So-so-so, so much for union solidarity in Quebec

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

Fanny Levesque/Canadian Press/Le Soleil

By appearances alone, Bernard Gauthier makes for a great villain. His nickname is Rambo, and though he came by it honestly enough—he served eight years in the Canadian military—it is fitting for 200-plus-pound man with a mohawk, an earring and a mouth that would mightily challenge even the most adept broadcast censor.

A construction worker practically since he could pick up a hammer, Gauthier is arguably the most notorious and divisive union figure in Quebec today. He is a hero to the men he oversees as a representative with the FTQ-Construction, the largest construction labour union federation in Quebec; his critics, and there are many, see him as a thuggish throwback who rules jealously and fist-first over his territory.“We are against violence, but honestly, telling a goddamn bastard that he’s a goddamn bastard feels good,” Gauthier told Maclean’s from his office in Sept-Îles recently. “It’s liberating. It takes out 50 per cent of the rage in your heart. And now you can’t do it. If you do, you’re accused of intimidation, tabarnac.”

Gauthier sees many bastards in his life these days, chief among them the members of Jean Charest’s Liberal government, whose proposed law, Bill C-33, would remove the union movement’s power to dictate which union members get to work on which job site in the province. Continue…

He’ll say no

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Thomas Mulcair touts his willingness to stand up to unions.

In an interview with The Globe, Mr. Mulcair recounted how he informed the Canadian national director of the Steelworkers, Ken Neumann, that he opposed a reserved voting block for unions at the NDP leadership convention in March. “It was quite clear he wasn’t used to being told ‘no’ by anyone in the NDP. And I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘Why not let the membership decide?’” Mr. Mulcair said of the “cordial” conversation that occurred last month…

“So that is a defining difference because I want to work with the unions, but I’m never going to be beholden to anybody other than the people who voted me there, which will be the membership of the party,” Mr. Mulcair said.

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.

Harper versus the unions

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 55 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In the midst of June’s 47-hour filibuster over back-to-work legislation for Canada Post, New Democrat MP Wayne Marston was moved to recall the events of 1946, when “workers and veterans fought side by side in the streets” of Hamilton for better working conditions, thus launching the modern labour movement and paving the way for what would become the NDP. When it was her turn to speak, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner apparently felt compelled to respond. “Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to many nostalgic comments across the way about the old labour movement and the unions back in 1946. I am wondering if the members opposite recognize that we are in 2011 and that we have just come through a great recession that has damaged so many countries and from which we are just recovering,” she said. “When will they realize that we are not in the old socialist days of the good old union? We are in 2011.”

Here the differences between the new Opposition and the new majority government seemed in stark relief. But that filibuster may have only been the beginning. Months later, the issue of organized labour is a source of conflict—or the potential thereof—on numerous fronts.

Last month, for instance, after party strategist Brian Topp—an official with ACTRA, the union that represents 22,000 members of the performing arts—confirmed his bid for the NDP leadership, Conservatives deemed him a “union boss” with “deep union ties.” “How,” they asked, “could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians when he is so tied to big union special interests?” Conservative MPs have compelled committee hearings into union sponsorships of events at the NDP convention in Vancouver this past spring, while Conservative backbencher Russ Hiebert, who won the draw to table the first private member’s bill, is proposing legislation that would require unions to release public financial statements. And last week, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt both moved to refer a dispute between Air Canada and the company’s flight attendants to the Canada Industrial Relations Board—thus blocking a potential strike—and mused vaguely of perhaps amending the Canadian Labour Code.

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The right to strike

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 10:55 AM - 43 Comments

Labour Minister Lisa Raitt is promising back-to-work legislation if Air Canada and the union representing flight attendants are unable to reach a deal before Wednesday. This would be the fourth time the Harper government has introduced such legislation. Yvon Godin, the NDP labour critic, is unimpressed.

