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Category Archives: labour news
Should the public service have the right to strike? YES
By Jim Stanford, Ottawa Citizen November 26, 2013
Photograph by: Chris Mikula , The Ottawa Citizen
It might seem like ancient history, but it wasn’t long ago that Canadian governments knew how to balance their books — and then some. The collective operating surplus of Canadian governments in 2007 equalled almost $40 billion. Teachers, nurses, and other public servants did their jobs. Tax revenues were more than sufficient to pay for their valuable work (in fact, average tax rates were falling, not rising).
Then along came a global financial meltdown. (No one argues, by the way, that it was caused by teachers, nurses and civil servants.) Surpluses dissolved into deficits: not huge, by historic or international standards, but significant. And some political leaders made tackling the deficit their defining crusade. Showing they could manage their own finances helped them pretend they were in control of the worrisome events around them. In that effort, public sector workers and their unions presented a politically convenient target.
It’s not that public sector compensation costs caused the deficit (which didn’t exist, remember, until 2008). Nor would squeezing public employees be central to the deficit reduction exercise. At the federal level, direct compensation accounts for only 8.5 cents of each dollar in total government spending, and that ratio has been stable. Achieving, say, a wage freeze instead of paying a normal two-per-cent annual increase, on that small share of spending, could make no noticeable difference to the fiscal trajectory.
Nor was strike activity crippling the economy and service delivery. In fact, the incidence of work stoppage (measured by days lost per worker to strikes and lockouts) fell in 2012 to the lowest since statistics began in 1946: down over 95 per cent compared to the strike-happy 1970s. Public sector workers are less likely to go on strike, not more: they’ve accounted for one-third of all work stoppage days in the last decade, even though they now make up over half of all union members.
No, tilting at public sector unions is all about politics, not economics. Governments want to change the channel from persistent economic stagnation and embarrassing scandals. Workers in the private sector suffered during the recession, politicians argue (not that they act to support private sector workers, either). So it’s about time public sector workers suffer, too. The logic of this ideology of “shared misery” may be bizarre, but it’s politically potent.
Thus began the latest chapter in a long-standing Canadian tradition: when times are tough, blame the unions. And then take away their right to strike. It’s happened over 200 times in Canada in the last 30 years.
The latest example is Bill C-4. It would give the federal government unilateral power to define who can strike and who can’t (contrary to past practice and international convention). The government won’t detail how this will happen until after the law is passed. In a true Catch-22, the bill would also neuter the arbitration process for workers who can’t strike. And the whole process is buried within a 321-page omnibus bill, debate on which was curtailed two days after it was introduced. Bill C-4 is an affront to democracy — both in Parliament, and in the workplace.
The attack on public sector labour rights is usually justified by the claim that unions have soaked taxpayers through their irresistible demands. This claim is not supported. In practice, public sector bargaining tends to follow economy-wide trends, but with a lag. Public sector wages were much lower before public sector unionization took off in the 1970s. Wages caught up in the 1980s, then fell behind again during the austere 1990s. The public sector did better in the mid-2000s. But more recently, bargaining has clearly responded to tough times: for four years running, public sector settlements have lagged well behind private sector deals, and behind the general growth of earnings in the overall economy.
Average earnings in the public sector are five to 10 per cent higher than economy averages (depending on how they are measured) — but education and credentials are significantly higher, too. Comparing similar occupations and credentials, it’s largely a wash. Women make more in the public sector than in the private sector, but men make less. The whole wage scale is compressed (with a higher bottom and a lower top). But overall public sector compensation is not out of whack — and powerful economic and political pressures tend to keep it that way.
Governments are the only employer with the power to “solve” their labour relations problems by simply dictating a settlement. The potential for misuse of this confluence of fiscal interest and political power is enormous. Most private sector employers would love to outlaw strikes and dictate wage outcomes, but they can’t — and for good reason. Where public employees provide a genuinely essential service (like fire, police, and some health services), there’s no debate: in place of strikes or lockouts, a neutral arbitration system should replicate collective bargaining outcomes without work stoppage. But other public sector workers must have the same rights as anyone else in our society to organize themselves and promote their interests, up to and including withdrawing their labour if that’s necessary to get a deal.
Jim Stanford is an economist with the trade union Unifor. Tuesday night at the Canadian War Museum, in a debate hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and moderated by former House speaker Peter Milliken, economist Jim Stanford and professor Tom Flanagan debated the resolution “The right to strike has no place in the public sector.”
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
In Canada, the fading union movement is a male phenomenon
TAVIA GRANT The Globe and Mail Nov. 26 2013, 2:00 PM EST
A dwindling proportion of men are members of labour groups, a shift that’s driving declines in Canada’s unionization rate in recent decades as rates for women have held steady.
