Friday’s Headlines

16 comments

1. As a progressive, I used to be reflexively pro-union. I thought, 1) unions bring benefits to all workers and the poor, and 2) corporations/governments are so powerful that whatever concessions the unions win, they will never be enough – the workers will always deserve more. My faith in these assumptions has come to an end.

   This strike has revealed two obvious facts:

   1) the lives disrupted by this strike are not those of well-tailored profit-takers. The people being harmed are the poor and the lower middle-class. Rich people have largely made municipal services irrelevant to their lives, with private garbage pickups, private schools, private security and private daycares. Rich people are hardly affected by this strike.

   2) CUPE has become so powerful that they are able to reject a gold-plated benefits package and go on strike, demanding instead a platinum package. Where does the money come from to pay for this? Not from shareholder profits or CEO salaries. The money comes from Toronto taxpayers. What restrains CUPE, when it holds a labor monopoly on municipal services and can hold the city hostage when it doesn’t get what it wants? Rich people can hire private services, but no one else can. Should we expect that every property tax increase / user fee will go straight to CUPE workers? If not, why not?

   Over the past year, I have seen unions put themselves on the wrong side of the environmental debate, opposing BC carbon pricing and supporting polluting old technologies. I have seen a great union, UNITE HERE, representing the most vulnerable workers in our economy, split apart due to pointless ideological infighting among union “leaders.”

   And now, CUPE is harming working moms, part-time student workers, and children needing a place to play … all while turning down a compensation package that still makes them far better paid than anything equivalent in the private sector.

   Publicly-delivered services are an essential way to bring social justice to our more vulnerable citizens. But how can the public sector grow when CUPE will only suck up any additional money for itself?

   Can progressives afford to be reflexively pro-union any more, at least when it comes to public-sector unions? Or is it time we recognize that public-sector unions are just another special interest group opposed to the common good?

2. John> Your thoughts are somewhat in parallel with my thinking about my hometown, Windsor. My growing feeling (after a lifetime of union family members, my own CAW union card for a time and living in hard-core NDP land) is that the CAW let the city down, and is as complicit in the fall of GM and etc as GM et al are themselves. When everybody was making (as they say in Windsor) “good money,” buying big cars and trucks (Ford F150 land), homes in some of Windsor’s sprawling suburbs, there was little or no real pressure from the CAW/NDP to build hybrids, to think in the long term on how the industry had to change. So what was once an extremely progressive org (and still is on social issues) became, at its core, extremely conservative. Don’t rock the boat, we’re all making money, even if the Dodge Minivan is about to fly off the cliff.

   Disturbing thoughts that upend everything I grew up knowing — and just thoughts at this point.

3. Hi John,

   As another lefty, I sympathize with a lot with what you’re saying. I do have a couple of concerns though:

   1. “Rich people are hardly affected by this strike.”

   That’s true with respect to many services, but not trash. Garbage is a great leveler. Not that many people, rich or poor, have private collection. And I don’t think all that many are happily paying the $5/bag that those new entrepreneurial operators are asking.

   2. “But how can the public sector grow when CUPE will only suck up any additional money for itself”

   I think that may be overstating the case a little. For a far bigger example of that, take a look at the police budget.

   3. “all while turning down a compensation package that still makes them far better paid than anything equivalent in the private sector”

   While I agree their compensation package looks pretty good (at least for workers who have been full-time for many years), the private sector compensation shouldn’t be held up as some kind of standard. In other words, while it’s certainly possible for union compensation packages to be overly generous, the fact that a given package is better than the often-exploitative compensation you find in the private sector is not necessarily a bad thing. As you probably agree anyway so why am I going on about this…? 🙂

   FWIW, I’m on the fence. But I want those ferries back STAT!

4. In “Lawn mowers in hand …”: “… the striking Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416 is warning citizens who take maintenance into their own hands. ‘You could use the word scab,’ said local president Mark Ferguson.”

   It is outrageous that a union could claim a veto over activities in PUBLIC SPACES. The same thing happened a few weeks ago in Windsor — citizen “mowing parties” were picketed by CUPE members:

   http://www.windsorstar.com/entertainment/Citizens+take+back+messy+parks/1647437/story.html

   … and ultimately shut down by union intimidation:

   http://www.windsorstar.com/sports/basketball/Mowing+party+fizzles+Forest+Glade+park/1672521/story.html

5. Well said John. In defense of Unions though, I would like to point out a recent move by workers in the tire industry. In some cases they have become the last resort for protecting jobs from being off-shored. While concerned with the US, the following article applies as much here.

   “Workers Are On Their Own To Defend American Jobs From Surging Chinese Imports; American Companies Are Conflicted Because They Now Produce In China ”

   http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/09/0630/421.html

6. “there was little or no real pressure from the CAW/NDP to build hybrids, to think in the long term on how the industry had to change.”

