Fighting Back After the Neoliberal Assault: Class Formation, Class Politics, and the Canadian Autoworkers

This dissertation examines the Canadian Autoworkers union (CAW) during an age of neoliberal globalization.The dissertation places particular emphasis on internal dynamics and the way these played a key role in shaping class formation within the union, focusing on the interactions between the rank-and-file delegates and leadership at CAW Council.The dissertation also examines the implications for class formation, deformation, and reformation in the neoliberal era.Particular attention is focused on the CAW Council, a key institution within the union that connects rank-and-file activists to the national leadership and acts as a ground for 'mid-tier' activists to organize, pursue strategy, and push for change within the union.A great deal of union policy and strategy -including electoral strategy -was developed at Council, where the leadership would present reports, which were then subject to debate by the members.The dissertation argues that Council thus acted as an important meeting ground for members of the union and provided a space for activists to challenge the leadership on key issues.The dissertation also uses the CAW to look at how unions can constitute themselves as classactors but this does not mean that other identities were ignored.The CAW was frequently a leader, especially among industrial unions, on equity politics.Members of equity seeking groups pressed for inclusion within the structures of the union, and, in turn, the union was able to make real gains for equity seeking members at the bargaining table.The equity politics of the CAW were based on the union shaping a common identity as members of the working class, while highlighting that equity seekers faced particular barriers on the job, in the union, and in the broader Canadian society that the union could help challenge.Particular attention is paid to the way the leadership embraced equity issues, often after being pushed by equity seeking activists, and how they relayed the importance of equity issues to the broader union membership.In two areas -concessions bargaining and electoral politics -however, the union appears to have shifted from its original position.Although the CAW split from the international United Autoworkers over the issue of concessions at the bargaining table, which the Canadian affiliate was unwilling to accept, the CAW ultimately accepted concessions.In addition, the CAW gradually embraced an electoral strategy of strategic voting in response to the New Democratic Party's inability to present a clear electoral alternative to neoliberalism.Both shifts reflected the union's changing caluculus of how best to protect the automotive industry, and, thus, the jobs of its members in the face of neoliberal globalization.My earliest political memory is attending a rally in an arena in Welland, put on by the OSSTF, against Bill 116 of the Mike Harris government in Ontario.I was taken there by my dad, a highschool teacher.My dad, David Fowler, was an activist within the OSSTF and the NDP, and he was my first introduction to leftist politics and the trade union movement.Without this introduction, I doubt this dissertation would have come to light.Besides this introduction to politics, I will be forever indebted to my dad, and my mum, Janet Hodgkins, for the supportemotional and financial -through all my many, many years of schooling.I owe a great academic debt to Dan Crow, who taught me both the Politics of Labour and my introduction to political economy course in my undergrad.Dan has since become one of my best friends and a great intellectual guide to me through the last decade of my political and academic life.Informal discussions with him about political economy, Marxism, the Canadian trade union movement, and the CAW have greatly helped to shape my thinking and this dissertation.I also owe a great debt to a fantastic advisory committee.Rianne Mahon has provided excellent guidance of a caliber I could not imagine when I started this project.She has helped me craft my sprawling and tangential ideas into what I hope is a finely tuned dissertation, and has guided me through especially tricky theoretical concepts.I also owe a debt of gratitude to Christina Gabriel and Rosemary Warskett for their ideas

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