Resisting Anti-Unionism
ATTITUDES IN ALBERTA:Unions aren’t the enemy.
A message to the Alberta Public from the 10,000-member Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters
The Alberta government has recently imposed legislation that frustrates construction union members from easily exercising their Charter of Rights freedom to choose to associate with one another by joining a union.
Since Bill 26 is now law, and since it’s obvious the government has no intention of changing its mind, there is no need here to dwell on the details.
But Bill 26 points to a much larger problem, one that causes members of our union to worry about the basic fabric of Albertan society.
In recent years, we have seen in this province a significant growth in openly-expressed negative attitudes toward unions and their members. It seems to have become more acceptable to think and speak of unions as disruptive, as unproductive, as obstructive hurdles standing between employers and profits.
Albertans who do not employ union members, together with many others of the same political-philosophical approach (including, in our experience, a majority of government MLAs), are, more and more, publicly acting in ways that assume that ‘anti-union’ is the Alberta norm. Bill 26 was evidence of the government’s assumption that it could impose outrageously unfair restrictions on construction unions without fear of criticism from anyone other than unions.
Why are unions the apparent enemy?
There are about 50,000 construction union members in Alberta; our own union has about 11,000 members. Just under 1 in 4 working Albertans belong to unions; across Canada the rate is 1 in 3.
Our members earn good incomes, yes, but in reality not much more than non-union construction workers. The hot economy and intense competition for limited numbers of skilled workers has driven wage rates up throughout the industry.
We and our spouses raise our kids in neighbourhoods like yours. We send them to schools, colleges and universities so they can become contributors to society. We try and teach them the values of hard work, honesty and respect.
We spend money on food, clothing, housing, vehicles, recreation, holidays and the like...just like other Albertans do. We are huge contributors to the economy.
We’re big time volunteers and personal and collective donors to all kinds of neighbourhood, school, church and community organizations.
The only difference between us and other Albertans is that we have chosen to join unions which enable us to deal collectively, as equals, with our employers.
Every working person, union member or not, has benefited from the achievements that unions have made over the years. Without unions, there would have been no five-day work week, no overtime, no 2- and 3-week vacations, no pensions and no formal on-the-job safety.
Today, unions ensure that their members earn a fair wage for a fair day’s work, that they are treated with respect by employers, that they can retire in dignity and that safety rules the worksite.
By working to ensure we are treated with respect by our employers, we also help to set standards of pay, benefits and workplace safety that benefit hundreds of thousands of non-union Albertans.
Employers are our partners.
Unlike the very early days of unions, today’s unions views employers as partners. And as partners, we take seriously our responsibility to give the employer our very highest levels of productivity. We take seriously our responsibility to maintain our skills through training and upgrading, training and upgrading that we pay for. We take seriously our responsibility to protect ourselves and our workmates physically, and our employers financially, by working safe.
In a way, we are free enterprisers, too.
We deeply respect our employers’ right to a profit. When our employers are profitable, they grow. They employ us for longer, and they employ more of our union brothers and sisters.
When our employers win, we win.
Important questions:
So given the foregoing, we’d like to ask Albertans in general – and specifically the employers who don’t work with unions and the members of the Alberta government, the people who seem to be stepping up their anti-union rhetoric – some very important questions.
• What’s wrong with the idea of union membership?
• If unions are ‘part of life’ in so many other provinces and elsewhere in the world, why do some find them so hard to accept and respect here in Alberta?
• How is it that so many think unions are hurting Alberta when so many union employers are making so much profit?
• What is it about union members that makes them less deserving of their Charter freedoms than any other citizen of Alberta?
We ask the people of Alberta, too, to consider these serious questions.
We believe that fair-minded people will see the conscious promotion by various special-interest groups of negativity toward unions and their members as a both a danger to the character of today’s and tomorrow’s Alberta, and as a violation of Alberta’s roots in simple live-and-let-live neighbourliness.
Martyn Piper
Executive Secretary Treasurer
Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters & Allied Trades