Are unions poised for a comeback?

Jordan If you’ve listened to some of the stories we tell on the show, then you know it’s a tough time to be a low income worker. The cost of living has never been higher. In many cases, the work has never been harder. The pandemic put millions of low income workers at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. And we’ve covered all the crap that they’ve had to put up with, from anti-maskers to antivaxxers, and a whole lot of angry people in between. And right now there is a real labor shortage. So if there was ever a time for workers to unite and demand better conditions and pay, you would think the past year or so would have been it. And yet…

News Clip 1 Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama will not be negotiating their work terms through a Union. In a historic election, the workers voted heavily against unionizing…

News Clip 2 …it was a workers protest this company was glad to allow for cameras today. Dozens of factory workers shouting, ‘we are with Tate’s cookies’ here in East Moriches and telling us they’re against unionizing.

Jordan Even as income inequality has risen, it’s remained incredibly difficult for workers to unionize. The percentage of workers who belong to a Union has plummeted over the past few decades. And even when Union drives pick up steam, today, companies like Amazon and others spend hundreds of millions of dollars to beat them back. But as we come out of this pandemic, and it becomes more and more clear that the labor shortage is real, that thousands of workers are unwilling to return to low paying, unsafe, or sole crushing jobs without real change, could this be the time when the pendulum begins to swing back towards organizing? What would it take for that to happen? And what kind of opposition would a new labor movement face?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Stephanie Ross is an associate professor of labor studies at McMaster University. Hey, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hi. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you for joining us. Why don’t we start with some context: with regards to unions and the labor movement in Canada, when was the heyday of that movement? When did it peak for lack of a better term?

Stephanie Yeah, it’s a good question. And I guess in part it depends on what you mean by heyday. So I’d say the first real surge of organizing that people remember was the 1940s, when the mass production industries like auto and steel got organized, really, for the first time. And tens of thousands of workers who had been excluded from the labor movement became unionized in what became very powerful unions like the United Auto Workers, later the Canadian Auto Workers and United Steel Workers. But then we had another big wave of organizing in Canada in the 1960s and 70s, when the vast majority of the public sector like civil servants, teachers, nurses, health care workers, social workers, et cetera, got unionized to the extent that the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which is now Canada’s largest Union, in that decade, was adding 1000 members a month. Their organizing Department really couldn’t even keep up with the demand.

So by the early 1990s, about 35% of workers in Canada were unionized. And that really is the numerical peak. And since then, we’ve seen a bit of fraying of the unionization rate and the presence of unionized workers in communities across the country. Although it’s important to note that unions are still very strong, especially when you compare to our American counterparts. So I would say the heyday of the labor movement in terms of numbers was probably in most recent memory between the 60s and the early 1990s. And I’d say in that period, too, in a lot of communities, the unionized part of the workforce had a really strong economic, political and social presence. So, for instance, economically, in a lot of places, the unionized industries could really set the terms of what non-union employers would do.

For instance, in Hamilton where I’m located, it’s well known that Stelco as a unionized steel mill, had a big impact on the non-Union Dofasco mill. That Dofasco had a regular practice of matching Union wages if only to avoid being unionized. So in order to undermine the basis on which their own employees might unionize, they would match what steel workers would negotiate at Stelco. So we kind of call that a Union spillover effect. And that was evident in a lot of places across the country.

And I’d say, too, that it’s really important to understand how Union’s bargaining power in that period between the 60s and the 90s really transformed working class people’s lives in Canada. Higher wages from collective bargaining meant for a lot of people home ownership for the first time, access to University and social mobility for their kids, an ability to save money and transfer some wealth to people’s kids. And I think the impact of unions on gender equality can’t be overstated. Women who enter into the public service and public sector jobs and therefore had access to unions, really for the first time from the 60s on, also really benefited from the equalizing impact that unions had on their wages and unions and continue to be extremely strong advocates for gender pay equity and other kinds of measures that equalize between different groups of workers.

Jordan So what happened in the early 90s that began the fraying process, as you put it?

Stephanie Yeah, that’s a good question. And there’s a number of things that converged in that period that over the course of the following 20 years really showed their impact. So people might remember that in the late 1980s in Canada our federal government signed two major free trade agreements, the free trade Agreement with the United States, and then later with Mexico. That first implementation of free trade between 88 and 93 saw massive job loss in industry and some industries that had been very strongly unionized, like, for instance, textiles and clothing, were almost nearly eliminated from Canada as companies began to relocate overseas to cheaper labor markets and could then sell their products to Canada without having to locate their manufacturing here. And that was replicated across lots of different industries. So free trade was a big part of the slide, especially in the private sector.

