Georgetti: The Tories Attack on the Middle Class Should Worry You

Ken Georgetti    President, Canadian Labour Congress

12/04/2013   http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

The Conservative government is engaged in a campaign to distract their supporters from a series of Senate scandals and cover ups. The Conservative fundraising machine believes that if it feeds its base a constant diet of someone to dislike, the donation cheques will keep rolling in. Workers and their unions are their current targets with a long list of legislation designed to keep their base happy.

The Conservative government’s recent volleys against workers and their unions will only serve to undercut the well-being and security of middle-class families in Canada if they succeed in pushing through their anti-union legislation. The Globe and Mail said as much in a recent series of articles on growing inequality in Canada — "declining unionization has contributed to wage inequality."

Canada’s labour movement is not just about decent jobs, it’s about a better life for everyone. Unions have worked to protect good jobs, make workplaces safer, fought for paid vacation time, public health insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. When union members stand up for fairness everyone benefits — whether you belong to a union or not.

Canadians will see through the government’s attempts to divide people against one another. At one end of the legislative spectrum, the government uses giant omnibus bills to throw everything but the kitchen sink into one piece of legislation. The current budget bill runs to 308 pages and in the fine print it makes sudden and dramatic changes to the Canada Labour Code. One of those changes would place workers’ lives at risk by eroding their right to refuse dangerous work.

Other amendments to federal labour laws would erode workers’ constitutional right to bargain collectively by letting the government unilaterally, without negotiation, change the rules for bargaining with their employees. To add insult to injury, witnesses to the parliamentary committee studying the bill who would speak out against the changes were deliberately scheduled to testify after the deadline for the committee to make amendments passed.

What is the government really trying to fix here? We know that well over 99 per cent of all collectively bargained contracts in Canada result in an agreement rather than a strike or lockout. There was no consultation with any of the parties affected by this proposed legislation, and changing the rules without consultation and negotiation is simply heavy-handed and unfair. Given the Supreme Court of Canada will soon rule on very similar legislation introduced by the Saskatchewan government, the ideological cousins of this government, it’s also premature.

At the other end of the legislative spectrum, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is offending parliamentary tradition by using its influence to introduce Private Member’s Bills and to force their passage. That is what happened with Bill C-377, an unconstitutional piece of legislation that will force labour organizations (but no one else) to undertake costly and time consuming reporting of even the most minute of financial transactions.

Bill C-377 was supposedly the initiative of backbench Conservative MP Russ Hiebert but we know that special interest groups met frequently with the PMO, including the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Nigel Wright, and the PMO exerted pressure in order for the bill to pass.

The senate found Bill C-377 to be so offensive that it was sent back to the House of Commons in June with numerous amendments. But then the Prime Minister shut down Parliament and Bill C-377 is now going to be sent to the senate all over again. Bill C-377 is ideologically-motivated and aimed at wasting union members’ money and it is not needed. Our members already have access to financial information about the unions to which they belong.

Bill C-525, another Private Member’s Bill put forward by a Conservative MP, would make it nearly impossible for workers in the federally-regulated sector to join a union. The bill would consider workers who don’t bother to vote in a certification vote as casting "no" ballots on having a union. That’s not democratic — giving those who don’t vote control over those who do. If those rules applied to electing MPs, Parliament would be empty. One set of rules for Conservatives and a different set for workers — that’s unfair.

Finally, the recent Conservative Party convention in Calgary passed a number of aggressively anti-worker resolutions. One of them would allow some workers to stop paying union dues but still receive all the benefits that the union negotiates – all at the expense of their coworkers who do pay their dues. Leave it to ethically-challenged Conservatives, counselling people that it’s okay to dine and dash at a restaurant while leaving others at your table to pay the bill. That’s unfair and it’s a recipe for conflict and disruption in the workplace.

This government puts its extreme ideology ahead of all other considerations, but Canadians see these bullying tactics for what they are. The CLC and its affiliates ran a television advertising campaign during October and November 2013. We talked directly to Canadians about the positive role that the labour movement plays in our society. The response to our campaign has been overwhelmingly positive from both union members and the public at large. That response and our polling shows that we are on the side of the vast majority of Canadians. They will support a labour movement that works in the interest of fairness for everyone.

Ken Georgetti is president of the 3.3 million member Canadian Labour Congress.

Follow The Progress Of Bills C-4, C-377 and C-525 On The West Kootenay Labour Council Website With The RSS Feeds

November 24, 2013

The West Kootenay Labour Council is now following the progress of the following federal government Bills that are of great interest to all Union affiliates and Labour:

Bill C-4: A second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures

Bill C-377: An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (requirements for labour organizations

Bill C-525: An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Labour Relations Act (certification and revocation — bargaining agent

The RSS feeds of the above bills are on the WKLC website: https://westkootenaylabourcouncil.wordpress.com/

MP welcomes bill’s second chance

Bill C-377 To Revert To When  It Passed third reading In The House On Dec. 12 – Nullifying  Senators’ Amendments, Deliberations.

By Alex Browne – Peace Arch News    August 21, 2013 3:00 PM

South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale Conservative MP Russ Hiebert

Russ Hiebert, Conservative MP for South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale, says he’s pleased by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue – or suspend – Parliament until October.

For Hiebert, prorogation means the clock will be turned back to last December on his controversial private member’s bill, C-377, which would require labour unions to publish detailed financial information.