The country’s rate of unionization (the proportion of workers who are union members) was 30 per cent last year, down from 38 per cent in 1981. Most of that decline happened in the 1980s and 1990s, Statistics Canada analysis shows, with rates stabilizing in the past decade.
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Men used to be more likely to belong to unions, but that has changed. In 1981, the proportion of men in unionized jobs was 42 per cent; by last year, that had tumbled to 29 per cent. By contrast, women’s unionization rate has hovered around 30 per cent for the past 30 years – leaving them now more apt to be unionized than men. (See chart, here.)
Unionization rates are rising among 45- to -64-year-old women, which may reflect their growing numbers in health care and education. Rates are falling among men of all age groups. And young people are far less likely to be unionized than in the past.
In general, “full-time work, longer job tenure, large firms, higher educational attainment and better wages were all associated with higher unionization rates,” said Statscan analysts Diane Galarneau and Thao Sohn.
Total unionization rates haven’t budged much in the past decade, but there are shifts within industries. The rate has fallen in goods-producing industries, such as manufacturing, while it has risen, a little, on the services side. The services sector now has a higher rate of unionization than goods-producing industries, a reversal from a decade ago.
Unionization rates are rising in management and administration support, along with public administration. They’re falling in forestry, factories and transportation. Education had the highest unionization rates last year, while agriculture had the lowest.
Alberta had the lowest unionization rates in Canada, at 22 per cent last year, while Newfoundland and Quebec had the highest, at 38 and 37 per cent, respectively. Unionization has declined in all provinces in the past three decades.
Statscan’s study draws on information from its labour force survey and earlier data sources.
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Kootenay Lake only school district not funding CUPE pay increases
Kirsten Hildebrand – Nelson Star Nov 22, 2013
Kootenay Lake school district stands by its inability to meet a provincial directive requiring local funding of CUPE pay increases. They say it can’t be done without impacting core services.— image credit: file photo
Kootenay Lake school board is the last hold out in the province when it comes to approving the CUPE bargaining provincial framework savings plan and that doesn’t sit well with several union members present at the November 19 board meeting.
CUPE workers in the district attended the meeting held at the local board office, some via teleconference from Creston, with interest and apparent frustration asking the board why it was the only district in the province not settling negotiations.
“We’re the only district in the province standing up,” responded acting chair Rebecca Huscroft.
CUPE locals throughout the province are in negotiations with local boards after the province negotiated a wage increase averting a September strike.
The Ministry of Education is asking local boards to find the money within their existing budgets without impacting core services. Kootenay Lake school board is asking CUPE to advocate with them and write a letter to the Ministry.
“For them [the Ministry of Education] to say we can’t cut services to pay for an increase is a bit of a joke,” said Huscroft addressing employees’ concerns. “We are the only district in the province advocating right now and we understand how this must look to you guys.”
Huscroft said trustees value the work of CUPE employees but increases shouldn’t come “on the backs of the board and the district.”
“We stand 100 per cent behind CUPE getting a wage increase,” she said. “But we want to send a message about how do we address reduced funding year after year.”
Natasha Morley, who speaks for the local union, said CUPE is aware of the school board’s request to join them in calling on the government to fund the wage increases and oppose the provincial savings plan requirements.
“CUPE and CUPE locals are on record as supporting full funding from the provincial government for CUPE wage increases,” she said. “Our commitment to full funding is not in question. However, our priority is a collective agreement for Local 748 members that includes the provincial framework agreement. We will not waver from that.”
The tentative provincial framework agreement included an end rate 3.5 percent wage increase over two years. The agreement provides a one per cent increase retroactive to July 1, two per cent on February 1, 2014, and 0.5 per cent on May 1, 2014.
Once settlements are achieved, they will be voted on by the memberships of the respective CUPE locals. There are 57 CUPE across BC, representing 27,000 educational support workers. The deadline for ratification of all local agreements is December 20.
Turning Back the Clock 50 Years: Bill C-4 and federal workers
Larry Rousseau Regional Executive Vice President, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Posted: 11/23/2013 7:39 am http://www.huffingtonpost.ca
Stuffed into the 309-page Conservative budget implementation act, Bill C-4, that was tabled last month, are a slew of drastic changes to the federal labour relations system, which will affect the health and safety provisions, human rights protections, and collective bargaining rights of federal workers. As its number suggests, Bill C-4 is truly explosive.
On the health and safety front, the government is changing the Canada Labour Code to limit the rights of workers to refuse unsafe work, and also doing away with independent health and safety officers, relegating their responsibilities to political appointees of “the Minister.”
