Comment
Ontario's "Days of
Action" and strategic
choices for the Left in
Canada
MARCELLA MUNRO
n the fall of 1995, leaders of labour and progressive
I
organizations woke up to find that the people of Ontario
had elected what would be the most regressive rightwing government the province has had since the 1930s. Once
it became obvious the Harris government would waste no
time implementing its agenda - an agenda which would
surely spell disaster for the more than forty years of achievements made by and for working people - the labour movement acted immediately to put together a strategy to fight
back and encourage resistance. The Action Plan passed at
the 1995 Ontario Federation of Labour convention called
for a series of escalating actions, including workplace disruptions, that would build towards a general walkout of organized labour in the province. In response to the Action
Plan, and building on a decade of cooperation with other
social movements, the OFL leadership organized a series of
Days of Action protests.!
Two of Canada's leading progressive publications have
already told the alleged tale of these labour-sponsored Days
of Action. The Canadian Forum dubbed them "Days of Factions"; This Magazine purported to have "Labour's Dirty
Secret.'? These sexy, slightly sensationalist, cover stories
both contained essentially the same analysis of the politics
surrounding, primarily, the Toronto protests. Both articles
Studies in Political Economy 53, Summer 1997
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were, unfortunately, too focused on the personalities and positioning of labour politicians to get to the heart of the story:
the Days of Action themselves, their achievements, and their
limitations.
In this article I will first focus on the community-based
strategies used in organizing for these protests, and the effects these efforts have had on both the activists themselves,
and the ability of local groups to work together in common
cause. My information comes from the communities where
these protests occurred, and is informed by a day-to-day
understanding
about how coalitions work, and what makes
them successful. At the same time, I'm the first to admit
that these strategies have hardly been without fault. As an
activist I feel there are many lessons we should and must
learn from the organizing that has taken place as part of the
Days of Actions, both in terms of building the struggle in
Ontario, and in terms of understanding the larger picture of
what makes social change happen. In the second part of this
piece I will therefore reflect on some of the weaknesses of
the protests, and some possible directions that can be taken
to fix them.
Finally I will take this opportunity to try and reopen a
larger debate over left strategy. The actions of the Harris
government and the challenges to them have provided the
space to reopen a critical debate on the Left about what
kind of political action forces meaningful, radical change,
and what kind of political structures are important in creating
and sustaining this change. The contest between progressive
forces vying for more reformist or more revolutionary strategies is an ancient one, and one which we have been ignoring
as a movement for too long. We desperately need to engage
in a debate about political strategy in an open, honest, and
up-front way if we are to take on the forces of capital in
their increasingly
vicious forms. By not openly debating
questions central to what our strategy as progressive forces
should be, and by narrowly defining these questions along
the lines of party politics, we are in danger of missing a
real opportunity as progressive movements for building on
the lessons and the outcomes of the parts of the Days of
Action that have been a success.
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Building blocks of a civil society in Ontario? Since Harris
was elected, OFL sponsored Days of Action have taken place
in London, Hamilton, Kitchener- Waterloo, Peterborough,
Toronto and, most recently, Sudbury.J As an organizer for
the Action Canada Network, I've worked closely with these
local social justice coalitions through our provincial counterpart the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice. In each of
these places, there have been four main positive outcomes
in terms of building a collective political expression of workers' groups and other progressive political organizations that
could have a more sustained impact on what Gramsci called
"civil society."
First, there has been a much strengthened social justice
network, integrating the work and the players involved in
local labour and social movement groups. In each of the
protests, coordinating committees were set up consisting of
representatives
of local unions, women's groups, anti-poverty organizations, social service associations, and other organizations that wanted to be a part of organizing the protests
in their community. These committees were co-chaired by
one representative of the labour movement (in all cases this
role was filled by the President of the District Labour Council) and one representative of social movement groups (often
the chair of the local coalition for social justice).
This Coordinating Committee had the final say over almost all aspects of the protests held in their area: from the
parade route to the popular materials; from the pre-protest
events to the media spokespeople.
Inevitably, many of the
trade union and other staff people assigned to work on these
protests found this structure bureaucratic and frustrating, but
that is the nature of organizing collectively. Through the
coordinating
committee and the sub-committees
that were
formed to work on specific parts of the protest, they learned
much about the organizational culture of different organizations and how to compromise between organizational
cultures.
