First-contract arbitration: the sky is(n’t) falling
Eric Durnford says if working conditions in Nova Scotia now were the same as in 1984, he too would support first-contract arbitration. Durnford, a prominent labour lawyer who represents employers, was responding last week to a union presentation on why we need the law.
Back in 1984, a CUPE official reminded the law amendments committee, workers at Keddys Nursing Manor in Halifax joined a union. Their employer refused to negotiate, suspending one union executive and forcing another worker to clean a floor with a toothbrush. It took the employees four years and an 18-month strike to win their first contract.
That was then. Now, Durnford says, Nova Scotia is a labour-relations utopia. We don’t need no first-contract-arbitration legislation.
Strangely, I can’t find any evidence Durnford—who was already an influential labour lawyer in 1984—spoke up for first-contract arbitration back when he says it might have been worth supporting.
Or perhaps not so strange. Self-interested supporters of the status quo inevitably claim that now—whenever now is—is the best-of-couldn’t-be-better times. And predict the sky’s collapse if it’s changed.
Last week, Corporate Chicken Littles Sobeys and Michelin—two of our biggest employers and, perhaps not coincidentally, two of our most successful government teat-suckers—lined up at law amendments to paint the sky black and gone.
Unions, they predcicted, would take advantage of the law to bamboozle their unsuspecting—and otherwise, of course, happy-happy—workers into signing union cards.
Reality check Number 1. Statistics show union membership is declining across the country, including in provinces with first-contract legislation.
In British Columbia, which has had first-contract arbitration since 1993, only 10 per cent of initial contracts go to arbitration, and fully one-third of those applications come from employers. Oops.
And such legislation, our concerned-only-for-what’s-best-for-the-province corporate spokes-folks also warned, will scare off potential investors.
Reality check Number 2. In 2007, Sobeys shelled out $260 million buy a supermarket chain in… uh, investment-slaughtering British Columbia.
Sobeys also currently operates 16 stores in Manitoba, all acquired long after that province’s supposedly draconian first-contract legislation came into effect.
Welcome to 2011.
Shades of Orwell’s 1984.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
At the bottom of the Bridgetown theft, we’ll discover…
I don’t know for certain. But it would not surprise me to discover, when we finally touch bottom in the Great Bridgetown Financial Fiasco—when we get past the recent auditor’s report fingering a single trusted employee for looting $113,000 from the town’s treasury, past the ongoing police investigation and likely charges and even more likely conviction (the auditor’s report says she admitted taking the money), and on to her pre-sentence report—gambling was at the heart of the crime.
I have no proof. But I read the papers.
Consider these Nova Scotia gambling-related crime stories, all published since October 1.
A former financial secretary to the Lunenburg local of the Canadian Auto Workers’ Union is ordered to stand trial on charges he failed to pay back $29,000 he stole from the organization. His lawyer claims the man is addicted to video lottery terminal gambling.
The former president of a Royal Canadian Legion branch in Waverley is sentenced to house arrest after stealing $21,385 he gambled away over three years. “Gambling took hold of me,” he told the judge at his sentencing.
A Glace Bay man pleads guilty to robbing a local bank branch of $2,389 to “support his gambling addiction.”
And a Musquodoboit Harbour doctor is ordered to abstain from gambling, alcohol and non-prescription medications after the province’s College of Physicians and Surgeons determines she prescribed narcotics to a patient—and took them herself.
Most crimes associated with gambling addictions tend to slide under our radar.
But not all.
Last spring, Jason MacRae finally admitted he killed his wife, school teacher Paula Gallant, during an argument over a $700 online gambling debt.
And two of those charged in the MLA expenses scandal—former MLA Dave Wilson and current MLA Trevor Zinck—have been publicly identified as having “issues” with gambling.
In fact, a 2006 research report says 45 per cent of all inmates at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Institution self-reported gambling problems; 20 per cent claimed to have committed gambling-related crimes.
We have a problem we’re not admitting. Perhaps it’s because we too are hooked—on the millions of dollars in government revenues gambling provides.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Rocky Jones: The past and future of the Nova Scotia human rights’ struggle
I wanted to ask Rocky Jones about his Wednesday lecture: “The Struggle for Human Rights in African Nova Scotian Communities, 1961-2011.”
No problem.
When?
