Haggard is the True Face of IWA and the CLC
The Canadian Labour Congress has imposed Level 2 sanctions against IWA-Canada for its continuing efforts to make a silk purse out of the misfortune of thousands of health servives workers.
The CLC sanctions mean that for the foreseeable future, IWA-Canada representatives will lose their vote on the CLC's executive board and on executive boards of the various federations of labour across the country. IWA-Canada will also be prohibited from participating in CLC and other labour "fed" committees, educational programs and conferences.
The CLC imposed the sanctions after an IWA local signed yet another sweetheart deal with a private contractor in defiance of a CLC directive calling on the union to "cease and desist from further voluntary agreements related to Bill 29 in British Columbia."
Are the level 2 sanctions a sign that the CLC is finally getting tough with IWA-Canada or are they just another lame assed effort on the part of CLC President Ken Georgetti part to make it look like he's doing something about the IWA's bad behaviour when, in reality, he aims to do nothing of any substance?
A look backward at the long chain of events leading up to the "Level 2" penalty may help us decide which way it really is.
It all started in January 2002 when the newly elected Liberal administration in BC legislated Bill 29 - The Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act - a far-reaching package of "labour reforms" that, among other things, gave health sector employers the right to layoff service workers and contract out their work. Leaders of the mainstream labour movement condemned the legislation claiming that it would undo years of collective bargaining (which it would) and was intended to support the BC government's privatization agenda (which it was).
In May 2002, mainstream labour leaders were outraged again when the BC Federation of Labour disclosed that it had tape recorded a sales pitch by an agent of a multinational corporation who was shopping for a friendly union. The company was anxious to get a piece of the newly privatized action. The agent was searching for a union partner - a business-friendly union that would cut a sweetheart deal in exchange for voluntary recognition. A report on CBC News on May 6, 2002, told the story:
Vancouver - The B.C. Federation of Labour has says it has evidence of plans for mass firings and blacklisting of health care workers, as the Campbell government privatizes hospital services.
The Fed says it has taped evidence that thousands of Hospital Employees Union food and laundry workers who make $17 an hour will be laid off and blacklisted. They would be replaced by $10-an-hour employees.
Union officials have released a secretly taped phone conversation between a man they identify as Spencer Green of Sodexho - a multinational company which provide hospital services - and a representative of the B.C. Government and Service Employees UnionThey say Sodexho offered the BCGEU a sweetheart deal to represent the new lower-paid replacement workers.
The Fed also says Sodexho has promised health authorities that no laid-off HEU workers would be hired back:
Green: "I'm saying it's everybody, and I ain't hiring them and I think it's the thing that anybody would do. I mean, now you've got a huge problem with trying to figure out where to get all these bodies from. You can't be firing people with those kinds of pays and benefits, and think they're going to come and work for you for a third of the cost you know, and be happy."
Labour leaders are demanding a response from Premier Gordon Campbell, and a full inquiry into the privatization of health care, and they say they want a moratorium while that inquiry takes place.
Health Services Minister Colin Hansen denies the government is trying to break the health care unions.
However, he says he is determined to get better value for every dollar spent on health care.
Hansen says B.C.'s costs are out of line with those in other provinces. "We have indicated to the health authorities that we are prepared to allow them to look at contracting out support services," he says.
Hansen also says he's had no talks with Sodexho, and that he's not aware of any attempts by private health employers to intimidate workers.
Within a few months, thousands of health services workers would indeed be shown the door as meploeyrs in the health care sector began the wholesale contracting out of food and other services isn hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities.
Mainstream union leaders lined up to express their outrage at Sodexho's sweetheart shopping trip. Most were strangely quiet, however, a few months later when the word got out that the company, as well as other health services companies, landed a willing union partner - IWA-Canada.
Health care sector employers began to contract out work to multinationals like Sodexho, Compass Group and Aramark Canada. Thousands of public sector health care workers were booted out the door. Their replacements, employees of the multinationals, would earn a fraction of their wages and receive few benefits under contracts that were entered into through voluntary rec deals with the IWA.
In January 2003, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and its BC affilate the Hospital Employees Union (HEU) blasted the IWA for a collective agreement it negotiated with the Compass Group at Vancouver General Hospital. The deal cut wages in half for housekeeping, laundry and foodservice staff and took working conditions back to 1960's levels. More of the same would follow. Within months CUPE and HEU would lose thousands of members as BC employers contracted out work to the multinationals and their partner union. This pathetic partnering agreement was signed in July 2003 between Aramark Ltd. and IWA Canada Local 1-3567 in July 2003.
