John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), posted the following recently on Facebook:
A strike wave of major proportions is developing in Canada. Tellingly, we are seeing workers reject deals and press for more in some instances.The present period is marked by an employer/state drive to ensure the cost of living crisis doesn’t unleash major and effective working class fight back. Interest rate policy is key to this, of course. We are also seeing an upsurge of militancy that has explosive implications and that has the potential to go much further than it already has.However, (and here’s the real challenge for the left) we are going into this fight with the structures, leadership and past experience of trade unions shaped by class compromise. In the present unforgiving context, there is a huge risk that this factor will lead to inadequate settlements that don’t protect living standards and a failure to take up the kind of united and unlimited forms of struggle that are essential.There must be a left force, rooted in the unions and communities under attack, that supports all struggles but that challenges efforts to contain them and rob them of their full potential. If the left is reduced to helping to fill the buses and bolster the picket lines, while justifying retreats and rotten compromises, it will be a tragic and horribly costly mistake.
The Abolitionary 