From the Globe and Mail:

The Canadian Auto Workers union has declared political independence after delegates to the union's constitutional convention voted to formally sever ties with the New Democratic Party.

And the union's high-profile leader, Buzz Hargrove, admitted Wednesday he's still angry over his treatment by the NDP after the last federal election. "We've cut the string, and we're moving on," he said.

From the CAW itself:

Delegates to the CAW’s 8th Constitutional Convention have overwhelmingly voted in support of a new and independent direction in electoral politics that is issue-based rather than party-based.

CAW president Buzz Hargrove said his suspension by the Ontario NDP for supporting strategic voting in the last federal election was really an attack on the entire union. Delegates to CAW Council in December 2005 voted in favour of supporting NDP candidates who had a strong chance of winning - and in other cases supporting the candidate with the best chance of defeating the Conservative. Hargrove said during that campaign he carried out that mandate.

“We will never accept as a union that the party will tell us what to do,” Hargrove said.

[CAW Local 444 financial secretary Gary Parent] blasted the NDP in Ontario for attempting to make CAW members choose between their union and the party.

“Don’t ever make us choose between the NDP and our union, because the NDP will lose every time,” Parent said.

The anger is palpable. I don't know that this break is reparable, at least not under the current leadership of the CAW.

Just how important is the CAW to the NDP? Some think the relationship was overblown:

And while experts acknowledged it doesn't help party fortunes, the CAW's support has never been a guarantee that New Democrat candidates would win elections in labour-friendly ridings like Oshawa, Ont., where General Motors is a major employer.

Indeed, the relationship has never been as close as some have portrayed it, said Sid Noel, a professor of politics and a senior fellow at the University of King's College in London, Ont.

"I suppose it shows a certain measure of disunity in what is often assumed to be a much closer sort of family relationship between the NDP and the unions than actually exists," Noel said.

"If you look at the voting patterns in Ontario, if you look at the votes in Oshawa for example, and it doesn't exactly tell you that the union is a surefire machine for delivering NDP votes."

I disagree. Though donation rules prevent the CAW from giving much directly to the NDP, the support still mattered:

Trade unions and affiliated groups spent the lion's share of $685,000 in third-party advertising during the last federal election campaign including thousands of dollars in direct support for a fourth failed election bid by Sid Ryan, the controversial head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario chapter.

Seven major unions and umbrella labour groups, as well as a national Internet campaign funded by them, spent a total of $354,660 supporting NDP candidates and platforms or, in the case of the Canadian Auto Workers, Liberals as well, returns filed with Elections Canada show.

Besides the advertising, there is the non-monetary support in the way of volunteers.

But more than direct donations, more than third-party advertising, more than election volunteers, there is the philosophical anchor to the NDP agenda that the CAW provided.

The CAW, as a union, is no fan of management. But the corporations do provide the jobs. No CAW member wants to see auto plants shut down. Nor would an auto worker be a fan of legislation so brutal to corporate interests that the car manufacturers would pull up stakes and take off to Asia.

That notion of achieving some sort of working relationship with corporate interests is not the sort of thing you see in other traditional NDP supporters. Feminists, academics, and most obviously environmentalists have little in common with your average CAW member. Each might be supporters of organized labour on an intellectual level, but for some it is more about supporting anything that is in opposition to corporate interests. But then organized labour is not truly against corporate interests like profitability. For organized labour, the fight is about how much of that profit belongs to them. The feminist believes corporations are manifestations of patriarchal interests and so has no place in a matriarchal paradise. The academic believes corporations should turn over the means of production to the proletariat under the enlightened and intelligent guidance of philosopher-kings. The environmentalist believes corporations ought to be replaced by cottage industries in which everything is made from hemp.

I'm exaggerating (but only a little), yet it is true that for other NDP factions, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship with corporate Canada. The socialism of a labour-dominated NDP is not going to be the same as the socialism promoted by an NDP without labour.

It should be said that the NDP is not bereft of support from organized labour. From Wayne Fraser of the United Steelworker's Union:

The United Steelworkers will continue to support the NDP because it is an alliance that has brought undeniable gains for working people. We don’t abandon our allies in anger or for short term, illusory gains. We will fight to strengthen that political party that supports working families over corporate interests.

But when it comes to organized labour, the departure of the CAW leaves a major hole in the NDP fabric. That puts the internal dynamics of the NDP into a state of flux. As it settles down to a new stable configuration, I have to think that the NDP faces two uncertain futures.

One, the departures will continue, and not just by organized labour, especially if a weakened NDP seems less likely to be able to act as a credible voice in Parliament. More environmentalists will move to the Green Party, for example, while others will create new special interest parties, or abandon organized politics altogether.

Two, the remaining factions within the NDP will recognize that they have become stronger voices because of the departure of the CAW, and will use that to pull the NDP further to the left. The NDP will become even more radicalized, and the "working families" mantra will sound hollow. "Working families" has always been a code phrase for union workers. Feminists, academics, and environmentalists don't often evoke images of either people engaged in hard work or people devoted to raising families. As the party migrates to the margins when it comes to policies, it will also find itself picking up votes only from the margins, while the bulk of the Canadian centre will distribute the votes between the Conservatives and the Liberals.

[There is a third possibilty, and that is that the CAW will split apart as the union membership defies Buzz Hargrove and attempts to restore a formal relationship with the NDP. Based on reports, this seems unlikely, which has to tell you something about just how much the NDP is relevant to "working families", even before this split with the CAW.]

Either way, Canada might be moving towards a two-party system as a result. Buzz Hargrove's policy of strategic voting, that is, encouraging people to vote Liberal instead of NDP in those ridings in which the NDP was weak as a means of blocking the Conservatives, the very policy that got him into trouble with the NDP in the first place and led to the CAW's departure, might not matter anymore, if there is no credible NDP left to vote for.

Update: A reader left an interesting comment:

It is more than a remote possibility that the federal NDP will become a proxy for CUPE and other public sector unions. This has already happened in Saskatchewan where the relationship between these two entities is incestuous and contrary to the interests of the public. We have seen an embarrassing increase in public servants together with an exodus of public in the form of population during the term of the NDP. When confronted with this evidence the NDP response was something to the effect that when those people leave, there is more for the rest of us.

So what of public sector unions? They are a very different animal, I think, from their private sector cousins. A unionized worker employed by a private corporation will do better, financially speaking, when his employer does well. It stands to reason, therefore, that a private sector unionized worker, in general, wants a government in place that is friendly to corporations, or, to be more accurate, not viciously in opposition to corporate interests.

On the other hand, a public sector unionized worker is better off with big government. The more invasive government is in daily life, the more regulatory burden placed on individuals and businesses, the more responsibilities handled by bureaucracies, the more work, and power, for public sector employees. Whether a government is friendly or not to corporate interests is neither here nor there for the public sector employee, except inasmuch as policies good for expanding the scope and power of the bureaucracy are bad for business, as a general rule. But being a thorn in the side of corporations is not a fundamental philosophy for the public sector union, just an unintended consequence.

So if a private sector union like the CAW leaves the NDP, leaving a public sector union like the CUPE behind as a more powerful voice representing organized labour, the NDP still pulls to the left by remaining radical elements, if only because a public sector union is not likely to work to counter that shift, not as long as it means bigger government.