Argle-bargle or fooferah?

The first three stories on this evening's news were related to labour disputes.

1. York University - Province is drafting back-to-back legislation.
2. OC Transpo - The most recent round of talks has failed between the City of Ottawa and bus operators.
3. Journal de Montreal - Prominent French-language newspaper locks out its employees over various disputes.

We will probably soon be hearing more about the following story which didn't make it onto tonight's program:

4. CAW - Auto Companies Push to Cut Labour Costs

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but this is starting to get ridiculous. But first, full disclosure: I've never been a very union-friendly person. I have been a member of two unions. I was a member of UFCW for three years. But I was a part-time employee and so the union didn't give me much of a thought. And as a university student, I suppose I was of some student union. I don't know what it was called; all I know was that they were focused solely on reducing tuition fees and shaking their fists at Israel, two things I'm not pariculary into. My experience with unions, then, has informed me that unions have a very narrow set of concerns, none of which have to do with the betterment of society.

In economic terms, a union is best understood as a cartel. The suppliers (workers) band together in order to raise their wage above the market price. A union is usually backed by law or social pressures. In fact, it must be; otherwise the cartel would not be able to enforce its program on individual members. For example, a worker who crosses the picket line is a "scab" and faces alientation from the community (and maybe even physical violence). These arrangements, legal and social alike, allow the union to exert an artificial collective strength.

Many people are sympathetic to the labour movement's cause, and thus are willing to accept striking powers as a "right". But we should be clear on something. The process by which a union achieves its goals is no different in structure that the process by which OPEC influence the price of oil (with especially devastating results for the West in the 1970s) or by which MLB owners agreed not to bid on each other's free agents in the 1980s. The word we usually use to refer to this type of activity is collusion. It is a criminal offence in Canada, except of course in the context of labour unions. In that case we call it legal strike action. I find it very odd that our government penalizes corporate collusion so heavily (rightly so!) while actually supporting labour collusion.

Unions are often perceived by the public as the defenders of the downtrodden. Indeed, unions have successfully cast themselves in this image, so-called promoters of social equality. But is this true? Maybe it was during the early stages of the labour movement. But those days are long gone and now unions are simply anachronistic institutions designed solely for the benefit of its members. There is no great social objective at stake. It is not altruism that drives unions in today's Canada. Quite the contrary, unions are motivated by the profit motive just like the corporations they so frequently abuse. Our laws and attitudes towards unions should be changed to reflect the fact that they are no different than the business to which they sell their services.

I think the recent spate of labour disputes is indicative of the union's moral decay. First, York University. Contract faculty, teaching assistants, and research assistants have now been on strike for nearly three months. This strike has cost 50,000 students a year's worth of schooling. And if the strike ends so that the lost semesters can be squeezed into the summer months, that means students will not be able to take summer jobs, an important source of income for many. I sympathize especially with those students who were poised to graduate this spring. Plans for grad school or careers will have to be put off. So what exactly was in the rejected offer? Nothing less than a 10+% wage increase over three years. That's an incredibly rich deal, especially considering the economic climate. The reason why the union is so against the deal is the duration. They want a two-year deal rather than a three-year deal so that the contract ends at the same time as most contracts at Ontario university. CUPE wants to time negotiations so that they have even greater bargaining power.

And let me tell you a little something about TAs. I was a TA at an Ontario university and these were the terms of my deal: $33/hr for 120 hours per semester. I probably only did 30-40 hours of TA-related work per semester, making my hourly wage over $100/hr. In fact, we were told from the outset that it was unlikely anybody would put in more than 60 hours. Being a TA is not just a way for profs to offload some grunt work; it's primarily a way to help fund graduate students. Apparently York's TAs already have one of the best set-ups in the province. The contract faculty have a rough time and I can understand their position (but of course they know all this before the make the career choice). But the TAs at York are displaying nothing but greed. Shame!

In Ottawa, bus drivers have been on strike since mid-December. The Union, which had been without a contract for awhile, planned their strike to coincide with the onset of winter, university exams, the Christmas holiday season, and the World Junior tournament. This is not a coincidence. The wage offer is an increase of 3.5% the first year and then 2% the two following years. But the union is adamant that it will not give up its scheduling rights, something the city wants to reclaim. As it stands right now, the union controls the schedule, a concession they "earned" during the last bus strike. This is very beneficial for the drivers since they can choose their shifts to maximize overtime. The city, understandably, wants to reverse this. Where else do you hear of workers at a large company choosing their exact hours?

The strike has had devastating effects for some people. Everyday in Ottawa one hears stories of people losing their jobs because they have no way of getting to work. Many of the elderly are shut in their homes, their only mode of transportation cut off. Traffic is terrible at rush hours and people walk (or bike!) kilometers every day through snow and cold. Downtown business are feeling the strike especially hard. It is, above all, the most vulnerable members of society that are bearing the burden of this strike.

The Ottawa bus strike and the York strike are similar in that the costs of the action are being borne primarily by the users, not the workers or management. This is not like a strike at, say, Ford. If Ford workers go on strike, consumers merely switch to one of its competitors. But if you're a student at York you have no alternative until the next academic year starts. You've committed yourself to that school. And if you're a user of public transit, where do you turn? You're a little bit better off than the student. You can turn to carpools are walking, but these are very inferior alternatives.

This is one of the greatest injustices perpetuated by unions on the rest of society. Because of the legal and social institutions that grant them massive market power, they are able to make decisions that affect outsiders without accounting for those external impacts. And why would they? Unions have no reason to consider students or bus riders or whoever else may be seriously affected by their actions. They are simply not interested in the common good. Anyone who tells you different is either misguided, delusional, or lying.

The dispute at le Journal is different. It's like my hypothetical strike at Ford. Newspapers readers have others options so although they may prefer le Journal they are not really hard done by. But it is a good example of another major problem with unions. A survey of 1200 Swedish human resource manages indicates that nearly 50 per cent of workers or union reps demand higher wages when they think the firm has the ability to pay. When the company is awash in cash, the union demands a bigger piece of the pie. Fair enough. Wages ought to be related to the value of what is being produced. However, the flip side is that these workers and unions should accept wage cuts when times are bad. But this is extremely rare. Unions are deathly afraid of giving up anything in the way of concessions. Already the CAW is telling the car companies they are unwilling to budge on wages. And at the same time they say they want to help improve cost competitiveness! What a joke. If there is another workers could help reduce costs besides accepting lower wages, they should be doing it anyways. The case is similar at le Journal, management is trying to cope with falling revenues related to changes within the news media sector, especially the rise of the internet. But the union, predictably, resists any changes.

I've always thought it was ironic that the labour movement is associated with the "progressives". Unions are among the least progressive organizations in our society. It is the corporations that are progressive and innovative, each one trying to find an edge over its competitions. Unions simply want to maintain the status quo, relics from another age.

I hope this little sermon has illustrated for you some of the major problems I see with unions. They are anti-competitve, collusive, harmful to outsiders, suppressive and reactionary. I still think unions can have a productive role to play in our economy. But as things stand today, they are not contributing in a positive fashion. We need to change not only the way we regulate labour organizations but also our attitudes toward them.