Anyone who has ever tried to organize an event knows
how important personal contact is to their success. Lucy
Harrison, co-chair of the Kitchener- Waterloo Coalition for
Social Justice, has reported that stronger networking and
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communication
between different local organizations
and
sectors are the most important and immediately
obvious
benefit of the Days of Action held in her community." The
kind of individual connections
and trust that were built
through the protests will come to benefit social justice work
in these communities for years to come.
Secondly, OFL unions (including the recently affiliated
teachers' federations) have poured literally millions of dollars into these communities in the form of human and financial resources
to make the Days of Action happen.
Cashed-starved community groups suddenly had the kind of
infrastructure necessary to successfully organize. When organizers got to Hamilton, for example, the local coalition
didn't even have their own phone number. Suddenly, they
had office space in a down-town building, and a host of
other bare necessities most community coalitions (and, for
that matter, community organizations in general) can't afford
- a phone number, an answering service, and a fax machine.
Through the organizers assigned to help them, they had instant connections to the provincial, and in many cases, national offices of unions and other social movement groups.
They had signs, placards, t-shirts, leaflets, and other popular
materials designed and printed, which gave them a local
profile and visibility they had never had.
Perhaps even more important than the physical resources
were the organizing, public relations, and administrative staff
assigned to work on the protests. These more than full-time
organizers brought a level of know-how to the communities,
providing training in the organizing of the protests, and turning the gearing-up for the actions into a month-long community organizing school. Local activists worked side-byside with people who get to do this stuff for a living, and
were able to pick up skills ranging from how to organize
picketing to how to do successful media work. The sense
of empowerment
of local community activists stems both
from the development of their abilities to organize, and the
enlargement of their view of the possible. The resulting burnout has been a small (but significant) price to pay for the
increased levels of participation and activism and the hands-on
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Munro/Days of Action
training in organizing many of these groups and activists
gained.
The third positive outcome has been the use of direct
action as the avenue to promote the debate that is now happening across Ontario. The main strategy used in the Days
of Action is one we haven't seen in the province in a generation - the political strike. Working people have been
staying away from their jobs not to make a point during
negotiations in their own work-places or for their own contracts, but for the express purpose of making a point with
an elected government. Other strategies used in the Days of
Action protests have included: cross-picketing
of workplaces, including both private and public institutions; keeping children home and/or staying away from school, university, child care, and other public institutions; sit-ins at the
offices of elected officials; and the blocking of streets and
other thoroughfares. The wide-spread use and acceptance of
these tactics as legitimate and necessary by both the majority
of the leadership of the OFL, and the overwhelming majority
of activists in local communities shows a fundamental shift
in our understanding
about how high the stakes are, and
what kind of actions are necessary to both engage people
in a debate, in an age when the television is on constantly
in most households, and to win against increasingly powerful
adversaries.
Geoff Bickerton, the Research Director of the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers, has worked on each of the Days
at the local level, going into plants and local membership
meetings. He has repeatedly made the point that these kind
of actions are not being led by cocky labour leaders who
mistakenly believe they have the support of all the membership in vocally opposing Harris. On the contrary, calling
for and organizing walk-outs and other forms of civil disobedience have been part of an overt strategy of the majority
of the local and provincial leadership of these protests to
grab the attention of the people being affected by the Harris
agenda, and provoke debate on the shop floors and in the
communities about Harris, his policies, and why they are
opposing him.
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The use of more civil disobedience also stems from a
realization that many people don't learn without acting, and
may not act without being directly challenged. There are
serious, substantial risks and consequences individual working people and families have been asked to accept in connection with the Days of Action protests. When people are
asked to take large risks - losing a days pay, losing their
jobs (as some people did), losing essential public services
for a day - they are forced to discuss and debate not only
the ramifications of taking that action, but the reasons for
and against taking action. They are forced to find out about
the issues, to try and understand why they should join the
protest. They are forced to take a position, and to take a
side. Suddenly politics appears, and cynical people are engaged in a debate about their communities
in relation to
government and private interests. Civil society is reborn.
By creating a community of committed activists and social
justice organizations working against the Harris agenda at
the local level, and using aggressive, direct action tactics
to raise the level of debate and discussion, the Days of Action
have been successful in doing what is perhaps the most important thing we could have done in the first year of Harris:
creating a climate for debate and opposition among the general public.
