Delegates at the recent Conservative Convention 2013 in Calgary approved a resolution with the following provisions: the government should “prevent mandatory dues collected by unions from being diverted to fund political causes unrelated to workplace needs”; the right to “a secret ballot in a strike vote”; “right-to-work legislation to allow optional union membership including student unions”; and “requirements for clarity and public transparency in financial returns from labour unions.”
While traditionally the Catholic Church has been supportive of unions, recent years have seen “the intrusion of union positions into the conscientious rights of their members, especially in areas of social policy,” said Phil Horgan, president of the Catholic Civil Rights League.
“Labour unions have been long supported by the Catholic Church, as a matter of justice,” said Horgan. But increasingly “There have been a number of examples of unions taking more aggressive positions contrary to Church teaching or the conscientious positions of their own members.”
“It seems to be that it is their own stubbornness on such issues which has led to increasing demands through court or political action to assert conscientious rights of members within a union,” Horgan said.
Horgan notes the example of former Public Service Alliance of Canada member Susan Comstock, who took her union to court to have the portion of her dues used to promote same-sex marriage diverted to charity. Comstock argued her dues paid for her union to discriminate against her as a Catholic.
Horgan noted unions have been unwilling to allow that kind of dues diversion and “jealously guard the mandatory membership and dues check off of objecting members.”
Horgan pointed out that in Europe and elsewhere “mandatory membership or mandatory dues check off have been curtailed as being in breach of one’s freedom of association.” Dijkema said the solution needs to be more choice among types of union rather a focus on individual choices.
Aside from supporting same-sex marriage, big unions in Canada have been supporting causes ranging from the divestment campaign against Israel as an apartheid state, support for Occupy protesters and other non-workplace-related causes.
Some of the Conservative resolution is already reflected in two private member’s bills from backbench Conservative MPs — Bill C-377 on union financial accountability now before the Senate and Bill C-525 on secret ballots in certifying or decertifying a union before the House of Commons.
Horgan says the resolutions and bills are a “response to the intransigence of unions in responding to their own members.”
Cardus work and economics program director Brian Dijkema says he can understand the concerns about unions’ political activities, but questions whether the solutions the Conservatives have put forward are the right ones.
Right-to-work legislation that allows individuals to opt out of unions and mandatory dues may undermine the communal nature of labour unions as civil society groups, just as highly individualist interpretations of religious freedom can undermine the communal nature of religious rights, Dijkema pointed out.
“Union membership is voluntary,” he said. “But it’s decided as a workplace group. You enter and exit as a group. That’s great.” For example, Trinity Western University has a morality code for staff and students. A student has an option to go elsewhere.
“The same thing should be true for the union world,” Dijkema said. “Let’s not forget there is more than one way to be a union.”
Right-to-work legislation means an individual worker can decide not to join or pay dues even if the majority vote to have a union, he said.
“The individual makes the choice on an individual basis instead of the workers together.”
“There are socialist unions and our country is full of them,” he said, but there are other types of unions, some more populist, as well as the Christian Labour Association of Canada.
“The state should be encouraging a variety of unions,” he said, not trying to solve a perceived problem through “the atomization of work.