“You don’t get me, I’m part of the union.” The Strawbs, 1973
Something is stirring among Canada’s workers. The percentage of unionized workers is up. This might seem surprising given the widespread closures and hundreds of thousands of layoffs due to COVID and the world recession.
Jim Stanford (former economist at Unifor) wrote in the Toronto Star that “the pandemic actually corresponds with a surprising rebound in unions’ size and importance. There’s nothing like a crisis, it seems, to remind workers that, when times are tough, it helps to have a powerful ally at your back.”
Union density in Canada declined most sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, dropping from 37.9 percent in 1984 to 30.4 percent in 1999. In this century it dropped as low as 28.8 percent in 2014. Most of the decline has been in private manufacturing.
There has been a small rebound in the last couple of years. The number of union members reached an all-time high of almost five million by the end of 2019. As a share of total employment, union coverage had increased to 30.2 percent, a 15-year high.
The increase in unionized workers is driven by two factors. Existing unionized workers have been less likely to lose their jobs and there have been some successful efforts to unionize unorganized workers.
Stanford points out the value of being in a union in hard times: it is harder for the boss to fire union members. The increase in the percentage of workers in unions “was driven by a disproportionate decline in non-union employment. Union-covered workers were half as likely to lose their jobs during the initial shutdowns as non-union workers. That’s because unionized employers can’t just dispose of staff like so much excess inventory: they must follow negotiated procedures, including notice, severance, and seniority. Workers without a union – especially in precarious temporary or part-time roles – had no such protection.”
Non-unionized workers were hit much harder by job losses in the recession of 2007-08 with a 4 percent drop in jobs, compared to unionized workers fall of 1.7 percent.
Organizing the unorganized
There have been important victories of workers gaining union rights. At this stage most are small and localized. But perhaps a sign of what is to come. Workers at several Indigo stores (including Chapters, Coles and the Book Company), Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto, Starbucks in Victoria, and Lynn Valley Care Home in Vancouver (site of Canada’s first COVID death) have all successfully joined a union.
The COVID crisis hasn’t stopped workers organizing and it may well be a spur to organize as employers continually disregard workers’ safety.
An important victory was won by recently unionized janitorial workers in northern BC. The industrial janitors employed by Gitxaala Horizon North, a contractor at LNG Canada’s Kitimat construction site, joined Unite Here Local 40 in the summer of 2020. The site has seen over 100 COVID cases and two outbreaks. The janitors were vital to the site’s operations and they wanted recognition for their essential work. They voted 84 percent in favour of strike action in January over pay and health and safety. Without going on strike they won a 40 percent pay increase over three years, “dramatically” improved health and safety protections, and obtained a company commitment to hire more Indigenous staff.
Loblaw workers in Newfoundland
Important to building union strength is unions defending their existing members. This is a practical demonstration to non-unionized workers of the benefits of a union. The figures of fewer job losses for unionized workers is a sign of this strength. However, a union card doesn’t always provide workers with protection against employers.
In late August 2020, more than 1,400 Unifor members at 11 Dominion grocery stores (owned by Loblaw Companies Limited) in Newfoundland went on strike. These were the people hailed as heroes at the beginning of the pandemic and received a $2 an hour pay increase that lasted less than three months. (Not long after, Loblaw boosted its quarterly dividend to shareholders, after announcing third quarter earnings jumped to $342 million, up from $331 million in the same period the previous year). Yet in 2019, Dominion eliminated more than 60 full-time positions at Newfoundland stores. Eighty percent of the workers were part-time, with low pay and limited access to benefits, and had not received a pay raise since spring 2018. The vote to strike was overwhelming and the public was fully on side. The union had to deal with management going to the courts to restrict the right to picket. The strike lasted 12 weeks but, in the end, the workers came out of it with few real gains compared to the company’s initial offer months earlier.
Dominion is a small part of the huge Loblaw grocery chain, Canada’s largest food retailer, operating under various banners: Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, Maxi, No Frills, and more. It is owned by the Weston family, Canada’s third richest family, whose wealth increased by $1.6 billion between March and September 2020. With profits soaring across Canada, Loblaw happily sat out the Dominion strike. The unions across all the Loblaw chain should push for unified negotiations to maximize pressure on the company and avoid isolated groups of workers fighting alone.
