Sid Ryan Has A Plan

Given the odious, intrusive and likely unconstitutional nature of Bill C-377, the 'private member's' bill covered with the indelible palm prints of Stephen Harper that forces labour unions to publicly disclose how they spend their money, it would be surprising indeed if unions did not have a plan to fight back. Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents 54 unions, has no intention of letting this blatant sop to the Tory base slip by unopposed.

In the following, Ryan explains what could be an effective strategy going into the October election:

A Contemptible, Arrogant Martinet

The other day I wrote a post about the resurrection of Bill C-377, the Harper backed private member's bill that would wage war against unions in Canada. Toward the end of the post I made reference to Senator Don Plett's arrogant dismissal of witness Paul Cavalluzzo during Senate hearings on the bill after the latter suggested Conservative senators are probably the last people who should be lecturing anyone about corruption and transparency.

Plett insulted the witness by telling him he considered “your time and my time to have been wasted with you here today not answering my questions.”

Press Progress offers this video of the exchange:



As you can see, the pompous and arrogant Plett sanctimoniously offers himself and the Senate as exemplars of fiscal rectitude and transparency. To this, Press Progress responds:

The Senate is transparent? The Senate isn't corrupt? Really, Senator Plett?

Last year, Conservative Senators reportedly tried to whitewash an audit of Mike Duffy's expenses, deleting paragraphs detailing Senator Duffy's attempt to dodge auditors and hide his expenses.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson is slated to release what is expected to be a damning report on Senate expenses. At least 40 current and former senators recently received letters from Ferguson asking them to account for questionable expense claims. Several senators are said to have expensed over $100,000 with one reportedly billing taxpayers to the tune of $250,000.

Senator Plett himself appears to be among the Senate's highest rollers -- a CBC investigation in 2014 found Plett had the second highest expenses in the Senate, billing taxpayers over $12,000 (mainly for first-class air travel) during one five-week period in 2012 while the Senate was debating suspending Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau.

Arrogance in public servants is always profoundly distasteful. When it is practised by pompous and contemptible martinets like Plett, it is intolerable.

A Cudgel Resurrected

To the red-meat crowd (a.k.a. the Harper base et alia), few things can seem more gratifying than an attack on unions. Viewed as the enemy of all that is good and holy (i.e., unfettered profits), unions, we are often told, have had their day and really shouldn't be disrupting our lives anymore. Anything that restrains them can only redound to the public good.

While critical thinkers can see this for the propaganda it is, critical thinkers are not the ones being courted by the Harper regime. And so, in search of yet another divisive and polarizing issue, Tim Harper writes that Bill C-377,

first introduced by British Columbia Conservative backbencher Russ Hiebertin December 2011, has been revived by a Senate committee and there was Hiebert this week, again staking his claim to some type of Conservative medal as the man who has most doggedly pursued his boss’s agenda.

Hiebert is still flogging what must be considered the most fundamentally flawed piece of legislation to come from this majority government, a punitive assault on labour unions which would tip the collective bargaining process in the country to the employer, violate privacy and freedom of association rights of union leaders and tie up unions up with unnecessary, trivial, insulting paper work.

While Harper lapdog Hiebert extols the bill as one providing accountability and transparency,

Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff calls it “an unwarranted, unconstitutional, venal and indefensible bill that is inherently flawed and must be withdrawn.”

Designed to hobble unions with paperwork and make it easier to decertify them, while simultaneously making union membership more difficult,

...it would force unions to publicize their budgets, their expenditures, how much they would be able to pay workers in the event of a strike and what type of money they would have to promote their cause in the case of a breakdown of a collective agreement.

Employers would not be compelled to disclose any of that.

A particular incident is instructive of the obdurate mindset of the bill's backers:

Manitoba Conservative Don Plett showered praise on Hiebert for his hard work and announced it was time to make this bill law.

But when he clashed with Paul Cavalluzzo, a constitutional and labour lawyer with more than four decades of experience, the bombastic Plett insulted the witness by telling him he considered “your time and my time to have been wasted with you here today not answering my questions.”

I suspect that what Plett really meant was that Cavalluzzo did not provide the answers that he wanted to hear.

The Harper War Against Unions Continues

So what else is new? In today's Star, Tim Harper tells a tale of the ongoing indefatigable contempt Canada's putative prime minister has for unions.

Like another Conservative entity, C-377 refuses to remain dead. The bill, proposed by a private member, Russ Hiebert, who is actually a front for Harper and Merit Canada, was actually severely amended/gutted by the senators (including 16 Conservatives), but when Harper prorogued Parliament,

instead of going back to the Commons in amended form, [it] remained in the Upper House, restored to its original form, where it is now up for second reading.

