Transparency and C-377

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 9, 2012 at 4:29 PM - 0 Comments

Earlier this week, John Geddes looked closer at Conservative MP Russ Hiebert’s bill on union disclosure.

The bill’s union opponents protest that if the tax deductibility of dues means their finances must be fully transparent, the same should go for professional and business organizations—from lawyers’ and doctors’ groups to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business—whose membership fees are also deductible. In any case, labour law is largely a provincial jurisdiction, and labour codes in most provinces already require unions to disclose financial information to their members. The Canada Labour Code does the same for unions under federal jurisdiction. Hiebert argues, though, that the public, not just the union rank and file, deserve access to that information. As well, he points out that U.S. law requires detailed disclosure, which means the best source of fine-grained financial data on any Canadian unions affiliated with American unions is often the U.S. Department of Labor’s website.

Still, while Hiebert professes to be for transparency, and not against unions, his allies are hardly friends of organized labour. Merit Canada, the national lobby group for the “open shop,” or non-unionized, construction industry, has thrown its support behind Bill C-377. Merit has mounted a campaign under the slogan, “Why is big labour afraid of the light?” According to a publicly disclosed report filed with the federal lobbyists’ registry, Merit’s representatives met on Oct. 23 with Hiebert and Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s powerful chief of staff. Also attending that top-level lobbying session were Alykhan Velshi, Harper’s director of planning, and two senior officials from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s department.

Amy Minsky has dug further into Merit Canada’s meetings with Conservative MPs and government officials. Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber has said he won’t support the bill unless it’s amended.

Pierre Poilievre v. Organized labour

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

In response to PSAC’s endorsement of PQ candidates, the parliamentary secretary wants to make it possible for public servants to opt out of paying union dues.

Poilievre said he plans to initiate a debate on how to give Canada’s public servants the right to decide whether they want to join a union and pay union dues. It’s unclear how he plans to go about this, since it would require legislative changes. As a parliamentary secretary, he is unable to introduce a private member’s bill to make such changes … 

Poilievre’s proposal could be the most radical policy change embarked by the Conservative government and is reminiscent of right-to-work legislation that has been introduced in some U.S. states. “You can call it that,” said Poilievre. “I consider it enhancement of workers rights and freedoms.”

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:38 PM - 2 Comments

From this week’s print edition, a thousand words on the new majority government, the new official opposition and the general notion of organized labour.

In that piece I note Lisa Raitt’s public musing about amending the Canada Labour Code. Speaking with reporters after QP today, in reaction to news of a settlement between Air Canada and its flight attendants, Raitt seemed to walk those musings back.

Well, you know, we were just talking in general about whether or not there was a difficulty in ratification this time. We referred it to the CIRB. But I don’t expect we’re going to get anything from the CIRB on the matter because they settled their differences and they found a process that worked so I’m very content with the Labour Code that it’s working as the way it should so it’s not priority for me at all … You know we went through a process of taking a look at the Code in general and I met with both labour and we met with employers and the Minister before me did the same thing.  It’s working in today’s situation. It worked in this case and I’m very happy with the way that it worked out. I think what I was referencing is just we were going to use the Code in a different way by having Section 107 reference to the CIRB and that’s what I was indicating we were thinking of and that’s what we did. And it worked very well so we’re happy with it.

Why Péladeau's anti-union plea is more than a bit disingenuous

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 7:02 PM - 8 Comments

Pierre-Karl Péladeau, the head of telecommunications behemoth Québecor, published an open letter in this morning’s Journal de Québec blasting unions for hampering the province’s economic progress. Not surprisingly, the missive isn’t going over very well. For those of you who can stomach record-breaking run-on sentences, here are the juiciest bits, translated into la langue de Gainey:

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