Workers are not invited to the process. This heady stuff is reserved for the union big wigs who prefer you trust they are representing your interests. They are used to working behind closed doors in the sanctuary of the LRB without any pesky workers looking over their shoulders.That their jobs are not on the line is not seen as an issue.
Those workers who attempt to understand the law and get involved in the process will have a hard climb ahead of them. In addition to a union that is not friendly to this kind of "interference", the LRB has made such equally "unfriendly."
As of today, the LRB library will not be open to the public. It was hard enough just getting there while they were open, but now that door has been closed as well. Rumour has it the library will be broken up into sections and scattered to different locations. That should make it even more difficult for anyone wanting access to this material.
Of course, if you have money to spare, you can access the information on-line. The costs are not something workers will be able to bear and in effect this information has been sheltered from the unwashed by yet another layer.
The Gordon Campbell dictatorship continues with its anti-worker (I think they call it pro-business)policies.
LRB 101: Injustice for all
Injustice for All
Today is the last day of work for some 250 workers at the Loman warehouse in Langley BC. Many of them have already worked their last shift. Since the beginning of the year, these workers have fought a courageous battle to save their jobs and to raise awareness of corporate greed. They fought, for the most part, on their own.
Throughout their campaign they were encouraged by their union them to put their faith in the BC Labour Relations Board where UFCW Local 1518 had filed a number of complaints against their employer. One by one these have been dismissed. Today only one - a common employer application -remains to be decided and the prospects don't look encouraging.
Working people believe the Labour Relations Board is there to protect their rights along with those of employers and unions. This workplace activist, who is among the 250 workers at Loman warehouse, has been there and he's learned whose rights really matter and how they are protected. An excerpt from Darryl Gehlen's LRB 101:
From everything I have studied and learned about the LRB, and not just this strange little grievance, I have some conclusions. I paid too much attention to the language in the law and not the process. The language is window dressing, it has no teeth, and the process is designed to hide this fact. The process is not designed to allow a full and open disclosure but severely limits it. What is considered are legal loopholes by a "system" that has granted one side a significant advantage. Hidden behind the legalese and the process lies that simple truth. The LRB, I have learned, is largely concerned with ensuring that businesses are not impacted in any significant way. This is why the timing has worked out as it has. Coincidentally, the ruling is expected no sooner than the very day the collective agreement is slated to end.
The complete LRB 101
The letter that started Darryl's LRB journey
MFD on the LRB
From pages 52 and 54 of the EV Logistics and RWU collective agreement:
Article 24-Duration
24.01 This agreement shall be effective from May 5, 1999 to and including November 30, 2009 and thereafter from year to year unless notice in writing is given, by either party, of the desire to cancel, change or amend any of the provisions contained herein, within four (4) months immediately preceeding the date of expiry of the Agreement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, should the major customer at the Baker Center terminate its "open book" contract with the Employer after November 30, 2000 this Agreement will be open for full negotiation.
A quick study of page 66 under "future facilities" (remember EV Aldergrove wasn't born yet) at part 2 will get you the reason as to why the Baker Center referred to above is in fact talking about the EV facility. "When any future facility(s) comes into place, that the classifications, wage rates and terms and conditions of employment will be as set out in the Collective Agreement for the Baker Center."
And presto, along comes a new facility. From the above, you can see that the "major customer" has not only a right to end its deal with the Baker Center (EV) but has a right to open the collective agreement as well - at any time.
This seems to be what Gehlen is, at least in part, referring to. What would an employer say if the union had the right to terminate a service agreement between them and a "third party"? What would the third party think of that? NOT FAIR!!!
Welcome to the one way street kept so clean by the LRB and biz unionism.
The above agreement was signed on behalf of the RWU by R. Janzen, M.Molag, P. Thygesen, G. Brassart, P. Rai, K. Long, and L. Martens.
It's just staggering what has been agreed to in these collective agreements. To tie the term of your contract to the comings and goings of the company's accounts is ludicrous. It actually encourages shoddy business practices and rewards the company for poor performance. "Who cares if our managers are idiots? If we lose a major account, the workers will take it on the chin." This is what this union has agreed to.
