No abstract
Recently there has been growing concern about the return or expansion of slavery globally. Some have suggested that neoliberal globalization has resulted in a decline in workers' rights and labor protections that leave workers vulnerable to conditions that are less than reflective of a "free" labor market. Still much of this concern remains focused on poorer economies or contexts outside of liberal democratic government structures. Certainly many would be skeptical about any notion that slavery, or conditions akin to slavery would be found in a liberal democratic nation such as Canada, which is still viewed internationally as a progressive upholder of human rights. Yet, on May 23, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal released its findings that the owners and operators of a tree planting firm in the interior of British Columbia (B.C.) had indeed run a "slave-like" work camp in the province. The ruling stated that the company Khaira Enterprises had racially discriminated against 55 African workers, most originally from Congo (and most of whom have been made refugees), including many women. The ruling concluded that the owners and operators of the tree-planting business in Golden, B.C., had subjected workers to squalid "slave-like" conditions at an isolated work camp during a period covering several months during 2010. The workers lived in containers with no washrooms. Many were subjected to violence at the camp and the claim reported that death threats had been directed against them. Even more, they were not paid for their work done. At the time these conditions were made public, the company owners, Khalid Bajwa and Hardilpreet Sidhu denied the claims against them. Notably, this is not the only recent case in Canada to raise directly the specter of slavery and/or indentured servitude. These cases involve foreign workers and raise alarming questions about government programs by which employers bring already precarious workers into Canada to work with few rights and minimal protections as a source of vulnerable, and often coerced, labor. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has come under close scrutiny as a result of some disturbing situations but the program remains intact.
Most approaches to Red and Green (labour and environmentalist) alliances have taken Marxian perspectives, to the exclusion of anarchism and libertarian socialism. Recent developments, however, have given voice to a "syndical ecology" or what some within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) call "green syndicalism". Green syndicalism highlights certain points of similarity between anarcho-syndicalism (revolutionary unionism) and radical ecology. These include, but are by no means limited to, decentralisation, regionalism, direct action, autonomy, pluralism and federation. The article discusses the theoretical and practical implications of syndicalism made green.
Significant attention has been given to social unionism in Canada as an alternative form of unionism which can combine successful bargaining with community‐based action for broader, even radical, social change. Supposedly representing an engaged, socially rooted activist union movement which might revitalize the labor movement as a whole, social unionism is said to provide the basis to return unions to the center of social change and progressive political action in Canada. There is even expectation that social unions will play a leading role in the foundation of a militant left resistance. Unfortunately, the reality is that social unionism has not been anything, even approximating a militant force or change or community defense during the decades‐long neoliberal period of capitalist development. In certain unfortunate instances, social union leaders have chosen to condemn the community groups that have put up a militant resistance, even going so far as to discipline their own rank‐and‐file members who have organized flying squads to support working‐class community struggles more broadly. The fundamental limits of social unionism in Canada are related to three main problems: a hierarchical and conciliatory bargaining model for action; electoralism and commitment to social democratic pressure politics through boycotts, symbolic protests, and political lobbying, especially through the New Democratic Party, and more recently even the procapitalist Liberal Party; and a charitable approach to community groups coupled with a paternalistic relation with social movements.
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