Not today. He’s on a panel at a national conference on public policy. Saturday, he’s in Truro, keynote speaker at an International Year for People of African Descent symposium. Then Ottawa for the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council; he’s on the private broadcast industry’s regional self-regulatory panel. And, finally, back to Halifax for the inaugural talk in Dalhousie University’s James Robinson Johnston Distinguished Lecture Series.
I thought you’d retired.
He laughs.
No one is better positioned to speak about the struggle for human rights in Nova Scotia over the past 50 years—and the next 50—than Burnley “Rocky” Jones. He’s central to that struggle.
During the mid-sixties, Jones and his then wife set up Kwacha House, a drop-in centre for inner-city black youth. It so frightened city fathers they lobbied to shut it down.
In 1968, he invited the Black Panthers to Halifax. In response, Ottawa quickly funded the “moderate” Black United Front just to undercut his growing popularity among “disaffected negroes.”
Someone set his house on fire—twice—and the RCMP began not-so-secretly following him.
In 1970, he helped lead a March on city hall by thousands of activists after city council secretly—some things never change!—hired a racist city manager. This time, the good guys won.
In 1970, he helped launch Dalhousie’s unique Transition Year Program to assist local blacks and natives succeed in university. Later, he developed innovative employment programs for ex-inmates, ran unsuccessfully for political office and launched a massive oral history project to record the stories of black elders.
After graduating from Dalhousie’s then-new Indigenous Black and Mi'kmaq law program in 1992, he went on to become one of Nova Scotia’s preeminent civil rights lawyers, arguing cases all the way to the Supreme Court.
Recently, he was in the news again—at 70—lobbying successfully against the appointment of a white outsider to head up the Africville Heritage Society.
Unsurprisingly, he has opinions on the current state—and future direction—of our province's human rights movement.
“But you’ll have to come to the speech for those,” he says.
I’ll be there.
Related posts:
- Encounter at Kwacha House. an NFB documentary.
- Dalhousie's Transition Year Program: It All Began in a Duck Blind
- The Unlearned Lesson of Africville
- Here's a 1995 profile I wrote on Rocky for the Halifax Daily News.
Information on the Lecture:
The James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University launches its Distinguished Lecture Series by featuring
BURNLEY ROCKY JONES,
Lawyer and Human Rights Advocate, speaking on
THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE AFRICAN NOVA SCOTIAN COMMUNITY, 1961-2011
Date: Wed. 23 Nov. 2011
Time: Reception: 6-7; Lecture: 7:15
Venue: Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, Potter Family Auditorium, Dalhousie University, 6100 University Ave (at Henry St.) Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Admission: Free
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
You showed them, Mr. Mayor
Dear Mayor Kelly,
Congratulations. You showed those dangerous... democrats.
Who knows what calamities might have befallen our fair city if those peaceful hooligans had been allowed to stage yet another one of their interminable, speak-and-repeat, consensus-decision-making general assemblies on our sacredly public Grand Parade (which, until recently, served as a sacredly private parking lot for you and your fellow councillors, but, hey, that’s another story...)?
Those hippies could certainly take a lesson from you on doing democratic decision making right. In-camera, mumble, mumble, secret handshake, consensus achieved, call in the cops, Chinese wall, operational decision, nothing to do with us, move along, move along...
Brilliant.
And that bargaining in bad faith thing you did with them? Inviting them to camp out at the Common to get them away from your office and then, zap! No Victoria Park, no Grand Parade, no Common. Nyah, nyah...
Bylaw enforcement time.
Bam!
I mean, really, if they wanted to flout the law, they should have have done it in style—shredding the city charter and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars like you did with that Common concert cash thingee. Now, that was flair!
The fact is, if you’re going to inconvenience the public, do it right. Forcing people to wander among tents and tenters to get where they’re going? No imagination. Close down the heart of the Common for a couple of weeks to put up a sound stage for some rockers no one pays to see. Now that takes guts.
So what if their tent city was less violent than the Palace on an average Friday night? That's not the point. The point is you showed them the point.
Personally, I thought the police—dozens and dozens of them, with their South Park Street-filling, light-flashing, murder-and-mayhem paddy wagons, patrol cars, motorcycles and tent-toting trailers and vans—showed remarkable restraint for having had to brave the elements on statutory holiday overtime pay. What is that? Double time? Double time and a half?
