related opinion piece from the Financial Post:
Strike champs
Canada strikes out when it comes to labour disputes, ranking second in the OECD in a new study. So why make things worse?
William Watson, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, May 24, 2007
Our beloved Canadiens not having made the playoffs this year, we Montrealers have to wait at least another year for our 25th Stanley Cup parade. In the meantime, we're holding our 15th transit strike in 40 years, which must also be some sort of record, Guinness or otherwise. The workers who supposedly maintain our city's buses and subway cars --in fact, the vehicles are often filthy -- have gone out over money and pensions.
Official Canadian thinking is that we are a placid people, almost impossible to ignite emotionally. Of course, this is hard to square with the fact that our national pastime is hockey, whose rules provide for an extra penalty -- though only two minutes --for literally bloodying the opponent.
We have the same sort of squaring to do with our strike statistics, which show we are almost the world leader in labour disputes. The data in the chart at right come from a recent study by the British Office for National Statistics looking at how many working days a year countries lose, per 1,000
From 1996 to 2005, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development as a group averaged 42 days lost through strikes. The United Kingdom, once a country infamous for the ragged state of its labour relations, averaged just 23 days lost (a record owing more to Margaret Thatcher than Tony Blair, though he had the good sense not to reverse her labour market reforms). As for Canada, our average was 208 days lost to labour disputes, five times the OECD average and almost 10 times the U.K. average. Some peaceable kingdom us!
We were second overall only to Iceland, which is not usually thought of as a hotbed of labour unrest (or a hotbed of anything except, perhaps, hot tubs). But Iceland had a peculiar pattern in which, in several years, days lost exceeded 1,000, while in others they were literally zero. We, on the other hand, were perfectly dependable: In five years, we were between 100 and 200 and, in five others, between 200 and 300, with no discernible trend. But steady as she goes beat out other such famously fractious places as France (only 53 days lost on average per year) and Italy (an average of 99 days lost, less than half ours).
One obvious hypothesis is that our bad numbers are a result of our high levels of public-sector unionization. In fact, the study found that our days-lost numbers were actually higher (229 per 1,000 workers over the 10 years) in the production and construction sectors than in services (where we were at 194). On the other hand, in a number of other OECD countries, services seemed especially tame in terms of strikes, so our service sector may well be atypically rambunctious in terms of strike incidence. In absolute terms, 194 beats out everybody (though separate numbers for services weren't available for Iceland, our rival for strike supremacy).
What do we do about our world beating strike numbers? Maybe nothing. Some countries like sharp elbowed sports, others don't. Withdrawing labour is a lawful part of our labour relations, the way they are currently constructed. Resorting to a strike (for a union) or not caving in to the threat of a strike (for a firm) is not necessarily failure. Sometimes people have to do what they have to do.
But our laws should certainly make sure unions are certified and strikes called only when that's what workers truly want. The best way to determine people's preferences is through a secret ballot.
And we should not try to eliminate strikes by tipping the bargaining balance to one side or the other. This spring, in a fit of common sense, the House of Commons rejected an "anti-scab" law that would have prevented employers in federal jurisdictions from hiring replacement workers during a strike, thus transferring Quebec's less-than-successful labour model to the federal level. The very next day, unfortunately, the Liberal Party announced it was backing a follow-up private member's bill that seems likely to win the support of all three opposition parties and therefore become law unless an election intervenes.
The usual argument for "antiscab" laws is that they help prevent violence on the picket lines. The logic is along the lines of "please remove your jaw from within reach of my flying fist, lest you cause yourself damage." For Canadians, whose national sport involves controlled violence, arguments about uncontrollable violent impulses should be unconvincing.
Companies deprived of the option of hiring replacements may well be more likely to settle than go through a given strike. On the other hand, unions may simply raise the ante, so strikes proceed as before. And it's hard to see how emasculating firms will encourage the investment that, over the long haul, is the best guarantee of wages.
In Montreal this time round, we're playing by different rules. The Essential Services Commission is requiring the strikers to enable bus and Metro service during the morning and evening rush hours and between 11 p.m. and one o'clock in the morning -- for which workers get 75% of their pay. As a result, in the first two days it has been hard to tell a strike is on. We may be in for many, many lost days and worse strike numbers, but not so much grief as customary.
