Unions were originally conceived in the days when employment conditions were poor, worker safety was nonexistent, wages were low, and hours were long. They were needed because no single employee could represent themselves in a fair argument against an employer – one would simply be fired. Since then, unions have won for workers a myriad of rights which have improved workplace safety, given us minimum wages, limits on hours, and many benefits we wouldn’t otherwise have without collective bargaining. These are all good advances which we should not forget, and unions have been instrumental in the advancement of our society.

Unions work because they have power over employers. As a group representing a large number of employees, they can threaten to withdraw their services (ie. go on strike), picket, work-to-rule, among other possibilities. These actions are detrimental to the employer, and any employer will be forced to bargain in good faith given this threat. If an employer refuses to bargain, he can choose to fire everyone (but cause massive disruptions and lose a great deal of reputation – it is also sometimes illegal), or he can choose to wait out a strike. Waiting out a strike, in the long run, will also damage a company, through lost profits and eventually bankruptcy.

This last point is important, because it is what provides a balance to the power that unions have over their employers. If a strike goes on for too long, the workers will be out of a job – because the company will go broke with no income. So the workers, too, must bargain in good faith, if they hope to reach a settlement before this worst case scenario occurs.

Let us now examine the case of modern public sector unions. These unions, such as CUPE (the largest in Canada), represent a variety of workers employed or funded by governments, be it local, provincial, or federal. Bargaining with public sector unions is not unlike that of any other union, with three very important caveats. First, their employers, the government, cannot go bankrupt. Because the government cannot go bankrupt, a strike cannot permanently put the workers out of a job. Second, in most jurisdictions, public sector workers cannot be fired for going on a legal strike. This removes a second risk that workers must take by going on strike. Third, a governmental institution usually has no competition for services. For example, when social services in Toronto are shut down, there is very little one can do as a consumer to boycott either the employees or the employers – we are dependent on them. By contrast, if say, GM plant workers go on strike, consumers can always buy from a myriad of other auto makers, such as Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc. With no competition, there cannot also be long term profit losses, which gives neither party an incentive to speed up the process.

This set of circumstances mean that the balance of power in the public sector shifts significantly towards the unions, and evidence suggests that public sector workers have ‘won’ more often than not, public sector strikes last longer than private sector ones, and public sector workers are paid more than their private sector counterparts.

The current model does not seem to be working for the public sector. Make no mistake though – the solution is not to copy the private sector, where workers make far less, and all the profits go straight to wall street investors and managerial executive types. Is it time for a more creative labour bargaining process?

Normally, I don’t have too big a problem with strikes – certainly unions have had their place in bringing much needed job security and improved working conditions – but in this instance, it was nigh impossible to feel any sort of sympathy for this union strike.

As a TA in the University of Toronto, I made $28.50/hour – a fairly hefty amount for little work and admittedly low standards of qualification. Granted, I am still an undergraduate, meaning my wages are lower than those of my graduate counterparts – who earn $36/hour plus health benefits (amounting to about $400 in medical coverage per year). York TAs, who work comparable hours in comparable situations, are paid a whopping $63.29 per hour. That’s right. Even as a graduated student, working in a full-time engineering firm, I would make no more than $40 an hour to start with – and that’s if I’m lucky.

CUPE3903’s demands have been wholly unreasonable, from the massive wage increases (they want in excess of 10% in the next 3 years – during the worst recession in decades, no less) to what they call “job security”. Let me elaborate on this point. The union wants part-time professors on one-year contracts to be given lengthier contracts based only on seniority, not qualifications. Many of these part-time professors lecturers are Ph.D. candidates or recent postdocs. The union claims it unfair that they don’t get the same security as tenure-track professors who have their Ph.D.s and established research fields.

On the face of it, increased job security seems something worth fighting for – something that even the students suffering from the strike could support. However, this demand of longer contracts comes with a condition of a shorter collective agreement. CUPE3903 refuses to sign a collective agreement longer than 2 years, while demanding that their faculty receive lengthy contracts of up to 5 years. Though unpublicized, most people know that the reason CUPE refuses to sign a longer collective agreement is so that their next round of bargaining in 2010 will coincide with all the other university CUPE unions province-wide. They’re just itching to go back to the picket lines in less than two years, along with a cohort of colleagues from around Ontario. With contradictory demands like this, it’s hard to take them seriously.

Moreover, CUPE3903’s hardline position has managed to drive a stake into Ontario politics. While McGuinty’s Liberals are in a no-win situation – alienating either the students or the unions, he can at least claim public opinion support in bringing back-to-work legislation to Parliament. The New Democratic Party, on the other hand, has been smoked out by CUPE to do something brazenly unpopular amongst us students. NDP Leader Howard Hampton has declared his support of the unions, and is solely responsible for holding up back-to-work legislation at Queen’s Park. In doing so, he has alienated one of his largest group of supporters – the students – in order to appease his core power base – the unions. It is yet to be seen how big of a political impact this will have on the NDPs, but needless to say, it won’t make the students any more likely to vote for them in the next election.

If the NDPs take a political hit in the next election, their already fragile existence may become life-threatening for the party – and CUPE3903 will have had no small part in making the NDPs look irrelevant to the public in the midst of a massive recession. NDPs losing power means less sway for CUPE, and some would wonder how they’ve gotten themselves in such a mess. It all seems to me like the unions have bitten off more than they can chew, asking for the moon when we can’t even see the sky.

I wonder, too, whether CUPE3903 really represents the graduate students and the TAs and the contract faculty. In my experience, having attending a couple of union meetings for the sister union at the University of Toronto, the meetings are dominated by the union leaders, whose jobs are paid for by the union, and whose only tasks are to fight for more demands and get more publicity. There is no room or any voice for dissent, and generally, the leaders are preaching to the converted. The people who attend union meetings are usually the most hardcore, or even militant. These are the ones who really believe in striking until all their demands are met. Most of the moderate or conservative types stay away from union meetings because of these attitudes. With such a biased attendance, it was no surprise to me when I read news reports of CUPE3903 members voting to reject York’s latest offer. What I wonder is whether those who voted even bothered to read the contract, or just decided to do what their all-too-aggressive leaders told them to do.

What’s even more puzzling is the lack of student input in the whole issue. When a striking union of less than 5000 members holds over 50000 students hostage in a 3-month long strike, one would think there would be more of an outcry in the media – but reports have been mostly docile from the students, not outraged. If I were at York right now, I would be demanding a full refund from the university, and in addition demanding that the union compensate me for lost time – the opportunity cost of a few lost months of education plus lost time in the summer for employment. Not to mention all those people who still have to pay their loans, or the exchange students who have become disgusted at the whole system in the ordeal.

Have the unions become irrelevant? What are the students doing? Will there be another strike in 2010?