everyone’s life and as with health care, treated as a public good and paid for collectively. Arts and culture, theatre and music, will be emphasized with the emphasis on local artists and productions (rather than overpriced “superstars”) as well as outdoor recreation.

Small businesses, where the owner earns his income by working in the business, will be encouraged and supported. For large enterprises, ownership and control of the means of production (factories, computer facilities, etc) will reside with the workers producing the products or providing the services, most often through co-operatives, except for public services like education, health care and public utilities where control and ownership will reside with the people through their democratically elected governments. All workers will have an effective, not just theoretical, right to join a union and bargain collectively.

The overall philosophy of the society/economy will be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

On Being a “Boomer”

Generations

When I was growing up in the 1950s and onward there was not all this talk about generations that seems to have become a fascination of the last twenty years. Although I became aware of the baby boom and even the term baby boomers (now apparently just boomers), I instinctively assumed the baby boomers were the people that had the babies. It was only recently that I realized that it referred to the children and I was one of them.

Indeed the original ideas for this blog had nothing to do with boomers but was simply to recount how lucky I was to be born at this time and live through all these changes, particularly the technological ones. But since labelling us folks born during this time as boomers seems to be the in thing I thought I might as well go with the flow, thus the title of this post.

This meant at least some cursory research into generations which Wikipedia explains this way. But the first thing I learned is that these generations are simply time periods people talk about in their own ways. There are no officially defined generational periods, no consensus on what the names of these periods are and not even a consensus on how long a generation is, even within individual generational schemes. So it's a good thing I am not talking about generations but just my time on this planet.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s

The 1950s and 1960s, at least in northern Ontario, was a great time to grow up. It was a time when all elementary school kids could walk or bike to school because we had eight room neighbourhood schools. Yes, we didn't have proper gymnasiums or any sort of shop rooms, or even libraries, but we managed without that until high school. There were no computer rooms because there were no computers, It was a time when on weekends we could wander away wherever to play in the rocks and bush by the railroad tracks and creek and the slag dump. We could bike all over town and once I even biked all the way to our camp (cottage for you non-northerners).

Progressing into the high school period, school spirit was a big thing. Anyone from Sudbury remember the school lunch bag contests ? Music was the other big thing. School dances always featured live bands. When the bands took their breaks and records where put on everybody stopped dancing. The groups were often other high school kids. Anyone remember The Sound Expressway. Local Battle of the Bands contests were a regular affair usually emceed by one of the local DJs who were more than minor celebrities in their time. Radio was our main source of music, and calling in requests and dedications were what you did while doing your homework and listening to your favourite DJ on the radio. Remember G. Michael Cranston.

Unions and the Middle Class

One of the most important facts about this time was the role of the labour movement and the fact that the 1950s was a time when we still built things in North America. Unions enlarged the middle class from being just the professional and merchant class to include working people enabling me to have a middle class upbringing and life as the son of a hard rock miner.

Public Health Care

It was in 1947 that Medicare, as our public health care system is known, was first introduced in Saskatchewan, and it was adopted by the federal government and all provinces during the 1950s and 1960s.

Social Change

The period from 1950 until present day was a pretty good time to be a heterosexual white male Canadian of European descent. If you did not fit that category (or even if you did) it was a period of great opportunity to fight for social progress. This included the 1960s and 1970s, decades defined by battles for social change, particularly on university campuses. Laurentian University at the time was known as the Berkeley of the North, It included the civil rights movement, women's liberation movement, LGBTQ rights movement, and the adoption of multiculturalism in Canada.

From the 1950s to current day we saw a huge change in the role of women in the workforce and economy (and the role of men in the home and family) and we saw the LGBTQ community advance from being whispered about in the shadows to fully accepted members of society.

This is not to say that discrimination, bigotry, racism, misogynism, etc no longer exists but we have matured as a society to where inclusion and diversity are accepted Canadian values. We have come a long way.

The Peace Movement and The War Against The War

No discussion of the time of the baby boom generation would be complete without mentioning the struggle against the Vietnam War, the War Against The War waged during the 1960s, inspired by a long history of the Peace movement, and more particularly the late 1950s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Canada played it's part as "Vietnam War resisters were welcomed as heroes in Canada" (Montreal Gazette).