The bill would require unions and employee organizations to give the Canada Revenue Agency details of all transactions over $5,000, along with the salaries and benefits of union officials over $100,000 and a detailed breakdown of spending on political and lobbying activities. It would all be publicly posted on the revenue agency’s website.

That the game was rigged from the start is evident by what Tim Harper has uncovered. Terrance Oakey, the Merit lobbyist with a long association with the Conservatives, has been given preferential treatment and access to the upper echelon of the government:

As Merit’s man in Ottawa, Oakey had 117 meetings with public officeholders on the bill since November 2011, but it’s his level of access which sets him apart.

He had 13 meetings with [backbencher] Hiebert, but also 12 meetings with Harper’s (since departed) director of stakeholder relations, Alykhan Velshi, as well as a meeting with Rachal Curran, Harper’s director of policy. Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright attended one of the meetings with Hiebert and Velshi. Oakey also had a separate tête-à-tête with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

Contrast that with labour's access:

[T]he Canadian Labour Congress says the closest it got to Harper’s office in lobbying against the bill was an early 2013 phone conversation between then-president Ken Georgetti and Wright. Georgetti raised it briefly with the prime minister in an unrelated meeting.

The CLC was told there was no time for a face-to-face meeting.

Senate opposition leader James Cowan perhaps best sums up the Machiavellian intent behind Bill C-377:

“Bill C-377 is an anti-union bill,’’...“It is designed to bury labour unions in so much paperwork that they will not be able to represent their workers as fully and capably as they do now.’’

Unions are being punished for opposition to government measures, ... and “this is a message that if you disagree, then the heavy arm of the law can and will be brought down upon you.’’

Yet one more of the countless examples demonstrating the illusory nature of democracy under the Harper regime.

An Editorial Recommendation

A bit of a busy day today, so I only have time right now to recommend today's editorial in The Star, a timely warning about the implications of increasingly popular anti-union legislation that has only one goal: to reduce the remuneration of workers.

One can only hope that Canadians will not believe that such regressive laws are good for anything other than corporate profits.

Unions After Bill C-377

In my favorite Shakespearian play, Hamlet, there is a scene wherein his erstwhile friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, explain that an acting company that used to enjoy great popularity has fallen on hard times. Thanks to a new craze in which troupes of child actors have become the rage, and "are most tyrannically clapped for", adults have had to go on the road to earn a living. Hamlet wonders about the child actors' futures, because their current success means they are in fact "exclaim[ing] against their own succession", since they will be out of work once they grow up.

I can't help but think about human nature's shortsightedness when I read those lines. We pursue things that aren't good for us, while we denigrate that which, in the long term, is of benefit. Take, for example, the public's attitude toward unions. More days than nought, there are columns and letters published condemning unions and their well-paid members, envy and resentment seeping through the pages, seemingly in a senseless quest to bring people down to the lowest pay and working conditions possible.

It is, of course, this irrational impulse to which Bill C-377, the thinly-disguised union-busting legislation passed on Wednesday evening by the Harper government, plays. Clothed in the rhetoric typical of a workers' rights-hating regime, the law will require labour organizations to provide extensive details, such as the salaries of top union leaders, to the Canada Revenue Agency, which will publish the information on its website.

All designed, of course, to stoke even more public contempt for those enjoying better working conditions and pay than those in non-union environments.

And yet, as observed by Thomas Walkom and David Climenhaga, unions themselves must bear some of the responsibility for this current sorry state.

Writes Walkom:

What’s really killing unions is not the political right. It is that, for too many workers, organized labour is no longer relevant.

In 2011, federal figures show, 31 per cent of Canadian workers overall were unionized. Of these, the vast majority are middle-aged or older. For younger workers between the ages of 15 and 24, the rate of unionization is just under 16 per cent.

Compounding the problem, says Walkom, is the fact that union membership is concentrated in the public sector, with only 16 per cent of private sector workers belonging to unions, largely due to the collapse of manufacturing jobs and the proliferation of part-time and contract work in North America.

He adds,

Unions — which understandably pay attention first and foremost to their own members — haven’t lobbied hard enough to tighten up the employment standards legislation that allows these low-wage practices.

Nor have most unions figured out a way to deal with a new kind of workplace, where people no longer labour in large factories and where strikes can be circumvented by technology.

Echoing this idea, in The Rabble David Climenhaga writes:

Ironically, while most unions don't do enough to represent working people beyond their own membership, what little they do to fight for the powerless in society is why authoritarian neoconservatives like Harper have such a hate on for labour and other groups that speak out for traditional Canadian values.

So one worthwhile response to the effort by the Conservatives to smother unions in red tape is to fight harder for real progressive causes, not to mention never again signing a lousy two-tier contract that leaves young workers with the short end of the stick to preserve the past victories of older workers. No, an injury to one remains an injury to all, people!

