Portside

Recent commentaries on the political trajectory of the major private sector union in Canada, CAW-Unifor, have often had a rather simplistic and problematic perspective. That the CAW-Unifor (the latter being the new name and re-foundation of the union in 2013) drifted from a left, struggle-oriented approach, summarized in the slogan “Fighting back makes a difference,” toward a more collaborative centrist and Gomperist political approach, as the union distanced itself and ultimately moved away from the New Democratic Party (NDP).

The new book by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage, Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics (UBC Press, 2024), is, in contrast, a thoughtful, and well researched historical analysis of the transformation of the political orientation and role of the union. [See video of book launch.] Written by two accomplished labour studies scholars, the book touches on critical contradictions and structures that underpin union behaviour, drawing upon both documentary sources and a series of interviews with union members, the broader labour movement, and labour studies scholars and commentators. (One being this reviewer.)

The analysis and narrative works quite well. It describes the dialectic and forces that drove that process that led the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) away from the social democratic NDP, through initially embracing a left rejection of the progressive competitiveness strategies that emerged in the 1990s and neoliberal globalization, but eventually moving toward an accommodation with business unionism, strategic voting and forms of partnership with employers, and the NDP’s parallel move toward a fundamental acceptance (and embrace) of the limits and essential components of neoliberal globalization, as social democratic parties around the world have done.

There are, however, some theses and contentions that merit discussion. There is a somewhat narrow portrayal of the reasons for the NDP’s and social democracy’s inability to provide needed support for the working-class and the union movement in the neoliberal period; a reliance on the somewhat elastic concept of social unionism that fails to capture both its limits and its lack of clarity and flexibility. The book glosses over the significance of policy differences across the union movement at critical periods and the real educational and organizational efforts of CAW to embed challenges to dominant neoliberal ideas and practices, such as competitiveness and globalization.

The Political Dilemmas of the Union

The basic narrative, however, is clear and provides an historical, political, and structural underpinning for the current impasse. The United Auto Workers (UAW) Canada and the CAW had a close relationship with the NDP, and the union, for the most part, adopted the social democratic framework of that party. The union had a social unionist approach, which it inherited from the (President of UAW, 1946-1970) Walter Reuther leadership in the US. It was a rather elastic concept, which in its best moments, argued that the union had to broaden its approach to fight for more than collective bargaining gains, to embrace the needs of working-class people and society as a whole for social justice and equality, and social, political, and to support economic rights at home and abroad.

While the union supported the NDP electorally, the latter worked to enact needed legislative reforms, with the union maintaining its own autonomous practices and policies. It reflected the union’s commitment to articulating a voice, independent of, but in partnership with, its political ally. Referred to as ‘syndicalism’, it was a stubborn effort to maintain its values and not subordinate them to electoral partners. This was an embedded part of the union’s history, as was its efforts to maintain its own relationships with governments and working relationships with employers all the while.

As Sam Gindin notes, “in this way, the UAW parted from how other unions with strong partisan ties to the NDP thought about union political action. In general, unions with partisan allegiances to the NDP contracted out their politics to the party. However, the division of labour was not as clear-cut in the UAW insofar as the union always maintained its own political capacity to influence policy directly” [emphasis added] (p. 41).

Into the 70s, the NDP worked to win and deepen basic social democratic reforms and policies that the UAW and other unions supported. Of note was the 1972-1974 Liberal minority government, pressured by the NDP. It was the most nationalist and ambitious set of policies that the Liberals and NDP were able to embrace in that era and included Petro Canada and the Foreign Investment Review Board. As well, NDP influence on minority governments in Ontario in the mid-1970s facilitated the passing of legislation that ensured the right to refuse unsafe work.

As the 1980s unfolded, Labour’s ties to the NDP were strained by what the authors call Social Democratic Electoralism (putting the desire to get elected and distancing itself from the labour movement ahead of championing basic principles and reforms that would further the interests of working people). The union and the party moved in opposite directions. Citing commentators such as Charlotte Yates, the authors note that the party was moving away from its “social democratic principles,” while the CAW was becoming more militant with more radical political demands (pp. 48-49).

The authors cite policy differences as well, such as the Canada-US “Free Trade election” of 1988, where Ed Broadbent’s Federal NDP refused to make free trade a central political concern, ceding the issue to the Liberals. It was underpinned by the party’s reticence to be seen as being too close to unions. The party’s role in the election became an issue not only with the CAW but also with the Steelworkers.