It was perhaps the generation's most defining moment.

Technology

Indeed I could talk much more about social change during this period but these advances were not the original motivation for this post. Rather it was to talk about how we were so fortunate to live through this period of technological advances. Other periods of history have seen technological advances such as the printing press, industrialization, still and moving picture photography, the telegraph and radio, but never so much so fast as this era from television to the Internet, where we have in many cases surpassed science fiction.

Television

I was three years old in Sudbury when television was first available to the city. Although it was a few or several years before TV ownership became widespread enough that we had one I was old enough to remember first getting television. I guess one could call it our generation's “screen time” although we were not nearly as enamoured with it as people seem to be with “screens” these days. It was something that amused us when we were finished our homework and it was too dark to go out and play or early weekend mornings before we went to meet our friends.

But that was just the beginning. Those of us born in the 1950s would see television go through many evolutionary stages from the development of cable television with cable only channels to streaming services over the Internet. Cable and satellite television came to be dominant over broadcast TV and may soon be supplanted by Internet streaming. We may even see the complete end of traditional broadcast television in my lifetime.

And of course. the the quality of the picture has improved with the quality of the screens used to watch it. First with the introduction of colour and then flat screens replacing CRT tubes along with higher resolution images for much better picture quality.

As to content, that has evolved in two directions, while production values have improved and the amount of high quality content has increased, the multi-channel universe has created space for an increasing amount of crap (can you say reality TV) on our screens.

Computers and Personal Computers

While the history of computers can be traced back to Charles Babbage in the 1800s, the first commercial computer UNIVAC was put into service in 1951. The early commercial computers were first designed and produced to perform specific tasks for specific customers. General purpose computers came later. The programming language COBOL was develop in 1953 and Fortran in 1954. The IBM System/360 was first produced in 1964. These mainframe computers revolutionized business and industry. The revolutionizing of our personal lives would come later.

We got our first personal computer in 1981, an Osborne 1, the world's first portable computer. It was a powerful computer with a 4.0 mHz processer and 64K RAM and two 92K 5.25 inch disk drives. $2,500 Canadian with another $800 for an Epson 9 pin dot matrix printer. A huge 10 Mb hard drive was available for $10,000. But this was a powerful machine for it's time. It was usable out of the box with bundled software, including WordStar and SuperCalc, plus MBASIC and CBASIC, and the CP/M operating system, a suite of software worth the price of the computer by themselves. We also managed to acquire a cope of dBASE II.

Previous personal computers were aimed at computer hobbyists and nerds who wanted to learn about computers and programming. The Osborne 1 was one of a new group of computers designed as productivity tools. This was only the start of the personal computer revolution which soon saw ordinary people with computers more powerful than the ones that put a man on the moon sitting on their desks.

Indeed, Wordstar made writing so much easier and SuperCalc allowed for financial wizardry on the Osborne 1. But Dbase II was the most interesting and fun with it's own programming language. My first big Dbase II project was creating an Index to The Portable Companion, the magazine for users of Osborne portable computers. My most ambitious project was creating a prototype key word indexing system for Hansard, the House of Commons Debates, and a computerized voting record database, at least 10 years before the House of Commons developed their own much more powerful Publication Search system.

Our next personal computer was an IBM XT clone, that ran MS-DOS, and following that new machines about every three years till we purchased our current machine on April 12 2013, with Windows 7, now running Windows 10.

Indeed it was quite a surprise when I checked back to see when I purchased this current machine. This is a clear sign that personal computing has matured and the average user does not need any more computing power. Of course gaming is a different matter. Putting a man on the moon did not require fancy 4k video imaging and fast graphics. It just required number crunching. Which is why it required much less computing power than making a game about it. That is also why today it is home computers that need more power and capability than business machines – number crunching requires much less power than high definition video.

But yet we may be soon coming full circle to the pre-home computing days when computing involved dumb terminals connected to main frames. The tech industry seems to want to go that way with all your applications and even personal data storage in the amorphous “cloud“ (a network server somewhere), somewhere in the great unknown.

