Unions in Kawartha Lakes

New economies, new challenges

By David Rapaport, adjunct professor of sociology, Trent University

The recent history of the labour movement in Kawartha Lakes reflects the recent history of the labour movement in Canada. The local experience cannot be separated from its wider context.

On the national level, union density remains at about 30 per cent, the same level that we have seen since the 1960s. Union density is the percentage of workers who are represented by a union, as their bargaining agent at work. That is one detail of what differentiates Canada from the United States. Union density rates in the U.S. were also about 30 per cent 50 years ago. Currently, that figure has been reduced to about 11 per cent. This is a result of more conservative and anti-union governments resulting in weaker social support systems. Unions have persistently been advocates for stronger public support systems, such as health care, employment insurance and income floors for more vulnerable people.

A big shift occurred in the later part of the last century. With the general rise of free trade and more specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), there has been a departure of manufacturing from Canada to cheaper and less regulated labour zones in other parts of the world. This has been particularly harmful for southern Ontario, the manufacturing heartland of Canada.

Post-Confederation and for more than a century, Canadian companies and workers benefitted from national policies that protected manufacturing plants and jobs. Mainly because of unions, industrial unions such as the Auto Workers (UAW, CAW, and UNIFOR) and the Steel Workers (USWA), these jobs became well-paying and secure. They served as the economic and commercial backbone of communities across southern Ontario – Lindsay included. Troubled by the prospect of the flight of business and deindustrialization, the labour movement opposed former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States – expanded to include Mexico in 1993.

The worst-case scenario did result as many businesses fled. Canada lost good paying union jobs. Now we are paying the price in smaller communities, those that cannot compete for the more specialized and higher paying jobs in the high tech, telecommunications economies. For those jobs, a move to Toronto, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, and other large centres is usually essential.

Deindustrialization clearly resulted in the loss of good jobs in our community. The General Electric (GE) experience in Peterborough is a well-documented example. By the late 1960s, GE employed about 6,000 workers in Peterborough in well-paying jobs, in skilled jobs, in union jobs. The United Electrical Workers (UE) was the bargaining agent for these workers for decades and delivered good wages for their membership. The work at the GE plant and the jobs disappeared slowly in the late 20th century as large areas of southern Ontario joined the so-called rust belt in the U.S. (The rust belt includes parts of the northeastern and midwestern U.S. characterized by declining industry.) Companies fled to cheaper labour zones knowing that free trade agreements allowed open, duty-free access into the Canadian market. Today, the GE plant in Peterborough is no more, at least from a manufacturing perspective. It stopped manufacturing in 2018. Now, only a handful of engineering and sales roles remain. A similar tragedy can be written for Oshawa; just substitute General Motors for GE and the Canadian Auto Workers for UE.

Losses in Kawartha Lakes

The Kawartha Lakes area has also experienced the loss of unionized manufacturing plants as well. They might not be the size of GE or GM but the disappearance of unionized, industrial and manufacturing plants in Kawartha Lakes has been deep and consequential. A short list includes the Uniroyal Tire Company, 400 workers represented by the United Rubber Workers; Viskase and Union Carbide, 400 workers represented by the GCIU; Fleetwood RV, 700 workers represented by UNITE; Turner and Seymour Chain Company, 100 workers represented by the United Steelworkers. And this is only a partial list.

The departure of a once-thriving manufacturing base provided the basis for a very specific form of unionization, one that thrived after the Second World War until the late 20th century. Since then, the Canadian economy has restructured, the labour movement has diminished and income inequality has soared.

Aside from the building trades and some local supermarkets, such as Loblaw’s, Reid’s Valu-mart, and Food Basics, there is a small presence of unionized workplaces in Lindsay outside the public sector. Public sector unions are found in the Lindsay correctional centre, Ontario government offices, and in city jobs for Kawartha Lakes. As well there are some at Ross Memorial Hospital, local school boards, and Fleming College.

The Canadian economy continues to polarize between high end jobs in the so-called creative economy and high-tech sector and low-end jobs in the precarious labour market and the ubiquitous gig economy.

The challenge for the labour movement is to organize workers at the lower end, where jobs are poorly paid, less secure, lack benefits and are directed by artificial intelligence and computer platforms. There are attempts to organize these workers – in the retail sector, in ride-share companies and food-delivery operations. In the United States, more than 300 Starbuck locations and one Amazon warehouse have been union certified in the past few years.

Gig companies like Uber, Lyft and Uber-Eats are using a legalized form of union-busting by declaring their workers ‘independent-contractors’ rather than employees, removing these workers from the protection of employment standards and collective bargaining. That tactic is being challenged in courts and at labour boards.

In the Advocate last year (February, 2023), local Lindsay + District Labour Council President James Mulhern and I wrote about the two central themes in Canadian union history. The first is the enabling of democratic participation by working people in the workplace and in the wider community. The second is how collective bargaining produced a higher standard of living and better material conditions for unionized and non-unionized workers as well as the wider community. I would now like to add a third theme. In our world of a shrinking middle class, food insecurity, homelessness, and economic downward mobility, unions provide a backbone to our communities, both economic and social. The so-called new economies translate into precarious and gig work for too many workers, particularly those just entering the labour market. Only a robust labour movement, with unions that have the power to challenge the politics and economics of ultra-greed can effectively address those realities and inequalities.

It is only through unions that workers can exercise economic power in ways that address egregious forms of inequality and economic turmoil for a growing underclass and a shrinking middle class. The union movement is most responsible for the shared prosperity that we experienced in the not-so-distant past. The challenge for the new generation of unionists is to repeat and expand that earlier accomplishment.