Over the course of one week, a strike involving 43,000 healthcare workers escalated to the point of a general strike in British Columbia. But the magnificent action was sabotaged by leaders of the Health Employees Union (HEU) and the BC Federation of Labor (BCFL).
The strike began on April 26 over demands that workers accept the reopening of a collective agreement to impose layoffs and wage cuts of up to 17%. The strike escalated as the BC nurses’ union vowed to not cross picket lines.
BC Premier Gordon Campbell’s government has become increasingly unpopular due to privatization, cutbacks, and attacks on workers. This led to universal sympathy with HEU strikers and a growing solidarity, first by other public sector workers and then by private sector workers.
Workers were outraged by “back to work” legislation which implemented a retroactive 15% pay cut. The strike remained solid as workers defied the law to continue what was now an illegal strike, with other public workers walking off the job in solidarity. Private sector workers shut down a pulp and paper mill, and the Teamsters announced that they would not cross picket lines. Members of supposedly “conservative” craft unions, like building trades, also prepared to walk off the job in an incredible sign of working-class unity.
The movement escalated as 100,000 workers prepared to walk off the job. Within days, the action would have escalated to a full-scale general strike.
On May 2, the courts ruled the walkout illegal and threatened to fine unions and jail union leaders. As workers prepared to shut down the province, their leaders met with the government to sell them out. The HEU union tops and BCFL agreed to a “settlement” with a 10% wage cut and 2.5 more work hours per week, in exchange for limiting the number of positions contracted out to 300.
Workers were appalled by their leaders’ demands that they go back to work. A number refused, but without a fighting organization of socialists in the union there was no structure in place for an organized defiance of this betrayal.
There are two lessons to be learned. First, workers’ consciousness and solidarity can crystallize very rapidly into a militant movement. Supposed divisions among workers can quickly evaporate, as workers instinctively recognize that they have more in common with each other than with their bosses.
Second, the union bureaucracy cannot be trusted. Workers must build grassroots socialist movements in their unions that can fight for militant action and provide leadership during struggles when bureaucrats sell out workers.