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A few thoughts on labour on the Labour Day long weekend

This week's Market Squared says so long to summer, and hello to some ideas on what 'labour' means.
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Here we are starting a Labour Day long weekend, so it seems timely that as some of us use the occasion to lament the end of summer, the rest of us remember the reason for the season.

It’s hard, but despite the waning influence of labour unions, a majority of Canadians, 70 per cent according to a Harris/Decima survey in 2013, think labour unions are still needed. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but you can’t ignore that there’s really only one sector of employment where unions still have any real influence at all: the public sector.

Public Response, a pro-labour public relations firm in Ottawa, conducted a survey of their own in 2012 and they found that 61 per cent of nearly 3,000 respondents said that unions do “a good job of protecting their members’ jobs.” As for how those protections extended to the greater labour force, only 46 per cent agreed that “gains made by unions for their members also improve the lives of other Canadians.”

These mixed feelings are understandable; media, politicians, and the corporate climate all tell us that you should just be grateful to have a job. How much you make, how long you work, and what benefits you get are secondary to just having someone give you a paycheque.

At the height of their power, unions were fighting for truly basic things, things we consider essential to a healthy and productive workplace. We’re talking about the right to not be overworked with the 40-hour work week and the weekend. We’re talking about minimum wage, social insurance and unemployment benefits. We’re talking about not being coerced into doing unsafe work and being given proper training.

If unions disappeared tomorrow, would Canada start borrowing from Chinese labour practices? It’s doubtful, but you’d be hard pressed to say that things would get better for the average Joe and Jane Worker in the long term.

The issues of modern labour are not whether you will drive your forklift, license-free, into a brick wall because you’re in the 85th hour of an 80 hour work week. Having said that though, it’s not usual to find people putting in 60, 70, or 80-hour work weeks in the year 2018.

That brings us to the issue we should think about this, and every Labour Day: inequity.

While these rules that labour organizers have fought, and yes, sometimes died for, are now standard operating procedure, we can’t pretend that they’re not being undermined as the cost of labour itself has been devalued in the interest of higher profit margins.

We have an economy where some people make a living working one job, and where others can’t make a living working three.

We have an economy where people work full-time hours but are classified as part-time to avoid the requisite extension of benefits.

We have an economy where young people in their first job are labelled as “interns” so that they’re either not paid or are paid a small stipend and are given no guarantee of an actual job when the “internship” ends as the job experience is its own reward.

Heck, people in the business of advising you on searching for a job will tell you that if you can’t find work, then you should volunteer to build your skills and stay busy.

It seems like the system itself is telling us that unskilled labour is cheap and replaceable, so it’s no wonder there’s so much depression and despair out there.

Mario Savio once tried to rally people to throw their bodies on the wheels and gears of the machine to make it stop, but the machine seems so big now that the gears just grind us into a powder underneath them.

Of course, that’s not to say that this is all the fault of the machine. One thing I’ll note having been to the Labour Day picnic in Riverside Park a couple of times is that its hard to find a young face there.

Why? Unions have traditionally been tied to specific jobs and places, and nowadays many young people are brought in on a temporary basis or are looking to use the job they have as a stepping stone to something better. Likely though, they’re just trying to stay a step ahead of proverbial indentured servitude and really have no investment in their job beyond a paycheque.

Might that be changing though?

An article in The Nation earlier this year described how young people, women, and new immigrants are keeping unions alive in the States because of those precarious jobs and lousy wages (not to mention the U.S. specific issue of basic healthcare costs). In fact, 2017 saw an overall increase in the number of unionized workers in the United States.

Time will tell if the next generation of labour leaders can change the program on today’s labour issues, but it could be argued that the workers themselves have to take their fate into their own hands. The corporations aren’t going to increase their expenses voluntarily, and it’s hard to depend on the government to take them in line.

So while I hate to leave you on Labour Day with a “pull up your bootstraps message,” it seems that’s all that’s left.


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Adam A. Donaldson

About the Author: Adam A. Donaldson

In addition to writing his weekly political column for GuelphToday, Adam A. Donaldson writes and manages Guelph Politico, frequently writes for Nerd Bastards and sometimes has to do less cool things for a paycheque.
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