The Ottawa government's move to force Canadian Auto Workers members at Canadian Airlines to vote on the company's concessions demands is an attack on democratic and union rights that the entire labor movement should oppose. It is a small indication of how far the capitalist rulers and their government are willing to go to wring more profits out of workers' hides. The company originally threatened to close down if workers did not agree to wage cuts of up to 10 percent.

The government's intervention follows moves by provincial governments to use legislation denying public sector workers' right to strike, and these governments' scrapping of collective agreements. By pushing the union bodies aside in order to impose a vote, Ottawa's action is a frontal attack on the unions - workers' principal defensive organizations.

As the bosses increasingly feel the squeeze of falling profit rates, pushing them to fiercer competition among themselves, they have no options left but to face off with workers in an effort to make them bear the brunt of the economic crisis. General Motors in Canada was willing to see its workforce strike, as it pushed for the concessions it needed from the union.

As the employers follow this course, they seek to narrow and eliminate workers' ability to unite and organize their resistance to the rulers' attacks. They must weaken and eliminate the industrial unions forged in battles during the last great capitalist depression.

Working people need to respond by standing up against every aspect of this offensive, from the concession demands of Canadian Airlines, to provincial cutbacks in education and health care, to chauvinist attacks on immigrants, Quebecois, and other oppressed nationalities.

The Canadian government's outrageous anti-democratic intervention into CAW members' union life should be denounced by all those fighting the rulers' austerity drive; by students demonstrating against tuition fee hikes, public sector workers marching against wage roll- backs and by all unions whose members will increasingly feel the need for union power in the battles ahead.  
 
 
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