We Won't Take Any More Shit and Abuse - Who's Got the Balls to Say It?
In October of 2003, two thousand delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees national convention passed the following resolution.
Therefore be it resolved that this convention demand that the Canadian Labour Congress executive committee direct the IWA Canada to withdraw from all certification applications and partnership agreements and to cease and desist from this action in the future; and
Be it further resolved that in the event that the IWA Canada does not immediately comply with this direction that the CLC executive committee be called upon to immediately impose full sanctions available to them under Article 04, Sec. 15 of the CLC constitution; and
Be it further resolved that in the absence of these actions this convention authorize the National Executive Board to take action, up to and including withholding CLC per capita until the situation is resolved to the satisfaction of the National Executive Board; and
Be it further resolved that CUPE continue to organize support in the broader labour movement for a labour movement wide strategy to stop privatization which includes supporting our efforts to continue to represent members after services have been contracted out; and
Be it further resolved that CUPE National regularly update all CUPE locals, divisions and councils regarding the status of our complaint at the CLC and action being taken to address them.
The resolution was the strongest message yet from the large public sector union to IWA-Canada and to the Canadian Labour Congress about the IWA's sweetheart deals with employers in British Columbia's health services sector - deals that have taken work that was once performed by members of the Hospital Employees Union (a CUPE affiliate) for decent pay and benefits and transformed it into low wage McJobs, covered by a shameful partnership agreements between the IWA and its corporate partners.
Delegates at the CUPE convention poured out their disgust and their frustration with the CLC's beating around the bush on the issue.
A media release issued during the convention made no bones about where the delegates stood:
The International Woodworkers of America (IWA) was put on hard notice at CUPE's 21st national convention today that the labour movement will not tolerate their continued attempts to steal members of the Hospital Employees' Union.
One HEU member, wearing a "Stop IWA's attack on HEU" sticker, drew a standing ovation when she described how the IWA "came along and took our jobs." Another described how health care workers had been "tossed out on the street."
"I knew we'd have to fight with the government. I knew we'd have to fight the employer. But I never thought I'd have to fight another union," she said.
Outgoing national CUPE president Judy Darcy called on the Canadian Labour Congress to "tell the IWA to get the hell out of those scuzzbag agreements." Newly elected CUPE national president Paul Moist added that the IAW's actions were "shameful."
The 2,000 delegates to the biennial convention of Canada's largest union expressed their repugnance at the IWA actions in a strongly worded resolution that was adopted unanimously. Angered by fresh news that the IWA was raiding HEU members, the delegates called on CLC president Ken Georgetti to impose sanctions on the IWA and questioned why it had not done so earlier.
"The actions of the IWA mean that people have to beg for their jobs," said HEU president Fred Muzin. "They are blacklisted, demeaned and isolated."
"It's not the IWA against CUPE," CUPE BC president Barry O'Neill said. "It's the IAW against the labour movement," noting that the internal dispute was keeping unions from their real job of defending workers.
What the IWA is doing in B.C. has incurred the "wrath of all working people in this country," Ontario Council of Hospital Unions president Michael Hurley said. "We do not accept the IAW's collusion with the government and employers."
The CLC's Executive Committee did not support the CUPE/HEU resolution.
Instead, the CLC Exec's passed their own resolution which looks an awful lot like what IWA Canada President Dave Haggard said he was prepared to do to bring his union into compliance with the CLC constitution earlier in the month. It is not known which unions, of the 20 that had a vote, rejected the CUPE resolution. The CLC doesn't have to provide those kinds of details to the 2.5 million members it claims as part of its turf.
The CLC's resolution is a pretty transparent effort on the part of the CLC inner circle to say, "Brother Haggard, you're alright!".
MFD predicted this very outcome a couple of months ago when news began to leak of dithering and dancing around the fence by the highly placed brethren at the CLC in response to CUPE's demands for meaningful action against the IWA's sweetheart deals.
