I’ve been on strike for over a month. This is not such an easy thing in sub-zero temperatures. My military surplus parka may be fashionable, but my shapeless goose-down coat is warmer. My 18 hole Doctor Marten boots are beautiful and intimidating in an art-punk way, but too heavy for the slow back-and-forth of picket-line walking, leading to sore calves. My kaffiyeh is fashionable but too thin… you get the idea. My vision of winter as an aesthetic choice only works when I don’t have to spend too much time outdoors. Reluctantly, I’m learning to layer: T-shirt, turtleneck, wool sweater, vest, leather motorcycle jacket, down coat. And even those things don’t stop the shivers after a few hours.

Politically, it’s a much harder adjustment. I know this is a strike against the neoliberal university. I know the administration is using all that government funding, and all those tuition dollars, to build a medical school, promote its MBA programme and shaft the Arts Faculty (the largest one, which subsidizes all the other programs.) I know that if we settle for a bad deal, then public services everywhere will be forced to make do with less – not just in the university sector. If we win a good deal, we set a firm precedent: public sector workers won’t let the government offload the financial crisis onto the public.



But most of the university workers on strike are scared, first and foremost, for their jobs and their degrees. They’re emotionally and physically exhausted, and a large part of that is from not seeing an end to the strike. It’s incredibly stressful. You can’t do any planning. Christmas vacation? Gifts for the family? Graduate and look for work? It’s all on hold.

I’m a leftist in the union. The language of neoliberalism and union militancy speaks to me. But it doesn’t to most people in the union. They don’t identify with class struggle, and they don’t see themselves as part of social movements. In many cases, they don’t see themselves as poor or as workers. They’re out on the line because they want a better deal. When they hear about neoliberalism, it makes them think there are radicals and extremists in charge of the union, dragging them into a strike with no end.

Let me give an example. At a union meeting, a member gave a presentation on mobilizing the local. It was the basics of Marxist political economy: we sell our labour power for a wage, this happens in the context of cutbacks, the only way to stop them is to be as mobilized as possible. The response was audible: people groaned. They were frustrated: they’d been on the line for weeks, and instead of a strategy to finish the strike, they were getting ‘idealism’. Hearing this, another member responded, “You might forget about neoliberalism, but neoliberalism won’t forget about you.” More groans. Faced with the hard reality of striking, the political conclusions began to sound flimsy.



I don’t think most people oppose an analysis of neoliberalism. They simply see it as irrelevant. There are no examples of popular struggle winning demands in the public consciousness, still less changing the political context. Neoliberalism exists – so what? Our strike can’t change that. No one wants to mortgage their future – and in many cases, their actual mortgage – for a political point, when all around us the economy is crumbling. When I’ve tried to argue carefully for the importance of a political understanding of the strike, I’ve been told it’s “unrealistic”, that we’re not going to get everything we’re asking for.

Insisting on making this a political movement strikes me as ultra-leftism. As socialists and unionists, we are absolutely correct in our analysis of the causes and consequences of strikes. However, we can’t impose that understanding just because the objective conditions warrant it. A union is a mass-membership group based on shared working conditions, not a political party.



There are two things I think would help our strike. One, speak the language of the majority. If the rhetoric around neoliberalism is turning people off, then let’s stop using it. It doesn’t build people’s confidence to stay out on strike. And two, think strategically about what our union is capable of. The ‘subjective’ fact of how people perceive the strike gets translated into an objective fact: who shows up to picket. If union members feel the strike is being misled, they won’t show up, and they’ll vote for the first deal the employer forces on us. Being militant in a way that doesn’t connect with people’s sense of what’s possible, can actually weaken the strike.

One of the things that makes me a socialist is the belief that people’s ideas can change very quickly, when they come together to struggle collectively against capital. I still look forward to those quick transitions. But they’re complex, mediated by a host of factors and they don’t arise out of nowhere. It’s our job as radicals to prepare the ground for those transformations: meet people half-way, so when they begin to shift, they’ll want to talk to us.



For example: let’s say the employer offers us a bad deal. As a radical, I’d think, “We got a 4% raise when if we’d held out just a little longer, we could’ve gotten 6%.” But if most union members think it’s a good deal, then their confidence is boosted, and it makes us stronger for the next fight (which, in my local, may be only two years away.) Of course we try to push the limits of what’s possible, in our rhetoric and actions. But we start from the actual limits, not from where we wish those limits were. Our starting point is the current consciousness of union members.

And at this point, I’m more concerned about union morale than I am about winning all our demands. Because it’s becoming increasingly obvious the employer wants to break us. They’re refusing to budge on issues that wouldn’t even cost them any money. If we can come out of this struggle with a union local still intact, I’ll consider it a victory. But the longer the strike lasts, the less I’m certain of that happening.



Our line has a picket line barbeque on Fridays. The warm veggie burgers are great, because there’s nothing worse than cold pizza when the air is already freezing. We also finally have a fire barrel, which is great for warming the hands. But I come home smelling like campfire, and toxic campfire at that – I don’t know what they put in the wooden pallets we’re breaking up and burning, but it’s not cedar chips and lavender oil.

Labels: class consciousness, strike, working class