Unions: Too powerful or too weak?

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By Roderick Benns

Roderick Benns is the publisher of The Advocate. An award-winning author and journalist who grew up in Lindsay, he has written several books including Basic Income: How a Canadian Movement Could Change the World.

This is the height of irony, then, that globally powerful corporations convinced average people that it was the unions which were too strong.

I remember having a discussion with my late father about unions, somewhere around 1990. He told me they were “a good thing once.”

And then he added, “But they’ve gotten too strong.”

Too strong. I started to hear that a lot over the years. In hindsight, it’s amazing to me how the perspective of the corporate world so quickly found its way into the average person’s mind. It’s exactly what they wanted us to believe — that strong unions were impeding the growth of jobs. After all, didn’t we all want more jobs?

We did, but it took a long, long time for society to realize the kind of jobs corporations preferred to give were the ones that didn’t pay very well, often didn’t have benefits, and might not even be full time. All that pesky union talk which involved negotiating (how time consuming!) just got in the way of enormous companies doling out their crap jobs that kept corporate profits so high.

So given this, why were people like my dad beginning to parrot the corporate line about unions becoming too strong?

It’s a process identified by scholar Antonio Gramsci, “by which the ideas and values of the wealthy and powerful are imposed upon and accepted by those being dominated,” according to York University professor Dennis Raphael.

In this case, the accepted belief is that somehow unions are too strong and are to be avoided whenever possible.

This is the height of irony, then, that globally powerful corporations convinced average people that it was the unions which were too strong.

Unionization rates are also low because of an assist from governments, too, which are far too cozy with corporate interests. Until 1977, workplaces in Canada could be organized by having a majority of workers sign a card indicating a wish for a union. But five provinces have removed this process in favour of an election: Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan, which makes up 70 per cent of Canada’s workforce.

“This shift allows employers to mobilize opposition to unionization through a range of tactics — some of them questionable — making it unlikely that certification of a union will occur,” Raphael writes.

Now, as corporate profits are soaring, too many of us are working multiple jobs and are struggling to provide the basics for our families. This, incidentally, has ignited the political polarization being felt in all western nations. So many people are angry because they have become economically marginalized and are looking for an outlet for their anger. All of this can be traced back to the rise of corporate power and the relative demise of union strength.

If we look at evidence, we know that unionized workers have higher wages, more benefits and better health outcomes than the non-unionized. Unions care about good jobs, decent pay, retirement security — things any of us would want.

Too strong, Dad?

No. Not strong enough – and that needs to change.

8 Comments

  1. Frances Moore says:

    Great article Mr. Benns. Since the Dawn of time this has been going on. Keep the little guy in his place. Thank you for your great magazine!

  2. Barry King says:

    Great article Mr B , for decades the corporate world has effectively been permeating propanda that unions were once needed but not any longer ” It has caught on . I think that there can be a good case to bring forward that Unions are needed more than ever. Over the years fewer company’s provide defined benefit pensions , less job security , little if any employee benefits such as prescription coverage etc. the list goes on.

  3. Ron Sutch says:

    I agree with you! We must remember that people fought hard and some even lost lives in their efforts to create unions there were and still are reasons why it remains important that they remain strong. Just look at the medical profession like nurses. RT’s and teachers to name a few who made strong movements to make great strides with their unions over many many years of negotiation. Now the corporations and the governments are trying to break these unions by refusing to sit down and negotiate a deal until there is a resolution on both sides and pass bills to be forced back to work. I say keep unions strong to keep avo ice for workers in all professions and trades.

  4. Wayne Medford says:

    Excellent piece. I find it completely baffling that a ‘city’ such as Kawartha Lakes would ever vote Conservative given the demographics of the ‘city’. The labour unions are what has expanded the middle class. People seem to forget that ‘private’ companies and corporations are in business to make a profit for the ‘owners’ and ‘shareholders’. Profit is achieved by ‘efficiencies’ and ‘low cost’. Both of these factors are achieved at the expense of the ‘worker’. A corporation or private company’s objective is to pay the workers the least and demand to most. Therefore, guaranteeing higher profit for the owner[s] and the share holders. The Conservative Party supports this model. They demonize
    labour as being ‘too strong’ or empowering ‘inefficiencies’ or being ‘controlled by the ‘union bosses’. Their main objective is to get rid of unions so the corporate and private owners to have ‘cheap labour.’ The current provincial government, led by Laurie Scott, removed the ‘Basic Income Guarantee’…they also froze minimum wages, they pay health care workers a shameful wage, etc.etc. They also hate ‘regulations’ aimed at protecting workers, controlling hours of work, providing safe working conditions etc. etc.
    The union movement is there for the workers. It has provided reasonable wages, safe working conditions, health benefits and often a decent pension.
    Unions need to be strong to counterbalance the political and corporate philosophy of maximizing profit at the expense of the worker.

    • Joan Abernethy says:

      It is ignorant to demonize the Conservative Party of Canada, the Ontario PC Party and MPP Laurie Scott as representing only the interests of big business. That is simply false.

      That local basic income project was too small to generalize to bigger populations and projects and it benefitted only those managing the pilot and a few of their friends, the rest of the suffering poor be damned. That is why it was cancelled, not because Conservatives oppose welfare generally and basic income law in particular.

      We have way more data than we need to get on with the business of welfare reform. But it needs to be done at the federal level and it needs to replace the bloated provincial programs. The biggest cost of poverty in Canada is the bureaucracy paid to administer it. If Canada were to pass basic income legislation to replace the bloated poverty industry that requires more and more poverty all the time to grow its workforce, salaries, benefits and CEO bonuses, we could pay single people (the largest group of poor) three times what we do now. If we were to implement a system of basic income administered by CRA software, we’d also save taxpayers millions of dollars in administration costs. That is what Conservative Party of Canada Senator, Hugh Segal, advised in his report “In From the Margins”.

      Former Ontario Premier, Ernie Eves, a member of the Ontario PC Party, also champions basic income.

      As did Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize winner in economics and a Libertarian Conservative.

      It is inhumane to keep growing public service welfare unions at the expense of Canada’s starving, freezing homeless.

    • Joan Abernethy says:

      Check this out: it’s PM Brian Mulroney supporting basic income legislation. https://youtu.be/80elRJ9kAEA

  5. Freya Keddie says:

    Great article!
    I will point out, though, that in April of 2022 the BC NDP Govt announced amendments to the labour code to make union certifications automatic if 55 per cent of employees in a workplace sign membership cards.
    (more here) https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022LBR0006-000485

    The current govt is making steady progress in overturning the damage done during 16 years of the former BC Liberal govt (whose big-business supporters are not happy, to say the least)

    It’s true that the former BC Liberal govt (recently rebranded as “BC United Party”), undermined the right to unionize & even tore up contracts. The 16 years they were in power were not good times for working people.

  6. Joan Abernethy says:

    As Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out, when robotics replace not only physical labour but also intellectual labour, those billionaires who own most of the world’s capital will have no more need to educate or to provide health care or security for the rest of us because they will no longer need us to perform their labour. It is just a matter of time.

    This reality is why some intellectuals are talking about stakeholder capitalism and a less or non-confrontational means of finding a way to live peacefully together with those with whom we differ.

    “Sundown on the union in the USA
    Sure was a good idea ’til greed got in the way”
    (Bob Dylan, Sundown on the Union)

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