I know she said that she will vote to protect the Canadian economy. At the same time she is voting against the union’s right to have a strike. In this country we still have the right to have free bargaining and have the right to have a strike. The strike is even not started yet and she`s already telling Canadians in this country under the Conservative government there’s no strike. They’ve done it in the spring. They’re doing it again and I think it takes away the freedom of the negotiations, free negotiations by doing it.

Who might be in, who’s threatening to stay out

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:21 PM - 2 Comments

Romeo Saganash is leaving open the possibility of a run for the NDP leadership and Karl Belanger, Jack Layton’s press secretary, is being urged to consider entering the race, but Thomas Mulcair says he’ll stay out if a vote is set for January.

“If what some people seemed to be angling for, which was January, if that ever came to pass, you know, I’d just continue working very hard to do the best we could, but I would never be part of something where there wouldn’t be a level playing field,” he said Friday…

“I have some very strong support for an eventual shot at it from my Quebec colleagues, and I’m honoured and thrilled at that but I’ve also got to build in the rest of Canada,” Mulcair said in an interview Friday. “We’ve got to have time to meet with people, to connect with them, to say who we are, what we do, and that can only be done with a campaign that would be similar to the ’02-03 campaign, which was a 7 1/2-month campaign.”

Mr. Mulcair, along with Pat Martin and Peter Stoffer, also quibbles with setting aside votes for labour unions.

Canada Post is all but obsolete

By Jesse Brown - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 3:43 PM - 108 Comments

I have regard and sympathy for postal workers. Their mission was once critical to the world, and they have a sense of duty and a code of professional ethics that reflects this. They also have enjoyed all of the security and privilege that comes with performing such a crucial task.

Today, the ideals (and the comforts) remain, but something has changed. The mail just isn’t critical to society anymore. In most cases, it’s an anachronism—overdue for obsolescence, economically and environmentally indefensible. The Canada Post lock-out will help nudge the obsolescence along

I still check my mailbox with great anticipation every day. Not for personal correspondence or periodicals—I get those online. Not for parcels—private couriers handle those. But as a freelancer and contractor, I still get paid through the mail, and that keeps me interested.

But why am I still paid by mail? Why is it taking so long for companies to put in place a direct-deposit system for non-employees? Why is it still so difficult for me to email payment to the people I hire? And why does the government still spend millions mailing out cheques for pension, social security, welfare and unemployment?

Everyone who deposits these cheques has a bank account, so their finances are already part of a digital network. The paper slip is just a note from one computer that tells another computer to change some data. The postal workers and the Canadians who cart these objects around are redundant, fleshy bottlenecks in the process. Why are we still locked into such a wildly expensive and inefficient system?

Entropy, I suspect, and a bizarre sense that removing the last physical artifact of money will somehow melt the brains of anyone over 45.

The Canada Post lock-out will help with the entropy. Organizations have trouble innovating from within, but can become surprisingly nimble when pressured externally. Nothing will force an overdue move to digital transfers like necessity. Then, once the sky fails to fall, what will remain is a much quicker and much cheaper system.

At that point, why will anyone go back to snail mail?

Rain or shine, the monopoly must end

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 134 Comments

Jeff McIntosh/CP

The current strike at Canada Post (perhaps you hadn’t noticed: it started last week) presents a curious spectacle: an all-out struggle for control of a company whose main line of business—carrying bits of paper from one point to another—is rapidly disappearing.

It isn’t just email, which has reduced the letter to more or less the same function that telegrams once performed, something you send on formal occasions but otherwise wouldn’t think of using. Nearly everything that Canada Post once charged to carry is being vaporized. Cheques are giving way to electronic funds transfer; catalogues to online shopping; CDs, DVDs and books to iTunes, Netflix and Kindle.

And yet, notwithstanding a 17 per cent plunge in volume per address in the last five years, it still carries 11 billion pieces of mail a year. Some customers in particular—small businesses, charities, rural and elderly correspondents—remain dependent on “snail mail.” For them a strike is an inconvenience, and even if some take the opportunity to make the switch to electronic transmission—never to return—for many others the post office is their only choice.