The article by Gehlen, is once, again one of the best analyses of the role of the that I've ever read. The message is clear: Workers have rights under the law. The LRB's role is to ensure they are deprived of them, as per the wishes of the workplace parties.
The first 10-year contract was one of RW Local 580's. I believe it was with Allied Grocers on Vancouver Island. Allied would lag behind Macdonalds Consolidated's (Safeway distribution's) agreement by one year. That agreement was proof to what lengths unions would go for a contract. It wasn't lost on the other employers.
UFCW Local 1518 did the six year deal that left the labour community aghast. Then they did the 10-year deal with OFG/Loman. Now RW has done a 10-year with EV/Versacold.
This is proof that these unions are businesses and the people who work at places where these types of unions are "partners" get treated like assets. They are bought, sold and traded. The company makes money and the union makes money.
You should see these guys as they slither around BC Fed get togethers. The Biz union guys are well loved and respected at the Fed and with the CLC.
Biz unionism is sick and dysfunctional and the guys who run those unions are sicker.
Sick is too good a word for these guys Troll. Being sick implies that you have some condition that is beyond your ability to cure. These biz unionists walked into the mess they've created with their eyes as wide open as their pockets.
What kind of unionist negotiates caps on the number of full time positions? What kind of unionist negotiates 10 year agreements? What kind of unionist gives the company the right to bail out of the collective agreement if it manages stupidly?
These are not unionists at all and we do ourselves a disservice by continuing to call them that. These guys are opportunists. They have no interest in the well being of working people at all. They are interested in the holding the position of union leader only for the material goodies that come with it.
You find guys like this all over. In a corporate office, they're the ones who are always stabbing everybody in the back and sucking up to the senior managers. There is no difference between them and the guys who negotiate 10 year contracts and sell their members a bill of goods at ratification. The only difference is who pays their salary.
It's these opportunists whose asses the big shots at the CLC, the BC Fed, the OFL and all the other umbrella orgs are kissing. It's time we started rubbing their noses in the shit these guys do - and reallly good. It pisses me off whenever I see those strident media releases from the CLC that talk about how poor we're all getting, how many of us are only working part-time, how many of us have no benefits and so on. I can't help but think "Does that include the casualized workers whose dues are paying your salaries you fat, pompous asses?!"
Minority Unionism By Alexis Buss
At the recent IWW General Assembly, I got a chance to be on a panel to share ideas on how to rebuild the labor movement. My talk was on minority unionism. Here are some excerpts:
If unionism is to become a movement again, we need to break out of the current model, one that has come to rely on a recipe increasingly difficult to prepare: a majority of workers vote a union in, a contract is bargained. We need to return to the sort of rank-and-file on-the-job agitating that won the 8-hour day and built unions as a vital force. One way to do this, is what has become known now as "minority unionism." It's to form meaningful, organized networks of solidarity capable of winning improvements in individual workplaces, throughout industries, and for the benefit of the international working class.
Minority unionism happens on our own terms, regardless of legal recognition. It is not about settling for creating a tiny clique of professional malcontents. It should aspire to grow, but in the short term gives an example of what kinds of organization is possible when we decide that our unions are going to exist because we need them to.
U.S. & Canadian labor relations regimes are set up on the premise that you need a majority of workers to have a union, generally government-certified. In a worldwide context, this is a relatively rare set-up. And even in North America, the notion that a union needs official recognition or majority status to have the right to represent its members is of relatively recent origin, thanks mostly to the choice of business unions to trade rank-and-file strength for legal maintenance of membership guarantees.
The labor movement was not built through majority unionism -- it couldn't have been. One hundred years ago unions had no legal status (indeed, courts often ruled that unions were an illegal conspiracy and strikes a form of extortion) -- they gained recognition through raw industrial power.
