With the ITF Congress being held in Vancouver, Canada, Geoff Meggs reports on the new anti-labour environment that the city and the wider province of British Columbia are facing

One year after British Columbia (BC) voters swept the province’s labour-supported New Democratic Party (NDP) government from power, BC workers find themselves facing the harshest anti-labour government in Canada – but they’re fighting back.

After 10 years in power, the New Democrats had a strong record of expanding labour rights and protecting health and social services from federal cost-cutting, but a series of political errors, media controversies and the impact of recession soured the electorate, including the NDP’s base in union families.

On 17 May 2001, the electorate crushed the New Democrats by handing the business-backed Liberals a 77-seat majority in the 79-seat Legislature. The government’s first action, the day after the election, was a massive tax cut to businesses and the province’s richest citizens.

Newly-elected Premier Gordon Campbell then lost no time in training his sights on the province’s tough and seasoned labour movement, which counts 450,000 organised workers. The first order of business: legislation ordering an end to a prolonged transit strike on terms that favoured the employers.

Campbell next imposed legislated settlements on striking health care professionals, who conducted a one-day illegal walkout in protest, and then a third law imposing employer terms on striking nurses. After a quick legislative session that stripped the Labour Code of key rights to unionise and eliminated the right to strike for teachers, Campbell unleashed a massive government restructuring to eliminate a deficit caused by his own tax cuts.

British Columbia Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair says: “This government is cutting the basic rights of working people to pay for massive tax cuts to the rich and big business. What we have is an all-out attack on the best aspects of BC society to join the global economy’s race to the bottom.”

The provincial electorate, seduced by Campbell’s campaign promises of a “new era of hope and prosperity” in which health and education would receive full funding, have been stunned by the reality. Massive cuts to public services are reducing support for environmental protection, children’s services, income assistance and even legal aid, which has been funded by a tax on lawyers’ fees. Judges, doctors and lawyers have all joined in the chorus of condemnation.

But even more devastating are the cuts to health and education, which are among the best such systems in the world and constitute a key competitive and social advantage for British Columbians. A savage programme of health restructuring and privatisation will cost 11,000 jobs over the next three years on top of the 6,500 jobs eliminated from the public service. Cuts to education will eliminate hundreds of teaching jobs. A prolonged and widely-supported campaign by teachers to win a new agreement ended in the Campbell government’s now-routine way: legislation imposing employer terms.

The private sector has not been immune. Changes proposed to the province’s forest sector, a pillar of the economy, will cost thousands of jobs by opening up raw logs for export to the United States or Mexico for processing. Threatened deregulation of the province’s public hydro electric utility would also eliminate a vital job generator for the province which has contributed billions in profits to the funding of health and education under previous governments.

And even more changes to the Labour Code will strip unions of additional rights while workplace health and safety protection and employment standards are rolled back under the guise of “eliminating red tape”.

British Columbians have not taken the changes quietly. After the wave of public sector strikes that culminated in the teachers’ walk-out in January 2002, the labour movement formally launched Campaign BC to unite every possible element of opposition to the government in community, political and economic action.

On 23 February 2002, more than 35,000 marched on the provincial Legislature in Victoria to demand a positive government agenda. More demonstrations have followed in towns and cities throughout the province. Meanwhile, labour organisers are working in their communities to rebuild the political networks destroyed by the election defeat of 2001.

British Columbia is no stranger to class strife. A similar confrontation in the 1980s resulted in general strikes and, ultimately, the election of the NDP. “We have tougher challenges today,” says Sinclair, “but British Columbians did not vote for the programme this government is implementing. The anger growing in the province will force a response, and the labour movement will do its part to contribute to the changes we know must come.”

Geoff Meggs is Director of Communications of the British Columbia Federation of Labour.

British Columbia Federation of Labour: http://www.bcfed.com/

Campaign BC: http://www.campaignbc.ca