The General Union’s organization model borrows from social justice unionism, with direct action at the core of our unionization and mobilization efforts. We envision and pursue a reinvigorated approach to organizing un-/under-unionized industries lacking union power, within which workers are organized, politicized, trained, and mobilized, then becoming core members of further unionization campaigns.
Labour organization and leftist theory
Organization and mobilization are fundamental aspects of working class unity and power. In recent years, leftist theory has been widely applied in increasingly sophisticated political analyses. However, this intellectual renaissance on the left has regularly struggled to translate into Canadian worker power.
Reconnecting theory and practice is vital at a time when as many (if not more) workers are being radicalized through cultural avenues as those radicalized at work. We must prevent class struggle from becoming a mere discussion topic and proud political traditions like communism and anarchism from becoming lifeless markers of countercultural cachet.
Divisions along theoretical lines hinder class struggle when they are detached from the dire material conditions presently facing Canadian workers. The Canadian working class needs leaders trained to organize, inspire, educate, and further class struggle on the economic, political, and cultural fronts.
The General Union in Montreal
The General Union (TGU) is a Montreal-based independent labour union, founded in 2022. We are a multi-denominational group, including anarchists, communists, socialists, and much more, with a laser focus on organizing industries lacking union power, and training workers to become effective labour organizers. We primarily organize in the private sector, which has a lower rate of unionization (15.3% in 2021) than the public sector. This makes private sector workplaces ripe for both age-old and novel forms of worker exploitation.
Our most recent organizing effort was with EC Montreal, a private language school, located in the city’s downtown core. Officially accredited on August 6, EC Montreal’s staff of ESL and FSL teachers, and student support workers, are following their EC counterparts in Toronto and Vancouver, who are unionized with Unifor and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, respectively.
The EC Montreal workers began organizing for many reasons, including higher salaries, stronger benefits, and better job security. Passionate about their jobs, these newly minted TGU members took the fight to augment their standards of living and provide the best educational experience for their students to heart. Through an intense effort in winning the trust of their colleagues and deepening social relationships within the workforce, they succeeded in getting more than 50% of workers to sign union cards only three months after the campaign began.
Now with accreditation secured, we are strategizing to begin negotiations for the EC Montreal collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Within our unionization philosophy, workers are an integral part of negotiations. We pursue CBAs that not only improve working and living conditions but also utilize creative provisions to expand the economic, political, social, and environmental possibilities and impact of union power. A big aspect of this is physically bringing as many workers to the bargaining table as possible. This enables them to gain confidence in their collective power and gives them an unflinching look at how corporate power is wielded when its profit margins are threatened.
The Canadian conjuncture
Effective harnessing and application of worker power is only more important when situated in the ongoing social crises facing Canadian workers. The Consumer Price Index has risen nearly 30% in the past 10 years, turning previously routine purchases into difficult choices for many families, at the grocery store, pharmacy, and everywhere else they shop. Even more stark is the real estate asset inflation crisis (normally called the ‘housing crisis’), during which rents in Montreal, still relatively one of Canada’s most affordable cities for renters, have increased by >45% in that same time period.
In addition to these economy-wide factors eroding the quality of life of all Canadian residents, EC Montreal workers also deal with other precarities due to the nature of their industry and the school’s business model. With enrollment swelling and shrinking throughout the year, EC workers can have different schedules and amounts of hours every single week. This leaves them, their families, and their budgets at the mercy of these enrollment fluctuations.
We can continue our theoretical discussions about who constitutes the proletariat, and which jobs produce surplus value, but we must never abandon a single member of the working class. No matter what job someone must do to survive under capitalism, politicization through collective action is the most effective way to bring about an economic system that truly values their humanity, ingenuity, capacity, labour, and life.
In what can be called the golden age of Canadian worker power (between World Wars I and II), union agitation and strategic theory thrived in a prosperous and nourishing dialectic. The careful study of working conditions, economic trends, and political openings is only possible through a high fidelity connection with all segments of the Canadian workforce. Just because large swathes now earn their living outside of large industrial workplaces, in roles that may not even serve a positive social function, doesn’t change the fact that they are our comrades in class struggle. Continuing to overlook these hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers would be a massive blunder by the labour movement, one which only serves to further the foundation of, and potential for, fascism in Canada.
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