» Issues for the Floorlayers Union Local 1541!

· Top Ten Labour Myths!

Following are the top 10 most favourite myths about unions, strikes, and the collective bargaining process:

• Unions don't need, and shouldn't be given, the right to strike
• Unions are always making "unreasonable" wage demands
• Strikes could be eliminated by getting rid of unions
• Union-won wage increases are the chief cause of inflation
• Labour-management conflict should be replaced by co-operation
• The right to strike should be replaced by compulsory arbitration
• The strike weapon makes unions too big and powerful
• The public is not represented in strikes by public sector workers
• Strikes are the main cause of low productivity and irreparable economic harm
• Workers in unions are forced to strike by "labour bosses"

For a complete debunking of any one of the above listed myths, simply click on its related title.
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· Unions don't need, and shouldn't be given, the right to strike

Although it's not generally realized, the right to strike is a fundamental right no less important than freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Why? Simply because it is a vital part of the collective bargaining process.

Free collective bargaining is the only instrument that workers have to protect and promote their economic interests in our economic system. Without that ultimate right to withdraw their labour, they would have no strength to bargain. And would have to accept whatever wages and working conditions their employer decided to impose on them.

The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labour. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown in collective bargaining - it is the indispensable cornerstone in that process.

· Unions are always making "unreasonable" wage demands

What is a "reasonable" wage demand? One that meets the workers' needs? One based on the employers' ability to pay? One that's tied to productivity?

The fact is that nobody has yet devised a workable formula for determining wage increases that would be considered reasonable by the workers, by their employer, by the public, the press and the government.

Besides, most employers - except occasionally when in genuine financial stress - still refuse to open their books to union negotiators. Unions are thus denied access to the data on profits, productivity and labour costs that they must have in order to formulate "reasonable" demands. The only alternative in our private enterprise society is to go for as much as their members are entitled to get.

· Strikes could be eliminated by getting rid of unions

Sorry, that wouldn't do it. Workers have been going on strike since the dawn of recorded history, in every civilization, and under all kinds of political systems. Whenever workers' discontent rises to an intolerable level, they'll strike, whether they're building the great pyramids of Egypt, working as potters or goldsmiths in the Middle Ages, or sorting mail in the 20th Century.

Canada's first recorded strike for better wages - by the fur trade voyageurs at Rainy Lake in August 1794 - occurred long before the first union was formed in this country.

Modern unions, in fact, through collective bargaining, prevent strikes - many more strikes than they initiate. Do away with unions, and the ensuing economic chaos would make current strike disruptions seem trivial by comparison.

· Union-won wage increases are the chief cause of inflation

The truth is that it is prices that drive up wage, not the other way around. That has been the finding of every objective, scientific study.

Over the past 50 years, total labour income, as a percentage of the Gross National Product, has fluctuated only a few percentage points - proving that rising wages and salaries have simply maintained their usual share of a growing GNP.

Wages are continually subject to restraint through the machinery of collective bargaining, compulsory conciliation, and legal restrictions on the right to strike. Unlike other forms of income - profits, stock dividends, rents, professional fees - wage levels must be set through negotiations with employers.

· Labour-management conflict should be replaced by co-operation

As an ideal this is quite acceptable. But unfortunately we live in a society that is based on competition, not co-operating: a society in which we are all supposed to compete with one another for our respective shares of the national income. That's the underlying principle of private enterprise.

No doubt the jungle, too, would be a much better place if the animals would stop hunting and killing one another. Given their nature, however, the suggestion that the lion lie down with the lamb is not very practical - at least for the lamb!

The world of industry and employment is also a jungle, a world in which the strong prosper and the weak languish. Many persons in both unions and companies wish it were otherwise. But they are trapped in the present system. They know that it will take a complete reversal of basic beliefs, and the abandonment of our entire economic philosophy, before a change to labour-management co-operation can take place.

Conflict is built into the present system, and strikes are simply one of its manifestations. As long as the relationship between management and labour is based on their respective power, the extent of that power will occasionally be tested - if only because so many employers refuse to take workers' requests for better pay and working conditions seriously unless they are willing to strike for them.

· The right to strike should be replaced by compulsory arbitration

Compulsory arbitration has never worked in any democratic country where it has been tried.

The Federal Task Force on Labour Relations ruled out compulsory arbitration as an acceptable alternative to the right to strike. "The inconvenience caused by strikes," said the Commission in its historic report, "is a small price to pay for the maintenance of the present collective bargaining system and the basic human right on which it is founded".