At that time, we speculated that the proliferation of sweetheart deals by other CLC affiliates and IWA President Haggard's recent urge to merge with some other big CLC affiliate, would forestall any meaningful action. Putting the word on the street that his 55,000 member union was "merger ready" would cast Brother Haggard in a much more sympathetic light in the eyes the leaders who make up the CLC Exec Committee - any one of whom could be a potential suitor.
Can you just visualize the bunch of hungry biz unionists sitting around a large table salivating out of the sides of their mouths as if tasting a new source of dues revenue, as they wrestle with the CUPE resolution? Do we want to play hardball with Brother Haggard or should we make nice? We'll bet that there wasn't much heated debate.
We wonder what position CLC President Ken Georgetti took during the deliberations. Bro_Ken, as we call him, who didn't have the courage to hear CUPE members debate the IWA's actions and ran out of the convention building only to propose his own motion to his executive committee which, we understand, gabbed about it and passed it over the phone.
The CLC resolution asks the IWA is too freeze its presence in the health care sector to the four voluntary agreements (sweet partnership deals) it has already signed (just like Brother Haggard said he was prepared to do) and to restrict its presence in BC's health services sector "within these four voluntary agreements to contracts already awarded or currently tendered."
From where we sit, that last line looks like something the boys threw in just to make it look like they really mean it. It affords the CLC the opportunity to publicly say, "Look we cut the IWA off at the pass. We can't do much about the poor serfs that have already been locked up in these partnership agreements but we sure as hell made certain that there wouldn't be any more." That might be good enough to satisfy the true believers at CLC or anyone who isn't all that familiar with the use of legal "weasel words" but it doesn't give us a warm feeling.
The statement "IWA Canada is restricted within these four voluntary agreements already awarded or currently tendered" is really quite deceptive. As far as we're concerned, Georgetti has kept the door open for further sweetheart wheeling and dealing and provided himself and his posse with an escape hatch if and when it does occur.
Why are we such skeptics? This certainly is an odd choice of words for a bunch of guys who are familiar with writing complicated language that could mean one thing or another depending on who's reading it. In our view, the words tie "what happens next" to decisions over which the health services employers (who are IWA Canada's "partners") and their clients have sole control.
Contracts - whether already awarded or currently tendered - can be modified, extended to other operations and just about anything else the signatories might want to do. So, while the lingo being used here might strike the not-too-cynical as a fair compromise, it isn't necessarily so.
First of all, it's a little less than clear just what "contracts" the weasel words are referring to. Do they refer to contracts between the employer and its business clients or to contracts between the employer and its union partner? Given the references to "awarding" and "tendering", it would be safe to assume that the words refer to contracts between the employers (Aramark, Sodehxo, Compass Group) and their health services industry clients. But considering the warped nature of the IWA's relationship with these employers (it doesn't have collective agreements but instead has signed partnership agreements with them), anything is possible. Could it be that the IWA is tendering proposals for voluntary recognition and being awarded the right to represent workers by their employers? That's a bizarre concept but if you read its partnership agreements, anything is possible.
Assuming though, that the contracts are the deals between the employers and the health authorities, nursing homes and other clients, the door is open wide for some innovative interpretations of just what the IWA can and can't do on the basis of the CLC resolution.
If, for instance, Aramark or Sodexho or Compass Group land some new accounts and wish to award the IWA representation rights for their new workers, what is to stop the food service companies from rolling their new business into an existing contract? If their clients are willing, it can be done and if it is done, the IWA's rights under an "existing contract" could simply flow to the new group of workers. If any CUPE malcontents have anything to say about it, the IWA will be in a position to say "Hey it's all cool with the CLC's resolution. It's an existing contract, so you can all go to hell."
And what would stop the employers for applying for a variance to a site. For example, if Aramark has Vancouver General Hospital and next week wins a bid for Burnaby Hospital, could that not be viewed as "currently tendered"?
Just what does "currently tendered" mean for working men and women? It means whatever the hell the guys who wrote the tender (or the contract) what it to mean. By extension then, the futures of thousands of health services workers will be whatever the guys who write the tenders and the contracts want them to be.