   Actually the NDP/CAW have been talking about this since at least 2003: http://web.archive.org/web/20030810224506/http://www.ndp.ca/campaigns/Greencarstrat.html

   Of course, as an opposition party, there is only so much they can do.

7. I’m in the teacher’s union, and it was only by being in the union that my job was saved from a psychotic parent with a long history of causing trouble, always humoured by the school board. The union didn’t do as much as they should have, but I still have my job.

   The problem with unions is the same as that with our whole society: everybody’s out for themself. If you don’t know about the ‘Wobblies’, look them up. All labour has to band together, or labour is set against itself.

8. Sorry, let me clarify. Labour wages increased as the proportion of people in unions increased, between the 30s and the 70s; wages decreased as the proportion of people in labour decreased since. These are inflation adjusted wages, of course.

9. Actually the rich do generally have a better time with garbage, since they are probably at their cottage right now to begin with or can haul their garbage there on weekends in the big family SUV. The Granite Club provided a tasty anecdotal story about dumpsters-for-the-rich (see stories in the Globe), and there are plenty of entrepreneurs cruising wealthy neighbourhoods offering to take garbage away for a fee. So, yeah, not such a hassle.

   Unions might have made sense when it was Andrew Carnegie vs a bunch of steelworkers toiling in a foundry somewhere. For white-collar government work in 2009, I just can’t see the sense. Toronto would do well to have a lot fewer unions and lot fewer strikes if it wants to stay competitive with other peer cities…

10. Are they going to call this man a “scab” as well, I wonder:

    http://blog.ftjco.com/2009/06/25/workin-the-night-shift-for-war-child-canada/

    I’ve made sure his flyer made it to neighhbours mailboxes.

    The lawn-mowing groups are simply easier targets, a proverbial low-blow, if you will. The local CUPEs disappoint me every day I open the paper, but to verbally attack/intimidate citizens taking initiative makes them appear like Tin Men: No hearts in sight.*

    I come from a union-friendly family as well. Between YorkU, TTC, and especially the current strike, this has diminished my past convictions considerably.

    *Implicit of lacking other essential (human) characteristics.

11. @jameasmallon I would totally agree that unions, in the public or private sector, have a crucial role to play in protecting individual worker rights, improving employee safety, and other non-monetary issues.

    My concern is about compensation. On one side is a union that can prevent even volunteers from helping clean their parks and neighborhoods. On the other side is a government that can compel payment from the “customers.” The situation is ripe for abuse, and I just don’t think we should simply trust that everyone is out to serve the public, which is caught in the middle with little voice or power.

    By the way, the City’s most recent offer has been rejected. Ann Dembrinski says that simply by informing the public about this offer, David Miller “has set labour relations in the city of Toronto back 30 years.”

    Wow.

    Ann Dembrinki may be many things, but she is not Norma Rae and Toronto is not Harlan County USA. If she really believes labour relations have been set back 30 years, then she will lead her union over a cliff before making any compromises.

    I am not optimistic for the future of labour under the leadership of zealots like Ann Dembrinki.

12. Darwin O’Connor> That NDP Green doc is pretty vague and does not satisfy the claim that the NDP/CAW was promoting greener cars.All it really talks about is fuel efficiency which is great but thats just one part of a larger strategy needed for green transit. Far from it the NDP and the CAW were dancing in the streets only 2 years ago when the Camero gas guzzler production came to Canada. I saw it on TV and thought “they are missing the larger point”. I am a lefty but the CAW and the NDP lost me some time ago.

13. I agree with Scott — that paper was not leadership in anyway. NDP’s conservatism may have pushed many to the Greens.

14. I think John is close to hitting the nail on the head on what is progressive. Unions in todays world are reactionary not progressive. Forestry workers want to cut down trees, Miners want cut down trees, Fishermen want more fish, Electrical workers want nuclear power and CUPE wants their own self interest put before the public interest. The bottom line is as a society we are all in this together but the Union movement wants to continue their Class Struggle ideology when it far past its’ past due’ date. If CUPE and others continue in their irrational claims to entitlement they will damn themselves to the ‘dust bin of history.’

15. I cannot agree with any classists arguments about the strike. The issue is way too complex to make generalizations like that. Besides, many people of all income levels live in apartments and condominiums that are unaffected by the strike.

16. Oh, I don’t think class issues are past their ‘due date’, but neither do I think Marxist analysis is going to solve it. We have to think much more simply. We live in a world with finite resources, too many people on it, who want to live well, and too much disparity between them. We have the unlikely choice of solving this ourselves, or ‘mother nature’ is going to solve it for us. Not going to be pretty.