A titre de membres de l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT), le Canada et les provinces ont l’obligation de respecter, promouvoir et appliquer de bonne foi les droits humains fondamentaux précisés en 1998 dans la Déclaration de l'OIT relative aux principes et droits fondamentaux au travail. Parmi ces droits figure la « liberté d'association » ou, autrement dit, le droit de devenir membre d'un syndicat et de participer aux négociations collectives.
Employment and labour
In the early 1980s, the world was gripped by recession. Following the troubled years of the 1970s, there was considerable worry throughout the developed world that we had entered a period of endemic stagnation. The real problem, it was claimed, was that the western economies had lost their ability to innovate and take risks.
Recent events tell us a lot about some of the challenges facing working people in Canada today.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) began rotating strike action on June 2nd, after over seven months of negotiations with Canada Post Corporation (CPC) for a new contract covering some 48 000 postal workers. CUPW members had voted almost 95% in favour of authorizing a strike if necessary, with a turnout that set a record for the union.
For the past 40 years political leaders — supported by the majority of professional economists in the academy and private sector — have reduced the role government plays and increased the degree of competitiveness in the economy. The number of public-sector enterprises that have been sold off (such as Manitoba Telephone Services, Petro Canada and Air Canada), and the increasing willingness of governments to downsize the public sector and deregulate key sectors of the economy (e.g., transportation, energy, telecommunications), are testimonies to this shift in governance.
The Canadian Government is well down the road, with the European Union, towards negotiating a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). They tell us that CETA will have everything that NAFTA has, plus more. They say that like it’s a good thing. But the more one looks at this Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, this CETA, the more there is to dislike.
Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) initiated job action on June 2 in response to Canada Post’s refusal to continue the collective bargaining process for the purpose of achieving a new collective agreement. The main unresolved issues were: health and safety, staffing, sick leave and short-term disability, wages, pensions and benefits, job creation and service expansion.
Unions are usually thought of as being about higher wages. It's true. Unions do produce higher wages for their members (and often, as a result of knock-on effects, for other workers as well). As of April 2011, for example, the 200,000 Manitoba workers covered by collective agreements earned an average hourly wage of $24.57, 30 percent above the $19.00 earned by workers not covered by collective agreements. Unionized workers also get better benefits.
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The Saskatchewan New Democrats have promised to reform and repeal much of Brad Wall's labour legislation in their recently released policy review "A Rooted and Growing Vision."
While changes to this legislation would be most welcome to the labour movement in the province, should we be satisfied with merely returning to the status-quo if an NDP government were to return to power in the province?
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