By Jim Sinclair, Special to the Sun
As we get ready to celebrate Labour Day and the contributions made by workers and unions, it is inevitable we will hear another message as well. It will come from business groups or an anti-union “think-tank” and it will predictably go something like this: “We needed unions a hundred years ago, but we don’t need them today.”
People who push this view reluctantly acknowledge the role unions played in winning gains for all workers: increased wages, the five-day work week, pensions, maternity benefits, unemployment insurance, safer workplaces, compensation for injured workers, minimum wages and paid vacations, to name just a few.
Having won these important gains, their suggestion is that unions should simply fold their tents, that government agencies and employers will protect and respect workers’ rights. Experience tells us otherwise. It tells us that workers had to fight hard to win these gains and that workers must fight just as hard to keep them. Nearly every bargaining table in the province has seen a long list of concessions demanded by employers.
Market forces are not kind to the people who go to work every day. They never have been and they never will be. With globalization, stagnant or declining wages, increasing economic uncertainty and a shrinking middle class, we need unions today more than ever.
Try telling Khaira Enterprises tree planters they don’t need a union. Explain that various government regulations and agencies will protect them. Experience has taught them otherwise. Two dozen Khaira workers were rescued from a squalid work camp outside Golden in July. They hadn’t been paid. They were malnourished. The camp was dangerous and basic safety requirements were nonexistent.
Try telling minimum-wage workers they do not need a raise or a union. Most are 20 or older and trying to make ends meet. These workers haven’t seen a salary increase in nine years and are now the lowest-paid workers in all of Canada. Businesses almost always argue against wage increases, which we can sort of understand. What is difficult to understand is the Liberal government’s refusal to increase the minimum wage and the government’s abdication of its responsibility to protect the poorest workers in the province.
Try telling farm workers they don’t need a union, or temporary foreign workers or the tens of thousands of people who work full-time but are paid less than they need to provide the basics for themselves and their families.
Last year the average unionized worker earned $24.47 an hour, while non-union workers were paid $19.89, a difference of $4.58 an hour. Unionized part-time workers earned $7.63 an hour more than non-union part-time workers. Unionized women on average earn 35 per cent more than women who do not belong to a union.
The more unionized workers we have in our province, the stronger our province will be. Main Street merchants understand this. Well-paid workers spend their paycheques in their communities and keep local businesses alive. They also pay the bulk of the taxes that pay for critical public services such as health care and education. The inverse is true too. When unions are under attack, just as they are now, salaries are pushed down, working conditions deteriorate and jobs disappear.
The trade union movement salutes the hundreds of thousands of British Columbians who toil to make the province work.
We pledge to continue to build a labour movement and a province that fights for everyone, not just those fortunate to have the dignity a union provides them.
Happy Labour Day.
