Vol. 73/No. 7      February 23, 2009

Josefina Otero
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Strike-breaking laws
One measure of the developing capitalist economic crisis is the increasing use of strike-breaking legislation by the bosses and their governments. The almost three-month strike of 2,300 Ottawa transit workers reported in your issue two weeks ago is over.

On January 29 union leaders reached a deal with city bosses to send all outstanding issues to binding arbitration and get the busses rolling again after the federal government threatened to force them back to work with strike-breaking legislation.

In Toronto that same day, the Ontario provincial government did use strike-breaking legislation to end the three-month strike of York University teaching assistants and contract faculty, which had closed the university.

However, the day before, hundreds of unionized Montreal blue collar workers who carry out snow removal strengthened our right to strike by stopping road clearing during a major snowstorm to demand pay cheques for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime they had not received for weeks. The matter was settled between the union and city bosses in a few hours.

John Steele
Montreal, Canada

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