Perhaps the final consideration should be given to those who "most tyrannically clap[...]' for the kind of repressive legislative agenda epitomized by Bill C-377. In a jurisdiction near you, you can probably look forward to more of this.

Workers of the World Unite- You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Union Shackles!

That perhaps might have been the call in Michigan yesterday, as it joined 23 other states in enacting so called 'right-to-work-legislation' that 'liberates' workers from mandatory union membership and union dues.

Passed by a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the new law was proudly proclaimed by Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger in the following terms:

“This is about freedom, fairness and equality” ... “These are basic American rights — rights that should unite us.”

Ah yes, those famous rights that allow workers to sell themselves to the lowest corporate bidder, a foregone conclusion in Michigan and the other 'liberated' states, a fact tacitly acknowledged with a wink and a nudge by supporters of the legislation, who say it will boost the economy by creating jobs, attract new companies to Michigan and give workers more choices for employment.

But then again, perhaps I am wrong, and that surge of expected new employment will result from corporations being attracted to states where the workers are revelling in their newly-acquired 'freedom.' After all, a happy and contented worker is a productive worker.

Lest Canadian workers feel left out, our federal overlords are laying the groundwork for similar serf-like satisfaction in this country. As reported in today's Star, Bill C-377, an alleged private member's bill about which I have previously written on this blog, is to receive the full backing of the Harper regime and is expected to be passed today in the House.

Says Labour Minister Lisa Raitt:

“Our government is going to support (the bill), with the amendments that have been brought in. It makes a lot of sense” ... “Workers want to know how their union dues are being spent.”

Of course, there are always naysayers when it comes to such liberating legislation:

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said Bill C-377 “is an exercise in bureaucratic overkill that has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with simply trying to punish trade union organizations.”

Rae said the bill, if passed, could be part of “the pattern in the United States” of limiting union rights. The next step, he warned, could by an attempt by the Harper government to eliminate the so-called Rand formula, under which workers in a bargaining unit must pay mandatory union dues.

Such carping criticism aside, can it be long before we are all living in a worker's paradise?

An Odious Servitude

In its ongoing and odious servitude to a reactionary constituency, the Harper regime continues to use the heavy hand of government to target and harass those whose ideology differs from its own.

I have already written several times about Bill C-377, the private members bill designed to flame discontent with unions in this country. Apparently, anyone who seeks to challenge that bill now becomes a victim of one of the favourite tools of the Harperites, name-calling.

As reported by The Star's Tim Harper, this childish and manipulative tactic, a sad substitute for reason (never a strong point with Harper and his ilk), was used to 'answer' what most would deem to be a reasonable question about Bill C-377:

Opponents of the bill wonder why the government is not forcing the same type of financial disclosure upon doctors, lawyers and others who, like union members, pay tax-deductible dues to professional organizations.

The answer was provided by Ottawa-area Conservative Pierre Poilievre after the NDP filibustered the Hiebert bill at committee.

“The NDP’s attempt to block this union transparency bill and block workers’ rights only strengthens our party’s resolve to support that member’s bill and its amendments,” Poilievre said. “The reality is that never before has one party in Parliament been so dominated by a single-interest group.”

He told the Commons that a third of NDP MPs are “past union bureaucrats or union bosses.”

Yet this unwarranted and unprecedented attack on unions is not the only way in which government power is being misused. As also reported by Tim Harper, Conservatives sitting on the natural resources committee have summoned Justin Trudean and David McGuinty to explain their anti-Alberta remarks. How long will it be before we see show trials in Canada?

Finally in his piece, the star columnist points out the egregious hyprocrisy of a government that insists that the principles of accountability and transparency are its sole motivation:

As the Conservatives cast their light of accountability about the halls of Parliament, they have ignored their own lack of accountability — on the true cost of the F-35 fighter jets, on spending on the G20 summit, on the use of a discredited marketing agency to spread lies about Liberal MP Irwin Cotler or on its recent fun-with-figures budget numbers aimed at delivering goodies in the 2015 campaign.

So far, the Canadian public has given no indication that its appetite for the government's reprehensible behaviour is reaching the saturation point. Until it does, expect more of the same.

Unions Under Attack: A Star Reader Writes

In two recent posts, I discussed Bill C-377, a Harper-driven anti-union measure disguised as a private member's bill. Introduced by Conservative MPP Russ Hiebert, it is designed to require full disclosure of all union expenditures, including monies allotted for various causes; while its ostensible purpose, according to government propaganda, is to provide full transparency, a concept Mr. Harper seems only peripherally acquainted with, its real purpose is to stoke the resentments and jealousies some feel toward unions and their members. If that resentment reaches a critical mass, making union dues optional, a favorite Trojan Horse tactic of the extreme right to weaken and ultimately destroy unions, will be that much easier.

