John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, posted the following several months ago on Facebook:
In the early 1980s, not long after I came to Canada, I worked at a factory in London, Ontario. I had to have an operation, after some wire I was winding on a machine became entangled and snapped, hitting me in the abdomen.When I got back to work, I discovered that no effort had been made to deal with the safety hazard so, being the shop steward in that part of the plant, I lined up support for a work stoppage. It brought everything to a halt and created a crisis for management.The chief engineer was brought in and, imagining himself to be the last word in rationality, he explained that the problem had ‘no solution from an engineering standpoint.’ I then told him that this was unfortunate since the machines would remain inoperative unless and until they could be operated safely.The interesting thing was the look on the face of the engineer. He was utterly appalled at my malevolent irrationality. At that moment, I drew several conclusions that have been helpful since in the struggles I’ve been part of. The lives of working class people are expendable and the profit needs of capitalism will ensure that they are thrown away unless there is a serious fight back.I rapidly learned another lesson when a team of experts were immediately flown in from Pittsburgh and they found a way to deal with the hazard and rigged it up in a matter of hours. The question of what is possible will, to a very large degree, be determined in the course of the class struggle. All we had to do in that situation was to tilt the balance of forces our way in order to settle the matter.us fight back.
The Abolitionary 