In each of the communities where the Days of Action
have taken place (and, to a lesser extent, in the province as
a whole-), mainstream media coverage of the events and
the debate leading-up to the protests has been intense. Local
labour and social movement leaders managed to create profiles for themselves, not only as legitimate voices of opposition, but as legitimate representatives
of forces in their
communities. Through the debate in the media, and in workplaces, shopping centres, and schools we have reinforced in
these communities, and to some extent in the entire province,
questions many people may have been asking themselves:
Is this government doing the right thing? Are they going
too far too fast? It is very powerful to articulate an unspoken
suspicion, and these protests have done that in a way which
shows the power of organizing together at a community
level.
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Coalitions are difficult: the need for resources and direction A feminist activist once observed that "if building
a coalition is easy, it isn't working." The same can be said
for the organizing of the Days of Action, for, in some ways,
the organizing has been just a bit too easy and the sense of
achievements must be tempered with an awareness of their
limitations. This isn't to say that people didn't work insane
hours under less than perfect conditions to achieve largescale organizational goals within a politically charged and
sensitive atmosphere - of course they did. The question
that needs to be asked is a strategic one: did the Days of
Action as organized serve to build a sustainable structure
for local political action in Ontario, or was this even a central
goal of the protests? In my view, there are some larger strategic weaknesses with the protests, and I want to address
three briefly: the lack of continued resources for communities where the Days have already occurred; the missed opportunities for building continued resistance and campaigns
in each of those communities by connecting the newly invigorated social justice networks to the concrete campaigns
taken on by provincial organizations; and the need for continued, targeted direct action campaign strategies to reinforce
the links between Harris and the corporate world at the community level and to continue to challenge people to choose
sides in this struggle.
The lack of continued resources for community organizations and coalitions is perhaps the easiest and most concrete problem to address. It has become apparent that the
human and financial resources available, the way in which
they are shared between organizations, and the strength of
ties between organizations varies greatly in every place
where a local coalition exists. The Days of Action involved
local activists intensively in some five to six weeks oflead-in
activity and organizing, up to a week of events including a
general shut-down, and then in playing host to a mass rally.
After such a process, activists were no-doubt exhausted and
in need of a break. So far, there has been no strategy put
into place to ensure that, after the much-needed (and deserved) downtime occurs, the new political networks and
momentum are maintained and strengthened, becoming a
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source for ongoing and longer-term political action in communities. This points to a desperate need for resources to
be assigned to communities after the main actions are completed to ensure that follow-through
happens.
In my experience working in the campaigns of the Action
Canada Network, there are minimal resources that must be
assigned to keep a coalition on its feet and ready to respond
to other actions and campaigns as they arise. Organizers
could be responsible for instituting some or all of these on
their way out of town: a fax machine for the local coalition
that would be programmed with the numbers of as many
members of the coalition as possible; a phone number for
the coalition with some kind of answering service; and, most
importantly, at least one local individual who can be responsible for taking care of the communication and coordination
needs of the coalition on a part- or full-time basis.f The
goal of building long-term capacity should be near the top
of the list for organizers throughout the event. As the protests
are completed, the local coalition coordinating committee
would potentially have the capacity to engage in their own
planning. Still, the organizers brought in to help with the
protest can play a critical role in organizing a post-Day
analysis and "what next" session to help spur the process,
and ensure that resources needed for the coalition's continued functioning are found and assigned.
Along with the gap in organizational resources assigned
to community coalitions, there has also been a gap in providing continued leadership in the form of collective campaigns and strategies. Although the leaders of the OFL took
responsibility
for initiating the Days of Action in the differenct communities, direction for continued, strategic action
hasn't been forthcoming. Why weren't the Days of Action
protests part of a longer-term strategy, and one in which
each protest built upon the last one to start creating something much larger with more potential impact?
For example, the strike of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union in the spring of 1996 could have been a real
opportunity to build on the Days of Action strategy as it
had played out thus far. By the time the strike started, successful protests had already taken place in both London and
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Hamilton. Yet to the best of my knowledge, no discussions
were held about how, for example, to use the OPSEU walkout
to move from the Days of Action strategy into a multi-city
strategy of more general strikes and protests. This is not to
say that community coalitions didn't respond to the OPSEU
strike, or show solidarity through contributing time and resources." But, imagine the impact if instead the union leadership had stated that they were going to assign two organizers to set up a strike support office in each of the communities where Days of Action had already occurred and
perhaps in other communities identified as priorities by the
OPSEU leadership. These offices could have built on the
work already done in the community and involved the coalition in working out local strategies to support the OPSEU
strike in that area: to strengthen picket lines; to organize
community information nights; to organize OPSEU workers
to talk to other union locals and other local groups about
their struggle; and to organize community-based
strategies
to make the links between OPSEU demands and the larger
issues, such as cuts to public services, that their struggle
entailed.