Meatpacking in Alberta
The events in Alberta’s meatpacking plants can only be described as a tragic disaster. The Cargill plant at High River remains the single largest COVID spreader in Canada, having caused 1,500 cases and three deaths in the spring of 2020. The JBS plant in Brooks was also a large spreader of COVID in the spring, with over 600 cases and one death. Recently, the Olymel slaughterhouse in Red Deer had a COVID outbreak that led to 515 cases and four deaths. Cases had been detected in the plant since November and there had been 14 inspections, but no action! In February 2021, a new outbreak was announced at the Cargill plant.
In every case, Alberta Health Services officials had done inspections and had said the site was safe and took no action. The union at these plants, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, did complain to management, threatened to go to court and eventually went public, which resulted in the management at Cargill and Olymel each closing the plants for a few days. Clearly the Alberta government and Alberta Health Services care more about company profits than workers’ safety. Unfortunately, the union did not call a strike and close these plants down. Olymel reopened the plant in early March. The union’s response was – a letter – stating they “do not feel that the employer has undertaken sufficient measures in order to make the workplace safe for a proposed reopening at this time.” But they are not refusing to return to work.
It is striking that the management are the ones to close the plants, not Alberta Health Services or the union. Workers have died because of managements’ disregard for safety, the government’s complicity and the union’s lack of strong action.
The future of labour
The last decade has seen fewer working days lost to strikes or lockouts than any other decade in the post Second World War era, as work stoppages have declined since the 1970s. But with workplace tensions on the rise as a result of COVID-19, will unions once again embrace strikes as the most effective way to protect and advance workers’ interests? Larry Savage, writing in The Hamilton Spectator, observed correctly that “unions are not nearly as militant as they were decades ago, but that does not mean workers won’t become more militant in the years to come. This is especially true if workers’ wages stagnate, and income inequality increases in the aftermath of the coronavirus – thus casting doubt that we are all really ‘in this together.’”
Savage continued, “Controversies over the rich and powerful having privileged access to virus testing, the suitability of income supports, and the appropriateness of bailouts for companies who pay their taxes offshore are already having a polarizing effect. How governments and business leaders respond to these issues and to the needs of workers in the immediate wake of the pandemic will set the stage for the labour relations struggles to come. For all the fear and anxiety caused by the pandemic, the fallout from the coronavirus may also stir anger and resentment. If employers and government unjustly press their advantage by using the economic fallout from the pandemic as a pretext for rolling back wages and benefit entitlements, they are likely to face the fury of their unionized employees. And if after being held up as heroes during the pandemic, tens of thousands of essential workers go back to living pay cheque to pay cheque without access to paid sick days, we are likely see an uptick in union militancy. That’s because when workers have come to know their value, they are far more likely to get up and fight back after being knocked down.”
Renewal and transformation are key to the development of fighting unions. A big part of the problem is the union leaderships with their conservative and routinist attitudes that have undermined members’ confidence in the unions and in militant action. Already there is growing anecdotal evidence of union members demanding strong action from union leaders. Pressure is growing in the unions against the failed policies of business as usual. There will be challenges to these leaders from activists willing to fight and return the unions to the proud tradition of struggle and solidarity. Socialist Alternative members will be part of this process.
The strength of unions is not in the number of university graduate staffers, high paid labour lawyers or reserves in the bank. A union’s strength is the membership and their ability to impact the flow of work by taking action. In many cases a simple work-to-rule and a ban on overtime can throw the workplace into disorder as both the private and public sector rely on over-stretched workforces. Of course, the pressure can be increased by stopping work altogether by taking strike action. Solidarity is vital to union power – workers refusing to cross picket lines or do the jobs of workers in dispute.
Canadian unions have work to do to get back to the position of strength that led The Strawbs to sing “And though I’m not hard, the sight of my card makes me some kind of superman.”
The key is the development of unions as fighting organizations that are capable of educating and mobilizing their members towards actions that achieve solid gains in working conditions and develop a political awareness of the need to fight for a socialist transformation of society.