In any event, a ban on strikes is impossible to enforce in a free society. Only in a police state can workers be forced to work against their will. In a free society, compulsory arbitration doesn't eliminate strikes; it merely makes them illegal.

· The strike weapon makes unions too big and powerful

"Big" and "powerful" are relative terms. In actual fact, most Canadian unions are quite small, and together they represent only about 30% of the country's non-farm workers.

Because collective bargaining usually involves only one union local at a time, most strikes that take place are confined to one community or region.

Even the largest unions, in terms of size and resources, pale by comparison with multinational corporations.

If unions were one-tenth as powerful as they are thought to be, they would be able to organize all the Canadian workers still outside unions. They would be winning more of their strikes and increasing their members' wage rates a lot more than they actually are.

Besides, there is no relation between union size and power and the incidence of strikes. In Sweden and Germany, for example, 80 to 90 per cent of all workers belong to unions, yet these countries have few strikes - mainly because of the enlightened policies of their governments.

Granted, strikes sometimes hurt or inconvenience innocent people. But so does almost every form of economic activity. When prices go up, that hurts. When profits are taken out of the country and invested abroad, that hurts.

Anti-union spokespeople ignore the fact that workers are people, too. All working people want is a fair payment for their labour - a fair share of the economic benefits they help to produce. And why, when a strike occurs, blame only the workers and their unions, as if they were the only ones involved? It takes two parties to make a quarrel, and, more often than not in industrial disputes, it's management that is mostly to blame.

· The public is not represented in strikes by public sector workers

Unions in the public sector are to bargain directly with government officials or their agents. Who are these officials representing, if not the public.

The mandatory conciliation process, along with the other legal rituals that must be followed before a legal strike can begin, are all imposed by government in the name of the public.

Public employees are exactly what their label implies. They are the "public's" employees.

They are our employees, and when they go on strike they do so for the same reason employees in the private sector go on strike: because they are dissatisfied with the way we - through our elected representatives - are treating them.

If the services provided by postal workers, by garbage collectors, by hospital workers, by workers in transportation and other key industries are truly essential, why are such workers so often among the lowest paid? If their jobs are so indispensable, why are they not treated accordingly?

The public, as an employer, really has no more right to claim immunity from strikes than other employers who don't make an honest effort to treat their workers fairly.

Unions representing public employees have no alternative, when governments refuse to bargain in good faith, then to exercise their right to strike.

People who may be inconvenienced by such strikes should make an effort to look at both sides of the dispute - to determine if their employees' demands are justified. Is this is clearly the case, then public pressure should be directed at governments to offer a fair settlement, rather than enact strike-breaking laws.

· Strikes are the main cause of low productivity and irreparable economic harm

The costs of strikes are greatly exaggerated, amounting on average to the loss of only one-half worker-day a year for each employee. This is only a small fraction of the time lost through illness, accidents and unemployment. An effective-flu vaccine would save far more working time than the most repressive anti-strike law.

Most companies can now completely offset the loss of production during a strike by stockpiling beforehand and using excess capacity and overtime afterward. Most of the businesses allegedly lost during is merely deferred. This is borne out by strikes showing that most business firms affected by strikes have been able to maintain their annual production norms.

There is no reliable standard for assessing the effects of a strike or the damage (if any) it causes. There is a tendency to quote unverified estimates of the daily losses a strike is supposedly inflicting, without taking into account what a struck firm is saving in wages and other operating costs. Isolated cases of hardship are also widely publicized, giving the impression that they are numerous. In this way a strike can be made to appear much more harmful than it actually is.

· Workers in unions are forced to strike by "labour bosses"

The term "labour boss" was coined to portray typical union leaders as the equivalent of the company vice-presidents they face across the bargaining table. It implies that a union officer has the same authoritarian control over his members that the company bosses exert over their subordinates.

In fact, union leaders are elected by the union's members at a convention, and are answerable to them for their actions. The members tell the leaders what to do, rather than the other way around.

Unions always conduct membership votes before taking strike action, and a strike occurs only when it is approved by a clear majority. It is inconceivable that workers would walk a picket line, in all kinds of weather, sometimes having confrontations with police and strikebreakers, existing on strike pay that in only a fraction of their normal income, if a majority of them were opposed to the strike. It simply couldn't happen.

Most union leaders measure their success by the extent to which they can avoid strikes, and do manage to settle 95 per cent of contract negotiations without a strike. But a .950 batting average evidently doesn't satisfy some of the public and the press. Though tolerant of most other imperfections in an imperfect world, they demand perfection from the collective bargaining process.