Canada’s largest private sector union backs the military machine. In an indication of its conservative bent, Unifor recently celebrated a large F-35 contract and called on Ottawa to develop a “world class” arms firm.
Last week the federal government announced that it had selected Montreal-based flight simulation firm CAE to develop the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Future Fighter Lead-in Training. FFLIT will prepare pilots to operate Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jets.
CAE’s training initiative on the fifth-generation US fighter jet will be worth up to $5 billion over four decades.
Purchasing 88 F-35s broke an explicit Liberal election promise not to buy Lockheed Martin’s fighter jets. Questions remain about the warplane’s capacity to fly the long distances required to cover Canadian airspace and the nuclear weapon capable warplane consumes significantly more carbon intensive fuel than other (already heavy GHG emitting) fighter jet. As I detailed, the Liberals about face on the F-35 reflects the power the US-dominated arms industry has over the government.
In selecting the F-35 the government defied standard military procurement policy requiring foreign companies that obtain contracts to invest specific amounts in Canada. From a nationalist and moral standpoint, the F35 purchase is a sop to the US military industrial complex that should be reevaluated as part of Canada’s response to Trump’s annexation and tariff threats.
Yet Unifor Québec celebrated FFLIT. Its release noted that it “welcomes the CF-35A training contract awarded to CAE and recalls the importance of strategic procurement for Canadian aerospace.”
It’s obviously difficult for a union representing CAE workers to criticize a major contract to the firm that generates work for its members. But the union doesn’t need to pay a wire service to promote a release quoting the president of its large Quebec section celebrating the contract! Additionally, it could have noted some objection to the far larger F-35 procurement.
Unifor has previously supported Canadian participation in Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. In its 2018 Soaring Higher: A Sector Strategy for the Aerospace Industry the union notes, “Unifor supports participation in the JSF and suggests additional IRB [industrial and regional benefits] measures must be taken if the F-35 is the fighter jet ultimately purchased by the federal government.”
Unifor Quebec celebrating CAE’s F-35 training contract follows on the heels of its director Daniel Cloutier touting the arms industry in Le Devoir. Ten days ago Cloutier told the Montreal paper, “We don’t have a leading player in the [arms] industry in Canada, but we have a lot of subcontractors and players who could become world-class players if we helped them a little. I’m not necessarily talking about financial help, but support. These players could make the leap and become world-class companies.”
In seeming contradiction with his celebration of the F-35 training contract, Cloutier also clamored for stronger rules on foreign companies that obtain contracts to invest in Canada. But as mentioned the F-35 procurement bypasses IRB rules.
In September Unifor president Lana Payne released the union’s Aerospace Policy that labels rising military spending an “opportunity”. The main image on the front of “Building for the Next Generation A Workers’ Strategy for Canada’s Aerospace Industry” is a fighter jet.
Unifor has repeatedly boosted the war machine. During the French language election debate in 2015 NDP leader Tom Mulcair criticized the government for selling $15 billion worth of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. In response the union representing 500 workers at the General Dynamics Land Systems plant in London, Ontario, where the vehicles are manufactured, pressured the party. “We have contacted the NDP about this issue,” said Fergo Berto, Unifor director in London. Mulcair failed to raise the issue during two subsequent debates and London-Fanshawe NDP MP, Irene Mathyssen, called it “a signed contract and we [an NDP government] will honour that contract.”
The union has demonstrated little concern about Justin Trudeau’s belligerent foreign policy. In 2019 Unifor invited both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland to address its convention. More recently, an important segment of Unifor in Ontario has been supporting Doug Ford’s Conservatives in the provincial election.
Unions are large contradictory organizations. They check the arbitrary power of the boss and improve members pay and conditions, but they operate under a capitalist system that gives workers little say over what they produce. As such, it’s important to be circumspect with criticism. But Unifor was created amidst much hype about advancing progressive social unionism (I worked in the research department of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union when it was effectively taken over by the Canadian Autoworkers Union to create Unifor in 2013).
Recently Jacobin reviewed Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics, which argues that Unifor has “lost its way” as a leader in working-class struggle. Authors Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage conclude that Unifor has turned into a “narrow, opportunist, sectionalist” union pursuing “transactional politics.”
The evidence for this position seems overwhelming. Unfortunately, left-nationalist economist Jim Stanford and former Communist party leader Fred Wilson, who played central roles in Unifor’s creation, responded to the constructive criticism with a head in the sands reply.
Militarism, imperialism, fossil fuel production and capitalism greatly constrain unions’ politics. Still, progressive unions don’t celebrate the arms industry.
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