From July 4 to July 11, the 18 000 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 joined the 6800 members of CUPE Local 416 (whose strike had started 5 days earlier) on strike against the City of Toronto. This was the largest municipal workers' strike in Canadian history. The strike ended when the Ontario legislature passed a law that forced the workers back to work and sent all unresolved issues to an arbitrator.

CUPE 79 represents "inside" workers, while 416 represents the "outside" city workers. For more background, see "The Groundwork for Privatization" in New Socialist 35 (April-May 2002).

Paul Lykotrafitis spoke to two key activists in the strike, Claudia White and Julia Barnett. Both are shop stewards in CUPE 79.

Paul: What was at stake during the strike?

Claudia: Our jobs. In the collective agreement we have provisions around employment security and the city was gunning for our employment security clause as it stands in the way of privatizing public services.

Julia: On the one hand the strike was about the public services we provide and the public services that people rely on in our communities, and on the other hand the strike saw the dismantling of union rights as labour's ability to bargain freely was taken away.

Paul: How was the strike run?

Claudia: The strike committee was fired at the end of March and it had a strong impact on the strike. As far as the fired strike committee went, we emerged as a flying squad and participated that way.

Some of great things that happened were workers participating on the picket line in a democratic way to make decisions as to how the employer's operations would be disrupted that day. And certainly the feeling that accompanies that type of political activity is not going to leave people for along time. Where the strike did its best was where members took it into their own hands to speak together and coordinate their actions. We felt that the picket line belongs to the picketers.

Julia: A campaign wasn't run by any level of the CUPE leadership on the issues our members were facing (privatization of public services, massive job losses, etc). As a result there was no way that individual citizens, or even our own members, really knew what the issues were. Instead there was constant media focus on the rotting garbage in the streets. The strike was not run from the bottom up by the workers.

Paul: Did the strike committee and the bargaining committee have different ideas of how your union should organize for a strike?

Claudia: The strike committee presented a report to the executive board of the local well in advance of the strike. This report included a list of things that were needed in order for us to wage a successful strike. Members of the strike committee discussed and argued for this report for over three months and eventually the report was passed. Although the board agreed to it, the executive committee would not abide by it.

Ours was an activist-based strategy and theirs was a stage prop strategy. For the stage prop strategy the members may be trotted out for a strike vote and even take token strike action because the union president has said there will be a strike. In the activist-based strategy, it's a matter of talking to members year-round and understanding what their working lives are like, formulating those concerns into bargaining demands, and organizing actions people are willing to take to back those demands.

Paul: How did the strike end?

Claudia: The short answer is we were legislated back to work. That has to be alarming to us as trade unionists. It may be that legislating people back to work is the future for collective bargaining, especially for large locals. CUPE Local 4400 [Toronto school board workers -ed.] and now 416 and 79 have all had their strikes ended by being legislated back to work and we are all big locals.

Paul: What would a better strategy to run the strike have looked like?

Julia: First of all there would have been a movement to educate members as to what was at stake in order to mobilize more members and build rank and file confidence. Secondly, we would have made the important connections with community organizations throughout the city in order to build solidarity for greater united action. What was crucial was for our strike to have been a strike to protect public services, and this message unfortunately did not come through.

Claudia: The strike committee's demands to the bargaining committee were really modest. The most important thing we were asking for was access to the membership list. Our outreach to the membership would have started months before the strike, and not on the eve of the strike. We also wanted communication about the bargaining process in order to inform the membership.

Rather than trying to take on the employer one grievance at a time, the idea would be to look at what's happening in the workplace and build year- round campaigns around these concrete workplace issues. I think that if we did do this a strike would only be a natural progression, a culmination of all the little campaigns that have gone on that have politicized so many people.

Paul: The leaders of CUPE Ontario and some others in the labour leadership consider this strike to have been a victory. What do you think?

Julia: It's not a victory, but I don't see it as a complete defeat either. On the one hand when labour is legislated back to work we have lost the right to collective bargaining and that's not acceptable. However, within the current environment in Local 79, the membership was not given the necessary tools to strike effectively and win. This experience has allowed activists to begin the process of building a reform movement within our local. It's allowed us to make links with other like-minded activists and help start the process of rebuilding the union from the bottom up. This experience has allowed many new people to ask questions and experience new things in political ways that they've not done before.

Paul: What are rank and file activists planning on doing to rebuild the union now that the strike is over ?

Julia: We need all the militants to get together and come up with a strategy at the rank and file level, shop stewards level and to strategize around general membership meetings. On the shop floor, we shouldn't rely on individuals or on an electoral slate. Ideally it would be great if we had an open reform caucus with both a political and activist focus. We also need also build links with the broader community as well. How we do that is something we'll have to discuss collectively.

Claudia: One of the best things to come out of this strike is the formation of the flying squad, which originally came from the strike committee that we were on. So far what we've been doing is supporting other activities. We're planning other activities to flow from the flying squads. Certainly it's our intention to continue as a flying squad and participate in community and labour struggles.

Paul: What are the broader political implications of the strike ?

Claudia: Certainly it puts the fight to keep public services public in the minds of the residents of Toronto. There was a demonstration of about 25 000 in support of public services. Our jobs as public service employees are worth fighting for and we don't need to apologize for defending the work we do. For the labour movement, I think more broadly we need to remain unapologetic about fighting for our jobs and to learn about the insidious nature of privatization and to continue to have the debate about public services.

Julia: Because 79 is the largest CUPE local, being legislated back to work will set a bad precedent for other public sector unions in Canada and the fight to save public services. The ability for workers to walk off the job to defend public services and their jobs is a powerful weapon and the government wants to take that away from us.