2014-01-23

Unions In Canada: An On-Going Evolution

From the Canadian Encyclopedia:

"In the last decades of the 20th century, in most industrialized countries of the world, union membership and its rate have strongly declined. In the United States it is well below 20%. There is only one important exception, Canada. Two main reasons explain this singular situation.

1. Automatic union dues checkoff from each paycheck, according to most collective agreements, sometimes by the law itself, is applied to all employees in the bargaining unit. The amount is transferred directly to the local (or other) union treasurer. Thus all members automatically remain in good standing. Since such provision is regularly transferred into the next agreement, the union in place has a kind of long survival ticket. The only stop machinery would be an explicit vote against the union asked for and obtained by the employees of the unit in question.

2. Almost all public-sector employees, federal, provincial and municipal, are already unionized and have the automatic checkoff provision in their collective agreement. The small decrease that can be observed, in private and public sector, come from special circumstances: a decrease in the labour force, the shutdown of a firm and/or an explicit rejection vote by the employees involved, which is highly improbable if not totally impossible."

The distribution of union members by province is uneven, the most highly unionized being BC and Newfoundland (around 50%), and the least, Prince Edward Island (25%). The distribution has also changed over time. Between 1962 and 1984 (2 years for which relatively comparable data are available) the degree of unionization has increased in most provinces; it has remained relatively stable, around 35%, in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. An important advance (from 25% to 41%) has occurred in Québec, mainly because of an almost complete unionization of public-sector employees. Besides the recent case of Newfoundland, BC has always been the most unionized of all Canadian provinces, while Ontario and Nova Scotia, former strongholds of Canadian unions, are losing ground."

Quebec has a civil service infamous for its size. It has double the public sector of California.  This, in part, explains why we have an anti-business, anti-private bent here. The irrational envy or 'wealth' and the subsequent suspicion of how it's attained is not unique (thought it's higher here than most places) to Quebec but to an overall left-wing mindset that covers all of North America.
 
"...The advance of unionism in the public sector is particularly obvious when one considers the 10 largest unions in Canada. The 3 groups with the highest number of members are (and have been for a while) public-sector unions: the CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES (CUPE), the National Union of Provincial Government Employees (NUPGE) and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Altogether they represent 750 000 members. Only after these 3 come the most powerful unions of the private sector, the Steelworkers, the Food and Commercial Workers, and the Autoworkers. Thirty years ago, the Steelworkers and the Autoworkers were the biggest of all Canadian unions. With the decline of the labour force in many sectors, union mergers often become the unavoidable option. An important example, though by no means the only one, was the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union of Canada, established in 1993. One may wonder of what remains of the basic principle of North American trade unionism. Many, if not close to all, main unions today are not defined by a trade but are rather of a general nature."


"...Most open conflicts in the 1990s have occurred between governments and public-sector employee unions. Since the 1980s there were very few major strikes in private-sector companies; despite the "sacrifices" asked for by the employers, most unions have conceded on important demands, like job numbers, because they feared that the company would close the plant and move it elsewhere, or contract-out most of the labour work to low-wage countries, thus losing the work."

When you force minimum wages up artificially that's what happens. A corporation objectively, so it's been argued, simply packs up and goes to a lower-cost jurisdiction. Sure, it can pass down the added costs to consumers but sometimes they may calculate it's not enough. 

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Just a story.

My father-in-law had to negotiate with unions while a key man at Steinberg's back in the day. The grocery profession already operates on tight margins (around 1.5 to 2%) based on high volume so any incremental increase would impact their bottom line substantially. He would tell me tales of dealing with the unions, which to him, were nothing but a racket because the company was pretty forward thinking and generous when it came to employees. Alas, sibling in-fighting, changing economic landscape, increased competition and impractical union demands eventually brought the grocery empire down to be sold off principally to IGA.

The point is, he argued, the unions were acting against their better interest with the mounting issues. He asked if it was better to keep a job or not have one if they closed. They called the bluff, not entirely unlike the situation at Hostess, and the rest was history.

The union head later on, ironically, went on to open his own store and would solicit my father-in-law for help on how to run and manage it. Among the advice sought was how to deal with the unions.

"Now, you see what it's like, eh Arnold?" he would joke. Arnold would just chuckle and reply, "Yes, sir. I understand now. I can see you treated us right."

I believe that last part because he was indeed a fine man.


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