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Striking union members prevent a bus carrying workers from entering Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alta. on Oct. 13, 2005. (CP PHOTO/Larry MacDougal) |
INDEPTH: STRIKE
Strikes: A Canadian History
CBC News Online | Feb. 22, 2006
John A. Macdonald
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It was 1872 when John A. Macdonald's government introduced the Trade Unions Act that said when workers banded together to fight for better conditions, it was not to be considered an illegal conspiracy. That didn't mean that companies couldn't call in the militia to break up strikes, or that company towns couldn't just shut down if workers asked for too much, but it was better than labour was used to. Compare, for instance, the Nova Scotia law from earlier in the century that said workers who tried to bargain for better pay or conditions could be put in prison.
Canada was five years old the year of the Trade Unions Act and caught, like the rest of the western world, in the momentous cultural, political, and economic changes of the Industrial Revolution: expansion of transportation networks, magnetic urban centres, burgeoning industry. The machine had moved in, even into the land of farmers, foresters and fishermen. Less than 25 years before, Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto had warned that the owners of the machines and the people who worked at them were like owls and mice, natural and irreconcilable enemies.
The Trade Unions Act was Macdonald's response to a time of labour turmoil. Many Canadian workers that year were supporting the "Nine-Hour Movement" whose aim was to reduce the workday to nine hours from as much as twelve. The same year, 1,500 workers marched through the streets of Hamilton, and Toronto printers went on strike against George Brown, founder of The Globe. Labour wanted more than to be treated like interchangeable parts in the machinery, like gears and levers, to be casually replaced when they wore down.
A Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital in 1889 recognized the social value of unions and by 1894 labour had become so respectable that the first Monday in September became a national holiday to acknowledge their contribution to society. In 1900, Canada got a Department of Labour to become involved in trying to settle disputes between workers and owners (though calling in the militia was still an option).
Karl Marx
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In the century since, labour has made great gains in power and prestige and been involved in both acts of social improvement and acts of mob intimidation and violence. Times have changed unimaginably in the world of employment since workers began grouping together. Demands to improve inhuman working conditions have turned, over time, to demands for employment security. But labour's big gun is still the strike.
It's impossible to count the number of times labour has withdrawn itself since the advent of The Department of Labour. Here's a quick canvass.
- 1909: Fort William freight handlers strike against the CPR. Gun battles ensue. Militia and Royal Canadian Mounted Rifles brought in to restore order.
- 1919: Admittedly a mythic year. There were over 400 strikes in Canada, three of them- the famous Winnipeg, Amherst, N.S., and Toronto- general strikes.
- 1923: Cape Breton mine and steel workers strike. Troops brought in.
- 1924: First national postal strike
- 1937: Labour Gazette says 72,000 Canadians are on strike or locked out.
- 1946: Stelco, Hamilton. 2700 workers strike. Replacement workers brought in. One witness reported that 300 club-wielding men attacked picketing strikers. Dozens injured on both sides.
Post-war
In 1946, Justice Ivan Rand of the Supreme Court of Canada was arbitrating a strike of 17,000 workers at the Ford plant in Windsor. His decision incorporated the formula that bears his name and was based on the premise that every worker benefits from an existing shop union and must therefore contribute to it. Rand's solution was that all workers in a union shop should have dues deducted from their cheques whether or not they actually belonged to the union. The union would be assured financial support for its agenda but in return there would be economic penalties imposed on it for illegal work stoppages.
In 1956, the Canadian Labour Congress was formed, amalgamating several existing labour organizations, and was involved in the founding of the New Democratic Party.
In July of 1965, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which didn't have the right to withdraw its services legally, staged a wildcat strike that lasted over two weeks and ended only when Prime Minister Lester Pearson agreed to extend collective bargaining rights to the public service. The legal strike had entered the workings of government. More than four decades later we face the threat of strikes in hospitals, school and universities, crown corporations, and even (call in the militia!) the Senate.
Why Strike?
The union is an attempt to adjust a power imbalance, to make the employee as strong as the employer by acting as a single united group. The basic weapon is the strike, the withdrawal of services en masse. The absence of any individual worker is incidental but a factory that sits idle because there is no one working its machinery (whether drill presses or computers) is a costly burden. The strike can only fully succeed, however, as long as production idleness can be forced, hence the contempt reserved in union circles for the "scab," the worker who is prepared to keep production moving, even if at a reduced level.
The intention of the strike is to cost the employer so much that it becomes cheaper, sometimes even essential for economic survival, to give in to the demands of the workers. The natural cap on workers' demands is theoretically the viability of the company. There's no point in asking for so much that giving it would produce bankruptcy. You can ask for a bigger share of the profits, but never so much that it doesn't leave enough to keep the company alive and humming. And employing.
Which is why it's such an interesting wrinkle on the idea of the strike that so many unions now work in places where there are no profits to share in. While it makes sense that a worker shouldn't lose rights merely because it's the government signing the paycheque, when there's no tally of demands that will drive the employer into financial ruin, what's the limit to what a striking union can ask for? The answer seems to be that government can do what no private sector employer can: legislate workers back, though the consequent rancour goes into the "incalculable" column of the ledger.
That simple description of the relationship, however, masks a complex series of calculations. If there are no books to peruse, no way of computing the value of the worker to the bottom line, the argument for fair return is hazier, certainly the definition of "fair" is more difficult to establish.
Sometimes, for instance, public sector workers may feel cheated, as if they've fairly limited their demands during bad economic times only to find themselves given an unfair share when better times return. It's the public sector equivalent of an argument for profit-sharing.
Do strikes pay off? Well that, of course, has to be answered on a case by case basis. But after the calculations are done there's always one uncomputable cost: strikes emphasize as nothing else can the "us versus them" relationship between two groups of people who, in a perfect world, would have an effortlessly symbiotic relationship. Labour and management need each other.
The posturing on both sides of a strike is predictable, with management claiming poverty and workers demanding what they see as their due. Spokespeople for both sides make insulting comments about the other group, impugning their honesty and, sometimes, their value. Onlookers watch the spectacle as if it were wrestling. What isn't seen clearly by watchers is the terrible human price. Though the rise of unions has meant that striking workers may get some small amount of money while picketing, a family that normally lives paycheque to paycheque faces quick crisis. That, of course, is what management wants.
Strikes are never flippant acts. The cost is too great. They are usually the result of broken down negotiations, long periods with no existing contract because no agreement can be reached, or threats the employees perceive as severe enough to require the most serious available response. Unfortunately, the strength of a striking group of workers- mass action- can have a dark face as well: mob rule and the protection provided by anonymity. It is not rare that strikes produce vandalism, intimidation, and violence.
It's easy to say that there has to be a better way to settle conflicts between employers and employees than the strike. Unfortunately, none has emerged with the persuasiveness necessary to replace the old way. The advent of the professional mediator is one bright spot.
It would be nice finally to prove Marx wrong. Maybe workers and managers don't have to be owls and mice, perpetually in conflict. But so far, more than a century and a half later, the biggest change in that direction is that the mice have joined together and armed themselves.
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