A Window vs. 30% of Ontario Workers
Shattered windows do not trump shattered lives
Yesterday, Laurie Scott, Ontario’s Labour Minister, had her constituency office in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock vandalized. The windows to the office were broken and graffiti was sprayed on a wall reading “Attack workers we fight back $15”.
The condemnation came swift. With the Labour Minster herself saying “I believe in democratic and peaceful protest and debate, but we will not tolerate vandalism, intimidation or bullying.” Doug Ford called the vandalism a “very serious incident”. Speaking about earlier comments made by the head of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), Chris Buckley, Government House Leader, Todd Smith, went on the offensive using some the language Ford did during his campaign saying that he wants to “see … some of these other radical groups acknowledge the fact that a line has been crossed here”.
His rhetoric worked. Soon after, Chris Buckley released a statement that the OFL “does not support or condone violence against persons or property in any form.” The Ontario NDP’s leader Andrea Horwath came out with a similar message but also condemned Smith’s “highly irresponsible” claim that the OFL was somehow responsible.
Defining Radical
What has been lost in all of this is why any of this is happening. With the Conservatives moral grandstanding about democracy and debate (remember the conservatives came to power on only 40% of the vote, hardly a democratic mandate), the fact that close to 30% of Ontario’s workers are being robbed of a minimum wage increase they were promised 10 weeks before it goes into effect is not what is radical and has certainly not crossed a line.
Surely, the revocation of worker rights through the “Making Ontario Open For Business Act”, from eliminating paid sick days, cutting days off, and promoting unequal pay between full-timers, part-timers, and contract workers, and others, is nothing but Ford living up to his slogan of “For the People”, not violence imposed on the lives of workers across the province, it’s just the peaceful march of democracy.
But it’s confusing that the Conservatives, and Scott especially, are speaking of democracy in the first place. In the same breath, as she condemns the undemocratic practice of breaking a window and using some spray paint, she commends the open for business act for tying later minimum wage increases to inflation by saying that “Ontario workers and businesses deserve a minimum wage determined by economics, not politics.” Why bother with democracy at all then? And if we’re so hell-bent on the great and invisible hand of the market to figure things out, why bother it with an “Open for Business Act” in the first place? Here it becomes clear that the only part of the economy that needs political cover is business — workers, they can starve, and then when they break windows and spray some graffiti, we can just call them radicals.
What’s the economy doing?
Speaking of the economy, the Conservative Party will have us believe that it’s in shambles. Why else would we need to open the province for business unless it was closed? Of course, this is just as mythical as claiming that economics and politics are separate things. The economy is fine and has actually been doing better since the passing of the minimum wage increase. The unemployment rate dropped to the lowest its been since the year 2000 six months after Bill 148, which included the minimum wage increase, went into effect. Inflation is stable. And profits are up.
This is not politics, this is the much-coveted economics that Scott is lauding. But if the conservatives can make some broken glass and graffiti seem more immoral than subjecting workers to wages that don’t even meet basic living needs, then why not spin a bogus claim about the economy?
Debate and Material Conditions
It really should be no surprise that individuals are lashing out at the politicians who are not only lying to them, which is a bit of a benchmark for conservative politics anyway, but are, with legislation, severely and negatively impacting their real and immediate material conditions. Freezing the minimum wage and resigning labour rights is not some abstract debate about the economy that workers have the time and privilege to discuss across aisles or engage in with moral grandstanding, it’s grounded in the ability of families to pay for education, rent, medicine, transport, take time off to care for a sick family member, not be subject to haphazard schedule changes. How can anyone compare material damage caused to an office to the real loss of livelihood for 30% of the workforce? Offices be damned! This is the message that all labour activists should be shouting, not making pitiful apologies for actions they didn’t even commit.
This is not an endorsement of personal violence, but for labour organizers and, what is supposed to be the party of labour, the NDP, to come out and make any statement besides that the Ford government will be facing nothing less than continuous escalations of confrontation until hard-fought and hard-earned workers rights are restored is nothing short of advocating for impotence!
The idea that discussions around the material conditions of workers should be confined to the legislature and abstract discussions about ‘what is best for the economy’ is absurd, especially when what the legislature claims to be democracy has so drastically failed to meet the basic needs of workers. Democracy is not some thing to be confined to lofty debates, democracy belongs in the workplace, in the streets, and yes, in graffiti on the wall and broken windows. For shattered windows do not trump shattered lives.