CUPE-HEU members were outraged. Their unions called upon the CLC to intervene but the CLC wasn't in a hurry to do anything. CLC President Ken Georgetti's lack of concern was quite breathtaking in fact. A CLC affiliate was doing sweetheart deals with corporations that stood to profit from the BC government's privatization agenda at a time when the CLC was leading the anti-privatization bandwagon. In the least, it was pretty embarrassing. But nothing could be done about it President Georgetti said. There was nothing in the CLC constitution that prohibited such sweetheart dealing (although we would find out later that there was). Bro_Ken (as he is known around here) chastised the outraged HEU members for criticizing the IWA and urged one and all to jump on his anti-privatization bandwagon.
CUPE leaders dithered around, at one point even pondering the merits of amending the CLC's constitution as a way to stop the IWA . The members continued to demand action. Georgetti took the bold step of asking the IWA to "reconsider" its decision to organize in the broader health care sector. The IWA must not have heard him as they completely ignored his request.
CUPE filed a complaint with the CLC alleging that the IWA violated Article IV of the CLC's constitution when it entered into the sweetheart deals.
Each affiliate shall respect the established work relationship of every other affiliate. For purposes of this Article an "established work relationship" shall be deemed to exist as to any work of a kind which the members of an organization have customarily performed at a particular plant, office, institution or work site, whether their employer is the plant operator, a contractor, or other employer. No affiliate shall by agreement or collusion with any employer or by the exercise of economic pressure, seek to obtain work for its members as to which an established work relationship exists with any other affiliate, except with the consent of such affiliate. Cases involving merger or reorganization of plants or companies under circumstances which eliminate the separate entities of previous bargaining units, will be referred directly to the President.
But CLC President Georgetti ruled that the IWA's conduct did not breach the CLC constitution. When CUPE persisted, Canadian labour relations guru Victor Pathe was brought in to play impartial umpire. In September 2003, Pathe found the IWA "guilty as charged". Instead of taking action Georgetti, who must have realized by now that the CLC constitution really did have something in it about sweetheart deals, asked IWA Canada President Dave Haggard what he was willing to do to play by the CLC's house rules.
Not a whole f**k of a lot - was the substance of Haggard's terse reply a couple of weeks past the deadline Georgetti had given him. Haggard, who had taken to calling Local 1-3567 a "rogue local" during the umpire's inquiry, promised to stop organizing in the health care sector but - out of the other side of his mouth - left the door wide open for the his union to do just that.
Just days before Haggard wrote his terse letter to Georgetti, two thousand delegates to CUPE's national convention passed a resolution demanding that the CLC's 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 to impose full sanctions (which include expulsion from the CLC) if it failed to do so immediately.
The CLC's Executive Committee did not support the resolution and instead, passed a resolution of their own - one that looked an awful lot like what IWA Dave Haggard said he was prepared to do in his terse letter to Ken Georgetti. Well, it wasn't exactly the same - it was better for the IWA as it contained some "weasel words" that would permit the IWA to expand its turf simply by expanding the scope clauses of the four voluntary recognition agreements that it already had with the health services corporations. [The CLC resolution required the IWA to freeze - whatever that meant - its presence in the health care sector to the four voluntary agreements it had 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."]
Within days of the CLC's resolution, in what must surely have been taken as a show of good faith on the part of the IWA, Local 1-3567 conducted a job fair in Victoria, BC. According to an ad in a local newspaper, Local 1-3567's "health care placement services" were "seeking on behalf of an established and distinguished health care employer, associates for employment". Applicants lucky enough to be hired were also required to join the IWA. Those who were curious about what that would get them were told they could see a copy of the collective agreement that had already been signed on their behalf, but they couldn't take a copy with them.
As 2003 drew to a close, Dave Haggard ensured that leaders of most of the CLC's largest affiliates would think twice before slamming his union by announcing that he was feeling the urge to merge and was seeking a suitable partner. A number of CLC biggies lined up to suck up - the CAW, the IAMAW, the UFCW, the CEP and the USWA were at the head of the pack. The CAW was so eager that it even tossed $50,000 into the IWA's strike fund.
