If the Canadian left were truly organized, class-conscious hotel workers could easily disrupt Carney’s upcoming CEO summit. But without far more work to boost militancy, don’t expect workers to employ their power over capital beyond the narrow ways the system has come to accept.
As Toronto marks Labour Day every socialist in that city should feel some shame the government hasn’t hesitated to host Canada’s largest ever capitalist get together in the centre of the city. After the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec City in 2001, major international summits have largely been confined to sparsely populated resort areas such as Kananaskis, Muskoka and Montebello. But now Mark Carney has the audacity to host ‘Davos downtown’ in Toronto.
In response several hundred, maybe a thousand, will march from Nathan Philips Square to the Four Seasons. It’s unlikely, however, the police will allow protesters near the hotel and opponents aren’t sufficiently organized or militant to challenge the cops.
But there’s another, better way to disrupt Carney’s carnival of capitalism. Workers at the Four Seasons could withdraw their labour. Hotel event planning and food service staff could all call in sick. Or even better the union local could launch a wildcat strike to refuse to set up the venue and prepare food and drinks for those scheming to appropriate ever-more socially derived wealth. The workforce could walk out declaring: “Let the capitalists make and serve their fancy food and drinks. We won’t prepare the room for those seeking to privatize public assets, weaken labour standards and ignore planetary ecological boundaries.”
Someday, when the union movement is more militant, hotel workers will exercise their power to cause major headaches for such a CEO summit. They will act collectively, supported by their union and a broader movement.
The Four Seasons workforce’s potential power to disrupt Carney’s bid to boost the global rich reflects the working class’s latent abiliity to bring capitalists to heel. Irrespective of how supportive the legal/political framework is to strikes, workers have the clout to shut individual workplaces or the entire economy down. By collectively withdrawing their labour through site specific strikes or general work stoppages, workers have immense leverage since capital is entirely dependent on labour to function and generate surplus value. As such, capitalist power is inherently vulnerable.
We can dream of a day when a truly well-organized left would seek to disrupt the largest ever gathering of capitalists in Canada by both marching to the Four Seasons and workers marching out of the hotel.
In the meantime, we do what we can to send a message and organize for the future.
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