Written by Joseph C. Ben-Ami
(www.policystudies.ca)
Monday, 11 April 2011
The recent decision by the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) to increase its members’ dues by $60 to fund an anti-Progressive Conservative Party campaign during this fall’s provincial election has been rightly criticized by a number of groups and individuals. In fact, the OECTA decision is just the tip of the iceberg, and a reminder of how bad labour laws in Canada are at protecting individual workers from abuse at the hands of powerful mega-unions.
Neither Canadians, nor their political leaders, seem to grasp just how far behind the rest of the developed world we are when it comes to defending these rights. Only in Canada can workers be forced to join a union as a condition of employment, and even in those places where workers are not forced to join the union, they still have to pay full union dues. The only way workers in Canada can legally opt out of joining a union – or paying dues if not actually forced to join – is if they have a religious objection to union affiliation. Even then, opting out does not entitle workers to keep their money. Instead of going to the union, the dues are re-directed to a charity the union approves.
The above arrangement is referred to as the Rand Formula after Supreme Court Justice Ivan Rand who, in an arbitration decision settling a strike at Ford Motor Company in Windsor, ruled that employers must deduct and turn over to the union, dues from all employees including non-members. Rand explained that this was because all workers benefited from the union’s collective bargaining.
For decades, union bosses in Canada have been collecting fees from workers including many who are not even members, and then using those fees to fund, not just the collective bargaining mandate of the union, but a myriad of partisan social and political causes as well. These bosses claim that the Rand Formula permits them to do this. They also claim that unions are democratic organizations, and that, Rand notwithstanding, the decision to allocate a portion of collected fees for any purpose is the outcome of a democratic process.
They are wrong on both counts.
To begin with, Mr. Justice Rand himself explained that his decision to force non-union workers to pay union dues could only be justified if those dues were used exclusively for collective bargaining purposes. Anything else would be nothing less than legal robbery (my words, not his).
As for the argument that the decision-making process is democratic, that might come as a surprise to all those non-union members from whose paychecks mandatory union dues are deducted every week. They are not entitled to vote in any union elections or plebiscite and, as a consequence, have no say whatsoever regarding how their dues are being spent. Only bona fide members of the union can participate in the decision making-process.
There is another reason why the “democracy argument” does not hold water though. The right to vote for or against a person or political party running for public office, or to assist, financially or otherwise, a social or political cause, is an individual right. It cannot be transferred to anyone else, even if that transfer is accomplished through democratic means.
It is quite astonishing that this simple fact has been so utterly overlooked here in Canada. Even in Europe – where liberal-left public policy is de rigueur – the courts have consistently ruled, not just against unions using dues to support causes unrelated to collective bargaining without the consent of individual members, but against any form of compelled membership altogether.
Nor is Europe the only jurisdiction where workers’ rights are given precedence over union privileges. In America, depending on what state they operate in, unions that engage in activities unrelated to collective bargaining must either raise the necessary funds through a voluntary appeal to their members, or if mandatory dues are to be used they (unions) must offer to discount dues commensurately, or they must offer members a refund of that portion of their dues that would otherwise have been used for these purposes.
Is there something the Europeans and Americans know about workers rights and their protection that we in Canada don’t? Apparently so.
It’s time for Canada to join the rest of the developed world in the 21st century by reforming labour laws to protect workers from the voracious appetite of unscrupulous and virtually unaccountable union bosses. That would require politicians with backbone though.
Is that really too much to hope for?
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