Computer Networks from BBSs to the Internet

But home computers were not just for nerds sitting at home looking at a screen and writing programs. The first home computers soon led to computing networks that were the forerunner of the internet, computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) that allowed users to to share their knowledge via discussion forums and also share software via download capability. I used at least one BBS to share my index of The Portable Companion. Surprisingly, they still exist .

However they were replaced to a certain degree by larger proprietary online service providers like CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. These systems provided information services, online forums, messaging services, downloadable files and programs, etc.. They were the forerunner to the Internet but they were proprietary corporate systems. They were very much like Facebook except it was very clear how you paid for access, with a monetary subscription fee. They died off, essentially by transforming themselves into Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as users embraced the open Internet, preferring that to getting all their online information from one commercial source (until Facebook).

Then came the The Internet but it was not accessible to the general public until Free-nets provided that access.

The word mark Free-Net was a registered trademark of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), founded in 1989 by Tom Grundner at Case Western Reserve University. NPTN was a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing and developing, free, public access, digital information and communication services for the general public.[4] It closed operations in 1996, filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.[5] However, prior use of the term created some conflicts.[6] NPTN distributed the software package FreePort, developed at Case Western Reserve, that was used and licensed by many of the free-net sites.

Any person with a personal computer, or through access from public terminal in libraries, could register for accounts on a free-net, and was assigned an email address. Other services often included Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms, IRC, telnet, and archives of community information, delivered either with text-based Gopher software or later the World-Wide Web. (Source: Free-net - Wikipedia )

In Ottawa it was the National Capital FreeNet (NCF) that provided the public with not only access to the Internet of the time but also access to e-mail, which started a communications revolution of it's own. The free-nets also provided a way for community organizations to reach the public, not only in their home communities but internationally as the free-nets were all inter-connected via the Internet. At this time the Internet was completely non-corporate and there was a huge debate, the conclusion of which was clearly predictable though not so obvious at the time, about whether corporations should have access to the Internet. It would certainly be different if that had gone the other way.

At the start of the free-nets the World Wide Web had not been developed so the FreePort menu system provided the accessibility that would later be provided by the web.

As an early member of the NCF, user ab190, I was also one of it's first “information providers” operating an information service for the Bridlewood Residents Hydro Line Committee on FreePort which later became the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields Information Service on the World Wide Web. It was one of and possibly the first NCF information services to move from Freeport to the Web. One of my proudest moments was when the World Health Organization (WHO) linked to the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields Information Service.

I took it offline when I stopped updating it but the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) Information Service is available on a mirror site provided by The Swedish Association for the Electro HyperSensitive - www.feb.se (FEB Sweden), in it's final state.

When the Internet became easily available via high speed broadband through DSL or Cable Internet the need for the free-nets disappeared, though many, like the National Capital Freenet became non-commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) aimed at making the Internet available to as many people as possible.

Communications Replaces Computing

With the Internet computers became as much a communications tool as a data, word and image processing tool and newer technologies to come would lead to a dominance of communications over computing in our electronic devices. Telephones (nobody calls them that anymore) would be marketed for their photographic capabilities and voice conversations would be their least important use.

And it all started with Agent 86 and his shoe phone. Once the purview of science fiction now it seems every ten year old has a compact portable videophone that is rarely used for making phone calls. Desktop computers are the rare purview of computer gamers and purists like me who prefer a larger screen and a desk to sit at to do my computing which still includes not just communication but a lot of writing and some photo processing. For most people laptop or notebook computers have replaced the standard desktop and some folks just rely on the new fangled tablets, for their entertainment, information and communications needs.

The smartphone has replaced the personal computer as the electronic device of choice and it may only be a matter of time until the smartwatch (which may even include a minor timekeeping function) will replace that.

Smart homes

Smart homes are the latest tech trend. Well actually not so new as the first article cited below points out: 'In 1975, the first general purpose home automation network technology, X10, was developed. It is a communication protocol for electronic devices.“

I certainly recall many years ago homes being built pre-wired with Ethernet (and sometimes also Coaxial) cable for home networking. The individual components like programmable home thermostats and video monitoring systems accessible from the Internet and of course remote controlled lighting systems just to mention a few have been available for quite awhile.

