Without trust, Union relations will be perpetual warfare
More years ago than I am comfortable admitting to, I personally was charged with intimidation by the teamsters union.
It complained to the labour relations board and the police about my threat to lay criminal charges if it continued its antics during a strike at a client. That complaint became a badge of honour, displayed on my wall until it yellowed with age.
This month, I stand charged, along with my client, by a different union for suggesting at the bargaining table that its president was misleading fellow employees.
I was astounded. I could barely recall a set of negotiations where someone, at some point, did not accuse the other side of misleading employees. I wondered if this application was this union's attempt to introduce a new era of gentility, but then realized it was likely only attempting to "conflict me out" from acting.
Peter Suchanek, Ontario director of the Canada Industrial Relations Board, told me my case is not unique.
He said 2008 has heralded a wave of unfair labour practice applications by unions against company lawyers. So what is going on in management-union relations in Canada?
The biggest change in the past decade has been the dissolution of private sector unions and the relative strength of public ones. Starting with the Mike Harris Tories in Ontario, who passed legislation requiring employers to post notices advising employees how to decertify, eliminating unions became a realistic objective.
Concomitantly, with Bob Rae's Bill 40 being repealed, the labour boards in Ontario and other provinces stopped automatically certifying unions with little support because of some minor employer transgression. In Rae's heyday, Royal Shirt Co. Ltd. was certified by the labour board because an alleged union supporter was fired, yet only one out of 50 staff had ever signed a union card.
In my experience, employers are more aggressively resisting unionization. They are acting intelligently and preventively, showing compassion to employees, mimicking union benefits such as grievance and anti-harassment procedures and paying wages that match or exceed their unionized competitors.
Private-sector unions - the largest being in auto, steel, and paper - have been weakened by a fall in membership and union dues, preventing them from fighting as strenuously as in the past.
Unions, to their credit, are increasingly, albeit not sufficiently, facing up to reality. Monetarily, if they ask for more than the competition is paying, the employer might be forced out of business and the union members would be out of a job.
In the public sector, the situation is different. As exemplified by the recent strike by members of the Toronto Transit Commission, the affected party is often not the employer - in this case the City of Toronto - rather, it is inconvenienced taxpayers.
Those taxpayers end up resenting funding public-sector workers, doing less-skilled jobs than their own for more pay. While a private employer can go bankrupt, the City goes into deficit. Worse, the people making the decisions are elected politicians whose political agenda seldom incorporates prudent fiscal dealmaking.
Labour unions have sewn up the public sector with overly generous collective agreements from governments too timorous and short-sighted to take them on. A once unified labour movement is more fractious, increasingly fighting among itself for the few remaining unionized employees. Its support for the NDP is also disintegrating, notably when Buzz Hargrove campaigned with Paul Martin and opportunistically called upon his members to vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the Tories.
The recent call by CUPW President Denis Lemelin for his 56,000 members to boycott Israel, following Ontario CUPE's similar vote, reminded Canadians of how compulsory union dues are being used for political purposes their members may violently oppose.
Perhaps the government, whose legislation forces all union members to pay dues, might pass legislation requiring those dues be used exclusively for its members' interest. Leaders who do otherwise should be deposed by their members, or the unions decertified.
Perhaps Canadians should respond in kind, boycotting the employers of the unions that take such positions until and unless the employer denounces the union for doing so. Canada Post, to its credit, did precisely that.
Labour relations are ultimately based upon trust, of explicit and intrinsic understandings, without which there will be a perpetual state of war or, at best, a cold peace. When the TTC union breached its agreement to provide 48 hours' notice of a strike, it was not breaking any law. But in breaking its word, it made future relations with the employer impossible.
Similarly, suing employers' counsel, or the employer itself, without good cause is the thin edge of a relationship breakdown, one likely to reverse the recent, albeit halting, private-sector gains in union-employer relations.
Howard Levitt, counsel to Lang Michener LLP, is an employment lawyer and author of The Law of Dismissal for Human Resources Professionals. Reach him at hlevitt@langmichener.ca
More Business
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
