labor

Back to Work Legislation: If Cost is a Reason, Prove It

Today, the Canadian federal government introduced back-to-work legislation to end the strike at Canadian Pacific Railways. As my colleague David Doorey has so eloquently described over at his blog, this fourth piece of federal back-to-work legislation represents a very disturbing pattern of intervention. Critics from both union and management positions have said that these acts hamper the effectiveness of collective bargaining, not only in the immediate situations, but also in long-term bargaining relationships, where the parties will either be unwilling or unable to reach agreement on their own.

I’ll also point out that the government has done an extremely poor job of justifying the economic rationale for stepping in to end these disputes. (more…)

Help Save the Kitsilano Coast Guard Base

My father is a tugboat captain, as was my grandfather, and I grew up with a great deal of respect for maritime safety. I also understood how important it is for help to arrive quickly if you get into trouble on the water. So I was astounded, to put it mildly, when Canada’s federal government announced the closing of the Kitsilano coast guard station in Vancouver in September. (more…)

Is It Work if You Don’t Get Paid for It?

The British Columbia Labour Relations Board is struggling this week to answer a deceptively simple question: what is work?

That question is part of the ongoing bargaining dispute between the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) and BC’s provincial government (represented in this situation by the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA)). (more…)

The Union That Doesn’t Call Itself A Union: The UFCW and “Ask Target for Fairness”

Unions are having a hard time in Canada right now.  Union density (the percentage of the workforce represented by a union) has stayed relatively constant in Canada over the past few years, but union membership numbers have shrunk dramatically in some parts of the workforce, because of job reductions in highly unionized parts of the private sector (e.g. manufacturing). And although anti-union attitudes in the United States have always been strong,  it isn’t unreasonable to think that anti-union sentiment in Canada is stronger now than it has been, shown by such anti-union actions as the proposed revisions to labour legislation in Saskatchewan, and the over-eagerness of the federal government to intervene in labour disputes when a strike might be involved. (more…)

Strikes and Lockouts Are Bad. And Your Point Is….?

It’s no secret by now that the governing Conservative party  in Canada has, well, a conservative attitude toward unions. It’s been shown through the quick legislative intervention in the Air Canada pilots’ dispute this spring – following similar interventions involving Air Canada’s flight attendants and Canada Post. These were all justified as necessary to offset the potential damage of extended work stoppages to the Canadian economy. But the government’s reasoning was, shall we say, light on the specific details of the extent of this (alleged) damage, and why legislation was needed to prevent it.  So, not surprisingly, these back-to-work laws have been characterized as just a convenient way to disrespect the bargaining rights of the parties in these disputes.

Clamping down on strike and lockout activity is a high-profile indication of the Conservative government’s feelings about unions. But there are other, more subtle, things going on too. (more…)