What is new is the use of voice commands yelled at tabletop orbs as the hub of smart home controls. In reality I doubt any serious smart home will be controlled that way. It will much more likely be via a dedicated control panel that is probably also accessible on a computer or tablet, perhaps even smartphone or watch via the Internet.

Smart home resources

Home automation - Wikipedia

The Best Smart Home Devices of 2020 - CNET

The Best Smart Home Devices for 2020 | PCMag

Smart home for beginners: How to lay a foundation you can build on | TechHive

Conclusion

This period since the birth of the baby boomers has certainly been one of technological change, though not all of it progress. While much of the world still lives in abject poverty another portion lives in relative wealth, some absurdly so. I have not mentioned all of the technological “wonders” the age has bestowed upon us, some of them just plain silly like electric plug in air fresheners and refrigerators that talk to your milk cartons so they can order new milk when you run out. My “favourite” misuse of technology are automobiles now being marketed, not for having the best engines or transmissions, but the best “infotainment system”.

Being a baby boomer is about living through change.

Postscript

I started talking about the gains made by the working class through the union movement during the baby boom years (1946-1964), gains we can actually thank the previous generations, including the so-called Silent Generation, for. They may have been silent but they were very active having been responsible for much of labour and civil rights movements and having built a more equal society.

That society has over the years become increasingly unequal, not only between the developed and third world but also within the so called developed world, with the latest generations, the so-called Millennials and Generation Z, becoming perhaps the first in recorded history to be worse off economically than the previous generations (except for a select few who control the economic system, what one might call the means of production). Their challenge is perhaps the greatest, to build a truly just and sustainable society, one that I discuss here: THE FIFTH COLUMN: Towards a Green Social Democratic Economy.

Started Enjoying Our New Community Mail Box Last Week

I know as a progressive I am supposed to oppose the transition to community mailboxes (CMBs) for all urban and suburban residents but logic prevents me from doing so. Indeed this only seems to have become an issue when it was announced that downtown urban areas would join suburban areas in the use of CMBs.

Our New Community Mailbox

Perhaps I see this differently because I live in a community (Bridlewood in Kanata/Ottawa) where 90% of households have always had community mailboxes (CMBs). It was a year or two after we moved here in 1979 that all new households had CMBs so we were somewhat of an anomaly having door to door delivery and I always thought that didn't make sense. There was no difference in neighbourhoods other than the dates our houses were built.

As Canada Post states:

Ten million Canadian households – or about two thirds of all households in Canada – already receive their mail at a centralized point away from their front door, such as at a community mailbox, a mail panel in an apartment building or condominium, a rural post office, or a curbside rural mailbox. Of these ten million households, four million receive their mail at a community mailbox. Over the next five years, the conversion to community mailboxes will impact about five million Canadian households – or about one third of all households in Canada – that still receive door-to-door delivery.

I do not recall any great protests when CMBs were introduced in the suburbs and all of the problems we hear about regarding CMBs do not seem to exist. There are senior citizens living in these neighbourhood with CMBs, and houses with wheelchair ramps and the residents choose to live here despite the CMBs and seem to be able to cope.

I find it somewhat insulting to suggest that senior citizens cannot walk a block or two to a CMB. I am just approaching Old Age Pension age and I do over 5 km hikes in the forest with a woman in her mid 80s. We are perfectly capable of walking to our mailboxes.

As for people with mobility issues, mail delivery is the least of their problems compared to grocery shopping, doctors appointments, etc. Much more comprehensive solutions and services are required for them, rather than making postal service inefficient for everyone.

Those that live in neighbourhoods already served by CMBs have already found solutions. And while Canada Post has also offered help in such cases, I expect most people would forego the bureaucratic process required by Canada Post and simply ask a neighbour to pick up their mail.

The fact is there are real issues regarding postal service. With the Internet and email people are simply not using the postal service the way they did before. There is considerably more junk mail being delivered than first class mail although there is a potential for more parcel deliveries.