By March 2004, the word on the street was that a deal was in the making with the Steelworkers. A merger of IWA Canada with another union - especially a large CLC affiliate like the USWA - would be very helpful to the CLC. It would allow the CLC to effectively bury the sweetheart issue and CUPE-HEU's complaints. Once a merger was completed, "IWA-Canada" would officially cease to exist (even though it could, and according to the USWA, would continue to exist as an appendage of its new parent union). Its issues would be history - dead and buried and not worth discussing. The USWA could claim the sweetheart deals were not its responsibility as they predated the merger and that it would do what it could to negotiate better deals in the future. Anyone who continued to criticize the IWA could be told that they are now criticizing the USWA which was really unfair because the USWA didn't do any of those deals.
While the leaders of Canada's largest unions were busy shmoozing Dave Haggard and everyone in the house of labour was anxiously waiting for the newlyweds to walk down the aisle, the IWA was busy making yet another sweetheart deal - this one with a company called Crothall Services at the Vancouver Island Health Authority.
The Crothall deal covers the work of 1,021 members of the Hospital Employees' Union who have been fired by the Vancouver Island Health Authority, to be replaced by contract workers represented by the IWA. As part of that deal, it is expected that wages will be cut in half to $9 to $11 an hour. www.cupe.ca
The Crothall deal was done on January 24, 2004. It clearly violated the CLC's weak-kneed resolution of November 2003 which restricted the IWA's presence in health care to "contracts already awarded".
CLC President Georgetti is said to have imposed the level 2 sanctions within days of being notified of the Crothall deal from CUPE National President Paul Moist. The move is being hailed by CUPE maintreamers as yet another hopeful sign that Georgetti is getting tough with the IWA. Anyone who believes this is dreaming.
In our view, the sanctions are meaningless. They impose no penalty of any real significance on the IWA. No CLC-sponsored educational programs? No more conferences or conventions? Now that's gotta hurt! No more votes on meaningless CLC executive committee resolutions? Oh, Brother Ken, you're really hurting us now. "Sanctions" our ass!
The IWA has been flouting the CLC's house rules for almost two years now. It's making a meal out of the misery of working people and plans to roll right along building its membership one sweetheart deal at a time. It should be clear to just about anyone that Brother Dave doesn't give a shit what the CLC thinks of his union's shameless activities. Indeed, if he were a shrewd sort of guy (and he is) he might just be thinking that Bro_Ken is A-OK with what his union has been up to. For a guy who is supposed to be feeling somewhat chastened after months of being hit with wet noodles by the leader of the Canadian house o' labour, Dave Haggard isn't making any bones about his take on the sweetheart deals his "rogue local" has been signing.
In the March 2004 edition of The Allied Worker, the IWA boasts of the success of Local 1-3567 with headlines like:
- Fraser Valley Local 1-3567 continues to lead organizing in private health care services field
- IWA Local 1-3567 continues to grow with health care services units-Servicing health care workers
- Local 1-3567 reaches out to new membership
One has to stop and ask the question: Just how arrogant is the leadership of the IWA to so shamelessly flaunt its sweetheart deals at a time like this? Pretty damned arrogant.
An article entitled Changing Faces of the IWA, speaks proudly of the IWA's achievements in the health care field:
Did you realize the fastest area of growth in the IWA is in the private health care sector field? In the past year, the IWA Local 1-3567 has been organizing new groups of private health care workers throughout the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound and Pemberton regions, southern Vancouver Island and Sunshine Coast by signing partnership agreements with major private health care services providers: Aramark, Compass Inc. and Sodexho. The influx of new IWA members (at press time Local 1-3567 claimed over 3,500 new members in the field), many who have never been union members before, is a challenge that the local union is taking on with much energy, determination, and success, says Dave Haggard, IWA National President. "It's very obvious that the growth of our union with this many new members will have an impact on the types of services our union will have to provide in the future to meet the needs of our new membership."
At a time when the local union is consolidating its presence in the field, with hiring hall agreements that sign up potential new workers, it has been out in the field to educate the new membership about the IWA and what the partnership agreements can do to assist them. "The face of the IWA is changing, both literally and figuratively," says Haggard. "It's a challenge we welcome."
