Unionized Labour in Ontario - Family Status Accommodation

Greetings Sisters and Brothers,

On February 21, 2013 a special report was released within the Toronto
Star on “Unionized Labour in Ontario.” PSAC National and PSAC
Ontario placed an ad within this report demonstrating PSAC’s recent
win for family status accommodation.

The ruling was won in Federal Court and states employers must try to
accommodate workers with childcare obligations, brought forward from a
Customs and Immigration Union member, a Component of PSAC. To view this
accomplishment visit:
http://www.psac.com/news/2013/what/20130213-e.shtml

Included in this special report is a “Panel of Experts” column on
page 11, which discusses the importance of unions.

Sharon DeSousa, PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President for Ontario is
part of this panel and provides answers to these questions. 

Please see the attached PDF of the special report.

In Solidarity,
PSAC Ontario

On 'Right to work' and the RAND formula

'Right to work' is right to work for less

as published in the Financial Post

Conservative Member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre is right: Judge Ivan Rand did rule that employees should "take the burden with the benefit" ("Unions ignore the Rand formula," Feb. 6 article posted below).

And Rand's formula does oblige workers who benefit from collective agreements and union representation to pay for those benefits. But that makes sense: Why should only some of the people in a workplace pay for something everyone in that workplace benefits from?

What Mr. Poilievre is wrong about is that workers would somehow benefit if the Conservative government did away with that formula. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is legally bound to represent all employees covered by our collective agreements, which is why all employees pay dues. Taking that away would destroy our ability to effectively represent workers and maintain the collective agreements they rely on.

That would seem to be Mr. Poilievre's objective. This is an attempt to import an American idea designed to undermine the rights of the people unions represent.

Eliminating mandatory dues has meant lower wages for both union and non-union workers in the U.S.'s "right to work" states - US$1,540 a year less than similar workers in other states. Is this what Mr. Poilievre wants for his constituents in Nepean-Carleton?

Mr. Poilievre argues that Judge Rand never contemplated the sorts of political action that unions take part in when he came up with his famous formula. He also probably never contemplated mobile phones, but it doesn't mean unions should not use them either. The fact is Canada is a more complicated place now and employee wages and working conditions are also affected by the courts, human rights commissions and indeed Parliament.

And a union that cannot act on behalf of its members before these bodies isn't going to be very effective at the bargaining table either.

Just last week, the PSAC won a major federal court victory for all working families because we stood up to the government, as an employer, for refusing to accommodate a worker who needed fixed shifts so she could arrange childcare.

The PSAC used the Canadian Human Rights Act to win pay equity adjustments plus interest for more than 200,000 current and former workers in the federal government, the government of the Northwest Territories and Canada Post.

PSAC's "Black Paper" campaign won health and safety protection under the law for federal government workers. Just imagine your working day without the right to a safe and healthy workplace. And there are so many more examples.

None of these would have been possible if unions didn't have the finances necessary to advocate for their members - not just at the bargaining table, but also before Parliament, human rights tribunals and the courts.

Is that what Pierre Poilievre wants for his constituents (which include, by the way, about 5,400 PSAC members)? If so, perhaps they should be able to opt out of paying some of their taxes - possibly an amount equivalent to what the MP for Nepean-Carleton has spent railing against the Rand formula.

Robyn Benson is the national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Unions ignore the Rand formula     If they don’t follow it, why should anyone?

Some people would have time to practise what they preach, if they did not spend every waking hour preaching, as The Dallas Morning News wrote in 1891.
Such is the case when union leaders preach, but don’t practise, the so-called “Rand formula.” Its namesake, Justice Ivan Rand, crafted it in his arbitration of the 1946 Ford Motors strike in Windsor. It imposes compulsory union dues on all employees in a unionized workplace, which labour leaders have turned into a $4-billion-a-year industry.
Now that northern American states are joining other U.S. and European jurisdictions in making dues voluntary, union bosses here are going apoplectic at the prospect that Canadian workers might now demand the same free choice. So they have made Rand into Moses, and his formula into the 11th commandment.
Well, kind of. But not really.
The truth is that, other than the guaranteed dues, union leaders actually don’t like the Rand formula. They have appropriated vast financial powers that the formula never authorized and imposed a form of forced association that it specifically forbade.
For example, according to its 2011 financial statements, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) spent $2.8-million on “political action and campaigns”, $3.8-million on “participation in the labour movement” and $247,715 on a “social justice fund.” That is the spending of one union. There are another 777 unions in Canada, who can force workers to fund politics.
By contrast, Rand’s formula only required employees to fund the bargaining and administration of the collective agreement — nothing more. “I consider it entirely equitable then,” wrote Rand, “that all employees should be required to shoulder their portion of the burden of expense for administering the law of their employment, the union contract [the collective agreement].” His decision used the term “bargaining agent” six different times to refer to the union, which clearly delineated its raison d’être: bargaining — not politics.
An employee was only to pay the union if and when benefiting from the union’s agreement. “My award is a check-off compulsory upon all employees who come within the unit to which the agreement applies. It shall continue during the period of the contract.” Judge Rand ruled that workers would “take the burden along with the benefit.”