Having letter carriers walking the street bypassing most houses or simply delivering junk mail is simply not efficient. There have been suggestions of reducing deliveries to three days a week but when we are receiving something important we want it as soon as possible. The alternative of using CMBs has already been proven to work for about 30 years.

The other new factor is the increase in online shopping and the resultant increase in parcel deliveries, Prior to being transitioned to a CMB parcel deliveries either meant the parcel was left on our front step as an invitation to theft or we had to go to a postal outlet the next day to pick it up. Now small and medium size parcels are left in a locked CMB compartment and we only have to make a trip to pick up very large parcels. And all mail is now in a locked compartment rather than an unlocked mailbox on our house like the vast majority of people in our neighbourhood.

However Canada Post could certainly have been more forthcoming and transparent in how they went about this. I recall the announcement a few years previous that all mail carriers would be using vehicles for their deliveries. That did not make sense unless they knew what was coming. They obviously did but did not want to tell anyone their plans. That is when they should have started letting the public and their workers know the direction they were moving.

Jobs are important but inefficiency is not a sustainable way of maintaining jobs in the long term. However, rather than the wishy-washy Canada Post response of we don't expect any individuals to lose their jobs they should have provided a job guarantee for all existing letter carriers. Attrition, retirement and increased parcel deliveries should easily allow that.

They should also make a firm commitment that all new parcel delivery services will be provided by unionized Canada Post employees under the terms of their collective agreements.

Our New Community Mailbox Seen From End of Our Driveway

But there is something worth fighting over, and I wish there was a bigger battle over this with more public support, and that is the privatization of retail postal services and the transfer of the responsibility for our mail from decently paid full time unionized employees hired and vetted by Canada Post to part time minimum wage retail clerks. That is a battle I can get behind.

Working Class Hero - Rest In Peace

Hated by some members of the public, André Cornellier always put his members first - a true Working Class Hero



Ottawa Citizen Obituary

Workers Win (Local 6500 vs VALE INCO)

They say nobody wins in a strike and certainly after a year the workers will never regain the income they lost and the company will never regain it's lost production, and in this case the extra expenses incurred on scabs and security to pretend they were operating normally.

But we have to look a lot further than that in this case, to the objectives of both sides, to declare a winner.

The objective of the Brazilian based VALE was to bring their Sudbury operations in line with their operations in third world developing countries, by dictating rather than negotiating a concessions only contract, and in the process break the workers union.

They clearly failed in that goal. Although it took a year long strike they were finally forced to negotiate and realize that Sudbury is not Brazil or Indonesia. The workers proved their solidarity ending their strike stronger than before and a whole new cadre of union activists were created.

The workers struck for a "fair deal" and negotiated a contract that included some gains and was a far cry from the original dictated terms of the company. The deal included cost of living increases to keep up with inflation as well as additional increases raising their real incomes. It did include some changes to the bonus system but much less than originally proposed, and while it included a new pension system for new hires it was much improved from the original proposal, and there were also improvements to the pension plan for current employees. On top of that was a signing bonus and substantial early retirement incentives to avoid layoffs. It is an agreement that while clearly not a "good deal", under the circumstances can be called a "fair deal".

It was unfortunate that it took a year long strike, with it's subsequent loss of production, to teach VALE that it has to respect their Sudbury workforce and negotiate with them rather than dictate to them, if they expect to operate in this country.

And the workers, and their union, now stronger than ever, have five years to prepare and save up for the next round of negotiations where they can build on the gains in this contract. Hopefully VALE will have learned their lesson and it will not require another year long strike before they start to negotiate. There may even be hope that a new respectful relationship with their Sudbury workers can be built during these five years.

The Fifth Column again congratulates the members of Local 6500 on their solidarity.

An Activist's Viewpoint

Congratulations Brothers and Sisters

Congratulations to Local 6500 on Your Solidarity - One Year Stronger

Sudbury, Port Colborne – United Steelworkers (USW) members in Sudbury and Port Colborne, Ont., voted today to end their year-long strike against mining giant Vale, approving a new collective agreement.

