It would seem that @ppilarski has brought me out of my self-imposed realm of 140 characters and into the blogosphere to debate the anti-employee resolution presented by the constituency of Edmonton McClung to the 2010 P.C. Convention in Calgary.
The resolution itself reads:
Be it resolved that, the Government of Alberta introduce amendments to the Labour Relations Code to permit individual employees to opt out of contributing a portion of their union dues if their dues are used to fund union activities which are unrelated to the core union activities of collective bargaining and grievance administration
The resolutions booklet contains a favorable legal opinion by McLennan and Ross presumably written for Merit Contactors Association who themselves gave $32,375 to the P.C. party in annual contributions since 2004
The motivation for the resolution came as a result of the “Nooo Plannn” campaign in 2008 that was entirely funded by Alberta’s unions.
Former Premier Ralph Klein who infamous promised a “boring” election campaigns was the real reason of the move by Alberta’s unions to take such a bold approach.
The momentum created by such ads, helped spur other unions to come on board. Some have said that the ads did not work, however it caused the P.C. party of Alberta to spend an extra million dollars from their bloated war chest to counter the message, but more importantly it created a lot of election discourse that was not promulgated by the current political establishment. In the end voters did not see a clear alternative.
From a labour relations perspective when employers argue for a status quo position, or a negative one, they often point to the lack of member or public engagement as pseudo acceptance of the employer’s position at bargaining. From this perspective it is not hard to understand why Unions want their members involved in political and community life, so why would this not be consider a core activity?
Back to the resolution at hand then, there are a number of questions that remain to be answered.
Question #1 If members of unions were allowed to “opt out” of dues for activities outside of core union business, then should employees of private non-unionized employers also be allowed to opt out of deferred pay raises from employers who spend company profits to donate to political parties ?
Question #2 Who would get to define what constitutes ”core union activities” Unions would often get involved in activities that may not have obvious benefit to the union, or its members to the casual observer, however may have short and long term implications on union core business as understood by those who are deeply involved in such activities.
Question #3 What about the obligation of the impacted member who disagrees with the activities to engage their union? Unions are democratically run with their constitutions on file with the Alberta Labour Relations Board, moreover are under the legal obligation called Duty of Fair representation and are answerable not only to its members but also the Alberta Labour Relations Board.
Question #4 What is the “Net Public Interest Benefit” of such a resolution? Considering that at last count there were 1509 collective bargaining agreements under provincial jurisdiction (remember we have federal labour laws as well) covering a total of 407,915 employees the question of “net public interest benefit” is an appropriate test for any proposed legislation in Alberta. Even in the favorable legal opinion provided at the end of the P.C. resolution booklet they write “provided the restrictions were reasonable ones” The test of what’s reasonable could be found on the net public interest benefit in imposing such restrictions on unions in the first place. I wonder however if the P.C. party has been in power so long it's members think it could pass anything it wants for the party interest.
Finally I want to point out that this issue has already been settled in a Supreme Court of Canada decision: Lavigne v. O.P.S.E.U.
Justice McLachlin in particular made salient points on this issue of a guy who felt the same way as @ppilarski and took it to court:
“He is not forced to join the union; he is not forced to participate in its activities, and he is not forced to join with others to achieve its aims.”
“Nor do the amounts collected impair the ability of workers to conduct their own political expression. To the extent that it offends workers and other forced contributors to see their monies ultimately benefit certain political causes, that harm does not warrant constitutional prohibition of political uses of extracted funds.”
As I tweeted to @ppilarski “Don't fight the unions, work with them. That would put the progressive back in the P.C. brand.”