A second and different way to show leadership would be
to encourage and provide the skills and resources necessary
to coalitions to expand the use of civil disobedience strategies in their communities as a way of continuing to challenge
individuals and to build resistance. In the United States, unions like the Services Employees International Unionf are
having great success in mobilizing dormant working-class
populations in community-based
campaigns for social justice
and union rights through the use of civil rights-inspired campaigns which use civil disobedience strategies. In Canada,
there is a long tradition in the CAW, the Postal Workers,
and other trade and student unions and, more recently, in
environmental and native organizations of using these strategies to strengthen their position, and to involve and excite
the membership about particular struggles. Civil disobedience-based campaigns, because of their confrontational
nature, also provide a way of keeping momentum in a campaign
going at the community level by continuing and expanding
the debate.
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In summary, the Days of Action strategies have been
viewed too narrowly thus far. It's very easy for organizers
to get caught-up in a "get the job done" attitude, but these
protests are not like a normal strike. The goal is much larger
- to discredit the corporate-driven
policies of the Harris
government, and, in doing so, to take a swipe at capitalism
in general. The protests, therefore, need to be about building
for long-term struggle, and the infrastructure these protests
leave behind needs to be constantly evaluated and strengthened so that the structures set up are useful for not only
the specific protests, but as links for action in the future.
Since we know the fight won't be won just in Toronto, and
it definitely won't be won just in the legislature, the structures the Days of Action leave behind must not only be
ready with resources to continue fight-backs in the community; they must be considered and relied upon as important
political actors in other struggles and campaigns that are
planned to take on the Harris government. As the struggles
themselves, such as the current struggle against the shutting
of hospitals, become equal parts local and provincial, we
must find ways to organize ourselves that mirror this reality.
This is not the time to back up or slow down. Now that the
agenda of federal and provincial cuts is sinking in, we should
be broadening and deepening protests across the country to
coincide with and help expand local struggles.
The problem is "the job" doesn't seem to have been defined with these larger goals in mind. It's impossible to look
at the Days of Action without asking: Where was the overall
strategy? What were/are we supposed to be building towards? If it's a general walk-out, as called for in the convention resolution, than how do we get there from here?
And how are the actions and the way the protests are organized in the communities building for that strategy? What
kind of structures and/or capacities for action do we want
to leave behind in each community? Are numbers of buses,
bodies, and speakers the measure of a successful day, or is
it the level of disruption and debate we cause in the given
city? Are we actually using these resources and these two-
day protests to build the capacity and the desire in these
communities
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for bigger and longer-term
actions,
or are we
MunrolDays of Action
simply looking to "raise the debate" and move on? The overall weakness of the Days of Action doesn't consist in any
one thing that was or wasn't done; it lies, rather, in their
lack of focus on the future. They involved a big expenditure
of energy and resources that had some very positive sideeffects with little long-term benefit.
Debate can only make us stronger In the end, what is
really lacking in the Days of Action campaign is a broad
debate about the political strategy behind them. Articles in
the popular progressive press surrounding the Days of Action
have focused quite a bit on the "question" of the New Democratic Party, and to read them one would think the split comes
down to whether you think this strategy is about promoting
the NDP as the alternative political voice for working people
or not.
The role of the NDP in each of the protests has stretched
from non-existent, to another group of marchers in the parade. The NDP leader has been left off the speakers' lists
at the Days of Action protests in most communities. Sudbury
and Peterborough were the exceptions. These decisions have
been taken by the local groups coordinating the protests in
each community, a fact which has been largely ignored.
Provincially.? the labour leadership has been only nominally
divided on the question of the NDP's participation: the socalled "pink-group" of private-sector unions led by the Steelworkers has been up-front and articulate in its view that
rebuilding support for NDP must be the focus of the protests
and other actions; the other unions, including the majority
of public sector unions and the Canadian Auto Workers, have
taken a much vaguer and less unified stance. They have
preferred to leave the question of NDP participation to the
local community in question (although the majority of the
second group has recently reverted to supporting the NDP,
including encouraging their union locals to affiliate, participate in and support the party). The "split" in the labour
leadership on the "NDP question" is, therefore, not as big
as the rhetoric suggests, a fact which has also been largely
ignored. In the labour movement and in social movements
in general, however, there is a real debate re-emerging about
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the focus and the goals of political action in Ontario and
across the country.
