Front Burner - Work sucks. Where are the unions?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Nearly a million Canadian workers have taken job action in recent years, with Canada Post employees being the latest to do so. That included work stoppages at airlines, railways and Canadian ports.You might assume, from the many headlines about strikes, that union power is growing in Canada. But in fact, over the last forty years, the number of workers who are members of a union has decreased by nearly 10 percent.At the same time, jobs across many sectors have gotten worse, from stagnating wages to reduced benefits.Barry Eidlin is an associate professor of sociology at McGill University and the author of "Labour and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada".He'll weigh in on why work sucks, what unions can do about that, and what is and is not being done.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Work sucks, I know. Hey everybody, it's Jamie. Canada Post workers and union supporters rallied in downtown St. John's on Monday,

calling for, they say, better support for the next generation of workers. They're part of a national strike involving around 55,000 workers across the country. It's been going on since last Friday. This is just the latest in a series of major labor strikes this year, including work stoppages at airlines, railways, and Canadian ports. In fact, in the last two years, nearly a million workers across the country have taken job action, the vast majority of which were public sector workers. So with so many strikes making the headlines, you could be forgiven if you assumed union power is growing in Canada.

But it's actually the opposite. Over the last 40 years, the number of workers who are members of a union has decreased by nearly 10%. At the same time, jobs across many sectors have gotten worse in a number of real, tangible ways. Think stagnating wages and reduced benefits. All of which might seem like fertile ground for a resurgence in collective labour action. And it has been, in the US at least. Less so here in Canada. Today we're talking with Barry Eidlin about why work sucks, what unions can do about that, and what is and is not being done. Barry is an associate professor of sociology at McGill University and the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States

and Canada. Barry, hi, thanks so much for coming on to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here. So let's start with the Canada post-strike. As I mentioned, 55,000 employees have walked off the job. They're still delivering pensions, unemployment checks, child care benefits, but parcels, letters to Santa, that is all stopped. I know there is a bunch on the table for negotiation, but my understanding is there are two big sticking points here. One is the pay raise, 11.5% versus 24% that the employees would like. And importantly, Canada Post wants to hire people on contract so it can start delivering on the weekends like Amazon.

But the union wants full-time employees to do that with overtime. And I just wonder if you could elaborate for me on why this has become such a sticking point. Yeah, so both of these issues should sound quite familiar to Canadians because these are issues that go far beyond the Postal Service. So the wage issue, for decades, as you've said, we've been in an environment of stagnating wages for most Canadians, where you're lucky to get a percent or two pay raise, if anything. raise, if anything. And employers have gotten accustomed to that. But basically, coming out of the pandemic, there's been a new reality, right? So I think the pandemic crystallized for a lot of people this contradiction between sort of being deemed essential but treated as disposable for many. And also coming out of the pandemic, there was a tighter labor market, which gave workers more structural leverage to ask for more.

And so they're asking for bigger pay raises to deal with the cost of living and to make up for the lost ground and employers that are still stuck in the past 40 years and not ready to give in to this new reality, if you will. And so you have negotiations coming at loggerheads on this pay issue, right? So five years ago, basically what Canada Post is giving like a 2% annual wage increase, I mean, it wouldn't be anything to write home about, but that'd be totally normal and acceptable and nobody would think too much about it. In 2024, that just doesn't cut it anymore. The Crown Corporation has proposed an 11.5% raise over four years. The union is pushing for almost double that amount.

The Grinch seems to have stolen Christmas for us. And for the holidays, we want to be able to work, but we want a fair contract at decent wages. The cost of living has gone up. It's affected us greatly. Canada Post workers are saying that, you know, they sacrificed during the pandemic. They just extended their contract. Right, because they were essential workers. Yeah. You know, and they need to make up for lost ground. So that's the pay issue.

Then the other thing is the issue of eroding job security. And one of the big ways that job security has eroded has been the growth in more contingent forms of work. It's been replacing permanent, well-paid jobs with benefits with less secure, lower-paid jobs with fewer benefits, often through what's called a two-tier or sometimes multi-tier system where employers will say, okay, those who already are hired on here, you stay at your same wage benefit package. But then the new hires come in and they have a defined contribution pension or no pension. They get hired in at $5 an hour or less. So you create a two-tier workforce. And obviously, over time, just through retirements and replacements, you know, the lower tier becomes the tier. So there's that. But then while the, you know, for the people who are still there, you know, it's just a breeding ground for resentment and division because you have people working side by side doing literally the same work,

but without the same pay and benefits. And it's just a recipe for division. So Canada Post says it's in really dire straits. Canada Post says a strike would further strain its finances. The Crown Corporation has lost $3 billion since 2018. We're losing in the parcel business because we're not competitive. So we've got to put forward a plan and a proposal that we can afford and will allow us to grow. Basically, like FedEx, Amazon, UPS have claimed this huge chunk of the parcel delivery market and that Canada Post historically was able to get revenue from people sending letters. But obviously, people are doing a lot less of that right now. And so they say they're in this tight spot. And how would you respond to that?

