Class struggle has been in full swing in the Canadian province of Ontario, where a long and difficult struggle over wages in the education sector has caused a desperate attempt to prevent a work stoppage across the province. The provincial government, in the face of an impasse in these negotiations, hastily passed legislation that would outlaw a strike in the province by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) if a new contract was not negotiated. The pretense of the law would be to suspend CUPE’s “right” to strike by using Article 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Popularly known as the Notwithstanding Clause, it allows a 5 year suspension of constitutional rights for specific acts by specific groups. The clause, based on the World War I “War Measures Act”, allowed banning socialist and communist organizations and publications. The Notwithstanding Clause has, for example, been used to allow Quebec to ban islamic headscarves and other regressive measures.

The showdown in Ontario demonstrates the real stakes of the capitalist system. Confronted by effective union mobilization, the Province sought to temporarily revoke the workers “right to strike” as guaranteed by the Canadian constitution. This shows that our position that even in so-called “free” countries, the rights contained in any bourgeois constitution are only promises in the abstract. The only thing that’s inalienable in this society is the right of the bourgeoisie to extract as much surplus value from the proletariat as possible, with the aid of the bourgeois State. Education, public service – these terms are as meaningless as human rights as long as private property exists on earth. The pitiful state of public education around the world shows that capitalism (and its unions) hold utter contempt for anything that enriches human life in general.

With the passing of this legislation, the CUPE continued on with their planned strike. They picketed for two days and as a result, the provincial government rescinded the legislation banning the strike.

The liberal petty-bourgeoisie are crowing that this is the end of the post-war era of compromise between the government and the public sector unions in Canada. By “compromise”, they mean defeat. Collaboration of any kind between labor and capital is suicidal for the working class. The bourgeois State, as we reiterate again and again, exists only to oppress the working class for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. If defeat has the appearance of compromise, it is only because bourgeois ideologies have captured the trade unions, making them into just another body of armed men organized against the working class. Now the economic crisis that began with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has incited workers everywhere to pull back the curtain, to see where this compromise, that collaboration, really leads them.

So with the head to head match between CUPE and the Ontario government undressed and out in the open, a tentative agreement has been proposed and voting on this agreement began November 11^th. Despite this agreement being reached, many in CUPE feel the contract falls short of what has been asked. Leadership of CUPE has even claimed that the new agreement is the very same the government presented not two weeks prior. The back and forth has certainly not abated, and it will be difficult to tell what will transpire until after the voting period ends on December 17^th.

But what we do know is:
Union solidarity stopped State repression in its tracks. This knowledge should be taken up by American rail workers as well as the West Coast dockers. Union leaders, beholden to various political parties have spent years trying and failing to accomplish what the workers, acting as a class for their class, accomplished in a few days. With the communist party and the class union (which are the only expressions of the real unity of action of the working class), the working class can and will end the bourgeois State and its repression.