The Bob Rae-led NDP majority government in Ontario’s social contract of 1992 led to a more serious division as the latter attacked public sector union contracts and betrayed a belief that public-sector spending and workers should bear the blame and burden for deficits, essentially endorsing austerity. The refusal of the NDP to challenge the strictures of neoliberalism here helped to set the stage for the eventual election of the ‘Common Sense Revolution’ of 1995 of Mike Harris and the Conservative Party.

The political and policy fiasco of the Rae years was a watershed moment in the relationship between the CAW and the NDP. It was mirrored by similar Third Way approaches that embraced much of the policy regime of neoliberalism in NDP provincial governments across the country and the policies of the federal party, as well as by social democratic parties in Europe.

At the time, the CAW was articulating a more radical perspective on both the strategic and tactical terrain of labour politics as well as on the policy level. This was the period of debate within the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) and across the larger labour movement between the CAW, Teacher’s unions, CUPW, CUPE, and much of the public sector, on the one hand, and the so-called Pink Paper group, (including the Steelworkers (USWA), United Commercial and Food Workers (UFCW), Machinists (IAM) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP)) on the other. It dealt with the relationship to the NDP but also differences over how to respond to neoliberalism. The term ‘pink paper’ came from the color of the paper the latter’s manifesto was written on.

The adoption of both strategic voting – only supporting candidates that can defeat the Conservatives, rather than automatically getting behind the NDP – and a more class struggle/direct action approach to fighting governments and employers came in the wake of the failure of the Rae government and the election that put Mike Harris’s PCs in office. The OFL, pushed by the CAW and public sector unions, organized the Ontario Days of Action, a series of one day general strikes against employers, in cities across province, in conjunction with coalitions of social activists and community organizations in each community.

The NDP played a marginal role in the Days of Action, and the Pink Paper unions for the most part refused to strike employers on the protest days, but did help to organize and participated in the actual demonstrations. The move away from the NDP partnership and the embrace of more radical forms of political actions followed from this period.

The relationship was further strained by the union’s concern that the NDP’s lack of electoral success would weaken the union’s power to influence outcomes. At the same time, the left in the union saw the moderating drift of the NDP as creating a space for embracing a more radical set of politics, and as well, a more radical strategic and tactical approach (mass protests, strikes, support for social movements, and others).

The Years of Leading the Left

For a period, the CAW positioned itself as a key left force, a kind of a stand-in for a party. It organized a number of workplace occupations, identified itself with the Days of Action, argued against lean production, team concept, and “progressive competitiveness,” and looked to find a politics beyond neoliberalism.

But while embracing different policies and a more radical strategic orientation for a time, the constraints on the union operating as a stand-in for a non-existent political left eventually took their toll. As time went on, in the face of the relentless deepening of neoliberalism and the pressures it placed on the union and the working-class (end of auto pact, plant closures, layoffs, bankruptcies, etc.), the union itself began to moderate its policies and embraced policies that it had eschewed and debated in the past, such as progressive competitiveness, calling for subsidizing employers, concessions, and so forth.

Politically, this was accompanied by not a move to the left but rather by the increasing embrace of Gomperist strategies – rewarding politicians who support the union’s short term interests and goals – as opposed to allying with the NDP in the electoral sphere. The union was clearly not in a position to create an alternative itself; and the socialist left outside the union was disorganized, small, and immature, much to the chagrin of those of us who had celebrated this break as an opening toward a more left political orientation.

The anti-globalization demonstrations and movement were important and gave rise for a brief period a so-called ‘Teamsters and Turtles alliance’ between unions and social movements. The movement engaged an entire stratum of CAW members from auto and other sectors (but is slighted in the book). Post 9/11 and the US-led ‘War on Terror’, the anti-globalization movement faltered, and the union leadership became defensive, rather than inspirational or mobilizing. Given the top-heavy leadership structure of the CAW, notably the central power of the president’s office, what was previously a base for energizing an alternative political direction became increasingly used to lower expectations and limiting of workplace militancy and independence from employers. The leadership used the union’s institutions to increasingly ‘manage expectations’.

“External economic pressures were increasingly internalized by the union’s leadership to justify shifting gears politically” (p. 17). The authors document the descent of the union on the economic and bargaining terrain, moving toward a strategy of seeking subsidizing of auto employers and sustaining the competitive positioning of the firms. This included, most controversially, looking to make unprincipled deals with other employers, as in the grossly misnamed “Framework for Fairness” bargained with Frank Stronach’s notoriously anti-union Magna.

