The economy, labour and the 2015 election
With the formation Unifor, a “new kind of union” and the country’s largest, there is at least a chance that the long slumber o the labour movement is over. An organization that big, with a radically new mandate, cannot help but influence developments elsewhere in the movement. The largely complacent leadership of other large unions will ether be inspired by Unifor’s approach, or be forced to recognize that change is in the offing – which might just mean their replacement.
One key part of that mandate is the idea of community chapters, consisting of any workers who want to join and focused not just on the workplace but on the community. While dramatic membership declines in the private sector union world is clearly a motivating factor in Unifor’s founding, a core part of the response to the crisis is to up the ante regarding social unionism – that tradition of unions engaging in the social and political life of the country.
One of the strongest motivating factors behind Unifor, and a wide variety of other initiatives being undertaken, is the desire to rid the country of the Harper government in 2015. If that is indeed a key objective – and it must be – then perhaps the most important element of this social unionism needs to be to focus as much attention on the economy as possible, to engage the media, the public and political parties in a broad discussion about the catastrophic economic policies of the Harper government.
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