Seven Oaks Magazine.

Fred Muzin is the president of the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), and a long-time activist for social justice. He recently spoke with Seven Oaks about the fall-out of the HEU strike and the controversial settlement between labour and the government of Gordon Campbell.

1. Seven Oaks: Upon one week’s reflection, how do feel about the deal that you voted for to end the strike?

It’s too early, we won’t really know for at least a year. I think we made a difficult decision. It was an incredibly difficult decision.

2. There has been a lot of anger directed towards the union leadership in the past week. Have people lost sight of Campbell as the main culprit here?

Some people may have, but not most people. The wage rollbacks were legislated. We absolutely opposed that. The government imposed that 15% cut through Bill 37. So I think that, after reflection, people understand that.

I think people lost track of the initial objective. As momentum built, people started to redraw the objectives. People throughout the province thought they could redress all the ills of this government -- the cuts to welfare, social housing, women’s centres, all the cuts. The talk of a general strike is a very valid objective, but for that the agenda had to be more than just the HEU. There needs to be a wider discussion of objectives for a general strike to be successful.

4. How much of the damage the Liberals have inflicted do you foresee the NDP undoing, if they were to win the 2005 election?

That’s hard to say, I don’t speak for the NDP by any means. I can say we will continue to pressure the government. We had a 17-day strike against the NDP government in 1992, so we’re willing to apply pressure to seek redress for our issues.

5. Ultimately is the fight for public health care a provincial or federal issue?

It’s a combination. Certainly the lack of enforcement of the Canada Health Act and the cuts to transfer payments by the federal government have caused problems. It has added fuel to the fire for the likes of Harris, Klein and Campbell. It’s given right-wing provincial governments excuses to cut, and bring in privatisation.

6. You regularly attend community activist events and solidarity rallies. Why do you feel this sort of bridge-building between labour and other groups is so important?

Because you can’t really effect the kind of societal changes that you want with one group acting alone. The forces against us, like multinational corporations, are very strong, and you can’t confront them without broad-based coalitions. In our case, the government tried to isolate the HEU, but we received support from the public and from labour. Even labour is a coalition, with many different interests, and that coalition can always be stronger.

We will continue to work with community groups. It’s very important. They are the most upset about this settlement. They weren’t a party to defining the objectives and they weren’t at the table for the negotiations, and so their frustration is entirely understandable.