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What happened down on the farm?

By Stephanie Findlay - Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), a union that represents food industry workers in Canada and the U.S., filed a complaint to the B.C. Labour Relations Board against the Mexican government and a Mission, B.C.-based farm, for allegedly blocking the return of a seasonal Mexican worker to Canada for his involvement in a union. The UFCW claims it has a Mexican government report blacklisting Victor Robles Velez, who had worked the last four years at Sidhu & Sons Nursery Ltd., for his union involvement. “The Mexican consulate has gone to the farms and injected themselves in the democratic process by telling workers and threatening workers that if they unionize or vote for a union they’ll be sent back to Mexico immediately,” says Wayne Hanley, the UFCW president. The hearing for the complaint, filed last month, is expected to take place in the next couple of weeks.

The Mexican consulate in Vancouver and the owners of the farm categorically deny the charges. “Absolutely not, there is no blacklist,” says a consulate spokesperson, adding the consulate has “absolute respect for the workers’ right to join the unions.”

The B.C. complaint is the latest in a series of controversies relating to the rights of migrant agricultural workers in Canada. Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a controversial ban on collective bargaining rights for migrant agricultural workers in Ontario, a decision critics say benefits employers and leaves foreign workers vulnerable. Andy Neufeld, a communications director with the UFCW, says that, if proven, the B.C. complaints have national, even international, consequences. “We’re talking about a government’s interference with their citizens’ rights,” says Neufeld, adding, “It would be surprising if somehow we were special out here in B.C. and this was an isolated incident.”

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Will Pierre Karl Péladeau take on other unions now?

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 6 Comments

John Mahoney/The Gazette; Pascal Ratthé/Ruefrontenac

“He won.” She takes no pleasure in saying the words, but journalist Valérie Dufour is candid about Pierre Karl Péladeau, the sleek-haired media magnate whose company, Quebecor Inc., has fought a protracted battle with its employees at Le Journal de Montréal, the continent’s largest-circulation French-language newspaper. “It’s Péladeau’s victory, not Quebecor’s,” Dufour said between sips of coffee in a Montreal coffee shop recently. “It was personal for him. It was his fight against the union movement in Quebec and he won.”

After more than two years off the job, Dufour and 252 of her colleagues voted to go back to work last week, though with the elimination of 70 per cent of the unionized positions at the paper, most find themselves without anything to go back to. The void will be filled by Quebecor management and, according to the company, an army of non-unionized, largely part-time workers.

Those who return do so with a heavy heart, knowing that despite their best efforts, the Journal didn’t once stop printing during the work stoppage; indeed, circulation actually increased.

Certainly, the Journal employees were girding for a fight with the man known to friends and detractors alike as PKP. Since becoming president and CEO of Quebecor in 1999, Péladeau has been unequivocal in his disdain for big unions, big government and other key aspects of the traditional modèle Québécoise. (Quebecor officials declined to speak to Maclean’s.) Once home to a crop of left-leaning columnists and journalists (including a young René Lévesque), Le Journal de Montréal‘s editorial line has undergone a populist rightward shift proselytizing low taxes and free market reforms. The new agreement between the Journal employees and Quebecor is, in many ways, this editorial line in action: there will now be more unionized journalists at the high-brow broadsheet Le Devoir, a paper with a much smaller circulation.

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The biggest hurdle to reform: unions

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, February 28, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 117 Comments

Jeffrey Phelps/AP

At one of his sporadic encounters with the press the other day in Vancouver, a statesmanlike Prime Minister implored opposition members of Parliament to dispense with political games and “focus on the economy.”

Some readers may be inclined to suggest the Prime Minister should tell this to Stephen Harper. But he is hardly the first political leader to sound this theme: of the vital necessity of elected representatives maintaining a constant vigil on the economy, undistracted by elections, polls or any of the other things that politicians think about all day long, else the whole thing collapse.