Other parts of the private sector where jobs were growing in Canada, were ones that unionization was always more difficult. So, for instance, in private services like retail dominated by global chains like McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, and now even more so with Amazon. They were, and continue to be strongly opposed to the presence of unions in their workplaces and willing to do do whatever it took to prevent unions from gaining a foothold. And believe me, unions did try and have tried repeatedly from the 90s on, to try to unionize those workplaces and have not been successful. And so the fact that the areas of job growth have been in those sectors that have a lot of really strong anti-Union employers and then also debilitated by the the kind of franchise structure of those employers made unionization very difficult.

Jordan So what does that mean then, compared to the peak?

Stephanie Well, it’s interesting, because if you look at the numbers, it doesn’t look that bad. So remember I said that in the early 90s, unionization had peaked at 35%. Really, we’re still on average at about 30%. It’s sort of fluctuated between, like 27 and 31 over the last 20 years. So that seems like a good news story. And in particular, in the public sector, we have extremely strong unionization still at about 70%.

Jordan So why does it feel like unions have lost some of the power that they once brought to the bargaining table?

Stephanie Yeah. Well, because the part of the story is in the private sector, where unionization is between 15% and 18%. And so the strength and the public sector really masks in the average the weakness of private sector unions. And those unions that still exist within the private sector don’t have as much bargaining power as they used to have. The advent of free trade has meant that there’s this threat of job loss that hangs over private sector workers. There’s always this fear that they’re going to shut this plant down and move it somewhere else. And that fear is not unreal. We have seen lots of examples of employers being willing to use that threat of job loss or the reality, the ability to move jobs out of Canada as a way to discipline workers. So I think that there has been in the private sector, some reduction of unions bargaining power.

In the public sector, it’s a slightly different story. You might say, well, with 70% unionization, the public sector should be very strong. And don’t get me wrong, they still are. But don’t forget that in the public sector, you have government that sets the terms in some important ways. And so what we’ve seen is that where where public sector workers have used their bargaining power to try to make economic gains for their members, very often, especially in key industries or key sectors, the government will use restrictive legislation like back to work legislation to basically prevent public sector workers from using what bargaining power they still do have.

Jordan So why are these multinational, global companies so opposed to unionization in North America? Theoretically, it wouldn’t impact the way they do business around the world. What’s at play here?

Stephanie That’s true. That is also a very good question, because we do see that McDonald’s in Sweden is unionized and there are good wages there. So why not here? I guess there might be a fear of a demonstration effect, because if you are not able to keep workers wages low in those sectors, it means that prices are going to have to go up. And it means that profits are going to go down. And so they can basically have a business model based on a low wage strategy. But I think that’s not the only reason. Unions also, besides improving people’s wages, which they still clearly do, there’s still a clear economic advantage to being unionized in terms of wages and benefits. But the other thing that unions do is they give workers a voice at work, and it means that employers can can’t just do whatever they wish. They do have to negotiate with unions, whether it’s over the terms and conditions of work that forms a collective agreement or how they’re going to implement certain kinds of changes at work, like technological change or new policies and procedures. And so that sharing of power in the workplace is a threat to the orientation and business model of a lot of these companies.

Jordan So now let’s talk about what’s happened during this pandemic. Obviously, we’ve realized or should have realized at least just how essential, quote, unquote essential workers are. And is there an opportunity now, I guess, is what we’re wondering for those workers in, say, the restaurant industry, grocery, retail, places that we can’t do without, to capitalize on any kind of newfound power that they’ve discovered during this?

Stephanie I mean, I think people have reconsidered the value that we place on different worker’s labor. But it is interesting to think about how that’s playing out right now. Some of the research that I did with some colleagues here at McMaster on people’s experiences of work under COVID show kind of a contradictory experience. On the one hand, yes, we saw publicly people being thankful for the work of such workers. But people reported to us a lot of abuse from members of the public in doing their work, especially if they had public facing jobs. And so how this plays out in terms of the public’s greater esteem for certain groups of essential workers, frontline workers are always the kind of easy targets. And so I think it’s actually a very contradictory situation in terms of public support for groups of workers exercising their power.

And public sector unions, in particular, always confront this issue. Whenever they, for instance, go on strike, they have to think about what it means to interrupt the provision of an essential service to the public and what side the public is going to be on. And so public sector unions make a lot of efforts generally to connect their bargaining demands to the demands and needs of the publics that they serve.