How appropriate the title "Changing Faces of the IWA". What do we call people with many faces? Two-faced? Double-dealing? Duplicitous? Dave Haggard? Nice trophy too - those fresh-faced health care workers (that's one helluva big union-dues-kill there Brother David!) who have never, ever, been in a union before and probably won't ever want to be in one again after they realize that their union is working hard to keep their employer profitable. But that will just be too damned bad for them. They won't have any choice but to stay in the IWA or the USWA or whatever union they become the "property of". There's no such thing as changing unions once you're in the Canadian house of labour. The CLC has a rule about that - one that it actually enforces.
CUPE President Paul Moist has tried to resolve this dispute by tickling Georgetti's stinky feet, but Georgetti and the other self-serving money-hungry CLC affiliates have not found CUPE's resolve very funny. In our view, the merger with the USWA was a calculated move in the part of the IWA and possibly of the CLC as well, to end the CUPE/HEU members' relentless protests once and for all. If bullshit wouldn't baffle their brains, then a match made in mainstream union heaven and a trip to the "level 2 time-out chair" for the IWA might finally shut them up.
CUPE members, HEU members and union members from coast to coast here's a word to the wise: Don't be fooled by any of this.
You were led to believe that IWA Local 1-3567 was to withdraw from the "partnership agreements" that it signed with the four multinationals. You were led to believe that no new deals were to be done. You were told to wait patiently while the great leaders made things right. The IWA-Canada repeatedly broke its promises and continues to violate the CLC Constitution; and what has happened? Nothing, god damned nothing.
CUPE's official web site states that "If no resolution is reached within three months, further sanctions can be imposed, including removal from the CLC executive, federations and labour councils." Boy, that's some scary stuff there. Dave Haggard and his sidekick, Local 1-3567 President Sonny Ghag, must be shakin' all over at the prospect of that.
CUPE/HEU members, don't be taken in by appeals to solidarity. "Solidarity among who?" you should ask yourselves. You have had enough empty rhetoric pumped up your asses and paid for it with your CLC dues. Four years ago, when the CAW decided to allow workers fleeing from the SEIU to join their union, they were booted out of the CLC within weeks of independent umpire Pathe's ruling that they'd broken the sacred "no raiding" rule. Full sanctions were imposed almost immediately. What's the reason for all the foot-dragging in the case of the IWA? What makes Buzz Hargrove a menace and Dave and Sonny such special guys?
What do the highly paid labour gurus chanting their hollow rhetoric have in common with union members whose lives have been devastated by the fine upstanding members of their congregation? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! And that is the problem. These labour leaders are so stuck in their comfortable ruts that you couldn't pull them out with a winch.
Let's stop, just stop dead in our tracks and ask ourselves: Do the CLC leaders really give a damn about the fate of workers and their families? Stop with the solidarity forever bullshit already. Save it for somebody who doesn't know any better - if you can find anyone who fits that bill any more.
The Canadian labour movement has been falling apart one brick at a time and the IWA's exploitation of workers - hand in hand with its corporate partners - is just another example.The IWA has blazed quite a trail for other enterprising business unionists who would like to keep one foot on the anti-privatization bandwagon and another in their corporate partners' beds. It's shown the business community and the neo-con politicians what mainstream labour leaders are really into and how easy it is to flout the CLC's house rules when your bottom line is the bottom line. With the Crothall agreement the IWA showed its true face, its true colours and its true intentions. It has no intention to stop its sweetheart dealing. In the March 2004 edition of its newsletter the IWA made it clear that it's not stopping. Neither the CLC nor the Steelworkers Union seem to care about that in the least. Why should you care about them?
Back in November 2003, two thousand CUPE members dared to give a damn and supported CUPE Emergency Resolution No. 301 which stated:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that in the absence of these actions, this (CUPE) Convention authorize the (CUPE) 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 complaints at the CLC and actions being taken to address them."
What did the CLC do for them? Here's a couple of members' take:
The CLC had a sort of gathering - like a cross between an IWA hiring hall and a bingo hall raffle. It was decided that the union that kissed the asses of the IWA executives the most got to take over the pathetic IWA and the opportunity to lead the race to the bottom in the labour movement. The winner was Georgetti's Steelworkers union. Well, it's not really his Steelworkers union, but it used run a big local so he might just have had some influence at the dues raffle bingo.
That's what the CUPE members got from the CLC.
The IWA's grandstanding and chest beating - with its dues trophy held high - points to only one conclusion: The CLC is dead, it's finished. It has no relevancy whatsoever for union members. It's become a trade association for biz unionists that supports itself with dues that it takes from their pockets. Start your own labour movement. The one you've got right now is dead.