It’s never entirely clear what this means. Is it that the economy is kept alive by a kind of collective wish of the political class, like Tinker Bell? (“Focus on the economy, boys and girls: focus really hard!”) Or are we to believe that the economy is waiting for them to actually do something? That would require no less of an imaginative leap: these days, the agenda facing governments at every level consists, in the main, not in fresh openings for the application of government’s miraculous healing powers, but in undoing the mistakes of past governments.

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Expect more Wisconsins

By John Parisella - Friday, February 25, 2011 at 7:04 PM - 63 Comments

The battle lines over public sector wages and benefits are being drawn in the state of Wisconsin and there is every indication the outcome will be messy. At issue is how government employees affect public finances. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker not only wishes to tackle this issue, but has gone a step further in wanting to permanently change how the state will conduct collective bargaining in the future.

Unions see this as a full frontal attack on the labour movement. The fact 36 per cent of union members work in the public sector, while only 7 per cent work in the private sector has made this an easy Republican versus Democratic battle about the role and size of government.

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Anti-union bill passed in Wisconsin

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 25, 2011 at 4:31 PM - 86 Comments

Wisconsin’s state assembly has passed a controversial bill that would eliminate collective bargaining power for the state’s labour unions. Governor Scott Walker was unmoved by the large protests that have taken over the state’s Capitol building in Madison, saying the union-busting bill was essential to give the government the flexibility needed to close a $3.6-billion budget gap. Walker expects the bill will save $300-million over three years. Wisconsin is a staunch union state, and tens of thousands of protestors have descended on Madison to loudly express their opposition to the controversial measure, which is also being considered by the state legislatures in Ohio and Indiana. The bill was approved 51-17, after Republicans cut off debate shortly after 1:00am after 60 hours of debate. Many Democrats did not have a chance to vote. The motion will now go to the Senate, which also has a Republican majority.

AFP

When reality bites

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 32 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

During his final year at the University of Ottawa, Justin Cantin had one goal for his first job after graduation: not to wear a uniform. Ideally, he hoped to put his undergraduate degree in history to work in a museum or doing research. But after graduating last December, in the aftermath of the most severe recession in decades, reality hit. With $45,000 in loans, the 23-year-old moved back in with his mom in Mississauga, Ont., and started sending out resumés. He soon broadened his search to include part-time jobs, factory positions—“whatever would give me a paycheque,” he says. Last week, he landed a warehouse gig in Waterloo, Ont. Though relocating for a manual labour job is not something he ever imagined he’d do, he says, “It’s better than nothing.”

As Cantin struggles to adjust his expectations, he can take comfort, however cold, in the knowledge that many of his peers are doing the same. Though it’s been months since Canada’s economy returned to growth, recessions have a way of bearing down hard on youth, even long after they’re officially over. Predominantly employed in industries like retail and food service, which depend on consumer demand, or in unions where seniority rules, youth tend to be first on the chopping block when the economy goes south. This time was no different: since October 2008, more than 190,000 jobs for young people have disappeared; unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds rose to 16.3 per cent in August 2009, almost double the overall rate.

Although jobs are slowly coming back—as of February, youth unemployment had dropped to 15.2 per cent—what’s on offer is hardly the stuff from which middle-class careers are made. Thanks to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, hiring freezes and the delayed retirement of workers, for many the reality is a spell of unemployment or a low-paying gig—both of which can have lasting consequences, derailing careers for years to come. While it’s impossible to know how much their future will be shaped by the Great Recession, one thing is clear: the generation raised to believe in the limitlessness of their own potential has just been dealt a very unlucky blow.

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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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The first nail in La Presse's coffin: no more BlackBerrys

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 3:37 PM - 4 Comments

In case anyone thought Gesca was bluffing when it threatened to shut down La Presse and Cyberpresse on December 1 unless they strike a cost-cutting deal with the union, managers at the paper are stepping up the pressure this week. According to TVA, there’s already a plan in place to cease operations and—this is truly the first sign of a looming journalistic apocalypse—reporters will apparently be asked to turn in their BlackBerrys some time next week. Workers are scheduled to meet with the union on Saturday to clear the air—and, presumably, begin panicking.