If the November 14th and 15th, 2003 IWA Job Fair (and organizing drive) is any indication of workers' futures, workers are in a lot of trouble.
The IWA organizer at the November job fair told those attending that they were hiring for James Bay Lodge and Sandringham Hospital. Both locations are Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) affiliates slated for certain changes outlined in a home care study.
That study concluded that "home/community care has the potential to be a cost-effective substitute for residential care while providing an equivalent or better, quality of care... Given current fiscal restraints there is an obligation to make the system more efficient and effective by allocating funds more wisely... Reduced costs and the increased overall cost-effectiveness of the Canadian health care system, will not result from providing more funding to acute care hospitals. Rather, increased efficiency will be obtained by developing and maintaining lower cost alternatives, such as home care and residential care, that reduce the need for hospital based services." (page 68)
Acting on the study, the Vancouver Island Health Authority sent out a letter to residential and home care facilities regarding a forthcoming Residential Care Service Redesign. That redesign calls for the closure of 575 residential care beds and their replacement with "alternative services".
At the IWA Job Fair, job seekers were told that the IWA was hiring for VIHA affiliates James Bay Lodge and Sandringham Hospital and next year they would be hiring for Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital.
When someone at the job fair remarked that they thought those jobs at the Victoria and Royal belonged to the HEU, the IWA organizer confidently and pompously responded "They're not in charge anymore, we are".
There is little doubt that the IWA will continue organizing workers for its employer-partners whatever CUPE or HEU thinks about it. Whatever the CLC thinks about it is a moot point now as, based on the weasel words in Georgetti's resolution, the IWA's activities are in line with the CLC's constitution.
Paul Moist, CUPE's recently crowned-in-the-back room president, says CUPE will continue to press the case for British Columbia health care workers.
It is going to be interesting to see what, if anything, Moist is going to do. The rejection of CUPE's resolution and the adoption of the CLC's weasel clause is a clear and painful slap in CUPE's face and that of thousands of HEU members.
The CLC is clearly no longer functioning as a true labour organization. Its continued clamouring against privatization and its support for affiliates that are making a pile off of the privatization of community services is an exercise in hypocrisy that only the most devout believers can rationalize.
The time has come for those unions whose leaders still have some honor and dignity left to leave the CLC and its sweetheart unions high and dry.
Sandra L. Smith, National Leader of the communist Party of Canada in her article Continuing Crisis in the Steel Industry and Bad-Faith Bargaining writes: "The bad faith bargaining has now sunk to such depths that new agreements between one of the unions in B.C. and private companies in the health sector are no longer called "contracts" but "partnership agreements".
Smith goes on to say: "Across the board the experience with concessions reveals that what ever conditions the workers agree to, it is merely a way to weaken them so that when the next round of demands come along, they have even less power to resist".
Are the CLC's sweetheart unions helping to weaken workers' will to win by blowing all the hot air at the very real problems that workers are facing? It seems that way to us. What benefit is there to belonging to the CLC and or its affiliates if all that those unions do is hold you down while you get screwed by a bunch of greedy corporations and their enablers in the provincial government?
Is CUPE President Moist serious when he talks about continuing to "press the case" for CUPE's health care workers or will he be distracted by all the pressing of the flesh that goes on behind closed doors at CLC high command?
CUPE members are outraged. The resolution their 2,000 delegates passed unanimously at their convention is unprecedented in Canadian labour history. Will Moist step up for the members and do whatever it takes to get redress or will he blow a little hot air and hope the whole messy business blows over?
The time for huffing and puffing is long past. It's time to blow the house down. It's time for CUPE's Paul Moist to put words into action and show all workers that CUPE is a militant union with a backbone - a union that will not look the other way on sweetheart deals and will not be a part of the demise of the labour movement.
Now is not the time for mediating politicians who expertise is in brokering deals that help the fat get fatter. Does Moist have the balls to stand up to the IWA and the CLC and say "We Won't Take Any More Shit and Abuse" - and mean it? If he doesn't, then the members should.