Ross and Savage note, “As the political-economic landscape has shifted, so too have the political perspectives of the union’s leaders charged with advancing the interests of the union members, leading to a significant reordering of political strategies” (p. 237).

The authors comment that both the NDP and the CAW embraced a defensive and unsuccessful effort to moderate the worst features of neoliberalism. The union did this through conceding the necessity of competitiveness, bargaining concessions, organizing for state subsidization of employers, and working with Liberals in their strategic voting approach. The NDP, in accepting the limits of the state, dependence on private capital competitiveness, and embracing austerity, looked to become the champion of small business and separated itself from working-class identities and interests. Neither the union nor the NDP adopted the kind of politics necessary to challenge neoliberalism.

The analysis of Ross and Savage of the founding and role of Unifor rejects the claims of some of the activists in the founding of the new union and contends that the new union project continued the same political and bargaining patterns and contradictions as its CAW predecessor. From the political alliances with Trudeau, partnership approaches to bargaining, and economic policies, to the failure of claims to create new forms of community unions, the challenges and contradictions remain much the same in a much more precarious moment, on a larger scale considering climate change, the need to move off of fossil fuels, and critical economic transformations on the horizon. (See “The CAW-CEP Merger: New Union in a Difficult World,” The Bullet, September 26, 2012.)

In the final chapter of Shifting Gears, Ross and Savage consider different possibilities of moving forward. The comments are somewhat contradictory: from those who see the move away from the NDP as an error, such as Andrew Jackson (p. 42), to those who argue that an independent socialist political party and movements remains a sine qua non for any alternative transformation of the union movement.

Shifting Gears does not take a position on whether or not the break with the NDP by Unifor facilitated the union’s move to the right. But they acknowledge that any attempt of a union such as Unifor to maintain an orientation that can stand to the left of neoliberal capitalism requires a political party and movement that challenges the system, organizes and educates to fight it, and argues for a project of social transformation. As they note, “a strong and dynamic union cannot substitute for a left-wing political party” (p. 251).

As well, Ross and Savage emphasize that any change requires education and mobilization. This is not just at the top level of a union, and through statements and pamphlets; but also through engaging and building in workplaces among workers in plants and offices, at all levels of the union.

Past and Present: Key Struggles Facing the Labour Movement

Ross and Savage do an impressive job of making sense out of an extremely complex historical set of experiences for CAW-Unifor and the wider union movement. Their analysis not only encourages reflection about strategic decisions of the past, but also begs for further speculation and debate about the direction of where the union movement might go in the future.

Social Democracy and the Problem of Social Democratic Electoralism

Shifting Gears treads lightly on defining and describing the nature of social democracy. It is often used interchangeably with ‘social unionism’; and it quite loosely refers to as acting in the interests of social justice, equality, and some form of politics that claims to support workers interests. The acceptance of the permanence of the capitalist system, and its adjustment to articulate its interests with neoliberalism, is never identified as being central to social democracy. The problem is cited as “electoralism,” or the opportunistic desire to break social democracy’s – and in particular, the NDP’s – popular identification with the working-class, so as to get elected as the champion of the so-called middle class, small business, and society as a whole.

Certainly, that is a real issue. But making it central is a mistake. The authors do not analyze the limitations of social democratic politics itself, whether tracing it from the Reuther period, or identifying its capitulation to neoliberalism and globalization in recent decades. Social democracy, at least from the post-war era on, has been marked by an acceptance of the limitations of dependence on private capital accumulation, and at its best, has looked to initiate important social welfare reforms and forms of regulation, to challenge the inequalities and hardships faced by working people by the market system, rather than taking on the system itself.

When the crisis of the 1970s initiated the move toward neoliberalism, social democracy turned toward limiting its reform agendas and accepted the inevitability of austerity and neoliberal globalization. The break with the working-class identity is part of this transformation and can describe the NDP in its current and recent incarnation as well as its sister parties in every country where social democracy exists.

The CAW’s roots in the social democratic milieu were somewhat mitigated by its autonomy, the syndicalist trend (which had a right and left component), and the role of the socialist left that was never completely exterminated from the Union and played an important role in underpinning Bob White’s (founding president of CAW, 1985-1992) challenge to the concessions regime in the UAW, and support for Canadian working-class autonomy.

