Commentary

“Buzz” Hargrove Reaffirms the Liberal-Labour Alliance

The Liberal-Labour alliance was forged during and shortly after the Second World War. In return for union recognition and an automatic dues check-off, the major trade unions agreed to line up the working class behind the capitalist system in general, and behind the Liberal Party in particular. By the 1970s and 1980s many trade union leaders were sitting on tri-partite boards alongside government and corporate leaders as members of the ruling elite. This arrangement began to come apart during the 1990s with the open adoption of neo-liberalism by both the Liberals and Conservatives, as well by the NDP provincially. Increasingly, the trade union leadership was shut out of the decision-making process.

These developments led some observers to speculate that the Liberal-Labour alliance was coming to an end. However, last week “Buzz” Hargrove, the National President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), reaffirmed that the Liberal-Labour Alliance is alive and well when he embraced and endorsed Liberal leader Paul Martin on the podium of the CAW convention in Toronto. Hargrove called on workers to “agree that this minority government deserves to go back to Ottawa with even bigger numbers.” Hargrove also called on workers to vote strategically in order to prevent the election of the Conservative Party and return the Liberals to power.

While, to date, Hargrove is the only national leader of a major trade union to publicly endorse Paul Martin’s Liberals many others have done the same thing in private. Clearly, a new arrangement has been worked out with a new role for the trade union leaders. One of the indications of this new role for the trade unions is the fact that trade union leaders are increasingly lobbying governments for financial bailouts for “their” capitalists. This has the effect of providing a pro-worker façade to the profoundly anti-social pratice of taking money out of the pockets of working people and putting it into the pockets of the rich. Hargrove has been in the forefront in this regard, arranging the recent bailout of General Motors, as well as various other companies. However, he has not been the only one. In return for Liberal “favours” these trade union leaders offer tacit – or in Hargrove’s case, open – support for the Liberal Party. Historically, this Liberal-Labour alliance has been the main block to the Canadian working class adopting its own, independent politics and this remains the case today.

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