I say re-emerging because, at least in the western world,
the debate on the left of the political spectrum has been
much the same since Rosa Luxemburg penned her brilliant
and timeless classic Reform or Revolution at the end of the
19th century. The debate has pitted the need for a social
and economic revolution that would get rid of capitalism,
and replace the system with something more humane and
workable, against the position that reforms to capitalism can
be made "in our life-time" that would free the working class
to participate more wholly in liberal-democracy,
and thus
change the system. The revolutionary "faction" has usually
placed greater emphasis on extra-parliamentary
politics, and
has viewed this as a long-term process of building a movement that would, to varying degrees, figure out a way to
get rid of capitalism and implement something better; the
reform "faction" (those in support of the current NDP provide one example) has put a much greater emphasis on the
value of liberal-democracy,
and viewed action as a way of
securing the incremental changes needed to better, in whatever way, living conditions under capitalism.
As capitalism becomes more ridiculous in its extremes
(perhaps best exemplified in Canada by the "contradiction"
between ballooning bank profits and ascending rates of poverty), and as the average woman and man look for radical
ideas about what could or should be done differently to set
things straight, this is the debate that should be taking place
in social movements:
Can we make capitalism better, or
should we be proposing and working for something radically
different? Although it's easy to get caught up in the moment
of political struggle, I think it's very dangerous to overlook
this important question. And, as electoral politics seems more
and more distant from the realities of working class and
poor people in Canada, it would seem bizarre for the labour
movement to allow itself to be side-tracked by the need to
support the NDP, forgetting altogether that supporting and
working to elect progressive candidates is only one in a
range of options and tactics open to us to force real and
long-lasting
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change.
Munro/Days of Action
Left-wing movements must strongly support non-electoral political strategies in Ontario and across the country.
Unfortunately, the Ontario-centric
nature of our institutions
and political thinking is apparent in the Days of Action strategy. We have to remember the Mulroney government; the
fact that as bad as Harris is, he is largely following Alberta's
lead, which, when compared to the resources poured into
fighting Harris, national labour organizations
largely ignored; that in Manitoba some of the most regressive labour
laws in North America are on the books; that the same lowwage, low public-service
economic policies are being implemented in Atlantic Canada with the help of a ruthless
federal Liberal government, a federal government which has
not only picked up where Mulroney left off, but which has
implemented the kind of structural adjustment that would
have made him blush. We need to stop acting as if Harris
or his government is the worst we've ever seen or fought,
because this isn't about one man, or the Ontario agenda.
Now, more than ever, it's about what corporations and capital
want, and, as OFL President Gord Wilson said, golf-lover
Mike Harris is simply the biggest caddie business in Ontario
has ever had. Polls and protests show that Canadians activists and observers - understand
that much of this
agenda is driven by and for corporate interests.l? and the
chant in Toronto was possibly the best popular example of
the sentiment that this is not the only battle ground ("Hey
Mike, Hey Harris/We'll shut you down like Paris"). As difficult as it seems sometimes, we can't lose sight of other
national struggles, or of the global corporate forces that are
driving them.
It is precisely the enormity and complexity of the situation
that makes non-partisan,
left-wing agitation so important.
Whether to support the NDP is not the only question that
must be answered. An equally, and perhaps more, important
question to be asked is whether you support organizations
committed to setting the political context for left debate,
for left policies, for left action, for left thinking among the
general population that are not directly connected to electing
a political party. We need organizations that not only strongly
articulate this position, but that will commit resources to
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the struggle, and won't get nervous or feel the need to overtly
support social democratic political parties come election
time.
Antonio Gramsci is, in many ways, the spiritual and theoretical godfather of coalition politics in Canada; his work
has very much affected the thinking and political beliefs of
those who have made the Action Canada Network and the
larger reality of local social justice coalitions a unique part
of the social movement experience in this country (one which
has been used as a model by social movements in other
countries facing similar government actions, most recently
in Australia)."!
