44. Labour’s Days of Lawlessness

Published in Report on Business
(The Globe and Mail)
22 October 1996

Re: Terence Corcoran - Labour’s Days of Lawlessness, October 22nd. Until there are instruments that can legally define what is a morally acceptable rate of profit for investment, it is irrational to fault union picketing for creating a “disturbance”, a “disruption”, etc., particularly if the impending effect of the planned protest is considered to be no more than an“inconvenient snowstorm”.
By default - in a ‘jobs versus investment returns’ struggle - the “union bosses” do in fact represent the majority of the population whose income is derived by selling or leasing their own labour including those like myself who may not be union members.
In this scenario Mr. Corcoran writes as the ‘company cop’ for fiscal thugs who get their way at least 300 days of each and every year. Apparently even that power is not enough hence Mr. Corcoran’s crocodile tears for the ”fundamental principles of democracy”. Such poor theatre cannot obscure our social reality that when the sovereignty of capital is even symbolically threatened, each and every real (pro)test for equitable social justice is deemed to be lawless.