Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009
Vuepoint
Happy Labour Day
It's hardly the way anyone would choose to spend Labour Day, the lazy
end-of-summer holiday ostensibly set aside by the government to celebrate the
collective gains made over the years by workers. But against the
recommendation of their union's bargaining committee over 70 percent of the
350 workers at Safeway's main distribution centre and the Lucerne Foods ice
cream plant in Edmonton voted against the company's latest offer, setting in
motion a lockout/strike which sent workers to the picket lines early Monday
morning for what United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 401 president Doug
O'Halloran warns could be a months-long strike.
The workers, who have been without a contract since December 2008, say they
are concerned about company plans to bump full-time workers from the current
37 hours a week to 40 hours a week, saying the company wants to implement the
move so that it can lay off workers in the future, a not-entirely implausible
scenario.
The decision to go on strike is never an easy one—much less so during
an economic downturn—which is one of the reasons that despite the
popular notion of unions as strike-happy, some 95 percent of agreements are
negotiated without a strike occurring.
But, ultimately, the only real bargaining chip workers have against employers
is to refuse to work. The right to strike when absolutely necessary is,
ironically, responsible for the gains supposedly celebrated on Labour Day.
But in a province like Alberta, with labour laws that are hopelessly slanted
against workers, and which get worse each time the government amends labour
legislation, the strike as an effective tool has been eroded
significantly.
Immediately upon locking out its workers Safeway began the process of hiring
replacement workers, some of whom will be receiving higher wages than the
workers they are replacing. At the same time, a Labour Relations Board
decision handed down on Monday prevents picketers from doing anything more
than telling trucks entering the facility about the situation, preventing
them from otherwise disrupting operations.
What it all means, of course, is that Safeway has absolutely no reason to
return to the bargaining table in good faith, leaving the workers with few
options to secure better working conditions, save to count on the support of
enough consumers to, as they have done before, boycott Safeway for the
duration of the dispute.
Happy Labour Day, indeed. V
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