Word: clc
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...CLC's leadership's initiative toward tripartism--a system of business-labor-government consultation and decision-making? best illustrates the tendency towards centralized cooperative involvement in state bureaucracy. A national convention of the Congress struck down this initiative, but the incident demonstrates the conservative impact that CLC leaders attempt to exercise over their rank and file...
Canadian labor split over the issue of supporting the postal workers' refusal to return to work. The National CLC refused to endorse the postal workers' position, while Quebec labor and a number of CLC affiliates strongly supported the strikers. The CLC refused to back the postal workers for "strategic reasons." According to Charles Bauer, CLC director of public relations, the CLC felt "at that time it was a suicidal decision to try to buck the federal government." Essentially, the CLC felt too weak to effectively rally around the beleaguered postal workers, and the national labor organization preferred not to risk...
...support the workers fighting for the right to strike is hardly a question of strategy, especially for a labor organization. The right to strike is a hard-won and crucial principle, and a decision to support workers protecting that right should be a principled decision. When the CLC resorts to strategic considerations to justify its position, it is safe to assume that it is covering up its weakness or has hidden motives for its decision...
...this case, both political impotence and the importance of unspoken principles appear to be the decisive factors. The fear of political failure seized the CLC and made the possibility the reality. Clearly unable to muster sufficient strength to force its way with the government, the CLC preferred to remain aloof and not dirty its hands. But behind this fear, Bauer's comments suggest that the CLC used the postal confrontation to discipline its own ranks, and to further centralize the labor movement under its direction...
Bauer complained that the postal union did not properly inform the CLC of the state of negotiations and the particular points under discussion. Bauer added that "labor solidarity is a two-way street" and argued that the postal union ought to have compromised its autonomy in negotiations in return for possible labor support on the right-to-strike question. But the general issue of the right-to-strike and the specifics of the contract discussions are clearly distinct and independent, and confusing them appears to be a mere pretense for the CLC to more directly interfere in the autonomous affairs...