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Canadian unions are struggling to regain lost ground as a growing proportion of the work force is employed in non-union operations.

The Canadian labour movement needs to organize between 150,000 and 200,000 new members a year to stem further declines in union density, the Canadian Labour Congress says in a frank assessment of its slippage.

"New organizing has made a difference, but it has been a case of rowing against the tide in the job market as a whole," CLC senior economist Andrew Jackson said in a discussion paper to be presented next weekend at a conference of labour leaders and organizers in Ottawa.

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Labor leaders will be meeting this weekend to discuss what may be the early signs of a burgeoning membership crisis. Thoughts?

[ 14 October 2003: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

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This Conference will build on the momentum from the 2002 Convention and start to set a direction for the Canadian Labour Congress and its District Labour Councils towards forging the tools our affiliates need to start the important work of rebuilding and renewing the Canadian Labour Movement.

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So far it's taken a year and a half to start to forge to start. If there was any momentum (I don't remember any) this ought to put it to rest.

p.s. - In a quick scan of two of the key documents, I didn't see any mention of either jurisdictional squabbling between unions or ineffective union leadership.

[ 14 October 2003: Message edited by: Non-partisan partisan ]

But one of the problems with the central labour organizations in Canada is that they really don't have alot of power. The power in the Canadian labour movement is in the individual affiliated unions...particularly the dozen or so largest unions.

Its very tough to get all of the affiliated unions all "on the same page". Central labour organizations be it the CLC, provincial federations of labour and local labour councils constantly spend their time trying not to piss off individual unions.

If a major union decides to have a hissy fit over something, an entire project can fall apart.

On the European continent, the power tends to be in the labour centrals as opposed to the individual unions.

Mind you, I looked at some ILO numbers and we're not doing that badly compared to some other countries. Here are some of the numbers I found:

Australia 28.1% ('98)
New Zealand 17.7% ('98)
Germany 26.1% ('98) - part of this is due to reunification
Japan 21.5% (2000)
UK 29.5% ('99)
Norway 70.6% (2001)
Ireland 43.6% ('96)
France 31.0% ('94)
Netherlands 29.1% ('98)
U.S.A. 13.5% (2001)

CANADA 30.1% ('99)

The percentages for countries like Finland and Sweden didn't make sense....Sweden was listed at 114% ... not sure what this means...workers having membership in multiple unions??? Although I know union membership in Scandinavian countries is very high.

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Originally posted by radiorahim:
On the European continent, the power tends to be in the labour centrals as opposed to the individual unions.

Mind you, I looked at some ILO numbers and we're not doing that badly compared to some other countries. Here are some of the numbers I found:

Australia 28.1% ('98)
New Zealand 17.7% ('98)
Germany 26.1% ('98) - part of this is due to reunification
Japan 21.5% (2000)
UK 29.5% ('99)
Norway 70.6% (2001)
Ireland 43.6% ('96)
France 31.0% ('94)
Netherlands 29.1% ('98)
U.S.A. 13.5% (2001)

CANADA 30.1% ('99)

The percentages for countries like Finland and Sweden didn't make sense....Sweden was listed at 114% ... not sure what this means...workers having membership in multiple unions??? Although I know union membership in Scandinavian countries is very high.

The labour movements in countries like Australia and New Zealand have suffered much worse membership declines than Canada. The Australian percentage was at 55% in 1980, 43.5% in New Zealand in 1985. Canada fell from 37.6% in 1980.

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I'm going to post something unrelated to that, but relevant to the main theme.

Here is a recent survey of union members attitudes done for the past Labour Day.

The sponsoring organization behind the following studies can hardly be described as "impartial." It was published in the National Post as part of an attack series on unions. Nonetheless, it might be useful to see some of the numbers they came up with. Note that I also posted this on the "Labour and the NDP" thread.

Full Analysis
Poll Questions
Poll Methodology

Here, by contrast, is the CLC's response, by Ken Georgetti:

Some friends have invented something similar to this that they (half-tounge-in-cheekily) call Venture Communism. They go out and win consulting business, staff it from their network of talent, and operate sustainably, fairly and have a way of divvying up the take from the client. Kind of a
small boutique consulting co-op.

I wonder if there is a way that unions could position themselves to be seen as adding value to operations instead of being pidgeon holed as the threat to business they have a reputation for.

I also wonder how collective bargaining with an employer is the different from negotiating an outsourcing agreement with a vendor.

The reason I say this is that I look at companies like Manpower or EDS that are essentially recruiters for different businesses, and they sell labour to employers. They compete with each other, and make their money by driving down their workers wages, but I wonder if unions could model themselves after co-op-like versions of these recruiters, and be competitive with them.

What if they went out and won staffing and services contracts from customers, then delivered them with all the ethics they could afford?

Is the difference between recruiters just a matter of political aesthetics, or is there a substantial difference?

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I also wonder how collective bargaining with an employer is the different from negotiating an outsourcing agreement with a vendor.

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They're well-trained and skilled, thanks to the union. And the union makes sure to demand appropriate compensation for that.

To some degree this happens in other industries, too, but much less though.

