MONTREAL — “I have a straightforward, realistic program — workers in our millions should take power into our hands,” Dennis Richter, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president, told 32 people at a Militant Labor Forum here Sept. 28.
Earlier Richter had brought solidarity to the picket lines of striking glassworkers at Prelco, during his four-day tour here. He was joined at the forum by Sylvain Nelson and one other striker, members of the Confederation of National Trade Unions.
“The employer offered us a 10% increase in a six-year contract,” Nelson told the meeting. “With inflation, that is not enough.”
When workers voted for a five-day strike, “the employer began sending material to their other factories. In the face of that, we walked out. One hour afterward we were locked out. Our demand is for 21% in a four-year contract.”
“They got a court injunction limiting the number of pickets. We have received a whole pile of warnings.” But the glassworkers have also received solidarity from other unions, he said. Richter pointed to some one-dozen teachers, members of the Autonomous Federation of Education, who joined the glassworkers’ picket line to show their solidarity.
Richter also attended a union barbecue organized by the strikers. He was invited to speak there. The number of union fights going on today, he said, underlines the fact that the low point of labor resistance is behind us. “The fight for a party of labor that will lead the fight for workers power begins today with building solidarity.”
Teodora Asare, an Ontario school support worker and member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, attended the forum. She was part of the two-day strike by CUPE members in 2022 that defied the Ontario government, forcing it to withdraw a law banning their action. The Ontario labor movement planned to have a province-wide walkout unless the government backed down.
“So I say don’t back off!” Asare said.
“The workers in Ontario stood their ground,” Richter said. “Any time we decide to fight we will not get a fair hearing in the courts. They will try to stop workers from picketing. Only with numbers and solidarity can we resist. But workers can do it. That is how the Teamsters union was built in the 1930s in the Midwest,” he said, pointing to the class-struggle leadership that led the strikes and organizing drives bringing hundreds of thousands into the union.
Crisis facing working farmers
During the meeting, Josette Hurtubise, a retired schoolteacher who had taken part in actions around the strike in Ontario, described a recent discussion she had with a grain farmer.
Farmers “have no control over prices,” Hurtubise said. “This farmer got a call from the Port of Montreal. They said there is a drought in Brazil. It is the time to sell. They said the price is set by the Chicago Stock Exchange which sets the world price, is that true?”
Richter said what she described is similar to the conditions facing working farmers in the U.S. “Farming is class divided,” he said. “There are big farmers and those who don’t have much land. Government subsidies go to the big farmers. It is true that the Chicago Board of Trade sets commodity prices.
“Technology exists today that makes it possible for us to do away with hunger,” the SWP candidate said. “I recently went by a John Deere dealership in my hometown, Glencoe, in Minnesota. They sell planters that can plant 37 rows at a time. One person can plant thousands of acres by themselves.
“But as long as food is a commodity there will be a crisis of overproduction,” he said. “If the large capitalist farmers don’t get the price they want, they will take thousands of acres out of production to keep the price up.
“Working farmers produce food needed by working people and need enough income to live on,” Richter said. “The SWP calls for immediate government aid that allows small farmers to cover their costs of production and for no foreclosures so they can continue farming. The land needs to be nationalized to prevent the banks from seizing it, and to guarantee family farmers never lose their land.
“The fight for this can bring workers and farmers, both producers, together in the fight to bring working people to power.”