USW Local 6500 members in Sudbury voted 75% in favour of the new contract, while Local 6200 members in Port Colborne ratified the deal by a 74% margin.

“Our members have spoken and I believe everyone respects the decisions they have made in extremely difficult circumstances,” said Wayne Fraser, the USW’s District Director for Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

“We congratulate our members for the determination, spirit and solidarity they demonstrated over the last year in their unprecedented struggle against this huge multinational corporation,” said USW Local 6200 President Wayne Rae.

“We also extend our sincere appreciation to our community for its tremendous support throughout the last year and to the countless people, unions and other groups around the world who demonstrated incredible international solidarity with our members,” said John Fera, President of USW Local 6500.

Highlights of the new collective agreement, which runs until May 31, 2015, include:

- Across-the-board, hourly wage increases with cost-of-living increases each of the five years. Thus, bringing the wage hike to between $2.25 and $2.50 an hour over the life of the agreement.

- Improvements to the existing Defined Benefit Pension Plan increasing to $41,400 per year, with cost-of-living indexing for life, along with life-time health care benefits.

- A Defined Contribution Pension Plan for new hires that provides for Company contributions equal to 8% of employees’ regular basic earnings. As well, employees will be able to make additional contributions ranging from 2% to 6% of regular earnings, with matching contributions from the Company subject to certain limits. The new plan also will include Long Term Disability coverage for employees.

- As a result of sustained, hard-fought negotiations, the nickel bonus program will allow employees to earn up to $15,000 annually in addition to regular earnings.

“For the last 12 months our members have stood together in the face of incredible adversity,” Fraser said. “They demonstrated tremendous character and they can hold their heads high as they return to work.”

“As our brothers in Voisey’s Bay NLF head into negotiations, our members in Sudbury and Port Colborne will remain in solidarity with them as they continue to fight for the fair deal they deserve,” said Fraser.

Sudbury's Leo Gerard Channels Joe Hill

"If it takes civil disobedience," so be it, said Gerard. "We're not going to walk away from our jobs or our fathers' and grandfathers' jobs just because Vale says so. We'll fill every goddamned jail if that's what it takes."

Sudbury's Leo Gerard, as reported in The Sudbury Star:

United Steelworkers International President Leo Gerard is refusing to apologize for two controversial statements he has made during the 9 1/2-month strike by more than 3,000 Steelworkers.

Gerard will not say he is sorry for telling Sudbury in September that if business owners were not for striking Steelworkers, then they were against them.

Nor should anyone expect Gerard to say he regrets telling The Sudbury Star two weeks ago that USW will not allow Vale Inco to return to full production without its unionized production and maintenance workers.

"If it takes civil disobedience," so be it, said Gerard. "We're not going to walk away from our jobs or our fathers' and grandfathers' jobs just because Vale says so. We'll fill every goddamned jail if that's what it takes."

Gerard and his union have taken a good deal of heat for both of his remarks.

But the Steelworker who began with Inco's transportation department 45 years ago before rising to the top job with the international union said he is not taking either comment back.

And it is about time my brothers and sisters in Sudbury said no to scabs doing their jobs.



Joe Hill: last seen on a picket line in Sudbury

Sudbury's Leo Gerard Speaks on West Virginia Coal Mining Disaster

Sudbury Steelworkers Stand Strong in Solidarity

88.7% Congratulations Brothers and Sisters.




Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Local 6500 - Six Months Stronger

We'll only get through this in solidarity. I want to make this crystal clear that I stand with you in this dispute. You are my citizens and I stand with you, my citizens, shoulder to shoulder in this struggle.

John Rodriguez, Mayor, Greater City of Sudbury

Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Dedicated to My Father and My Brothers and Sisters on the INCO Picket Lines

My father, was a hard rock miner, a construction leader at INCO's Frood Stobie mine, who died too early as a result of a medical condition from working underground.

I remember the first INCO strike (and all of those since). I was only eight years old in 1958 but as a miner's son even then I understood that it was about fairness, rights and dignity. Although we did not have much under the tree that year we still had a good family Christmas filled with love.

