What started as a day of demonstrations and historic struggles for workers’ rights has now morphed into a day of leisure and a celebration of the last long weekend of summer. Any thoughts of work are typically washed away with beer.
On April 15, 1872, the Toronto Trades Assembly organized Canada’s first large-scale demonstration for workers’ rights. An estimated 2000 workers and 10,000 spectators gathered to demand the release of 24 leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union that represented workers at the Toronto Globe (now known as the Globe and Mail). They had been imprisoned for striking to reduce their workday to nine hours and their work week to 58 hours. Several months later, on September 3, Ottawa unions organized a similar demonstration that deliberately led past the home of Canada’s Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.
Macdonald had long been a political rival of George Brown, the founder and editor of the Globe, so he was quite willing to speak out on their behalf, vowing to do away with laws that banned strikes. He quickly acted on that pledge, more likely because of the opportunity to stick it to his mortal enemy than any altruistic desires.
Twenty years later, on July 23, 1894, Parliament declared Labour Day a Canadian holiday to be held each year on the first Monday of September. Other countries followed Canada’s example and Labour Day is now celebrated in many countries around the world as Labour Day, International Workers Day or May Day.
Historically, unions acted to improve workers’ lives through better pay, hours, benefits and safety measures. But what started as a noble cause to free workers from bad employers who had all the power has degenerated into a less than noble cause where union leaders and bureaucracies have all the power. Ironically, in some cases, workers’ rights remain oppressed simply because workers have traded the tyranny of bad employers for the tyranny of bad unions.
Some Canadian unions have been campaigning for a Workers’ Bill of Rights using the mantra “labour rights are human rights.” But, the truth is, Canada’s unions deny their own members one of the most basic human rights stated by the UN’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Article 20 (2) states, “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.” In other words, it’s a basic human right for individuals to make a free choice about joining – or rejecting – an association such as a union.
Yet, many Canadian unions demand collective agreements based on forced membership (which tends to put a damper on one’s right to freely choose to not join a union). Any individual that wishes to be employed in that workplace must join the union and pay full union dues as a condition of employment. Is this really a denial of human rights? Forced membership and dues aren’t even allowed in other countries. The nations that make up the Council of Europe have a free choice about union membership – because of human rights rulings. Other countries, like the US, New Zealand and Australia have their right to choose protected by laws.
So while Canadian unions are whining for political leaders to recognize their Bill of Rights that proclaims workers have the right to freedom of association, other countries actually give their workers freedom of association in its fullest form – where workers can accept or reject an association.
More irony comes in the form of harassment. I’ve written on numerous occasions about The Lively Seven—seven female bank employees in Lively, Ontario, who complained to the federal labour board that representatives and supporters of United Steelworkers of America had repeatedly harassed them, invaded their privacy and provided deliberate misinformation during a union drive. Union reps entered their homes and refused to leave – even when asked – until a union card was signed.
But the labour board dismissed the complaints, stating they “stemmed from a lack of knowledge about the unionization process.” In other words, union harassment of workers is so common that the labour board considers it standard union practice.
In the Northwest Territories, an unpopular strike at a diamond mine (where nine replacement workers at a nearby gold mine had been killed by a bomb blast in a 1992 strike) forced the union (PSAC) to use heavy-handed tactics in ‘encouraging’ work compliance on the picket line. A territorial Supreme Court later found the union guilty of unlawful activities (against its own members).
Ah, the many ironies associated with Canadian unions and their so-called drive for workers’ rights.
No wonder unionization rates have fallen from 35% in 1994 to 29% today. This rate is sustained primarily by high unionization in the union’s last stronghold, the public sector (71.4%), compared to a mere 17% in the private sector.
No wonder Canadians spend their Labour Days celebrating summer and family fun instead of unions and their inglorious drive to better the lives of Canadian workers.
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