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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

"Unions slide from unity to enmity over Tim Hudak"

Here's a huge reason why Ontario labour remains stuck and ineffective as a movement: an evolving 20-year battle at the top of the province's major unions over election strategies because there is no commitment to a political strategy that would involve serious extra-parliamentary or even workplace mobilization.

Whether campaigning openly for the NDP, or openly for Anybody-But-Hudak, or funding issue-based TV ads that lend to strategic voting, Ontario's unions have all allowed their political strategies to be narrowed and whittled down to electoralism.

Only labour's agitation for the minimum wage bucks this trend.

There are of course other issues driving these splits, but it is the political strategy of labour that has to be addressed first and foremost.

Problems of personality and territorialism will always persist but it couldn't hurt to have some new people with new ideas.