I agree. We have to be willing to pay a price for democracy, and it was vital the dismantling be done on Remembrance Day in the torrential rain and wind and mud so the public would be able to see for themselves exactly what those hippies had done to our parks. They'll remember.
Mr. Mayor, you showed them what your democracy looks like. Congratulations!
November 14, 2011
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
First contract arbitration: tilting the balance or righting the balance?
So Nova Scotia’s largest non-union employers are eager to preserve an unfettered collective bargaining process. They are, they claim, deeply concerned about “a third party deciding what will be the appropriate terms and conditions of employment.”
How progressive.
Where were they when the Harper government systematically ripped the guts out of that process during the recent Air Canada and Canada Post disputes?
Nowhere.
Oh, right. They don’t want to preserve collective bargaining; they want to prevent it.
Last week, the Nova Scotia Employers’ Roundtable—made up of 21 employers “representing” 34,000 workers—sent a letter to Premier Darrell Dexter, expressing horror at even the whiff his government might contemplate “first contract arbitration” legislation.
First contract arbitration is specifically designed to protect workers who choose to join a union and whose employers then refuse to bargain in good faith on a first contract. It happens—rarely, but it does. When it does, the legislation provides, initially, for conciliation or mediation. If that fails, there is the big stick of an imposed settlement. Studies show the threat of first contract arbitration increases the chances of a negotiated contract and reduces work stoppages by a “statistically significant” 65 per cent.
Conservative leader Jamie Baillie calls it a “crazy idea” and warns it will be a job killer.
Really? Six provinces and the federal government have similar laws. Eighty 80 per cent of Canadian workers—including the 15 per cent of Nova Scotians working in federally regulated industries—are already covered.
Where are all those dead jobs, Jamie?
For his part, Liberal leader Stephen McNeil frets such legislation will tilt the balance in favour of workers.
Earth to Stephen. During the 1970s, Nova Scotia governments—at the behest of powerful, and powerfully anti-union, Michelin Tire—rewrote the province’s labour laws on several occasions to make it virtually impossible for the company’s workers to organize, let alone bargain for a first contract. Those laws are still on the books.
Tilt the balance? Perhaps it’s time to take the corporate thumb—and fist—off the scale.
And perhaps—just perhaps—it’s time Stephen McNeil and Jamie Baillie stopped shilling for the powerful and spoke for the least powerful, including unorganized workers.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Occupy protesters speaking for more than just themselves
Occupy Nova Scotia's campers will decamp—temporarily—from Grand Parade so Remembrance Day ceremonies can take place there next week.
Given the respectful, peaceful tenor of the protest, that’s hardly surprising.
Neither will it come as any surprise—though it will doubtless disappoint Mayor Peter Kelly—that the protesters also intend to rebuild their tent village and continue the occupation outside City Hall after Nov. 11.
The Occupy movement sometimes seems easy for those of us not in its trenches to mock: its endless, participatory, consensual, non-decision-making gatherings; its megaphone-less, speak-and-repeat chanting communications; its occasional unconnected-to-the-larger-group-or-to-reality oddball conspiracy theorist accosting passers by with their truths—“Read ‘The Creation of First Corporation’ on my web page,” one older man in a wheel chair, who bills himself as Truth Soldier, urges me. “It explains everything about everything”—and, of course, with its conspicuous lack of the standard laundry list of easily answerable concrete complaints or demands.
That—and the fact local Occupiers have been so peaceful—may explain why the mayor underestimates its strength.
He does.
His paternalistic thanks-for-coming-you’ve-had-your-say-now-go-away mantra misses the fact the protesters are tapping a deep worldwide well of frustration and anger. Even among those of us who don’t camp out.
The rich get even richer, the poor get poorer and everyone else stagnates. More than 40 per cent of the world’s income is now gobbled up by the already wealthiest 10 per cent; the poorest 10 per cent get the one per cent crumbs. In Canada, federal corporate taxes get sliced in half and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says it’s pointless to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. The rest of us will have to tighten our belts.
In Cape Breton, a single mother of two had her power cut off last week because of an electrical bill provincial social assistance refuses to cover.
Her problem?
Unlike the bankers or the auto industry, she is not too big to fail.
And so it goes.
The problems haven’t disappeared; neither will the protesters. Good.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.