Yeah. I mean, clearly we're in a moment now where we need to be thinking about what the future of the Postal Service looks like. Do we want to have a future for the Postal Service that is basically eroding job security and well-paying jobs for thousands of Canadians and lowering work centers? Is that the future of work that we want in Canada? Or do we want to think of creative ways to use this nationwide network. Canada Post is one of the few entities that has an organizational presence literally in every community across all of Canada and has this public mission to serve all Canadians. Are there ways to use that network in other ways? And the postal union, Cup W, has proposed several ideas for how to do that, whether that be doing senior check-ins. Right, like a postal worker would go check on your

grandma. Yeah, exactly, right? Things like postal banking is actually kind of an old idea that's becoming new again. It's a common thing in a lot of other countries to provide low cost, you know, low fee banking for, you know, millions of unbanked Canadians or Canadians that are paying way too high in fees. Got it. Got it. And so just to zoom out, this Strike at Canada post, I'm sure people will just like intuitively remember all these strikes that we've seen lately, right? I'm thinking of like WestJet mechanics that walked off the job following pilots threatening to strike. As part of the tentative agreement, the airline mechanics union got a wage increase and agreed to no more strike action. CP and CN were locked out when contract negotiations failed in August.

Just 16 hours after the lockout began, the federal government stepped in. The impacts of the current impasse are being borne by all Canadians. The Labour minister changing course, turning the dispute over to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. Dock workers in Quebec and BC were ordered back to work last week. I've directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order that all operations and duties at the ports resume and to assist the parties in settling their collective agreements

by imposing final and binding arbitration. And don't forget the Quebec public sector. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the same issues there that we're talking about when we're talking about Canada Post, fair to say? a high degree of public support in general are many Canadians, a vast majority of Canadians, are dealing with wages that aren't keeping up with the cost of living, are dealing with unpredictable scheduling or not enough hours or too much forced overtime, are dealing with technological change, issues of control at work over being micromanaged or not having the resources to do the job that you need to do. These are all the issues that are coming up over and over again In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Barry, how would you say that the unions have done here in addressing those concerns? Have they been effective generally? Well, I will say that we haven't seen the sort of resounding, clear victories that maybe you,

I mean, they're few and far between regardless. But I would say that the fight has borne fruit in the sense that workers have gotten far more than they would have absent a viable strike threat or without striking. I mean, I think you see an example here in Quebec with the public sector, which is the largest strike and there's almost half a million workers on strike last year against the Quebec government in health care and education. The one-day strike was led by a coalition of unions called the Common Front. I think people misconstrued the reason why we're striking. It's not just about pay. It's really better working conditions for the students, for the staff.

You know, the government was asking for, it was proposing a 9% wage increase over five years, and they got it up to like 17.4%, right? So nearly double, And they got that by these massive strikes. That being said, 17.4% still doesn't really keep up with the cost of living. considering the fact that these unions were, you know, at least able to eke out some real gains here for their members. Well, why then are we seeing a decrease in unionization across the country? Well, I think we need to keep in mind that that's been a trend for the past few decades, and that's something that would take some time to reverse, right? So, you know, Canada has actually, in the grand scheme of things, done far better than most other comparable countries in the sense that even with the 10 percentage point decline, we're still looking at unionization rates that are similar

to what they were back in the 1970s, which is something that very few other countries could say. That being said, yes, there is this pattern of decline. The fact remains that even with more favorable labor laws than exist in many other countries, particularly in places like Quebec and BC, it's still really hard to join a union. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through. And employers are still very reticent to accept what they see as an infringement over their sovereign power in the workplace. as an infringement over their sovereign power in the workplace. And I think that you repeat that across workplaces across Canada, and you see the risks and barriers that workers face when they want to join unions, and you can see why the rates haven't been budging quite yet.

I wonder if we could do a bit of a comparison between here and the United States. So I'm thinking of efforts in Quebec and B.C. by Amazon warehouse workers to unionize here that were met with stiff opposition and didn't work or haven't worked yet, right? But recently, there has been this surge in grassroots union activity in the U.S. The Amazon Labor Union, along with the Starbucks Workers United Union, both organizations were started and run by rank and file employees, and they've managed to achieve these victories that have actually eluded larger unions. Is there something going on there that isn't going on here? Well, I see it as the different manifestations of a similar phenomenon,

which is that we see an upsurge in grassroots rank-and-file energy amongst workers in both countries. It's just taking different shapes, right? So in the U.S., there's more of a sort of grassroots organizational infrastructure, if you will. There's groups in place like this thing called Labor Notes. There's the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. There are political organizations like DSA, Democratic Socialism of America that have had a surge in membership. And so when you look at what's been going on, a lot of it ties back to this organizational infrastructure. And so it takes the form of independent unions like Amazon Labor Union, Starbucks Workers United, which is affiliated with a large union, Service Employees International, SEIU, but is very worker-led.

