A SEASON OF DISCONTENT:
Bishop, Jordan
REPORT FROM CANADA A SEASON OF DISCONTENT Canada and the United States swim to a great extent in the same economic pool, but there are still real differences in the economies. This is Canada's...
...Coal miners in Cape Breton Island, enjoying a new prestige in a year of high oil prices, voted to reject what the leader of UMW district 26 called the best contract ever offered in the industry...
...Ford in Washington was still fighting inflation as public enemy number one, Canada's Liberal government was quietly looking for ways to give a recession-bound economy a shot in the arm...
...Nurses in New Brunswick, interns and residents in British Columbia and Newfoundland threatened strike action...
...School children may still be seen wearing "boycott the postal code" buttons...
...As if this were not enough, oil prices can only go up...
...At this writing, letter carriers across the country are legally entitled to strike and have struck in some areas...
...Canada's labor legislation has always been ordered to prevent strikes whenever possible...
...In Halifax, technicians at Victoria General Hospital, who did not have a right to strike, resigned en masse and made their point...
...In Ontario, there were widespread teachers' strikes in the separate schools before a settlement was reached...
...Inflation, which has continued unabated during the recession, has only added fuel to the flames, just as the threat of inflation is still used as a club to forestall or limit wage increases...
...And this is complicated by some 1972 federal legislation that allows federal employees to negotiate- and to strike-problems arising from technological change during the life of a contract...
...NDP veteran Stanley Knowles remarked that the proposed raise was higher than the average family income of his own constitutents...
...There was a public transit strike in Toronto...
...In governmental employ, there is a problem with respect to criteria for wage increases...
...A recent federal-provincial conference on the matter failed to reach any agreement as Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (Lib) snuggled up to Alberta's Premier Peter Lougheed (Conservative) for higher oil prices against screams of foul from Ontario's William Davis (Cons) and Nova Scotia's Gerald Regan (Lib...
...In addition, due to the government's refusal to negotiate the impact of automation, there was a serious illegal strike of postal workers in 1974...
...The game involves public statements of more-than-realistic demands from labor leaders during negotiations, so that the rank-and-file are moved to reject good contracts that are well below the publicly-demanded wage increases...
...As the year progresses, faint cries are heard in favor of wage and price controls, countered by loud cries from labor leaders who know only too well which of these controls can be enforced...
...This year, as parliament members debated their own pay raise, grain inspectors walked out in some of the major ports, along with west-coast dockers...
...While some industries in the private sector voluntarily negotiated wage increases during the life of a contract, there is pressure from the private sector to avoid this in public employ...
...Ability to pay is limited only by the political hazards of higher taxes...
...This was in effect an admission that the problem is too complex for ordinary collective bargaining procedures...
...But in recent years, the conciliation procedures have been falling apart, and in essential services, not a few strikes have been ended by legislation...
...It was bitterly opposed at the time by business interests, lest the virus spread to the private sector through provincial legislation...
...As things stand, union labor is just about keeping up with increases in consumer prices...
...This is-as if the fates had not heard of economic orthodoxy-combined with a recession that promises more layoffs and protests of inability to pay on the part of employers...
...Strikes are legal only when a contract is under negotiation, and then only after conciliation...
...With federal backing, Alberta and the oil industry will get higher prices, as the same federal government preaches restraint to unions negotiating wage contracts because higher wages are inflationary-or perhaps because they cut into company profits...
...Despite complaints about the public nuisance of strikes in essential services, public employees across the country have gained the right to strike...
...JORDAN BISHOP (Jordan Bishop, a regular contributor, teaches at the College of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia...
...Even in the private sector -as happened in the case of the dockers-employers can often count on parliamentary intervention to settle strikes by ad-hoc legislation...
...The parliamentary pay raise was quietly introduced in the last session before the Christmas break, and was to bring the total to thirty-nine thousand per annum, of which twelve would be tax-free...
...labor (part of the opposition) is opposed...
...As all Liberals (and Tories) know, company profits are what makes the economy go...
...Lest the public be deceived, this is not inflationary...
...This discrimination has become almost a public necessity, since if they were paid as much or more, the government would be accused of "leading" wage demands in a "never-ending" spiral of inflation...
...It is assumed that they should keep up with increases in the consumer price index...
...This quiet revolution in parliamentary salaries exploded into a noisy counterrevolution as New Democratic Party members insisted on the observance of certain technicalities such as the need for a quorum in order to block the pay hike...
...Unlike civil servants, blue-collar workers in federal employ are generally paid less than their counterparts in the private sector, and the rate varies (according to going rates) from one region to another...
...It is almost enough to make the impartial observer doubt the ability of governments to manage the economy...
...1975 is not only a year of continued inflation, but a year of contracts to be negotiated...
...Meanwhile the members of parliament (who do not have a union) have finally got their pay hike...
...In public service jobs, restraint is even more important, since higher taxes might be required to pay the bill, and tax breaks are needed to stimulate the economy...
...Before the pay increase was finally steered through the house, where the Liberals have a comfortable majority and the support of the Tory opposition (on this issue), the nation's airports and the biggest post office in the country were closed down by a strike of selected blue-collar workers...
...While Mr...
...For the two-thirds of Canada's non-agricultural work force that are not organized, this is hardly possible...
...Parliament hill is a good place to start, where the controversy over pay increases takes a different form: management (the power in power) is in favor of a substantial increase...
...Part of the problem in public services is inexperience on both sides of the bargaining table, as well as some misunderstanding of the rules of the game among the rank-and-file...
...Productivity is often difficult or impossible to measure...
...As might be expected, this gave rise to loud complaints about strikes in essential services...
...They are approaching the level where family allowances are nullified by income taxes, and with regular if modest increases built into this legislation, can soon join the ranks of the top one-half percent of Canada's working population...
...It won't wash...
...Construction workers threatened progress on Montreal's Olympic stadium...
...What better place to start, thought Liberal house leader Mitchell Sharp, than by getting more money into than hands of members of parliament, who have been struggling.to get along on a mere eighteen thousand a year plus an eight-thousand dollar tax-free- expense allowance...
...This, as every school child knows in this post-Keynesian age, is done by getting more money into the hands of the people...
...In 1970, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada saw its first legal police strike and the first legal strike of registered nurses...
...This is Canada's year for what the press usually calls "labor troubles," although the whole world knows that they are management's troubles as well...
...One might argue that if anybody could do it, it would be the ruling Liberals, whose relations with the corporate sector are nothing but the best...
Vol. 102 • July 1975 • No. 8