If there was one thing I learned from my father it was solidarity and to never cross a picket line. Indeed as a student working at INCO to pay for my university education I walked the line with my brothers and sisters. That people are crossing the lines in Sudbury is astounding to me, as is the fact that they are allowed to. Perhaps it is just a different time than when I grew up in Sudbury.

You can read more about the proud history of Sudbury's INCO workers and their unions here: A Short History of Sudbury Labour by Mick Lowe

Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Michael Moore Honours Sudbury Workers

As the National Post reports:

There were some improbable guests on the red carpet last night at the premiere of Michael Moore's latest film Capitalism: A Love Story. The documentarian invited some of the more than 3,000 workers from the Sudbury mining giant Vale Inco who have been on strike since mid-July.

"The mining company's doing quite well," said Moore the following day. "It's made over four billion dollars in the last two years, but they want to cut back on the pension, and they want to stop the profit sharing, and give back, give back, give back, give back. It seems very un-Canadian to me, to behave in that manner. So try and maintain yourselves, Canadians. That's all I have to say."

Local 6500 Statement to Community


Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Sudbury Prepares For War

Northern Life: Vale Inco resuming production would mean ' war' : union

Support Local 6500 Sudbury

Summer Blogging Frustrations and The War on Workers

Summer Blogging Frustrations and The War on Workers

Those who have followed The Fifth Column from the beginning will know that summer is a slow time for the blog when I find my time taken up with other things and the blog becomes intermittent.

This summer has been particularly frustrating because while preoccupied with other things I have found myself thinking about things to blog about but too frustrated to do it. This is primarily because we are in the middle of the War on Workers in this country at the same time as our American friends are battling the War on Health Care and, in particular, the War on Canadian Health Care.

I found myself vacationing in Sudbury when the vote results from Local 6500 came in. As a student at Laurentian University I worked for INCO and was a member of Local 6500 and walked the picket lines with my brothers and sisters who depended on working at INCO for their livelihood.

I call upon all readers of the Fifth Column to give their full support to my brothers and sisters in Sudbury.


Please feel free to use the following on your blogs or web pages.

Support Local 6500 Sudbury

No More OC Transpo Strikes - Why

One sentence says it all:

"Acting Mayor Michel Bellemare, along with the city manager, solicitor, and OC Transpo general manager worked out the deal with the union’s local president Andre Cornellier and international representative Randy Graham over the last few weeks."

May Day – Time To Organize

If ever there was a time for workers to organize it is now.

As a proud former member of USW Local 6500 I present these videos in honour of International Workers Day.

Completing The Cuban Revolution - An Open Letter to Raul and Fidel Castro

The time is ripe for the completion of the final stages of the Cuban Revolution and the transition to a truly democratic and socialist society. Let us be clear. This must not be an American style “capitalist democracy” where wealthy corporate interests control the economy and political system, but a true peoples democracy.

I see three components to this transformation.

Economic Democracy – Beyond State Enterprises

This will include the expansion of the economy from state institutions to include small businesses, (where the owner works in the enterprise and earns his income from his labour and not from capital invested in the businesses) as well as co-operative enterprises, including both producer and consumer co-operatives.

Economic democracy must above all else ensure that foreign corporate interests are not allowed to dominate the economy.

Civil Democracy – Freedom of Expression and the Press

The revolution is truly strong enough to withstand competing ideas. The people of Cuba can be trusted with the full right of free expression, including full access to the Internet and the right of free expression on it, whether on forums, blogs or other means of communication.

As well a free press will invigorate the people and enhance the revolution. But we are not talking about the rights of corporate interests to build propaganda machines. We are talking about the rights of the people to have free journalistic expression by means such as newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, through their organizations such as labour unions and co-operatives, including co-operatives of journalists.

Political Democracy – Free Elections

It is time to move beyond one party politics - but not into corporate politics, where corporate interests dominate elections and conduct them as marketing campaigns. It is time to have real alternatives to the communist party candidates. These should come in the form of candidates from peoples organizations, such as labour unions and co-operatives, as well as independents. But election campaign funding and expenses must be restricted to ensure elections are grass roots activities and not marketing campaigns conducted by the wealthy.

Towards A Free Democratic and Socialist Cuba

Some will say that because this model does not mirror that of western democracies that it is not truly democratic.