Meanwhile, another part of the bill will alter the Public Service Labour Relations Act (PSRLA) to prevent federal public service workers from accessing the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal over workplace discrimination complaints. Workers facing discrimination will instead have to file their complaint directly with their employer, which would have the power to promptly dismiss it for “being trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith.”
Bill C-4 also guts public service collective bargaining by further modifying the PSLRA to allow the government to unilaterally determine which workers are essential and therefore forbidden from striking, without recourse to third party review. (At present, when the government and the union disagree on who is essential, either party can refer the matter to the Public Service Labour Relations Board, which ensures that neither side can exaggerate their assessment of who is essential or non-essential, a sensible system that has worked well over the years.)
Furthermore, Bill C-4 denies unions the right to refer a dispute to arbitration, unless more than 80% of workers are deemed essential. This means that the government would be able to declare 79% of workers in a bargaining group as essential, deny arbitration, and then force the remaining 21% minority to strike, in a classic attempt to divide and conquer workers in a given bargaining unit.
Arnold Heeney, the renowned Canadian diplomat and civil servant who led the Preparatory Committee on Collective Bargaining in the Public Service way back in 1963, noted in his memoirs that prior to free collective bargaining “there was great and growing dissatisfaction among government employees generally with the arbitrary and paternalistic system which continued to prevail…” As a consequence of this dissatisfaction and the stunning 1965 wildcat strike by postal workers, the government under Lester B. Pearson was forced to pass in 1967 the Public Service Staff Relations Act, which first codified the right to free collective bargaining as well as the right of public service unions to choose between strikes and third party arbitration to resolve disputes. And as Heeney further observed, though a number of politicians and labour leaders at the time predicted an explosion in the frequency of strikes, “the majority of civil servants chose the former route” of arbitration to resolve their disputes with government.
Indeed, the historical record has shown that major public service strikes have remained rather infrequent, but that the right of recourse to a strike has been critical to balancing the overwhelming power held by the government over public service workers. After all, the government not only has inherent power as the employer, it also has the power to set the rules of the game through legislation.
Yet today, we find ourselves with a government intent on turning back the clock almost 50 years by attempting to rig the labour relations playing field to the point where public service workers will be thrown back to that “arbitrary and paternalistic system” Heeney wrote about. And it would seem, of course, that the government couldn’t care less that the proposed changes to the PSLRA will effectively undermine the right to free collective bargaining under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2007.
Together, the dangerous, undemocratic and retrograde changes contained in Bill C-4 will directly impact some 800,000 Canadian workers subject to the Canada Labour Code in industries as diverse as rail, air, broadcasting, telecommunications and fisheries, in addition to well over 200,000 federal public service workers who fall under the PSLRA–approximately a million people in total.
Yet, the Conservatives have moved to limit debate in Parliament in an attempt to ram the bill through in the next couple of weeks. In fact, it has now emerged that labour changes in the bill were drafted secretly, without consulting law professors or labour-management experts (and certainly without consulting any of the unions representing federal workers).
It’s hard to imagine a reason for the callous health and safety changes, which needlessly endanger workers, but it’s clearly evident why the Conservatives are frustrating the collective bargaining process currently spelled out in the PSLRA.
Led by Treasury Board President Tony Clement, they have spent the last two years repeatedly attacking the pay and benefits of federal public service workers, claiming that these are out of line with the private sector. They say these workers, who deliver important quality public services like Old Age Security and food inspection to Canadians, are paid too much, but ignore that the Parliamentary Budget Officer recently reported that in the last decade–the latter part of which was shaped by the Conservative agenda–wages of federal workers have mostly just kept up with inflation. They also absurdly claim at every opportunity that federal public service workers take over 18 days of sick leave each year, again ignoring research from Statistics Canada demonstrating that this is simply not true.
The repetition of such claims–false as they are–serves the goal of creating a political atmosphere conducive to squeezing out from federal public service workers non-monetary benefits they negotiated over previous decades, often in lieu of their requests for raises that were said to be unaffordable, and therefore rejected, in the context of deficits during the Mulroney years, followed by pressures of debt repayment during the Chrétien years.
We’ve been down this road before. Just this past year, the government repeatedly overreached and tried to undermine free collective bargaining with public service workers only to be forced back to the table following action by unions. It did it with technical inspectors, whose many bargaining positions were later validated by a Public Interest Commission. It did it with foreign service officers, who then won a bad faith bargaining decision. And it did it with border services officers, who also won a court injunction against a forced vote. Bill C-4 undoubtedly presents an unprecedented assault on workers and the middle class, aimed at rewriting the very rules of the game. However, one at a time, the abusive sections of this law will be defeated.
Follow Larry Rousseau on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larryrousseau
Andrew Phillip Chernoff 