The think is, unions are ultimately the workers' representative - not the companies. Workers pay dues for the union to go out and negotiate a decent contract. Sometimes that means the company has to hand over $$$ in wages that it would otherwise have preferred to have given to the shareholders in dividends. And that's the way it should be. I don't see why capital owners should have any greater claim to the proceeds of a business than the workers do. After all, the profit is just the fruit of the workers' labor.

The problem is that right now, if you look at the underlying rules of the supposedly "free" market, you'll see that they're actually all bolster the owners' bargaining leverage, rather than that of the labourers. Unions are helpful, but far from completely rectify that imbalance. The key in my view is how to give the unions more bargaining power. That may be being more cooperative with management in some cases. In others, it may be for the workers to find a bigger stick.

[ 16 October 2003: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

This is just it, I think that the notion my friends had of venture communism is a bit of a mis-nomer, as venture co-op would reflect it a bit better.

I agree that workers have the same 'right' to the proceeds of a business as shareholders. Many companies have profit-sharing systems in place, and ironically, the dot.com model of working for equity shares in the company was consistent with this right to sharing in the success and ownership of the firm.

I am generally suspicious of any Market Based(tm) solution as it tends to be based upon faith in an invisible hand. Frankly, I am a believer in a corallory to the Golden Rule, which is, "show me the gold and we'll talk".

I wonder if it would be worthwhile for unions to use their pension funds to become shareholders and take positions on corporate boards as a means to increase bargaining power? After all, the success of the workers is linked to the success of the company, so it would only make sense that they have representation on the board.

This wouldn't work in the public sector, but maybe in manufacturing and IT?

It might also balance out the interests of workers vs. management, in that the executives would be accountable to workers like they are to other shareholders.

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I wonder if it would be worthwhile for unions to use their pension funds to become shareholders and take positions on corporate boards as a means to increase bargaining power? After all, the success of the workers is linked to the success of the company, so it would only make sense that they have representation on the board.

This wouldn't work in the public sector, but maybe in manufacturing and IT?

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Actually there are a variety of ways that unions can use their pension funds for leverage in both the public and private sectors. I'm not sure if you've seen this story before, but here is the latest on what California's public employees' pension fund (one of the world's largest) is doing:

Calpers may stop investing in companies that privatize public services (Sacremento Bee)

Attempting to become influential or controlling shareholders in their own employers is another possibility. The problem is that pension funds also have to make sure they maintain diverse enough holdings so that if their employer fails for reasons unrelated to the union's financial investment in the company, the workers don't lose all their retirement savings along with their jobs. Several of the airlines are largely employee-owned through ESOPs, but that hasn't allowed the workers to escape major restructuring due to 9/11 and an industry-wide collapse in business. Because they bought out their company a few years ago, they are arguably worse off because their pensions also took a hit.

It would be interesting to see union pension funds get into the venture capital game. While they have to be relatively conservative investors to preserve the integrity of their workers pensions, so do mutual fund companies. Risk is risk.

If union leadership really believe that unions increase the value of a company and the likelyhood of its continued success, then I would challenge them to establish venture capital funds for innovative start-ups with unionized workers.

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Originally posted by batz:
If union leadership really believe that unions increase the value of a company and the likelyhood of its continued success, then I would challenge them to establish venture capital funds for innovative start-ups with unionized workers.

Maybe they do already, I sincerely don't know, but they could raise their profile significantly if they were seen to be an asset to businesss instead of a threat. These sort of initiatives would go a long way to helping that cause.

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If union leadership really believe that unions increase the value of a company and the likelyhood of its continued success, then I would challenge them to establish venture capital funds for innovative start-ups with unionized workers.

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I don't know about the union leadership, but I personally wouldn't argue that unions actually increase the value of a company. The economic evidence I have seen is that (1) contrary to the stereotype, union workers are actually more productive than non-union workers, however (2) those companies that employ union workers are less profitable than non-union companies, because the unions demand a higher share of the fruits of production in the form of wages and benefits. So unionization actually decreases the value of the company, at least to the shareholders, even if it increases the company's total productive contribution to the economy.

In a predominantly non-union economy, unionized companies would therefor be less competitive in the capital markets, which is damaging to their long-term prospects of success.

An exception are companies that are directly owned by their workers (which may also be unionized), at least as they compare to companies that are privately held by capitalists. That's because neither of these types of companies compete for outside capital investment, but rather, rely solely on internal sources or borrowing. In this scenario the worker-owned companies have the advantage over capitalist ownership, because of both higher productivity, and the ability to set their own rate of profit based on workers' preference for long-term returns to their shares, versus short-term returns in the form of current wages.

Of course, worker ownership then runs into that diversification problem, though. Many worker owned companies can do well. But like all kinds of companies in all industries, other worker-owned companies can fail. And when they do, the original worker owners get doubly soaked because in addition to losing their current income, they also lose their savings which are over-invested in the enterprise.

I guess what I am saying is that I still agree with more aggressive investment of worker pension funds to further union objectives. But the overarching goal has to be primary worker ownership throughout the economy, or at the very least, mass unionization of the economy both worker-owned and non. Otherwise, the wage-skewed distribution of wealth within the unionized companies will make them less successful, as capitalist organizations at least, than their non-union competitors.

I'm not sure if a union "capital strategy" can achieve this goal on its alone, or if it has to be linked to a legal and political strategy.

[ 24 October 2003: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]