And so those are the ways that you see it taking shape there. Here in Canada, you have a similar energy, but we don't have that same infrastructure in Canada. And so one of the main ways that I see it taking shape in Canada is through contract rejections, right? So there will be a contract negotiation. Workers have high expectations. The negotiating committee will negotiate what they think is a good agreement. They'll bring it back to the members and they'll vote it down.. Then they'll go on strike to fight for more. We saw that with the metro grocery strike last year, with the longshore union on the West Coast, and many other instances of that. What's interesting about that is that over the past few decades, when you see contract negotiations, contracts getting rejected like that, it's usually because the employer is demanding concessions and the negotiating committee is sort of saying, well, we just don't think we have the strength to beat this, so we're just going to take what we've got. And they try to basically convince the members to take a bad deal because it's the best they can get at the time.

That's not what's been happening these past couple of years. Rather, what's happening is these negotiating communities are negotiating agreements that they think are good. And actually, when you compare to what they've been able to get in recent years are objectively good agreements in a comparative perspective. They just aren't good enough given the changed environment. They don't meet workers' heightened expectations. I just want to end this conversation today sort of talking about the political landscape a little bit.

So, of course, in BC, the port workers were ordered back to work by the federal government. The rationale seems to be that they were too effective at impacting the economy, right? And there is now talk of the Canada Post workers being ordered back. And the rail workers. And the rail workers, right.

And so what impact does that have on the leverage that unions have to negotiate? And related to that, what do you see on the horizon as we enter into like a new Trump presidency and the potential for a poly of government here in Canada? Yeah. I realize that was a big question. You get to your best. Canada really stands alone in both federal and provincial governments' trigger-happy use of back-to-work orders, historically. Every time you see this knee-jerk response like, oh, we need to put a stop to this and get them back to work with special legislation or binding arbitration or whatever. That is not a normal response on a more global scale. That is a distinctly Canadian response. And it is a corrosive response to collective bargaining and to respecting workers' rights.

And it's also worth pausing here to note that when we're talking about the right to strike, when we're talking about the right to engage in collective bargaining, to join a union, we're talking about rights that are protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as of 2015. But leaving aside the charter issues, we need to think about what these back-to-work orders do to a viable system of collective bargaining in Canada. The problem is that, by definition, the whole reason that we have collective bargaining is because it brings together parties that have fundamentally different interests, fundamentally different goals, and have to come to agreement over very thorny, difficult issues that are not easily resolved. The reason is that in order to

get to that agreement, in order to work through those thorny issues, to reconcile those very divergent interests, there has to be an element of compulsion. There has to be an element of coercion, even, to push people to the table. Right. And when you take that off, yeah, when you order them back to work, that leverage goes away. And it's particularly the case for employers, right? Employers, particularly because they have a degree of structural power over their workers in the workplace, would rather not have to come to deals at the table. And so the right to strike is the fundamental underpinning of a stable and functioning collective bargaining regime because it provides the pressure to get employers to come to the table.

Now then, as you said, when you introduce the possibility of government intervention through back-to-work legislation or binding arbitration, that basically provides an escape hatch for employers. That gives them no incentive to actually reach an agreement at the bargaining table, and over time has this corrosive effect on collective bargaining. Right. And then let's end this on the second half of that very packed question that I asked you, which is sort of where you see this all going with big political moves in the United States and a very great potential for there to be a change of government and leadership here in Canada. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I think more so in the U.S. than in Canada, the Biden presidency, for all its shortcomings, has had some important salutary effects for labor in terms of more aggressive and expansive enforcement of existing labor law, which isn't great. There's been this sort of dance between the bottom-up energy of the workers and the more favorable enforcement of labor law that has had this sort of synergy, if you will. synergy, if you will. In Canada, there hasn't been quite that same synergy, certainly with the Liberal government, but we could expect less synergy with the Poilier government. But the issue here is that while the favorable legal enforcement climate certainly is helpful. It's not the only thing.

And the fact that you have this grassroots energy is a new thing that we've not seen in many decades. And that doesn't automatically go away when you're faced with a more hostile government. go away when you're faced with a more hostile government. To the contrary, what you see is there's a possibility that a workers' movement with heightened expectations that has gotten a taste of what it means to fight back and win will not take lightly to efforts to curtail that power and could lead to more of a fightback situation, which is certainly what we saw in Canada in the 1930s, in the 1970s, where further efforts to repress labor were met with much more pushback from the labor movement. So that's not a given by any stretch, but it's certainly something we've seen in the past, and I would not be surprised to see it in the future. All right, Barry, thank you so much for this. This is great. I learned a lot.

Really, really appreciate you coming by. Thanks. It's my pleasure. Really appreciate it. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.