CAW & CEP merger may include unemployed and contract workers

[blake 3:17]

Union might open doors to unemployed, retired, says CAW head


BY CLAIRE BROWNELL, POSTMEDIA NEWSMAY 25, 2012




CAW president Ken Lewenza takes part in the CAW open house at the Caboto Club in Windsor, Ont. on Wednesday, April 17, 2012. The information meeting was held to talk about the call for a national auto policy.
Photograph by: Tyler Brownbridge, The Windsor Star
WINDSOR, Ont. — Two of Canada's biggest unions are considering opening membership to everyone, including the unemployed and retired, when they merge.

A committee working on the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers unions floated the proposal in a recently released report outlining the potential structure of the new union.

"A new category of membership would be developed to allow unemployed workers, workers in workplaces where the union is not yet certified, young people, and precarious or temporary workers to also join the union — albeit without traditional bargaining status," the report reads.

The goal is to reverse the declining number of unionized workers and change the perception that unions are irrelevant and out of touch.

"It's about engaging and providing the kind of necessary support for one another, recognizing we're all part of the 99 per cent. How can we be more inclusive, how can we be more responsive, how can we be more effective?" said CAW president Ken Lewenza.

Lewenza said Canada's traditional union model, where either the entire workplace is organized or none of it is, doesn't always work in today's economy. More and more jobs are contracts or temporary, making it difficult to form a bargaining unit and negotiate, he said.

There are many reasons why people would sign up to join the new CAW/CEP as individuals, Lewenza said. They would have access to support and resources when advocating for change in the workplace, a strong national organization lobbying the government in their interest and, potentially, the chance to join group health and pension plans with other members in the new category.

Allowing individuals to become members would also help the CAW/CEP maintain ties with employees in workplaces that attempted to form bargaining units and failed, Lewenza said. "One thing employers hate is a legal contract. That's why they fight like hell to keep unions out, because that's the strength of a union, a legal, binding contract. But I don't think there's an employer out there that would ignore a large minority of workers who were advocating for change."

On the other hand, that legally binding contract is the main source of power for unionized workers. Michael Lynk, a labour law professor at Western University, said the new category would mean little from a legal standpoint.

What it might do, he said, is give unions a toehold in workplaces where they would normally be totally shut out. Workers advocating for change would also benefit from legal protection against discrimination for participating in labour organization or union activities.

"We have this cookie cutter style of unionization, the all-or-nothing approach," he said. "You've either got a majority and you represent everybody or you don't get a majority and you represent nobody."

Paul Chislett, an advocate at the Windsor Workers' Action Centre, welcomed the proposal. The workers he helps navigate the claims system through the Ministry of Labour and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board are exactly the type of workers the new CAW/CEP would be trying to attract: non-unionized employees who often work in low-wage service industry or temporary jobs.

"They've got problems at work, they think they're getting short changed from wages, vacation pay. Sometimes people come in with WSIB claims or they don't know how to get started," he said.

Chislett said for the most part, unions aren't even on the minds of those workers and organizing their workplace seems outside the realm of possibility. With a little education and outreach, he said they could be convinced of the benefits of signing up.

"It's something new and it can be exciting. The big problem is always mobilizing workers."

The new category would also benefit the merged union because of the increase in member dues. Lewenza said that's not the main reason for the move and the two unions plan to discuss a lower rate for members in the new category, especially laid off and unemployed workers.

"It's not a revenue generator, it's a confidence generator," he said.

Lynk said the CAW and CEP are following the lead of American unions, which have tried a similar approach in the face of declining membership and anti-union legislation. It hasn't had much of an effect south of the border, he said, but that doesn't mean it can't work here.

"They're probably two of the most innovative unions in the country," he said of the CAW and CEP. "So if anybody can make these ideas work and successfully transplant them into Canada, it's probably them."


http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Union+might+open+doors+unemployed+retired+says+hea d/6677788/story.html

[blake 3:17]

Walkom: From CAW and CEP comes a new (old) idea to rebuild unions
May 23, 2012

Thomas Walkom


CAW president Ken Lewenza speaks at the "We are Ontario" rally in April. The gathering brought dozens of unions, labour groups and activists from around the province to rally against the Ontario budget.
MARK BLINCH/REUTERS FILE PHOTO
Two Canadian unions are negotiating a deal that, if successful, just might reinvigorate the labour movement.

The proposed deal itself, as reported in the Star by my colleague Tony Van Alphen, involves a merger between two labour giants, the 200,000-member Canadian Auto Workers and the 130,000-strong Communications, Energy and Paperworkers.

But the most interesting element of the proposed deal would see the new union aggressively move to sign up members among groups that the modern labour movement has tended to ignore — including the unemployed and the growing number of contract workers technically considered self-employed.

Unlike traditional unionists, the new kinds of members wouldn’t necessarily bargain contracts with bosses. The unemployed have no employers.

But the aim of the proposed scheme is to restructure the organizations that claim to represent working people so that they better reflect the reality of the modern workplace.

That reality rests on part-time work, so-called independent contractors (in actual fact, employees who legally don’t qualify for statutory benefits) and fragile jobs.

How do unions make this leap? In part, the new proposal harkens back to an earlier era when unions, such as the 19th-century Knights of Labour, acted more like fraternal organizations than modern-day collective bargaining units.

Unions got their start in those days by offering members tangible benefits, ranging from burial insurance to summer camp for the kids.

The CEP-CAW scheme echoes this with its suggestion of letting those outside of traditional bargaining units participate in union-sponsored benefit plans.

With its talk of organizing the jobless, the proposal also harkens back to similar attempts — often successful — by Canadian Communists in the 1930s.

“There’s a lot of like-minded people out there not in traditional bargaining units,” says CAW secretary-treasurer Peter Kennedy, who co-chairs the merger committee.

And the idea of unifying workers as a class is as old as the labour movement itself, dating back to the radical Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, and Canada’s short-lived One Big Union.

That labour is even talking about such things is a great step forward. Thanks to outsourcing, the factory model of work, on which the modern union movement was built, is virtually finished in North America.

It’s no surprise that the two protagonists in this effort come from factory-style industries in decline.

The autoworkers face low-wage competition from China. The CEP represents workers in the struggling pulp and newspaper industries. (The Star is a CEP shop and I’m a proud union member.)

More to the point, the political climate facing labour is unremittingly hostile. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are openly anti-labour. They have used the power of the state to beat back unions not just in the public sector but also at privately owned Air Canada.

In Ontario, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals are taking on public sector workers.

And the New Democrats, for decades the party of labour, are deliberately moving to what they call the centre.

In such a world, labour needs new friends. No wonder then that Ontario Federation of Labour chief Sid Ryan has embraced striking students in Montreal. No wonder that the once-mighty CAW is casting about for new ideas.

Incidentally, these new ideas don’t always work. In 2004, UNITE HERE was formed as a merger between skilled needle-trade operatives and low-wage hotel workers. Dedicated to progressive, social unionism, it was heralded as the model of the future

Five years later, amid great bitterness and disputes over money, that merged union fractured.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1183155--walkom-from-caw-and-cep-comes-a-new-old-idea-to-rebuild-unions

[Die Neue Zeit]

Better late than never, comrade?