Survey shows top 3 reasons why many people choose to become members
With school support staff in Ontario planning a major walkout on Friday, unions are once again in the spotlight.
And for anyone who thinks collective bargaining is a thing of the past, they may want to look at a recent survey that found 77 per cent of workers approve of labour unions.
A further 86 per cent believe that strike action does help workers achieve their goals, according to the survey by ResumeLab, which heard from 1,032 respondents in the U.S.
Job security (42 per cent), workplace safety issues (29 per cent), and changing general working conditions (28 per cent) were the top three reasons for joining unions.
And for Canada, the labour movement is “strong and well-founded,” says Jim Stanford, economist and director of the Centre for Future Work, a research institute in Vancouver.
“The share of workers who are protected by a union has been relatively stable by international standards: around 30 per cent of employed workers have a union,” he says, adding the rate is much higher, 75 per cent, in the public sector.
The future of unions is brighter today than it was five years ago, says Larry Rousseau, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in Ottawa.
“Things are playing out in real time right now and I think that this is one fight that the government may find themselves having to back down because this is one thing that is going to unite, from coast to coast to coast, labour across the land,” he says, citing the Ontario dispute.
Why the support?
With all of the changes foisted upon workplaces because of the pandemic, many workers are re-evaluating their relationships with employers, and some are looking to unions to make things better, according to Rousseau.
“We, as a national organization but also many of our affiliates, are seeing an increase in the interest from folks who are currently not unionized. The statistics still bear out the fact that unionized labour is doing better in terms of wages than non-unionized labour, but it’s not so much the wages that we’re seeing people get excited about, what we’re seeing is [interest] in quality of life in the workplace.”
In the early days of the pandemic and its resultant lockdowns, many Canadians were comforted by front-line workers who continued to work to provide basic needs — and this reflected well on unions.
“People have seen essential-service workers, health care, first responders, and so on, putting their lives on the line for us but they’ve also been reminded of how essential it is the delivery drivers and grocery store clerks and cleaners — whose labour is typically undervalued and taken for granted — but turned out to be essential to helping us survive the pandemic,” says Stanford.
“In that respect, Canadians have a bit more respect for the reality of work, and the people who do it.”
HR may also be at fault for current attitudes around unionization, says Rousseau.
“If management messes up, the first thing that HR, the labour relations professional, is doing is [asking]: ‘How do we save management harmless? How do we reduce liability?’”
“If this supervisor has harassed or discriminated, assaulted in any way… people are looking at ‘What are my options to improve where I am?... Or maybe I should go to a workplace that does have protections, that does have a contract, that does have a union there to make sure that I’m protected.’”
Facing a union drive
But for those organizations who find themselves facing a union drive, some introspection needs to be undertaken, says Rousseau.
“Employers have to realize that if they are in a situation where they suspect that a majority of their employees are ready to sign a union card, that should be raising a whole bunch of questions: Is this such a great place to work? Why is it that they want to join a union?”
For those employers who are honest, there is often a strong reason for the increased interest in bringing in outside help, he says.
“Very often, it’ll have to do with management style or with people feeling that they’re harassed and discriminated [against] in the workplace, that their scheduling is not what they were told it was going to be, there isn’t a contract.”
Read more: When unions to go too far
The news is not all bad, however, as the bulk of the power remains in the hands of employers.
“Particularly in the private sector, there’s still an epic battle that has to be fought and won before a union can be organized and certified and employer resistance to unions is strong and well-funded and sophisticated,” says Stanford.
“When workers in the private sector company decide they want collective representation, they have to be prepared for a very daunting and long battle to get that right recognized.”
Future of labour rights
While the battle in Ontario continues, it might actually foreshadow the movement’s future, says Stanford.
“We’ll have a good test of that right now,” he says. “What the Ontario government has done — overruling the Charter of Rights for a group of low-paid education workers — is absolutely shocking and unapologetic, and we’re going to have a good test of how people in Ontario [and] elsewhere in Canada feel about unions when they see your basic constitutional rights getting thrown in the garbage, because it’s convenient for a ruling party.”
If they go along with this move, then the outlook for labour rights in Canada is dire, he says, “because if this precedent sticks, then any government anywhere can take any action to suppress unions, including just prohibiting unions; there’s nothing to stop a provincial government from just prohibiting a union, if they’re going to use the notwithstanding clause to endorse their actions.”