Without revisiting all Gramsci had to say
about the importance of progressive forces building a parallel
political culture, anyone not convinced of the need for social
movements to strongly resource and support non-partisan
political organizations and initiatives on the left need only
take a look at the success of corporate Canada's modern
political strategy. Corporations in our country don't tell a
sophisticated electorate such as ours how to vote anymore,
and they certainly don't spend any time directing Chambers
of Commerce to affiliate directly with the Progressive Conservative, Reform, or Liberal parties (although local, personal and group connections no doubt exist). Certainly corporate Canada funds the right-wing political parties, but they
also spend more human and financial resources staffing and
supporting their think tanks (like the C.D. Howe and Fraser
Institutes), their non-partisan organizations (such as the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation), and their lobbying associations (PMAC anyone?), not to mention their media, all in
a concerted, sustained effort to set the ideological context
for politics in Canada.
This is not to say that we should mirror exactly the way
corporate Canada runs the country. Our organizations must
be much more democratic and grass roots-oriented
if they
are to survive and grow into the kind of movements and
society we aspire to build. It is to say, however, that the
corporations
have learned a great deal in the last twenty
years about manufacturing
consent, and that their success
should directly inform our own questions and debate about
the way forward for the left.
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of Action
Conclusion The Days of Action are an imperfect success
story for radical politics in Canada. They should be viewed
not as an end unto themselves, but as a window into how
we might organize ourselves more effectively at the community level to take on complex capitalist forces. At the
same time, because they have happened in a context of regrouping and confusion among major left-wing forces where
questions of political action are concerned, they have given
us the opportunity to re-open an important debate on the
left about how political change happens, and the variety of
mechanisms and organizations we should be supporting and
building. Without an open, critical debate about the strategy
behind such massive protests, about what actually happens
during these protests and what we leave behind in the way
of resources, and a broader discussion about left political
action in general, the Days of Action are easily written off
as labour's attempt to "flex its muscle" in the face of a
hostile government. These debates - not narrow debates
about whether or not to support the NDP - must occur at
all levels of the social movements if we are to begin to
figure out how to meet the current crisis of capitalism, and
avoid becoming as irrelevant to the public as neoconservatives claim we already are.
Notes
This is a slightly revised version of a panel presentation sponsored by the
Socialist Seminar entitled "From the Days of Action to ?," Carleton University, 14 February 1997. I'd like to thank my co-worker Mandy Rocks
for her insightful and thoughtful comments, and the editors of SPE for
their helpful suggestions. The opinions and any errors expressed within are
my own.
1.
2.
3.
Many of the union leaders responsible for making the Days of Action
possible also played important roles in building the Action Canada
Network and the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice during the fight
against the Free Trade Agreements and the Mulroney government.
"Days of Factions," The Canadian Forum (January/February 1997);
"Labour's Dirty Secret," This Magazine (NovemberlDecember 1996).
Since the Toronto protest, the centre for the Days of Action strategy
has shifted from the OFL to the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice.
While this certainly represents the unwillingness of some members
of the OFL Executive Board members to continue this strategy, the
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
recent protest in Sudbury has shown that its potential for positive
outcomes on local coalition organizing and strengthening
have not
been diminished.
In conversation
with Mandy Rocks, ACN Organizer, March 1997.
In the case of the Metro Days of Action in Toronto, the whole country
was forced to take notice as the protest was covered extensively on
all major television stations.
While these resources may seem like a lot to ask, they are by no
means extravagant. In every coalition there are organizations
involved
that have such resources. We argue that those with the resources find
a way to share them with the coalition so that the coalition becomes
an organizational
as well as individual priority for its member groups.
This benefits the coalition both in strengthening
the resources available, as well as strengthening
the commitment of member organizations around the table.
We also know the OFL Executive offered interest free loans to OPSEU
should their strike fund have run out.
For more on this see Stephen Lerner, "Let's get moving," Labor
Research Review 18.
9.
10.
11.
140
Even though the Days of Action has been a provincial campaign,
the "provincial"
decisions have had large participation
from national
labour leadership. Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove
and other national labour leaders have, at various points, attended
OFL Executive Board meetings to discuss strategies and make decisions.
Ekos Research has recently been tracking attitudes of Canadians on
these governance questions, and has found that, while people want
and believe it is the government's
responsibility to implement policies
to represent them, they feel politicians have been too busy representing themselves and their big corporate friends. Ekos Research,
Rethinking Government II: A Year-end Review, November 1996.
Correspondence
from Jorge Rodriquez, Coordinator, Migrant Workers
Resource Centre and Australian Coalition for Economic Justice, August 1996.