We do know that there is a Union advantage under COVID. The research that we’ve done and that we’re doing another phase of in the coming year shows that workers who were unionized in the pandemic were much less likely to have lost their jobs, to have lost wages. They were much more likely to have had paid sick days to rely on if they got sick, they were much less likely to have had a whole host of negative interactions with their employers, and they were also more likely to have had positive health and safety interventions in their workplaces to deal with COVID. In other words, more likely to have gotten access to PPE and other kinds of protective measures. And so there’s a clear advantage to being unionized under COVID that has been observed in other places as well. The question is whether or not people’s consciousness of the need of the Union and their desire to have a Union actually translates into unionization. So lots of workers seem to be much more positive towards unions and are exploring unionization.

And we can see some indications that in both Canada and the US areas that had been previously difficult to break into with unions like Indigo, for instance, in Canada, there’s been a bit of a little wave of unionization at Indigo book stores here. But also Starbucks and attempts to unionize Amazon in the United States. So there’s obviously attempts to unionize. I think in the wake of seeing that if you go to work without a Union in COVID, you’re kind of helpless and that it’s a bit of a life and death situation and can make the difference between getting sick at work and having some ability to protect yourself at work.

Jordan What has to happen next for those attempts at unionization and those blips that you’ve just discussed to become more of an overall push? And the other question I have about it is, public sentiment to the side, at some point isn’t it just a numbers game? We’re hearing a lot about labor shortages in the health care industry, in the hospitality industry. At what point do employers lose power if they can’t get people to fill the spots?

Stephanie Yeah, absolutely. This is something that’s coming. I was going to say three things. One is that there’s some legislative changes that could be made to help facilitate unionization. Lots of people want unions, but the actual ability to unionize, it’s still difficult. There are still lots of hurdles that empower employers when they want to oppose unionization. And so there are some changes, especially in terms of those sectors that have franchise structures, things like sectorwide bargaining, rather than the system that we have now, where you have to organize each specific workplace and have a collective agreement in each specific workplace. That fragmentation is a real barrier to people getting the unions that they want. So I think some legislative changes are necessary.

But I think that you point to this other issue that in a condition of labor shortage, workers will be able to have more power to set the terms of their employment. Employers will have to increase wages to attract workers to what were not very good jobs before, they will have to improve working conditions to attract workers. And that gives workers the ability to use some of their inherent bargaining power in a labor shortage to have some real say over their workplaces. The question is whether workers will use it. And I think that that is an interesting factor right now.

I think about the public sector workers who right now do have a lot of power. For instance, health care workers have a lot of inherent bargaining power because they really are essential, and if they don’t go to work, the consequences are very serious. But they also have a professional ethos that puts patients first. And so they’re much less likely to use their bargaining power in ways that disrupt the workplace and put pressure on their employers. And so there are limits there. And I would say too, making demands collectively is something that you actually have to practice. It’s not something that everybody just knows how to do. Almost everything in our society, individualizes us and doesn’t really help us think about how to make collective demands. And our isolation from each other has been deepened now by the pandemic.

So I think we’re at a crossroads where workers can have more power in the condition of labor shortage, which itself might get worse because, of course, we have an aging population as well as a group of people who are thinking like, Why do I want to spend my life working in low wage, dead end jobs for no appreciation? And people are rethinking their work lives in a fundamental way. In those conditions, there’s a lot of opportunity, but we won’t know if people will actually take advantage of that opportunity, given I think, a generation of a lack of experience around taking collective action to improve work.

Jordan So last question then, what signs? What numbers? What data will you be watching in the next six months or a year to figure out which way the pendulum’s going to swing?

Stephanie Well, I’ll definitely looking for attempts at unionization and the number of attempts that are made to unionize. But I’ll also be looking for whether or not workers begin to withdraw their labor, go on strike, or engage in various forms of protests around their working conditions. Those are some of the indications to say that, okay, workers are aren’t just using the individual exit to make change in their lives, but they’re actually trying to collectively make change to their lives and their workplaces. So those are some of the things I’m going to be looking for.

I think that it would be nice to see some opinion data on Union favourability in Canada. In the US, the polling firms ask people quite regularly what their opinion of unions are. And we know in the US that 65% of Americans view unions favourably, and that has gone up significantly in the pandemic. And almost half of non-Union workers say in the US that they would unionize if they could. I’d like to see similar numbers in Canada and a lot of those things happen at the local level. So it will be interesting, for instance, to see how health care workers respond to some of the demonstrations that are increasingly happening at hospitals, a very concerning trend. Because it it speaks quite directly to their value as workers and how they will collectively respond to it.

Jordan Stephanie, thank you so much for this. It was really enlightening.

Stephanie Thank you.

Jordan Stephanie Ross of McMaster University. That was the Big Story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. Talk to us anytime via email at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. If you find us in a podcast player, like us, rate us, review us, etc. If you’re listening to us on the Internet, you should know you can listen to us on an app in your smartphone. There are hundreds to choose from.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow. Back to top of page