Marking May Day, Terry Glavin has a guest post at Z Word– like everything he writes, it’s worth reading in full– lamenting the Canadian Labour Congress’s lack of support for strengthening ties between Palestinian and Israeli trade unions and for demonstrating solidarity with oppressed and imprisoned trade unionists in Iran.
Just the other day, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and several other worldwide labour federations issued an alert to unions around the world, warning that the approach of May Day in Iran meant the country’s trade unionists were facing especially grave peril. After last year’s May Day protests, scores of Iranian union leaders were fired from their jobs, sentenced to lengthy jail terms and publicly flogged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s police thugs have begun yet another wave of arrests in recent weeks.
You’d think that Canadian trade unionists would have been at the vanguard of a massive response to ITUC’s appeal. After all, the historic 1872 Toronto printers’ strike was waged against laws that banned free trade unions, and these are precisely the kinds of laws the Tehran regime is using right now to persecute trade unionists in that country. These are laws that even the Tory Prime Minister John A. Macdonald called “barbarous” when he agreed to the Toronto strikers’ demands for their full repeal.
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I can’t say I’ve noticed any great throngs of CLC-affiliated union members massing down Granville Street in Vancouver or Danforth Avenue in Toronto to show the world they stand in solidarity with their Iranian brothers and sisters.Last year, the CLC’ s Mehdi Kouhestaninejad tried with all his might to roust some solidarity for our Iranian brothers and sisters, among whom he says the big debate is about why “leftists outside Iran, is staying by the Iranian government by their actions.” There were a few protest letters from Canadian unions, and there was a dismal little protest at Queen’s Park, but at least Kouhestaninejad tried.
There haven’t been many acts of solidarity with Iranian trade unionists in the US either, but at least the Washington, DC, labor council held a protest outside the Iranian interests section in 2006 in solidarity with Mansour Osanloo, the imprisoned leader of the Tehran bus workers’ union. (I was much happier to participate in that relatively small demonstration than I would have been to join a bigger demonstration that featured larger-than-life pictures of mass-murderer extraordinaire Stalin.)
And at least here the AFL-CIO has a strong commitment to Israel’s security and has supported cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli trade unions. No major American unions have supported boycotts, divestments or sanctions against Israel.
Update: Oh, and feel free to sing along.
(Hat tip: Brother Glavin)
