Are they still effective or has the public grown indifferent to this bargaining tactic?
Workers belonging to two of Canada’s major unions have been ordered back on the job by the federal government in a span of less than two weeks.
Federal labour minister Lisa Raitt introduced back-to-work legislation 16 hours after 3,800 Air Canada sales and service agents walked off the job on June 13.
A week later, similar legislation was introduced to get Canada’s mail system moving again. About 48,000 unionized Canada Post employees were locked out June 14 after two weeks of rotating strikes.
With the social, political and economic pressures facing trade unions today, there could be reason to question the effectiveness of a strike as a collective bargaining tool.
In the public sector, there appears to be more willingness to order employees back to work. In Saskatchewan, for example, the provincial government introduced legislation three years ago declaring many services essential.
In the private sector, the use of replacement workers continues to threaten unionized employees. The recent Voisey’s Bay Industrial Inquiry suggested the strike was blunted by the remote location of the picket line. With little public visibility, replacement workers could cross the picket line more easily and it was difficult for workers to gain public support.
Dionne Pohler, a labour relations expert at the University of Saskatchewan, says “it’s a bit of a stretch to say (strikes) have been rendered useless” by recent events. However, she says with union density on the decline over the past decade, especially in the private sector, the face of collective bargaining has changed.
“In the private sector, this remains the only real effective tool,” she says.
While the public appears largely indifferent to the postal shutdown, Pohler says it’s worth noting what happened in Wisconsin earlier this year. When the state government threatened to remove the right to collective bargaining from public sector employees, who already don’t have a right to strike, both unionized and non-unionized workers rallied in their support.
“People might not always support the strike, but they support the right to strike,” she says. “People may not rally around one strike or cause but, when threatened, they will support the right to take job action.”
Carla Lipsig-Mummé, a labour relations expert at York University in Toronto, says the issue is not whether strikes are achieving their goal. It’s about what’s driving them in the first place.
“This is less about strikes than employer radicalism. Employers have tried to move beyond concessionary demands,” she says. “Strikes are a reaction to it.”
The balance of power has shifted, creating an unfair playing field, says Lipsig-Mummé. In the public sector, both the federal and provincial governments are increasingly “pro-employer” and in the private sector labour laws have been steadily eroded.
Lipsig-Mummé points to a recent labour dispute at a Toronto hotel where employees have gone on strike because the employer is proposing to reduce wages from $14 to $19 an hour to $12.
“Employers are trying to undo incremental benefits negotiated over years of collective bargaining,” she says. “This is the most important instrument workers have left.”
She says unions have attempted to be “socially responsible” in their attempt to wield the strike tool. CUPW, for example, chose rotating strikes to prevent the complete shutdown of the postal system.
Lipsig-Mummé says unions need to get involved politically and be prepared to put up challenges on the legal front to prevent the erosion of their power.
Pohler adds they must also present themselves as a social movement that benefits the wider community, not just unionized members. While the public may be less inclined to support striking postal workers with seven weeks of holidays, she says opinion would shift if union leaders made minimum vacation time a global issue.
“People are not as moved by the ‘not paid well’ talk anymore,” she says.