When the IWW fought for the 8-hour day in the timber and wheat fields, they didn't decide to prove their majority to the boss through elections. Workers instead held meetings to decide what their demands were, elected shop committees to present those demands, and used tactics such as walking off the job at the end of an 8-hour shift to persuade recalcitrant bosses to agree to those demands. Union recognition in the construction crafts was built through a combination of strikes, direct action and honoring each others' picket lines (the latter not often enough).
The wave of sit-down strikes that established the CIO in auto and steel, for example, was undertaken by minority unions that had a substantial presence in workplaces with a history of agitating around grievances. The unions then drew upon that minority presence to undertake direct actions that galvanized the larger workforce in their plants -- and inspired workers across the continent.
Unionism was built through direct action and through organization on the job. But in the 1930s, the bosses found it increasingly difficult to keep unions out with hired thugs, mass firings and friendly judges. Recognizing that there was no way to crush unions altogether, and tired of the continual strife, they offered a deal: If unions would agree to give up their industrial power and instead work through proper channels -- the National Labor Relations Board in the United States, various provincial boards in Canada -- the government would act as an "impartial" arbiter to determine whether or not the union was the bona fide representative of the workers.
In the short term unions were able to short-circuit the need to sign workers up one by one and collect dues directly. The bosses traded union busters in suits for the gun thugs they had previously employed. And after a short burst in membership, unions (particularly in the United States) began a long-term downward spiral.
Under this exclusive bargaining model, unions do not attempt to function on the job until they gain legal certification. That legal process affords the bosses almost unlimited opportunity to threaten and intimidate workers, and to drag proceedings out for years. It is a system designed to interfere with workers' right to organize -- and the IWW pointed this out when the National Labor Relations Act was passed.
However, while the labor law regime is designed around this majority-designated majority status unionism, it does not actually require it. As long as workers are acting in concert, they enjoy the same basic legal rights -- such as those are -- whether or not they are in an officially certified union. Indeed, in certain cases they enjoy greater rights, as the courts have ruled that most union contracts implicitly surrender the right to strike. It is illegal to fire members of a minority union for their union activity, to discriminate against them, to fire them for striking, to refuse to allow union representatives to participate in disciplinary hearings, etc. An organized group of workers has legal rights, though it would be a mistake to expect the labor boards to enforce them any more vigorously than they do for unions that have been certified. And an organized group of workers, even if it is a small minority, has much more potential power than unorganized individual workers.
For the most part you have as many legal rights as a minority union as a majority union does -- with the single exception of being certified as the exclusive bargaining agent with the sole authority to negotiate a contract. A minority union has the right to present grievances (though there may not be a formal grievance procedure in place), to engage in concerted activity, to make demands upon the boss, to seek meetings, even to strike (though this isn't a great idea if you don't have majority support).
If you pick your issues well and use them as an opportunity to talk with and engage your fellow workers, you can simultaneously fight for better conditions and build the union. In campaigning around issues that matter to your coworkers you are building the union's credibility, you are gaining experience in self-organization, you are learning who can be relied upon, you are establishing that the union is workers on the job and that we're in it for the long haul.
The labor movement was built when groups of workers came together and began agitating over conditions. Sometimes they persuaded their fellow workers to approach the boss and demand that some problem be corrected. Sometimes they refused to work under unsafe conditions or in unsafe ways, and persuaded their coworkers to do likewise. Sometimes they acted on the individual job, sometimes they held citywide demonstrations over issues of common concern, such as working hours or unsafe work. The important point is that they acted.
They identified key issues of concern, they met together, they decided upon a course of action, and they acted upon it. That is unionism in action. It does not require official recognition, it does not require a contract. It requires workers to come together and act collectively.
If unionism is to become a movement again, we need to break out of the current model and return to the sort of rank-and-file on-the-job agitating that won the 8-hour day and built unions as a vital force.
Minority unionism is about forming meaningful, organized networks of solidarity capable of winning improvements in individual workplaces, throughout industries, and for the benefit of the international working class. It is a process, a process that offers hope for transforming our greatest weakness -- the fact that our members are scattered in many largely disorganized workplaces -- into a strength.