In the midst of Ontario's current election campaign, a lot of people are making light of how much power the province's unions, or more specifically public sector unions, have. Indeed, day in and day out during this campaign, I've come across one advertisement after another sponsored by one of the public sector unions. At the same time, I've been bombarded by just as many ads attacking the power and influence of these same unions. I do take issue with the kind of clout that the public sector unions have in this province right now. However, I am just as concerned with folks who believe that we don't need unions anymore.
Do We Still Need Unions? The Short Answer is...Absolutely!
Every now and then I hear people saying that we don't need unions because we already have labour laws to protect workers. Uh, yes, that's true, but the reason we have those laws is because of unions. Anyone who knows their history knows that unions were created because there was no protection against worker abuse. Before unions, ordinary workers were not treated much better than slaves. They worked endless hours, earning meager wages that they could not support themselves on, let alone their families. Actually, many of them were lucky if they even got paid. They could also be ordered to do work in life-threatening situations without any safety precautions afforded to them. Hey, wait a minute, why am I talking about this in the past tense? This abuse of workers is still happening all over the world right now, as I am writing this. Anyone remember what happened to those poor garment workers who were burned to death in Bangladesh making clothes for Western companies, including Canada's Joe Fresh? And no, worker abuse is not limited to third world countries. It's still happening in the industrialized world, including right here in Canada. If you follow the news, you've heard all the fuss being made about Canada's temporary foreign workers program. Not only have there been allegations made by foreigners who came to Canada because of this program, but we're also finding out that big corporations have allegedly taken advantage of these to hire foreign labour instead of Canadians. Here are some examples of these allegations:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mcdonald-s-accused-of-favouring-foreign-workers-1.2598684
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/Go+Public/ID/2450187011/
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/04/24/temporary_foreign_workers_program_has_boosted_joblessness_cd_howe_report_says.html#
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tim-hortons-breaks-with-franchisee-expands-foreign-worker-oversight-after-wage-theft-claims-1.2620672
Public Sector vs. Private Sector
Most of the worker abuse cases that we hear about in the media tend to occur in the private sector. This doesn't mean, of course, that no abuse goes on in the public sector. There is, however, a big difference in terms of who public sector unions deal with as opposed to private sector unions. Unions in the private sector deal with private businesses, usually larger ones. The Canadian Autoworkers Union once represented thousands of people working for big automakers, like GM and Ford before it merged with another union to create what is now known as UNIFOR. As we all know, big multinational corporations, like the aforementioned car makers, are for-profit businesses whose owners are often multimillionaires and even billionaires. This is not the case with the folks that public sector unions deal with.
Public sector unions deal with governments that are, at least in theory, controlled by, who else? The public. That is, every living, breathing taxpayer residing in the jurisdiction that the government in question has control over. In Ontario, our public sector unions deal with a government that is certainly not a money-making giant corporation, like McDonald's or Walmart. In fact, our province's debt and deficit have grown quite a bit over the last few years. And unlike the owners of big corporations, most of the folks that our provincial government represents are ordinary working people, many of whom struggle to make ends meet in today's sluggish economy. What I'm trying to say is that the folks in the public sector unions need to understand that they cannot deal with a government that is supposed to work for all of us the same way a private sector union deals with a big, multimillion dollar conglomerate that works only for its rich owners and shareholders. They have to realize that more money for them doesn't mean less money for some big shot corporate CEO; it means less money for Joe Shmo Ontarian to pay the rent and feed the kids because he has to pay the government more in taxes so that public sector union members can have bigger salaries, more vacation time and better benefits than most Ontarians can only dream of.
Yes, I understand that public sector unions represent some of the most noble professions out there. They're our doctors, our nurses, our teachers, our firefighters and our police officers, just to name a few. And I understand that it is only human nature to try and get as much as possible. Nevertheless, you folks in the public sector must be prepared to be reasonable when dealing with what are essentially fellow taxpayers represented by our government.
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