Harper has said prorogation is in anticipation of a throne speech putting forward a new agenda for the government at the midpoint of its mandate.

Following heated debate, the Senate sent C-377 back to the Commons in June, with extensive amendments reducing the scope and impact of the bill that Hiebert claimed, at the time, had “gutted” it.

Under prorogation, according to the Library of Parliament, the bill will revert to the way it was when it passed third reading in the House on Dec. 12 – essentially nullifying the Senators’ amendments and the deliberations leading to them.

The unamended bill will subsequently be resubmitted to the Senate, Hiebert noted in a statement issued Tuesday.

“As such, I am hopeful my colleagues in the Senate will give C-377 appropriate and timely consideration,” he said, adding that the restored bill will “once again reflect the wishes of the elected lower house of Parliament.”

Wednesday, Peace Arch News asked Hiebert if that means he expects the bill will receive a smoother ride the second time around.

“I’m always hopeful,” Hiebert said, adding that he’s making no predictions about how quickly the Senate will deal with the bill when it returns to the chamber.

“This does give me an opportunity to communicate with the small number of members of my caucus who had concerns about the bill. I’ll do my best to persuade them that the bill should pass as it stands.”

Hiebert acknowledged going back to square one with the Senate also raises the possibility the bill could face further Senate Banking Committee hearings before being debated by senators.

“That decision would have to rest with them,” he said. “My hope is that, because we have already had three weeks of testimony, that could be taken into consideration. But it’s completely in the hands of the senators.”

A total of 16 Tory senators joined their Liberal counterparts in approving the amendments to Hiebert’s bill in June.

Hiebert has argued that since unions receive tax deductions through union dues, their finances should be made public, and that the transparency he’s asking for is no greater than that currently required for charities.

Opponents, however, claim the legislation – as it stands – will cost unions millions of dollars, adding that the bill also ventures into dangerous  areas of unconstitutionality and invasion of privacy.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal was among those who spoke out against the bill in June, saying it was poorly drafted and likely to be challenged.

"Whatever may have been its laudable transparency goals, (it is) really – through drafting sins of omission and commission – an expression of statutory contempt for the working men and women in our trade unions and for the trade unions themselves and their right under federal and provincial law to organize," Segal said.

Conservative Senator Diane Bellemare, a former economics professor at the University of Quebec, was also critical of the legislation.

"Even with the proposed amendments, this bill remains an unbalanced bill that has no similarity to other transparency bills in France, the United Kingdom and Australia," she said.

Opinion: Canada’s labour model is broken

By Brian Dijkema, Edmonton Journal July 16, 2013

 

The Harper government needs to reshape labour relations to reflect that workers and capital both win when they work together. Photograph by: Jacques Boissinot , THE CANADIAN PRESS

 

Pop quiz: which Canadian politician was responsible for the first piece of legislation allowing trade unions in Canada? J.S. Woodsworth? Tommy Douglas? Ed Broadbent?

The obvious answer — one might say the conservative Canadian answer — would be one of the above. The correct answer is, in fact, none of the above.

None other than Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, passed the Trade Unions Act in 1872. You read that right: it was a Conservative prime minister who first legally recognized trade unions in Canada.

That this would come as a surprise to many reflects our assumptions about the way conservatives react on the labour file, instead of leading in step with their principles. Recent efforts are a case in point.

For those who haven’t been following, the current government’s efforts in labour relations reform have been limited to nibbling at the edges via private member’s bills. Bill C-377, which sought to force labour unions to disclose to everyone, not just their members, all spending over $5,000, loans over $250, and wages of employees making more than $100,000.

The other attempt at reform was Bill C-525, which would require unions to achieve a threshold of support in workplaces of 50 per cent plus one of all employees (not just those who vote).

In other words, it would require unions to receive a mandate not currently enjoyed by any current governing party in Canada, or any government in Canada ever.

Bill C-525 didn’t make it to second reading, and Bill C-377 was deemed — by the normally compliant Senate, no less — so poorly written that it was infamously sent back to the House of Commons with amendments.

Both of these bills are efforts to solve real problems with Canadian labour unions. Union spending on fringe causes — Israel apartheid week anyone? — is worthy of scrutiny. So are many of the deceptive practices unions use to get members in the door.

But what both bills have in common is that they buy into the very adversarial mentality that many of the socialist labour unions in Canada have against conservatives. In doing so, the federal Conservatives (and conservatives) are letting the left frame the conversation instead of taking a page out of Macdonald’s book and charting their own course.

Canadian labour law has not fundamentally changed since 1944 when Canada adopted the American model based on the Wagner Act of 1935. That model is based on the false premise that workers and owners are adversaries rather than parties with different, yet entwined interests.

There are rumours the government is considering bringing back a version of C-377 this fall. Let us all hope it is not so.

The choice facing the federal government over the summer is whether to continue symbolic tinkering with a broken model that diminishes mutual respect and trust, or to substantially reshape labour relations to account for the fact that workers and capital both win when they work co-operatively.

The latter approach reflects values inherent to Conservative governments: recognition of the entwined nature of labour and capital, respect for the limited role of the state, and the value of private associations.

Framing the debate according to conservative principles of limited government with a view to increasing competition between unions would break up the current anti-conservative labour monolith and, paradoxically, lead to the development of more unions.

In other words, it would be good for workers, and good for the country. It would be a legacy worthy of Sir John A. Macdonald himself.

Brian Dijkema is program director for work and economics at Cardus, a think-tank that researches renewal of North American social architecture.

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