In this morning's Star, letter-writer Jenny Carter offers her insights on the bill:

Thomas Walkom talks of Russ Hiebert's private member's bill, which is, he says, ostensibly a plea for openness but actually an attack on the automatic check-off of union dues, or Rand formula.

It's a funny thing, but I, and everybody with a taxable income, also pay automatic dues, also supposed to provide services and benefits to those who pay.

Bill C-377 says the public has the right to know how unions spend their money. But the government refuses to tell the public how their tax money is spent. Even Members of Parliament seem no longer to have a right to this information, which is very strange because one of the main functions of an elected parliament has always been to oversee the way in which tax money is spent.

REAL Women may not like expenditure on “left-wing causes,” but many taxpayers may feel that it is not in their best interests to have government money spent, for example, on subsidizing fossil fuel companies, building unnecessary jails and buying attack fighter jets, while starving provincial governments of funds for health-care and essential social spending, and failing to provide public housing.

We need trade unions as a counterbalance to business. If the Rand formula is abolished, I really don't see why I, or anybody who objects to the government's lack of financial transparency and the way it spends our money, should be expected to pay taxes, especially since the tax system in this country is extremely unfair.

The proposed bill is undemocratic and unjust, and another indication that Big Brother is trying to take us over.

Jenny Carter, Peterborough

Rand Formula Under Attack

The other day I wrote a post about Bill C-377, ostensibly a private member's bill put forward by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert that would subject unions to unprecedented scrutiny. It is, in fact, a bill being guided by the Prime Minister's Office.

In his column today, The Star's Thomas Walkom says that the real target of the bill is the Rand Formula, which requires all employees in a bargaining unit that has democratically chosen a union to pay union dues.

Initiated in 1946, it was designed as a counterbalance to the power of the employer and as a means of ensuring that those receiving the advantage of union working conditions and pay could not simply opt out in order to avoid paying union dues. All in all, most would say it is balanced and desirable.

Everyone, that is, except the extreme right-wing, i.e., the Harperites, who are using this bill as a thinly disguised union-busting tactic. Writes Walkom:

On the face of it, Bill C-377 makes no sense. It argues that because workers can treat union dues as tax deductions, the general public has the right to know — in exacting detail — how unions spend their money.

Indeed, as drafted, the bill is remarkably intrusive. It would require the names and addresses of anyone who gives or receives more than $5,000 from a union. Unions would also have to categorize how and why they spent their funds.

As he goes on to point out, there are many tax breaks offered to professional organizations such as doctors and lawyers, as well as the executives paid in stock options, all of which cost the treasury countless sums. Yet none of them are being subjected to the kind of scrutiny Bill C-377 would impose on unions.

Walkom suggests the ultimate purpose behind the bill:

The unstated aim of this bill is to provide ammunition to politicians, like Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak, who would scrap the Rand formula and introduce U.S.-style right-to-work laws designed to sap unions.

The Conservatives’ working assumption is that once Canadians see how unions spend their money, they will be scandalized. It is another round in a sophisticated public relations war designed to portray union leaders as undemocratic pork-choppers.

Given the irrational contempt and envy much of the public feels toward unions, it seems likely that if passed, the bill will achieve its nefarious intent, and we will all literally be the poorer for it.

The Not-So-Hidden-Hand of Harper

Although I believe unreservedly in the vital role that unions play in both protecting and promoting workers' rights, I make no apologies for the times that I have been critical of them. Cronyism, questionable expenditures, and corruption have no place in organizations meant to serve their members.

Nonetheless, the latest thinly-disguised attack against unions by the Harper regime goes beyond the pale, one that feeds into and exploits the inexplicable envy and antipathy felt by much of the public toward those responsible for helping their members earn a living wage.

Bill C-377, ostensibly a private member's bill put forward by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert, is getting help from the Prime Minister's office to modify measures that have touched off an unusual outpouring of concern from Canadians.

Denounced as a well-structured assault on trade union rights by MP Pat Martin, the bill,

...would require labour unions or any group involved in collective bargaining with an employer to provide Canada Revenue Agency with information annually on nearly all financial affairs, with the reports to be published on CRA’s website.

However, the information that would be required goes well beyond simple financial statements:

Required information includes every transaction or disbursement over $5,000 for conferences, collective bargaining activities, training, lobbying, political activity and payments to union officers and members. The same reporting requirement applies to all investment trusts and funds operated by unions on behalf of their members. The name and address of each person involved in any of these transactions would have to be reported to CRA and would be made public.

Especially vexing is the arrantly hypocritical Harper justification for this information, with Hiebert claiming

...the bill is in keeping with the Harper government’s attempt to promote transparency and the public has a right to know how unions spend their members’ dues, which are tax deductible and according to Hiebert cost Ottawa about $500 million in foregone revenues a year.

Transparency and lost tax revenue are concerns of this government?

Really?