But union spending on political and social causes brings the employee no benefit — only burden. What “benefit” did Jewish health care workers gain when the Canadian Union of Public Employees forced them to fund an Israel boycott? Does a federal public servant (whose job literally depends on a united Canada) “benefit” from his union’s recent support of separatist parties in the last Quebec election? These are questions for workers to answer. It is their money. Presently, they have no choice but to pay for causes that have nothing to do with their workplaces.
If union leaders want to fund ideological causes, they should raise voluntary donations like every other group in civil society. Groups like the Canadian Cancer Society advance unassailable causes. Yet, their lobbying and advocacy come from voluntary donations.
Likewise for unions in Europe, where six years ago in the Evaldsson case the European Court of Human Rights ruled that forcing a worker to fund political causes against his conscience, and without his individual consent, violated his human rights.
It is also a violation of human rights to force someone to join a union, according to Judge Rand: “it would deny the individual Canadian the right to seek work and to work independently of personal association with any organized group.”
Yet read Article 4 of the National Organized Workers Union contract with ABC Climate Control Systems: “All employees who are presently employed by the Employer must, as a condition of employment, become and/or maintain their Union membership in good standing.”
Agreements like this are common. They violate the Rand formula and, incidentally, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.”
In its 2006 ruling Sørensen and Rasmussen v. Denmark, the European Court of Human Rights also ruled that forced union membership contravenes freedom of association. “Accordingly, Article 11 [freedom of association] must also be viewed as encompassing a negative right of association or, put in other words, a right not to be forced to join an association.”
In these respects, European courts are more faithful to Judge Rand than are his purported champions in Canada’s labour movement. Which begs the question: If union leaders refuse to follow the Rand Formula, then why should anyone else?

Pierre Poilievre is a Conservative Member of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/02/05/unions-ignore-the-rand-formula/

 

Toronto Star's Linda McQuaig on Tuesday February 12, 2013

Opinion / Editorial Opinion

Unions in Canada under siege from government, business and media: McQuaig

CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES, JAMES COLLECTION

Workers often toiled 10 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week in the 19th century. In the decades that followed the Great Depression, unions won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. 

By: Linda McQuaig Columnist, Published on Tue Feb 12 2013

Although much denigrated by the right these days, union activists are, as the old saying notes, “the people who brought you the weekend.”

The right apparently wants you to believe that the weekend is now out of date.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, along with influential members of the corporate and media world, are hostile to unions, rarely missing an opportunity to portray union leaders as autocratic “bosses.”

Yet, if you’re middle class, a union probably helped you or your ancestors get there. In the 19th century, workers typically toiled 10 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week. Unions fought to change that. In the decades that followed the Great Depression, unions won higher wages and better working conditions for their members, setting a standard with ripple effects that led to a better deal for all workers.

But in recent decades, many of the precious, hard-fought union gains — job security, workplace pensions, as well as broader social goals like public pensions and unemployment insurance — have been under fierce attack by the corporate world (where workers really are under the thumb of unelected “bosses”).

Part of the strategy has been to pit worker against worker. So, as private sector workers have lost ground, they’ve been encouraged to resent public sector workers, whose unions have generally been stronger and better able to protect them.

With workers increasingly baited into a dogfight against each other, it’s been easier to make the case that unions are no longer relevant.

But, given the intensity of the attack, unions are likely more necessary than ever. If you’ve grown attached to the weekend, not to mention the eight-hour day, this probably isn’t the time to throw unions under the bus.

In fact, they’re really the only organized line of defence against the broad right-wing assault on a wide range of social programs and government regulations important to most Canadians.

We’re told that many of these benefits and protections have to be cut back to make our economy more flexible in an era of globalization.

In fact, what is referred to as “globalization” is simply the set of laws governing the global economy. There’s nothing natural or inevitable about these laws, which have been crafted by corporate interests and their think-tanks. They just reflect the growing political muscle of the corporate elite, which has reshaped international and domestic laws in recent decades to their own advantage.