Social Unionism

Social unionism is a very elastic and flexible concept and was clearly used by different groupings within the union – from those who were rooted in the Reuther tradition and saw themselves as distinct from the narrow business unionism of the AFL, identifying their role as standing for social equality and a series of social democratic reforms. To an extent, it also referred to the struggle against racism, segregation, and the rights of women, immigrants, and sexual minorities.

Many of those reforms were won through bargaining with employers (more so in the US than in Canada) and led to the creation of what has been called the ‘private welfare state’. Although this form of strong social unionism was progressive and important in its time, it was limited by its social democratic ideological content. It was not part of a challenge to the social system and in many ways ended up reinforcing the dependence that workers and unions have on capital through the practices of ‘social partnerships’. As a partner through various forms of corporatism, unions double-down on the dependence on the company and its successes in profits, competitiveness, and capital accumulation (directly through private employers, indirectly in the public sector’s through fostering a business-friendly environment for private accumulation).

While the UAW easily slid into concessions and celebrations of competitiveness, eventually, the CAW did as well, although the role of leadership, the left, and other factors mitigated this process for a time. Shifting Gears notes that without a politics of social transformation operating in some form, this was inevitable.

Of course, as the authors note, there are all kinds of ways that social unionism can be defined – from a strong sense of social justice (but limited within a social democratic framework), to simply identifying with broader community (read cross-class) charity projects.

The Pink Paper Challenge

There are several critical moments when the CAW argued against others in the union movement – as well as in the NDP – from a position considerably to the left of social democracy that are overlooked in Shifting Gears. The most notable was the debate with the Pink Paper unions in the mid-1990’s, and the issue was much deeper than whether or not to support the NDP. The CAW argued that it was wrong to build partnerships with employers in order to make the latter more competitive in international markets; this would weaken the union and ultimately lead it to embrace forms of concession and job loss. The idea that an economic strategy can be built by enhanced corporate training, team concept, ‘empowerment’, and lean production was a recipe for failure. Developing the creative and productive capacities of society and workers was not the same as making them partners with employers whose goal is to cut costs and make the most profits for investors (or even worse, lure workers or their unions into becoming investors).

The Pink Paper document and unions criticized the costs of the public sector and a reliance on creating public services and productive capacities seen as being non-competitive. This was precisely the position of the NDP and was similar to other social democratic parties that were accommodating neoliberalism in their policy platforms. This type of thinking was also the basis for the reticence of many unions to strike employers or sanction wider strike actions for fears it would hurt competitiveness as well as the electoral ambitions of the NDP.

The Ontario Days of Action

The one-day general strikes against the savage austerity cuts of the Ontario government from 1995-98 involved much more than a spontaneous militancy and direct action by unions and workers in communities. They were only possible because activists in CUPE, CUPW, Teachers’ unions, CAW, and others took up the responsibility to educate local unionists about the necessity of opposing the Harris agenda, educating their co-workers, and pressuring their employers to stop supporting Harris. This was a critical opening for developing the capacity to understand and challenge neoliberal ideology. The Days played an important role in future actions by the union around plant occupations, differentiating the union from the NDP, and later on, building a base for the rank-and-file workers to fight against the globalization agenda in the latter part of the decade.

The links made in communities where the strikes were held between union and social movements was also critical. Although the relative balance of resources between these different components of the working-class were not equal, it was also a moment with the potential to create a different set of working-class institutions and politics independent of the NDP. Because there was no organized political left, nothing was built and the legacy of the strikes lost. This period bears more discussion than undertaken for what it meant for internal CAW politics, but also for what it reveals about the failures of the socialist left to build new experiments and parties as other countries were attempting. There was an opening and potential to move the left ahead, but the politics of the socialist left in Canada was simply not ambitious or mature enough. And both the union and socialist movements have suffered – even declined – since.

The Anti-Globalization Movement

It is surprising that Ross and Savage didn’t reference the inspiring role that CAW played in contributing to the anti-globalization mobilizations of the late 1990’s, and the potential that it could have played in enabling the political development of the union movement to limit the drift of the NDP and the social democratic centre to the right and neoliberal politics. This would have also meant moving to the left in the steady closure and polarization of political options in the face of a radicalizing capitalist classes in North America.

Activists and staffers in the CAW – some of whom had long been NDP loyalists – took the lead in developing a series of educational initiatives that were combined with mass actions. The demonstrations against the Organization of American States (OAS) in Windsor changed what had originally been a celebration by the local union movement of community recognition by the establishment of business and government leaders, into a massive political learning experience. As a result, hundreds of young workers became active in the anti-globalization movement and took to the buses in Quebec City against the WTO months later (reflecting the same level of frustration as everyone else by not being able to ‘go to the wall’).