What's Toronto Mayor David Miller doing with his garbage?

By Tom Henheffer - Monday, July 20, 2009 at 5:57 PM - 70 Comments

David Miller’s garage stinks. It should—it’s full of trash.

The Toronto city workers’ strike has already dragged on for a month. As a result, municipal services like pools, daycares, kids camps, and garbage collection have been shut down. (Grab a copy of this week’s Maclean’s for more on the strike.) If residents want to get rid of their refuse they have to take it to one of the city’s management-run temporary dump sites, 19 of which are still accepting garbage. But the Miller family has held on to their trash, and plan to continue adding to the garbage heap until the strike ends. Hauling it to a temporary dump site isn’t an option. “That’s sort of like giving in to the strikers,” says Miller.

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Demanding times

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:40 PM - 90 Comments

The three-week-old strike by municipal workers in Toronto has spawned mountains of stinking garbage, left public swimming pools empty and wreaked havoc for working parents who rely on city-run daycares. But the strike has also brought with it something else: the sudden realization that not all jobs in Canada are created equal.

In what many would call the real world, an economic earthquake has shattered lives, erased nearly 400,000 jobs, and obliterated a lifetime of retirement savings, hopes and dreams. Yet despite that, public sector workers with iron-clad pensions and rock-solid job security have opted to wage a battle for pay hikes and the type of arcane perks that were almost unheard of in the private sector, even when times were good. “Everyone who works within a large apparatus like the government believes the whole world works that way, when in fact it doesn’t,” says Ted Mallett, chief economist with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). “There’s a distinct lack of appreciation for what’s changed outside in the real world.” Continue…

Are labour unions a blessing or a curse?

By Steve Maich - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 25 Comments

Depending upon who you choose to believe, labour unions are either a central cause of North America’s current economic troubles, or the only viable escape from them.

Robert Reich took up the pro-union banner last week. In a column in the Los Angeles Times, the professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and former labour secretary under Bill Clinton argued that unions formed the bedrock of America’s economic emergence, and that their decline over the past two decades has coincided with the collapse of the typical American’s standard of living. Harkening back to the good ol’ days of poodle skirts and drive-ins, Reich explained that “good pay meant more purchases and more purchases meant more jobs. At the centre of this virtuous circle were unions.”

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Rise and fall of the young fogeys

By selley - Monday, November 24, 2008 at 1:32 PM - 10 Comments

Must-reads: Conrad Black on a certain grotesque miscarriage of justice; Jeffrey Simpson on Henry Waxman; Don Macpherson on Mario Dumont; Greg Weston on Bob Rae; George Jonas on “Singapore of the North.”

Brother, can you spare a dime?
From Washington to Lima to the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, there’s bad news on the economy. But you already knew that.

The National Post‘s Terence Corcoran asks us if we really want the future of the North American auto industry to be in the hands of politicians intent on aping Jerry Maguire (“Until they show us the plan,” said Sen. Harry Reid, “we cannot show them the money”) or who actually believe “GM would be better off if CEO Rick Wagoner wandered about U.S. airports in search of his luggage.” By all accounts, he observes, a bailout would mean “further suppression of market forces from an industry already burdened by regulations that have driven it into the ground” and the “continued existence of union protections,” among other impediments to future success. Let them go bankrupt, Corcoran implores, in hopes they might someday be able to recover “in a genuine market.”

Playtime’s over, the Ottawa Citizen‘s Randall Denley advises Canadian union members in both the private and public sectors. It may well be unfair that government workers should suffer for the fiscal mismanagement of city councillors or school board trustees, he concedes, but “the same accusation could be made about the management of many corporations that are laying off employees. That doesn’t create any more money for raises.” He suggests the brothers and sisters be happy just to remain employed, and believes “sharing the pain” with their fellow Canadians isn’t too much to ask.

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