One of the most outrageous attacks on hard-won benefits was Harper’s decision last year to raise public pension eligibility by two years. Most commentators supported the move, noting that people are living longer.

But this misses the point. The real question is: as the country has grown richer, who should benefit? Under the more egalitarian system that prevailed during the early postwar decades, the economic benefits would have been more widely shared and could have been used to actually lower the retirement age (or extend holiday time, such as in Scandinavia, where the norm is six weeks paid vacation).

A few decades ago, North Americans often whimsically posed the question: in the future, what will we do with all our leisure time?

As it turned out, our leisure time shrunk (with two years of it now snatched away by the Harper government).

Indeed, instead of being widely shared, almost all the benefits of economic growth in recent decades have been siphoned off by a small corporate elite.

It’s that same corporate elite, and its political and media supporters, who now assure us that unions are no longer relevant.

This is curious, since corporations still see the wisdom in collective action for themselves; they band together to form business lobby groups. But, when it comes to working people, collective action is apparently out of date.

Lined up against today’s worker is the corporate world — the most powerful set of interests in history.

But, hey, why would a worker want to act collectively when she could take on this corporate Goliath all on her own?

the upcoming PSAC Ontario Council meeting

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

 

I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to observe the upcoming PSAC Ontario Council meeting scheduled for February 22nd and 23rd, 2013 at the Delta Meadowvale Resorts in Mississauga 

(6750 Mississauga Road, Mississauga ON L5N 2L3).

Our hours of sitting are: Friday February 22 from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Saturday, February 23 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

 

If you are, or will be in the Toronto area and would like to attend, please RSVP to my Executive Assistant, Cleo Reid (reidc@psac.com). 

 

Note this is a scent-free environment. 

 

In Solidarity,

Sharon DeSousa

 

REVP, Ontario

Public Service Alliance of Canada

90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 608

Toronto Ontario M4P 2Y3

Telephone No. (416) 485-3558 ext 231

Fax No. (416) 485-8607

Email: desouss@psac.com

 

                                                              Agenda                  

PSAC Ontario Council

    February 22 & 23, 2013

____________________________________________________________

  

1.           Adoption of Agenda

2.          Adoption of previous meeting minutes (November 2-3, 2012)

3.           Business arising from previous minute

4.           REVP Report

5.           Regional Office - Updates (Chris Wilson)

6.           Ontario Council Committees Reports

7.           Ontario Council Committees - Changes

8.           Ontario Council Members Reports

9.           Fight-back Plan

·        Activities for the Summer

·        Labour Day

10.       Collective Bargaining

11.       Toronto/York District Labour Council Presentation

12.       PSAC Ontario Regional Triennial Convention

·        Theme

·        Convention Committees

·        Delegate Assistance Committee

·        Meet & Greet

13.       PSAC National Leadership Summit

14.       PSAC Ontario Strategic Plan

15.       In Camera Session

16.       OFL Rights and Democracy Rally

17.       Rand Formula

18.       New Business

2013 PSAC Ontario Regional Women’sConference

If any woman in the Local is at all interested in attending, please talk to Paula , before applying.


Greetings Sisters,

We are pleased to announce the 2013 PSAC Ontario Regional Women’s
Conference will be held on May 31 - June 2, 2013 in Toronto.

The Conference theme is “Reach, Mobilize and Get Involved”. 

Delegates to the Conference will be selected based on the criteria
outlined in the registration application. 

Sisters from Components, Directly Chartered Locals, Area Councils,
Human Rights Committees, Regional or National Officers and who are
members of the PSAC Ontario Regional Council are encouraged to attend.

Please visit our site:
www.psac.com/ontario. 

The deadline for applications and resolutions
is March 29th, 2013.

In Sisterhood and Solidarity,

Colleen Wice,
Regional Women’s Committee Representative, PSAC Ontario Council

Sharon DeSousa,
PSAC Regional Executive Vice-President, Ontario

Changes in legislation - Harassment and Bullying

We are circulating information on new changes in regards to Harassment and
Bullying in the workplace for federal employees.

Federal Public Sector Employers are legally required under the Canada
Labour Code to provide employees with a safe and healthy work
environment free of all types of violence, including harassment and
bullying.

With the introduction of the Canada Occupational Health and Safety
Regulations - Violence Prevention in the Work Place; the landscape has
significantly changed in terms of how we view and deal with harassment.

Please go to the website shown below to access documents that are helpful to members in understanding the changes in legislation with respect to Harassment and Bullying in the
workplace.

http://ontario.psac.com/harassment-and-bullying-forms-of-workplace-violence