Hudak proposes sweeping changes to strip unions of power

Could Hudak invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to override the Rand Formula?

Get lost, Mr.Tea.

The problem with secret ballot certification votes is that it makes it a lot harder to organize unions, as employers can (and regularly do; union-busting is a big and lucrative industry) pull all kinds of ditry tricks between the time that the cards are signed and when the vote takes place.  It tips the scales heavily in favour of the employer.

Jim Stanford wrote:

"Going South: Cheap Labour as an Unfair Subsidy in North American Free Trade": My paper published by the CCPA in 1991, it estimates that right-to-work laws reduce manufacturing wages by over 15 percent, and then argues this is a "distortion" in normal democratic compensation practices that should be actionable under countervail law. (Of course, our enemies argue that it is unions that are the "distortion"!)

http://www.caw.ca/en/11080.htm[/quote]

What they say about fascists and their first order of business. Good essay by Jim Stanford.

They don't believe in free labour markets. Labour unions are at least as natural their corporate lobbyists and right wing think tankerists bending the ears of the Harpers and fat-cat senators alike.

Fascism and free labour markets are generally incompatible.

 

autoworker wrote:

Does anyone know the current extent of constitutional protections of labour rights?

There was the 2007 Supreme Court decision which sort of, kind of, said that collective bargaining was a right protected by the Charter. Then there was that rather amazing decision by the Alberta Labour Relations Board in 2009 that ordered the Alberta government to insert the Rand Formula principle in its labour code within 12 months, citing the earlier Supreme Court decision as authority. I have no idea what happened after that... did Alberta appeal? Did they comply?

Québec was the first jurisdiction to legislate the Rand Formula (1977). It entered the federal code only in 1988. Not sure when Ontario adopted it. But until the ALRB decision, I never guessed that it could be seen as a constitutional right.

Resident lawyers, please weigh in!

Boom Boom wrote:

It's scary how convinced he is that he's right.

Hudak's not right, he's Right. As in "Might Makes Right".

He's a full-blown, out-in-the-open, got-the-T-shirt, flying-the-fucking-flag FASCIST. As his hero Ronnie Raygun once said, "Facts are useless things." When you're a TRUE BELIEVER in the corporatist cause, reality and history are whatever you will them to be. Intelligent discussion is for wimps and losers to waste their time on...

That's us, BTW - and if we don't stop these bastards soon, Timmy will actually be right about something for a change.

@ Unionist: Thanks for the info. I've been observing Labor's (sic) response to RTW initiatives in Michigan, one of which is to put forward their own ballot initiative to include collective bargaining rights in their state constitution. I'm thinking that Canadian Supreme Court rulings, vis-a-vis the Rand Formula, puts Canadian labour activists in a better position to firm up Constitutional protections. If my rudimentary understanding of constitutional law serves me correctly, the fact that Britain does not have a written constitution, lends much gravitas to legal convention, and by extension, to its influence on Canadian jurisprudence. If so, one might argue that adherence, for almost 70 years, to a Supreme Court justice's arbitration ruling, might also have accrued that force of convention to the Rand Formula. While political education, and countering negative opinions about unions is important, shoring up and expanding legal protections, based on a body of law, is, in my view imperative.

For those who seem to believe workers need government-imposed secret ballots to protect themselves against being bulldozed by union thugs, here's some information (note that the first paragraph refers only to federally-regulated workplaces):

Quote:

Under the current set-up, there are two ways in which non-unionized employees can unionize their workplace. The first is known as card check certification, and occurs when over 50% of employees have signed membership cards stating their intention to join a union. If the Canada Industrial Relations Board confirms that a majority of employees have independently chosen to sign a union card free of any coercion and wish their workplace to become unionized, the Board issues a certificate, thus making the workplace unionized. The second way that a workplace can become unionized is through a secret ballot election. In instances in which more than 35% of employees but less than 50% of employees have signed a card stating their desire to unionize their workplace, the Board orders a secret ballot election to allow all employees to determine if they wish their workplace to become unionized. If a majority of those who cast a ballot vote in favour of the union, then the Board issues a certificate and the workplace becomes unionized.

While the secret ballot election approach exists in all ten provinces, only four provinces (Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick and PEI) allow for unions to be certified through the card check certification process. In Manitoba, however, 65% of employees must sign a union card before the workplace becomes automatically unionized without a vote. In Ontario, between 1948 and 1995, employees wishing to unionize had the option of using the card check certification procedure. However, after coming to power in 1995, one of the first things that Mike Harris did was to alter Ontario’s Labour Relations Act to mandate that every union be certified through a secret ballot election, even if 100% of employees had signed a card stating a desire to have their workplace unionized.

A move away from card check certification to a mandatory secret ballot election would impede the efforts of unions to organize new members. A study by Sarah Slinn of Osgoode Hall Law School traced the effect of such a move in Ontario during the 1990s. Her study found that eliminating the option of card check certification had a considerable impact of unions’ success. Prior to the introduction of a mandatory vote, unions were successful in almost 73% of certification applications. However, following the elimination of card check certification and the introduction of a mandatory secret ballot vote, the success rate of union certification drives dropped considerably and they were successful in just over 64% of certification drives. She also noted that a mandatory secret ballot election also had other adverse effects on union organizing, including a reduction in the number of private sector workplaces being organized, a reduction in the number of smaller bargaining units being organized, and a reduction in the number of bargaining units consisting primarily of part-time employees. The data from Ontario suggests that unions would face significant challenges in organizing new members if the federal government were to make all union certifications subject to a secret ballot election and end the possibility of certification through card check certification.

[url=http://canadiandimension.com/articles/4254/]Labour Law in Harper’s Canada: New Directions, New Challenges[/url]

Further to my post #14 above, it appears that the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench held that the Alberta Labour Relations Board didn't have the jurisdiction to declare that the Rand Formula needed to be included in the Alberta legislation as a Charter requirement. [url=http://canlii.ca/en/ab/abqb/doc/2010/2010abqb777/2010abqb777.html]Source...

Of course, I could be reading it all wrong, which is why I'm still waiting for our lawyers!

In the meantime, my best guess is that the Rand Formula is not (as of now) a constitutional requirement. Which would help explain why only British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland, as well as the federal Canada Labour Code, currently include it.

Unionist wrote:

And here's a pretty good op-ed on Hudak's proposals:

[url=http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1219932--cohn-tim-hudak-s-tor... Tim Hudak’s Tory vision for a low-union, low-wage Ontario [/url]

The big question to Tim Hudak ought to be why it is that feels Ontario ought to look more like Alabama than it currently does.

It's a continuation of the race to the bottom. First ship jobs to low wage countries with little workers' rights. Then seek to drive down the wages and benefits of the jobs that remain. Except for the 1% of course. And pit workers against one another in so doing.

Timmy Hudak: Class Warrior