Remember that Cuba had an American style “capitalist democracy” and when the people were about to elect Fidel Castro into government the corporate interests scuttled the election and it took a revolution for the people to put their chosen leader into power.

And I ask is our system truly democratic when the economic and political system is so heavily dominated by wealthy corporate interests as current events so obviously demonstrate.

I say to the leaders and people of Cuba you have a chance to set an example for the world of what a peoples democracy can truly be.

Labour-Management Relations at OC Transpo – Moving Forward After The Strike

This was a strike that had to be, but never should have been. After over 50 days of the workers going without pay and the city going without transit service, and the hardships resulting from that, we ended up with a settlement that we could have had without a strike.

But the fact is that it took a strike for OC Transpo and Mayor Larry to realize they could not impose their position (the main issue being the rollback of previously negotiated contract provisions) unilaterally.

At this point we have very ill will between workers and management and the potential for a “poisoned work environment”. How do we move forward from here.

The irony of it all is that the very contentious scheduling provisions that we're at the heart of the strike were negotiated as a solution to the ill will between management and workers and a “poisoned work environment”.

The solution put forward at that time, by the consulting group KPMG, was to get both sides to work together for the common good using interest-based bargaining, rather than the traditional confrontational demands-based bargaining. Out of that came a management proposal to change the scheduling system to give the workers more control over their lives. And things did improve.

Then Larry O'Brien was elected Mayor of Ottawa, and he obviously did not bother to learn the history of OC Transpo or he chose to ignore it.

We can no longer ignore history. We not only need to rebuild OC Transpo ridership, we also need to rebuild trust between workers and management. We need to go back to the non-confrontational approach.

Their may be a need for improvements to the scheduling system. If so, they should be designed the same way the existing system was designed, by workers and management taking the time to co-operatively design a better system together.

There will be a lot of challenges to rebuild OC Transpo and rebuild ridership. The chances of success will be a lot better if workers and management do it together co-operatively. We are at the stage of moving into a whole new phase of public transit in Ottawa. We can only succeed if we work together and take advantage of, not only the expertise of hired consultants, but the expertise of our own front line workers who are in contact with transit users everyday.

Both sides could start by providing transit users with an assurance of continued stable transit service by agreeing to use interest-based bargaining for the next collective agreement and agreeing to send any outstanding issues to binding arbitration with no preconditions.

They could start working immediately by establishing a worker-management brainstorming group to develop ways of improving transit service in Ottawa. Not only might this come up with some novel ways to improve service, it will get both sides working together for the common good.

The Phony Safety Issue in the OC Transpo Strike

It is not because safety is not important that I say that this is a phony issue. It is a phony issue because there was no concern raised by the city before the strike began, or even at the start of the strike, or at least no concern that was made public, and Mayor Larry has shown no inclination to keep such concerns private.

The concern was only raised after OC Transpo, and Mayor Larry's, financial arguments about their scheduling position were discredited when the public learned that the current scheduling system was proposed by OC Transpo and that the workers took a pay reduction to pay for the additional costs of the system.

It was simply an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

However there is a problem with OC Transpo not being under any safety regulations regarding bus drivers' working hours. This is because of the federal government's blatant disregard of their responsibility for inter-provincial (and international) municipal public transit and the lack of appropriate safety regulations. Requests were made, and granted, to have municipal transit services exempted from the federal regulations because the federal regulations were designed for long distance trucking and bus systems and were not suited to municipal systems. The fact that the federal government has jurisdiction over inter-provincial municipal transit systems and does not provide appropriate safety regulations is inexcusable.

The ideal solution would be to recognize that OC Transpo is essentially an Ontario transit service and have a federal-providential agreement giving the province regulatory powers so that OC Transpo would be under the same safety regulations as other Ontario public transit systems.

In the interim I would suggest an agreement (outside of the collective bargaining process) between OC Transpo and the Amalgamated Transit Union to have OC Transpo operate as if it was covered by the provincial regulations.

In the meantime the scheduling system could be referred to mediation, the financial issues could go to arbitration, and the buses could go back into service.