With the exception of animators who are trying to organize a union in Vancouver, there appears to be little appetite in Vancouver’s high-tech and entertainment-sector workforces to unionize.
That could change, if the BC NDP can persuade the BC Green Party to support its plan to eliminate the secret ballot in union certification votes.
Not surprisingly, the BC Federation of Labour (BCFL) welcomes any policy changes that would make it easier for workers to organize in B.C., while the Fraser Institute pro-business think tank thinks it would be bad for business, and especially unwelcome in the high-tech sector.
“We have 25% of the population of B.C. working for poverty wages,” said BCFL president Irene Lanzinger. “We’ve seen wages stagnate, we’ve seen companies move things offshore, we see more part-time precarious work, we see all kinds of abuses of workers. We need unions now more than ever.”
For the most part, over the last three decades, unionization rates in the private sector have fallen in Canada, though not nearly as much as they have in the U.S. In Canada, B.C. has had the most pronounced decline, according to Statistics Canada.
In 1958, half of all Canadian workers – 50% – belonged to a union. By 2014, only 30% of Canada’s workers were unionized. The fastest decline in unionization rates in Canada between 1981 and 2012 occurred in B.C., which had a 13% decline.
While unionization levels remained stable in the public sector, private-sector unionization rates declined. In 2014, 71.3% of all public-sector workers belonged to a union in Canada; in the private sector the rates dropped to 15.2% in 2014 from 18.1% in 1999.
A lack of competition and mobility in the public sector, and increased globalization, has a lot to do with that disparity. Governments don’t have the option of moving hospitals, schools, fire departments and post offices offshore to avoid the added costs that a unionized workforce can sometimes bring, but private companies can and do.
This also partly explains why natural resource sectors in B.C., like forestry and mining, still have relatively high rates of unionization compared with other sectors. A Vancouver software company can easily pick up and move to Silicon Valley, whereas a mining company can’t pick up a copper mine and move it to the U.S., which has much lower unionization rates than Canada does.
And as Fraser Institute fiscal studies director Charles Lammam points out, the nature of work in extractive industries like forestry and mining is inherently more dangerous, so workers are far more likely to insist on belonging to unions that will make occupational health and safety a top priority in collective bargaining.
“In the private sector there is increased competition versus the public sector, where you tend to have monopolies over service provision,” Lammam said. “As well, in the public sector, in government, they have soft budget constraints, so they’re not subject to the economic and competitive disciplines that private employers are.”
But there are other factors at play.
In many sectors, work has become increasingly amorphous. There is more telecommuting, more contract and part-time work, more temporary foreign workers and higher mobility within given sectors, thanks to automation and other technological changes.
“How do you unionize people when they change their jobs all of the time?” Lanzinger asks.
She thinks the labour laws instituted by conservative governments in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. during the Mulroney-Reagan-Thatcher era have a lot to do with the decline of unionization rates since the 1980s in western industrialized countries.
But organized labour has also been criticized for being inflexible and, perhaps, even irrelevant in an age when some of the safeguards that unions once provided are now offered to all workers by government through labour laws and agencies like WorkSafeBC and human rights commissions.
Lanzinger hopes to see B.C.’s new NDP government implement policies that favour organized labour – even if they don’t include the elimination of secret balloting and a return to the card-check system for union certification.
“We may not get card check because of the Green opposition to that – that’s just a reality,” Lanzinger said. “But if we don’t, there are many other things we can do to improve the labour code, to improve the Labour Relations Board, to bring back balance to the labour front, because we have seen that very heavily tilted in favour of the employer under the Christy Clark government.”
Lammam said it’s not the unionization rate that is the biggest concern for businesses.
“It’s the laws that govern the unions when they are in place – things like technology provisions that can hinder, say, an employer from instituting a new technology that may in fact benefit its customers, increase market share and profitability.”
Lanzinger said employers should not fear organized labour because, ultimately, it benefits the economy.
“If you believe in a democratic and relatively equal society, then you should not fear unions. Because the evidence is absolutely clear around the world – that one of the major ways that we can reduce the gap between rich and poor, and deal with issues of poverty, is to have higher rates of unionization.
“Unions reduce inequality. It means fewer people grow up in poverty. It means people have money to spend at your business. People who live in poverty cost a lot of money to our society.”
