At the beginning of May, tens of thousands of British Columbia workers were ready to confront their employers and the government of their employers by walking off the job in support of health care workers and in defense of the future of this province.

Make no mistake! Those non-HEU workers, union and non-union, who had been walking the lines at hospitals and other care facilities, those who had been honking their support at the defiance of Bill 37, knew what was at stake. Those in other unions - private sector as well as public sector - who hit the bricks as early as April 29, also knew the stakes. And they knew they weren't going to get the call to action from their provincial trade union leaders. Rather, their actions forced the leaders to race out in front so as not to be too obviously left behind.

Most of those workers will continue to know what they knew on May 2. But due to the actions that day of a handful of union bureaucrats, too many workers are now drawing other "lessons" from the sell-out, a sell-out which ran directly opposite to two votes by HEU members (one in April 2003 and the other just before the strike) and which also violated resolutions passed at the 2002 and 2003 BC Federation of Labour conventions.

Too many workers and their community supporters are in danger of "learning" that struggling together for what is right is a waste of time because the whole fight can be called off by trade union "leaders" acting in completely cowardly and undemocratic ways. Many workers and non-workers "learned" this in the sellout of Operation Solidarity in 1983. The legacy of that defeat demoralized and demobilized unions and community groups for years. And it poisoned and weakened a generation of struggles.

We must try to keep each other from "learning" that "lesson" this time. But how?

First we have to develop, spread around and elaborate an analysis of why the sellout happened. It's crucially important that we try to understand this, rather than just venting our anger and outrage, and saying simply that the bureaucrats are rotten or they got paid off or they all want cushy jobs in politics.

Second, we have to start looking at what we can do to avoid a bureaucratic sellout the next time. Because there will be a next time. The corporate agenda has not been completed in BC yet.

Obviously, many people have to contribute to these two tasks before they are adequately completed. Below is my initial contribution, offered with a sense of urgency that we begin this process before people's anger and outrage turn to numbness and demoralization.

WHY DID THE SELLOUT HAPPEN?

Union bureaucrats are calling it a "victory". They always call defeats they have allowed or collaborated in "victories". If they called it a "defeat", there would be a lot of pressure to draw a balance sheet on what went right and what went wrong, so that we wouldn't make the same mistakes the next time. But hey, if it was a win, no need for a balance sheet. We did it right, right? Wrong! So why did ALL the top leaders of all the unions involved back this sellout?

Their sole strategy for defending against the corporate agenda is to elect the New Democratic Party (NDP). To do that they believe the NDP has to win over many easily spooked middle-of-the-road voters. Radical action by union members would tarnish the NDP in the eyes of these middle-of-the-road voters, driving them to support the Liberals or simply not vote.

Trade union bureaucrats believe they are essential to the well-being of the union movement because they are specialists, in-the-know, experienced, etc. This justifies their salaries, their need to keep things from the members, and their occasional regrettable duty to go along with strike-breaking legislation without even consulting their members.

As a corollary, this self-perceived elite status also makes the bureaucrats very distrustful of workers making decisions and carrying them out without leadership direction. The workers must be protected from themselves because they are not experts and because they tend to get carried away by emotion.

Oh and by the way, if workers start to do radical things and learn by experience how to organize and fight, they might not need the high-paid bureaucrats. Then what would the latter do? Go back into the ranks?

There was undoubtedly a fear that court-levied fines and possible jailings would have weakened the HEU and maybe other unions.

These analytical points make no judgment on whether supporting the NDP is a good idea for workers or not. It's another debate that we need to have among workers, but it doesn't need to - and shouldn't, in my mind - muddy the debate we need to have.

Is electoralism the only strategy open to workers? Does radical strike action by workers strengthen or weaken their struggle? Does such action strengthen or weaken support for progressive alternatives at the ballot box?

Would you rather have the French Social Democratic government elected after the 1995 general strike or the British Labour government of Tony Blair elected after decades of union defeat and demoralization?

Or to bring it home: would you rather have the Dave Barrett government elected on a tide of protest and struggle or the Mike Harcourt government, elected because the Socred alternative was too ridiculous to vote for?

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The first thing we all have to do is keep the resistance going as strongly as possible - in words and action.

But I would argue that we have to make a big change in how we have all been fighting, in dwindling numbers, over the past three years. We have to get away from having a thousand groups fighting a thousand small battles with small actions, small meetings, and a few leaflets here and there.

What galvanized so many of us in the HEU struggle was that it had a bearing on all of us and IT WAS UNITARY.

Were it not for the sellout, we could actually feel and taste what it would be like to have hundreds of thousands of us taking on the government and bosses all at once, all together.

As much as possible, in communities, regions, and the province as a whole, we have to strive toward unitary fights. If we can win some of those, it will keep the fighting spirit alive in many folks for later battles.

Second, we have to find a way to keep the bureaucrats from derailing a struggle once it's underway. In doing this, I hope we have all learned that the trade union bureaucrats are not the trade unions or the trade union members.

That was a dead wrong and highly counterproductive confusion coming out of 1983. In a way the bureaucrats helped clarify this distinction this time, because they did not call out the non-HEU workers against Bill 37. Local unions went out in spite of getting no call, andd in spite of two years of bureaucrats saying the workers are not ready, a general strike would never work, concentrate on the next election. If the sellout had not happened on May 2, the mushrooming walkouts planned for May 3 might have gotten completely beyond the bureaucrats' control.

The short answer on how to keep a handful of bureaucrats from derailing us again is to talk about it with fellow workers and community members, make it clear that this is what happened before the spin doctors rewrite the history, and adopt a blood oath that next time, "The leaders will abide by what the members decide!"

At the next level of complexity, we have to develop what Soviet dissidents used to call "horizontalism." Instead of each union local and each community group depending on its own leaders for information and direction of what should be done, we should have ways for rank-and-file members of one union to maintain lines of information and, possibly, joint decision-making with rank-and-file members of other unions. We also need similar links with community groups and activists. These would be different than the community coalitions we set up around the province three years ago. Or perhaps, more accurately, they would be what a lot of those organizations have become - small groups of activists. But what about large groups of activists?

What would it take to get city-wide or town-wide shop stewards' meetings together every couple of months? How many Prepare the General Strike Committees (or like-minded groups) can we set up around the province? How would we maintain them so they don't whither during low-activity periods? How could we re-activate them and re-galvanize them in a big struggle - locally, regionally, and provincially? How (and this is a big one) could we fund them so they are not beholden to the BC Federation of Labour or this or that group of local trade union bureaucrats?