Stephen McNeil has launched an underhanded attack on workers by introducing Bill 37. The bill is designed to destroy worker power in the public sector. Bill 37 is duplicitous. It goes beyond the scope of this particular labour dispute by reaching into future rounds of negotiations and declawing the union power of some 40,000 public sector workers.
Solidarity Halifax applauds the bold action taken by nurses and their allies, some of whom are their patients. Nurses who belong to NSGEU Local 97 have prioritized the needs of their patients over other legitimate demands like their wages and benefits by centering their fight on nurse-to-patient ratios.
This week, it has been the voices of nurses that have carried
the strongest and the loudest – through megaphones outside
the legislature and through microphones inside its four walls.
Workers, mostly women, are telling their own stories, in their
own words.
Solidarity Halifax members in labour, community and student organizations have been on picket lines, speaking before the Law Amendments Committee and talking to their friends and neighbours about the MacNeil Liberals’ austerity agenda for our province.
The 1% is united. The Sobeys, the Irvings, the Braggs and the other millionaires and billionaires have their agenda served by the MacNeil Liberals. Withdrawing labour power is the major card workers can play when resisting their bosses and their government, and all over the world – in Spain, in Greece, in Bangladesh – that right is under attack. This struggle is about freezing the power of workers to negotiate. It is about making it impossible for workers to resist the dismantling of their political and economic gains.
With the passing of this legislation, we wish to renew our call for a united left that can oppose austerity and oppression. Working class people have everything we need to begin building a better world.
We want to work with nurses, organizations of low-income persons, racially oppressed groups, aboriginal people, women and trans people, students, the labour movement, the environmental movement, all those who stand to gain from building a world beyond capitalism.
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