ICFTU ONLINE...

276/981216/DD

Brussels. December 16 1998 (ICFTU OnLine): "This new report on Canada's labour rights shatters the illusion of Canada as a country with a progressive attitude to trade union rights", said the ICFTU on the publication of a report released to complement the WTO's trade policy review on Canada.

The report describes a country where federal and provincial governments seem set on rejecting trade union rights at every opportunity. The main infringement of basic union rights by the Canadian government and by many of Canada’s provinces centres around their interference in the collective bargaining rights of trade unions in the public sector. They are also inactive in the face of flagrant anti-union discrimination by private companies. The government has also refused to ratify ILO Convention 98 on collective bargaining.

The violation of the collective bargaining rights for public employees began in 1977 with the Public Service Employee Act in Alberta. This trend continued with the passage of legislation by various provinces, including Manitoba, and Ontario, which passed an act in 1997 specifically named "To Prevent Unionisation with respect to Community Participation". The provinces of Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia restrict strikes by public employees. The Conservative government in Ontario bans strikes by hospital workers, having failed to win the passage of far-reaching legislation in 1997 that would have banned all strikes by public-service employees, because of a vigorous union campaign.

Workers in the public sector who provide essential services are not allowed to strike in most provinces either, and the province of Alberta has taken this a step further by broadening "essential services" to include jobs such as gardening. This move, and a similar one in Quebec defining too many services as "essential" have been rightly criticised by the International Labour Organisation, but the two Provincial governments have ignored ILO recommendations to amend their legislation.

Workers in the private sector also suffer greatly from this anti-union attitude, because employers are in effect free to intervene in union affairs. Employer interference with workers’ rights in the retail sector in Alberta makes it virtually impossible for unions to exist. In Ontario, architects', dentists', land surveyors', lawyers' and doctors' trade union rights were taken away with the 1995 Labour Relations and Employment Statute Law Amendments. This legislation also removed the protection of trade union recognition and collective agreements for contract service workers.

McDonalds, the hamburger chain, which is fiercely anti-union, closed one of its restaurants in Quebec this February after 82% of its staff had joined a union. McDonalds does not allow trade unions in any of its North American restaurants, although it does so in some European countries, and was recently forced to recognise a union in British Columbia. A complaint has been submitted under the NAFTA labour co-operation agreement, which says that countries must uphold existing labour laws on basic workers rights.

However, the agreement on labour co-operation within NAFTA has not had any effect so far in safeguarding workers' rights, since the first four cases to be submitted about workers who were dismissed when they tried to organise unions at Honeywell, General Electric, Sony and Sprint did not lead to them being reinstated. The most recent case was submitted just two weeks ago, because the Canadian government refuses to allow rural postal workers to organise. These workers currently earn below the minimum wage.

Women now form almost half the labour force but on average only earn about 80% of the average male wage, and while the government has ratified ILO Conventions on equal pay and against discrimination most women remain in the lowest-paying jobs. When a new equal pay law came into effect in Quebec in 1997 not a single union or women's organisation was included on the committee to monitor its application.

While Canadian law prohibits sexual harassment, a stunning 90% of women workers said that a they had been sexually harassed at work, according to the Canadian National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

The other main area of discrimination concerns indigenous people, who are vastly underrepresented in the work force, and much poorer than other population groups. Canada was substantially criticised for this at the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in November 1998 and the Canadian government has yet to reply to these criticisms.

Surprisingly, the Canadian government has not ratified two other core labour conventions: neither ILO Convention No 138 on minimum age of employment (against child labour), nor No 29 Against Forced Labour. While there is no evidence of forced labour in Canada, child labour is to be found in the migrant farm labour force in the vegetable and fruit fields of Manitoba, Ontario and British Columbia.

The ICFTU says a number of measures have to be taken to establish full respect for basic labour standards in Canada. For a start, Canada should ratify ILO Convention No. 98 on the Right to Collective Bargaining, and also ensure that workers are given these rights by federal and provincial governments. In addition, workers in non-essential services in Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, and in the ports and railways sector need to be given the right to strike.

The ICFTU says that the WTO should remind the Canadian government of the commitments it has made to observe core labour standards, and should also request the ILO to intensify its work with Canada to ensure it brings its legislation into line with the ILO’s core labour conventions.

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
Boulevard Emile Jacqmain 155, B - 1210 Brussels, Belgium. For more information
please contact: Luc Demaret on: 00 322 224 0212 - press@icftu.org

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