Buzz on Buzz

"Buzz marches to his own ego and his own drum"

Comment by: panel moderator Larry Solway

  I simply do not understand what Buzz Hargrove is up to. He claims he is helping several locals of the Service Employees International Union get out from under what he calls the "dictatorial" U.S. parent union. Buzz is tough.
  Buzz also sees himself as a kind of messiah leading downtrodden workers out from the darkness of exploitation and abuse by the bosses. I am sorry Buzz, but that's the way I see you. According to one newspaper report you said that your fight with the CLC could lead to an alternative Labour movement.
  You led many union members away from the NDP and toward "strategic" voting. Vote for "the candidate with the best chance to beat the Tory " If, according top polls and past results, that happened to be a Liberal, well so be it. Buzz never accepted that the McGuinty Liberals were and are Harris Lite.
  The irony, laughable if it were not so tragic, is that Buzz talked a good stick but never delivered his rank and file. The star local of the CAW, 222 in Oshawa, helped elect a Tory to represent Oshawa plus regional heavyweights - Janet Ecker and Jim Flaherty, two of the big Harris machine cabinet members. Now with a Federal election almost certain for late November, are we to see the spectacle of Buzz rallying voters to the Liberals where "the candidate has the best chance of beating the Alliance candidate." It may be that I am still smarting from my own defeat in last year's Provincial election, a defeat at least partly due to "strategic" voting.
  I simply don't understand the CAW parroting the classic business line: "workers should have the right etc..." That's how unions get busted. Invoking "rights" is a classic "Common Sense" mantra.
  Ken Georgetti, President of the Canadian Labour Congress wrote: " I wish to inform you that, with a great deal of regret, the Executive Committee has authorized me to impose full sanctions on the National Automobile Aerospace Transportation & General Workers Union of Canada (CAW-Canada)...The CAW was found guilty of raiding the SEIU by an Impartial Umpire on April 14, 2000.... the CAW was given 14 days to comply with the ruling and cease their activities. Since the Union continued its activities I imposed level 1 sanctions on May 1, 2000."
  Buzz may fulminate that freedom to choose is at stake. He may rant that many members of SEIU wanted to make the switch because negotiations were bogging down. Rubbish. If every time a union came to an impasse another union snuck in the back door there would be chaos. Not only chaos, but risking everything unions stand for from collective bargaining to social justice to Medicare. A union is not only a standard-bearer for its members, it is an integral part of a political movement to bring power, choice, human decency, and justice to all the people of the community.
  I remember the bad old days of raiding when it was to get the Commies out of the union. It was the excuse to unseat Pat Murphy of the Canadian Seaman's Union right after the war. The steamship companies wanted a sweetheart union They got it. The S.I.U under a gangster named Hal Banks presided over the destruction of much of our domestic deep sea shipping industry.
  In the years that followed the Red flag waved to root out the United Electrical workers. It was used, and I was in Timmins at the time, by the Steelworkers Union to oust the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers from the Porcupine Gold Fields. At least in this case it was a move to rid unions of Reds. Fine if you like Red-baiting. But that's another issue.
  Buzz Hargrove has no such pretext. Buzz is empire building. Buzz will come out of this even more estranged from the political left, marching to his own ego and his own drum.
  By the way, if, as Buzz implies, there are other Labour leaders who have "privately expressed support, let them show themselves and be counted.

P.S. I don't mean to get the last word on Buzz. But a few days after I wrote my comment and got a reply from Buzz the National Post ran a headline: Hargrove Predicts End of The NDP. If you can believe the Post, no friend of the Left, Buzz is supposed to have said: "After the next election, I think there will be a serious discussion on the left about whether or not we can rebuild the NDP or we have to form a new party... "My sense is the NDP is going to take a real beating in the election," Again I ask the question: Is he empire building? I leave it to you.

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