Unions should use collective bargaining to tackle socio-economic issues: Expert
With the lockout at Electro-Motive Diesel in London, Ont. passing the one month mark, Toronto outside workers and the city still far from settling their dispute, and public-sector unions in several provinces anticipating difficult negotiations, people both inside and outside the union movement say it’s time for unions to rethink old strategies.
Unions have been weakened by a lack of solidarity over the past couple of decades, says Pradeep Kumar, a labour relations expert at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
“Raiding,” political disagreements and rivalries — especially between private and public-sector workers — have left trade unions without a lot of clout, he says.
“You can’t sustain collective bargaining or organizing without any kind of political campaign,” Kumar says. “That’s what influences the public and, in turn, public policy.”
Unions need to shift their attention away from members-only to larger social campaigns targeted at all workers, he says.
“They should not simply be looking for higher wages for their members,” says Kumar. “They should be campaigning for minimum wage, for ways to revitalize manufacturing, for infrastructure such as water issues. Those issues resonate with everybody.”
But what would, or should, those campaigns look like? Does it require a wholesale change in the framework of trade unions in Canada — or a return to the days of action seen in Ontario in the 1990s, in response to the policies of former premier Mike Harris?
“The days of action were very different,” says Kumar. “They were in response to a provincial government that was making changes that were socially divisive.”
Those solidarity protests actually led to divisions within the labour community, many which have continued to fester, he says.
Solidarity protests are not enough on their own, according to Charlotte Yates, an expert on union organizing and dean of social sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton.
“Fifteen years ago there were a constellation of issues, such as cuts to schools that had an impact on parents and kids,” Yates says. “There were so many attacks it made galvanizing possible. There was a common cause across the board.”
The dispute at Electro-Motive shares some similarities but on a smaller scale, she says, noting most workers — union or not — can identify with seeing their wages cut deeply by a profitable company.
The problem for unions, according to Yates, is labour disputes such as those at Canada Post, Air Canada and Electro-Motive “look like an attack only on union members.”
For unions to gain public support and survive, they need to frame these disputes around bigger picture issues facing workers everywhere, she says.
“It needs to be shifted around the decline of the middle class or the loss of good jobs for young people,” she says. “If they can’t take this on, they can’t win.”
That requires a complete shift in thinking, so unions are seen as part of the solution, not the problem, Yates says.
For example, unions could use the collective bargaining process to address youth unemployment, she says.
“They say, we’ll take a pay cut but we expect you to hire ‘x’ number of young people,” she explains, adding the challenges facing unions in Canada require multiple solutions, not simply a few days of protest.
“You need a bigger strategy,” she says.
Recently, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) released a discussion paper that proposes a merger that would see the creation of an entirely new union in Canada — one that “would define itself as a force fighting for all workers, not just its own,” according to the document.
CAW economist Jim Stanford says it’s “not an act of desperation” but a realization the world is changing and so is the role of unions within it.
It’s not the first time unions have discussed mergers, but it would be one of the largest in Canadian history.
Last year, two United Food and Commercial Workers International Union locals in Ontario combined to create North America’s largest local union, representing about 60,000 workers.
Stanford says while there is strength in numbers, the labour movement also has to be more visible, as noted by both Yates and Kumar.
But like them, he’s not sure a return to the days of action is the solution either.
“It’s not just a question of doing things the old way,” he says. “How can we give new ideas and new practices to that movement?”
