NUPGE leaving CLC

Why NUPGE is at odds with the Canadian Labour Congress

Quote:

It's clear where NUPGE stands on this issue: in 2001 we suspended one of our largest component unions, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), for raiding another union.

The current CLC rules against raiding are ineffective and unevenly applied. In 2005, NUPGE's Manitoba component union, the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union (MGEU), was raided by the Teamsters union. In 2009, another NUPGE component union, the BC Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGEU), was raided by the BC Nurses' Union, an affiliate of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU).

Neither the Teamsters nor the CFNU faced any meaningful consequences from the CLC. In fact, under the current rules, a union that succeeds in a raid (such as the Teamsters) is actually rewarded for their behaviour. That's because the CLC allows the Teamsters to remain in the House of Labour and they benefit from the additional dues revenue from the members they raided. In fact, the Teamsters were allowed to attend the last CLC convention but NUPGE was not.

Isn't there something profoundly wrong with this situation?

Not good. Unions are weak enough in Canada as it is. We need to send the most effective workers' reps in the country to the halls of power in Ottawa - the NDP!

Can I explain? Maybe:

1. The CLC is a congress of unions. Only the "parent" unions belong, not the local unions, or "component" unions, or "divisions", etc. For example, PSAC is an affiliate of the CLC, but not its "components" like UCTE (Union of Canadian Transportation Employees) or UNDE (Union of National Defence Employees) etc. Not all unions have "component" structures - most don't.

2. Unions affiliated to the Congress have a right to send delegates to provincial federations of labour (in your case, the BC Fed) and to municipal labour councils. There's the rub - how a CLC-affiliated union chooses to select its delegates depends on each affiliate's internal rules, constitution, etc.

3. NUPGE is more like a federation of unions - kind of an umbrella organization of 11 different unions, of which HEU is one.

4. I have no idea how NUPGE decides how to select delegates to feds and labour councils. What is certain, however, is that if NUPGE secedes from the CLC, its access to those bodies disappears - and that automatically excludes its 11 components from access as well.

Whether that's the way it should be or not is debatable. But the real debate right now, IMO, should be whether this plague of raiding and counter-raiding should become a pretext for dividing the labour movement altogether. I think workers should be free to secede, trade, leave unions on the basis of secret ballots - as in fact they legally are able to do, on a bargaining unit basis (generally a workplace, sometimes a group of workplaces for larger companies). The very word "raid" should be deleted from the vocabulary. No one ever uses it when they are doing the raiding - only when they are defending themselves against one! It's like "terrorist" or "fundamentalist" - it's those [b]other[/b] guys, not the good guys!!

Whether you go for 'stop trying to sanction against raiding' for reasons of principle as Unionist mentions, maybe its high time for the pragmatics of giving up on it.

It is absolutley inevirable that are there are going to be differences in treatment ovwer raiding, and even bigger differences in perceptions of different treatment.

We may have reached the point where the battles over penalizing raiding or not may be worse than the battles over the raiding/competition itself. At best, they have become indistibguishable.

People legitimately fear a free for all. But most workers are at any given time not even potentially going to move. For the small slice where there will be contention.... seriously, could the side effects of a free for all be any worse than this?

Seems to me that there is competetion between the provincial employee unions and the provincial nurses union everywhere. In Nova Scotia the nurses in at least one board have changed. [And all bargain within a common framework.]

Again: showing how impossible it is to set a line for what is 'raiding' and what isnt.

[And inn the particular cases of the nurses unions and the provincial government unions, no matter how bad the relations, they DO have relationships around bargaining.]

Just a quick clarification.  The BCGEU is the provincial affiliate of NUPGE in BC.  HSA is not an affiliate.  Unionist is correct that HEU is a CUPE affiliate and that both HEU and the BCGEU represent certain LPNs that were the subject of the BCNU raid.  The raid by the BCGEU against HERE Local 40 was a move to stop CLAC from engaging in a raid.  HERE had already lost one large unit at Orca Bay to CLAC and it appeared inevitable that a second larger unit would also fall.  HERE Local 40 was beset by internal turmoil and ineffective.  The circumstances look like they have improved in part thanks to fending off the BCGEU raid.  Local 40 has also benefited from a 22 month time bar against a raid by all organisations, including CLAC.

Another strangeness, just on the level of common sense.

There are a lot of NSGEU members who are only somewhat engaged with their unions affairs, and have at least an awareness of what the NS Fed does. But who have no idea what NUPGE is- other than the fact that it exists.

Tail wags dog.

I always kind of wondered myself what NUPGE did. Figured maybe it was mostly a kind of lobbying presence in Ottawa, like the national unions have. Now it turns out it is actually the voice at the CLC.

Who knew?

Thanks Lou, my mistake ... learn something every day!

To further muddy the waters; at the BC Fed convention CUPE BC walked out of the convention in solidarity with NUPGE.  CUPE BC is another weird organization that seems to have no direct responsibility to service members concerns but has some middle level authority to speak on behalf of the organizations that actually represent the workers in the workplace.  Don't forget that Georgetti is a Steelworker (trust me he won't) and in BC the Steelworkers were raiding in the health care sector after they took over Sunny Gag's [sic]  IWA local. Instead of stepping back they intensified their raiding efforts this while the HEU was getting the boots put to it by the Campbell government.  Solidarity is not a common thing it seems.

V

The doc Gary posted titled "Special Report to the Canadian Labour Congress Executive Council" gives a great over view of the issue.

I can't speak for the rest of Canada but here in BC the NUPGE affiliates are BCGEU and HSA. The Compensation Employees Union, The BC Ferry and Marine Workers’ Union, The Brewery, Winery & Distillery Workers' Union, The Interior Brewery Workers' Union, and the Grain Workers' Union Local 333 are all affiliated to BCGEU and therefor NUPGE. If this isn't fixed by Jan 1, they will no longer be able belong to the BCFED or Labour Congress either.

As has been mentioned HEU is a division (branch) of CUPE. CUPE BC is also a division of CUPE. There are two types of divisions in CUPE. Provincial (like CUPE BC) and Service (like HEU)

Provincial divisions are a political arm of CUPE in the provincial. They work on provincial and municipal politics. They don't service members (as a rule). The staff at CUPE BC are mainly staff that work on political issues.

Service divisions represent workers in a certain field. In the case of HEU it's health care. There is also a CUPE Airline division. In HEU anyways, they do represent and service members. Most of the staff at HEU service members.

To the best of my knowledge, HEU do not belong to CUPE BC. This is why they didn't walk out at BCFed.

It's my understanding that CUPE BC feel that NUPGE (BCGEU and HSA in BC) delegates should not be able to take part in Federations and Labour Councils. Until NUPGE is back in the CLC or NUPGE delegates are no longer participating at Fed and LC's CUPE in BC will not be participating in these bodies.

I don't see how this would stop HEU delegates from participating, seeing as they aren't a member of CUPE BC and this is more of a self imposed exile by CUPE. The CLC is not saying that CUPE can't participating. In fact they are hoping that CUPE does participate in these bodies.

It should be noted that CUPE BC does not have the power to tell locals in BC not to participate at Labour Councils. It can only ask and hope the locals agree with them.

Hopefully (which I think it will) this will work itself out by Jan 1. Somehow I think this has less to do with raiding than it does have to do with other issues.