Let Labour be Free to Choose
Editorial
Originally published by Winnipeg Free Press
Sunday, January 19th, 2003
Nurses at the Drumheller health district in Alberta voted in December to get out of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and join the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
The switch gave CUPE a brutal reminder that their members are not necessarily captives forever, despite union security provisions of their collective agreements. Unions finally do have to serve their members, at least in Alberta, because competing unions sometimes have the chance to sign up poorly-served members.
That chance arises rarely in Manitoba. By the policy of the Canadian Labour Congress, it should never arise anywhere in Canada. But provincial governments could squeeze improved performance out of labour unions by opening new opportunities for union members to discard unions that are not serving them well.
In the view of union bureaucrats, a union commits a terrible sin if it approaches members of another union and invites them to join. The practice is called raiding and it is one of the few offences for which a union can be thrown out of the CLC. The Canadian Autoworkers Union was briefly suspended from CLC activities last year because it was accused of raiding in the ranks of the Service Employees International Union and the Steelworkers. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees has not been thrown out of the Alberta Federation of Labour because it did not belong, though individual AUPE locals are free to seek affiliation with the AFL.
The certification switch at Drumheller came about because health care institutions were re-organized so that nurses represented by CUPE and others represented by AUPE were brought together under one employer. CUPE demanded a right to represent them all because its local was larger, but the Alberta Labour Board called a certification vote which was held Dec. 6 and 63 per cent of the employees, many of them CUPE members, voted for AUPE.
In Manitoba, too, health institutions have been re-organized but Manitoba has been careful to maintain the positions of the many existing health care unions through back-room deals among union bureaucrats and hospital administrators. Health care workers have been spared the trouble of deciding which union they want to belong to. Health care unions have been spared the embarrassment of showing their members that they provide good service and should be retained as bargaining agents.
The depth of Canadian Labour Congress opposition to competition among unions is shown in the protocol on raiding drawn up at the time of last summer's CLC convention in Vancouver. The protocol stipulates that if any union member approaches another union, then the member's union and the CLC president are to be informed immediately. In the typical case, the union member who crossed the street to speak to another union would then be subject to disciplinary action or organized shunning within the union that is supposed to defend his interests -- to discourage others from committing the same breach of etiquette. Under no circumstances, according to the protocol, may a union take the first step and approach members of an existing union.
Though union leaders hate raiding, the possibility of switching unions is one of the few ways in which union members can call a lazy or self-serving union to order and make it listen to the working people it represents. The whole structure of union bargaining and internal operation is geared to protecting acquired rights, whether they are relevant and useful or not. Once a union has acquired the right to represent a group of workers, that right of the union is usually maintained against the rights of workers to choose a different bargaining agent. In Manitoba, people change their political allegiances, their religious affiliations and even their ethnic identities more often than they change their unions -- not because the unions are better than the churches and the political parties but because the system throws obstacles in their way and tends to lock them into the unions they have.
With more freedom to switch, unions might have to listen more attentively to their members and make a persuasive case that they are serving their needs. This would make no difference to unions that already do provide good service, bargain good contracts, preserve jobs when necessary, open career options when possible and adapt quickly to new requirements of technology, work methods and shifting economic conditions. But it could make a large and beneficial difference to the most hidebound, change-resistant unions that fixate so tightly on acquired rights that they obstruct growth and change in industry.
Premier Gary Doer and his ruling NDP in Manitoba are linked by background and by interlocking managements to the Manitoba labour movement, but nothing obliges Mr. Doer to uphold the freedom of unions to disregard the interest of their members. Mr. Doer should encourage competition among unions to promote improved service.