Unfortunately, 9/11 and the embarrassing defensiveness of the union’s leadership in the face of the bombing, helped to put a chill on this movement. But it is important to understand that up to this point, the union was clearly moving to the left, and the energy and learning should have and could have been nurtured, not just in the leadership strata, but amongst rank-and-file workers. That it was not tells a great deal about the road not taken and the road that was by CAW-Unifor.

Green Jobs Oshawa

The Green Jobs Oshawa (GJO) initiative, organized by workers, academics, and retirees, to challenge the closure of the General Motors (GM) Oshawa Plant in 2019 is left out of Shifting Gears. This is a significant omission for it is an example of the potential for working-class alternatives that has remained within the union. The project proposed that the plant be transformed into a publicly owned production facility for needed electric-powered vehicles, to serve public and community needs such as the postal and other government services. As well, that it become part of a larger sector that could be part of a planned move to create different forms of ecologically-responsible production for need.

GJO was opposed by the Unifor leadership and the local union but was one of the first such projects in Canada in this era to introduce the idea of creating a worker-initiated plan for conversion, away from dependence on fossil fuels and breaking with dependence on the whims and investment concerns of US multinational auto companies and not subordinate to the requirements of competitive markets.

When GM agreed to keep the plant open by assembling overflow production of trucks, the GJO movement was put on hold. While GJO failed to build a sustained movement within the local union and community, it pointed the way forward for engaging workers and unions in the process of converting the economy toward an ecosocialist future. Lessons from that experience – negative as well as positive – after all, it did fail – are critical for building a base for union transformation.

Challenges Remain

In glossing over key left political initiatives like GJO in the union’s history, Shifting Gears fails to fully to appreciate the genuine potentials – the suppressed alternative – that were part of the union’s history, as well as its (and other unions’) potential in the future. A socialist political movement or party, bringing together the various components of the working-class, advocating, educating, and mobilizing around a class struggle approach, and looking to build a movement that challenges dependence on private capital could have created the basis for a consistent left current in the labour movement and nurture the left in the CAW-Unifor. The absence of such a left is deeply felt in the declining role of the union movement in leading social struggles in Canada as it had for a century. Left Socialist politics of some kind might have been able to limit or prevent the move toward the right in the union, but even after the openings presented by the social contract debates, the Days of Action building across the different sectors of the working-class, and later, the anti-globalization movement and Green Jobs Oshawa, the lack of such a movement or party became evident.

Shifting Gears is an impressive achievement. It covers over half a century of union history and traces the political evolution of Canada’s most interesting and iconic union, and opens up for debate about organizational strategy and political struggle in Unifor and the Canadian union movement as a whole. While many of the underlying crisis factors facing the union movement are acknowledged, there is much less said about how to address them.

Given the huge challenges of the larger union movement unable to grow into sectors such as massive growth in the distribution and logistics sectors. Failure to establish an organizing wave in these new sectors and with new workers is the most visible sign of the impasse of the Canadian labour movement. But with the disarray and decline of the political centrism of social democracy, the workers’ movement in Canada (and elsewhere) is politically disarmed and ideologically confused. Workers have been a first target by a resurgent right-wing in both Canada and the US. In place of the fragmented and ineffective socialist left that now exists, building a new socialist politics tied to the centres of working-class life in unions and workplaces is the order of the day. 

Herman Rosenfeld is a Toronto-based socialist activist, educator, organizer and writer. He is a retired national staff person with the Canadian Auto Workers (now Unifor), and worked in their Education Department.

About Socialist Project: In the early 21^st century, it is imperative that the Left begin a sustained process of organizational redevelopment, experimentation and struggle. Neither capitalism nor neoliberalism will fade from the planet based on the momentum of their own contradictions, or as result of new technologies. The SP is a Toronto-based organization that supports the rebuilding of the socialist Left in Canada and around the world. Committed to the development of a more free, democratic, humane and sustainable society than the one we live in, the SP opposes capitalism out of necessity and supports the struggles of others out of solidarity. We support struggles aligned with working class emancipation, anti-oppression, democratic self-determination, planetary sustainability, and peace. We do not propose a fast route out of capitalism, claim a ready alternative to take its place or extol any one Left tendency. We engage the concrete limits and possibilities of emerging struggles within and against capitalism as it is today with an eye to making a different kind of future.