What's crazy when you read the company memo and the collective bargaining agreement (both linked in the article) is how the company has done a horrible job at wording the memo, that has been picked up by the news.
If I understand that right:
- the company can request overtime from its workers, first by asking for volunteers
- the workers collectively decided not to volunteer, as is their right
- the company can force workers, according to their skills and other factors, to work overtime. There doesn't seem to be any difference in pay between voluntarily accepting overtime and being forced to work overtime (at least none that I could find in the memo or bargaining agreement, I didn't read the law on that matter)
- the problem, then, seems to be that workers refuse to work overtime at all.
A much more reasonable headline, if I understood the story correctly, would be, "workers refuse to work mandatory overtime, and courts ruled that to be a strike, which is forbidden by their collective bargaining agreement".
That makes a lot more sense: workers don't want to work overtime because the conditions are bad and didn't think it would constitute a strike, but the courts disagreed, which seems like a reasonable ruling (IMO, it could have gone both ways before the ruling).
Striking is an essential tool for union power, and the union agreement gives up the ability to strike so long as it is in effect. Giving up striking is akin to giving up all further collective bargaining outside the gains of the current agreement.
The memo is absurd all on its own. Outside of the threats to jail employees, the final bullet comes off as infantile and petty.
Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract? That seems to be the most wildly absurd component of the entire story.
> Giving up striking is akin to giving up all further collective bargaining outside the gains of the current agreement.
Nonsense. While the current agreement is in force, it's perfectly legitimate to start negotiating a new agreement. It's quite possible for that to happen without first staging a strike. Industrial action is for when negotiation has failed; you give due notice to terminate the existing agreement, on the grounds that it has failed, and hold a vote on action.
> Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract?
The threat in the letter is that jail time might be a possibility if workers violate court orders (contempt of court is mentioned). It's not simply for breaking a contract. If you break an employment contract, the contract is arguably void, and you are no longer employed, that's all.
There is so much that could be said here... but a company forcing workers to work overtime is both a) run of the mill in terms of history and b) still reprehensible.
Strikes always have been of grey legality, because the law has always been much more responsive to the concerns of business owners and investors than to those of the workers. There are many examples of historical strikes that ended in workers being gunned down by the army.
The bargaining table is always going to be tilted away from the workers, which is how you end up with collective bargaining agreements like this: with clauses that allow workers to be forced to work involuntary overtime and that make workers using their power to renegotiate the agreement illegal.
But that doesn't mean we should accept that fact or call it "reasonable". It's not. It never has been. It never will be.
This is why I don't believe unions are the solution to issues of inequity and abuse in the workplace. They are a bandaid and a poor one at that. The solution is for the people who are doing the work to also be the ones governing the business. And for the people who provided the capital to merely be given a reasonable return, and nothing more.
Just to be clear, I don't pass any judgement about forcing overtime / forbidding strikes. I also think those are bad practices, and I'm pretty sure both are not legal in my country (in which most labor advances were a hard-won battle involving strikes, the country is famous for its strikes, you can probably guess it already).
I just tried to figure out the actual situation in a way that would actually make sense, assuming everyone involved was reasonable and tried to abid by the law.
Acting without voting made this an "illegal strike." If they'd all voted to stop, there would be no threat of jail.
This is a garbage ruling because obviously there was consensus among the workers otherwise it would never have been a problem and gone to court. And the point of the vote is to demonstrate consensus.
> A much more reasonable headline, if I understood the story correctly, would be, "workers refuse to work mandatory overtime, and courts ruled that to be a strike, which is forbidden by their collective bargaining agreement".
How can it even be legal to give up the right to strike in a collective agreement? How can it be legal to work overtime without extra pay?
I’m once again shocked by the sorry state of working laws in the USA.
This is actually quite reasonable and the same in Germany as well. While a collective bargaining agreement is in effect and has not been cancelled (there are minimum times and notice periods), a strike would be illegal.
The idea is to give both sides some assurance that what has been agreed is stable and not up to the whim of either the employer or the union.
> How can it even be legal to give up the right to strike in a collective agreement?
"This union agrees with <employer X> that, while negotiations are ongoing, the union will not sanction industrial action by its members". It seems pretty reasonable to me that nobody should have to negotiate with a gun to their head.
I don't think there should be a right to strike while your union is negotiating. If you think your union negotiators are crap, you can join a different union, and urge your fellow workers to join you. The collective agreement is between the employer and the old union; it wouldn't bind members of the new union.
Wildcat industrial action, without the backing of a union, is dangerous.
> How can it be legal to work overtime without extra pay? I’m once again shocked by the sorry state of working laws in the USA.
In this particular case, the overtime is paid: 1.5x the normal rates for nights an 2x for weekends and holidays. It also takes place in Canada, which has a distinct set of labor laws as compared to the USA.
The court’s ruling is the boring part, but you imply that the company’s response is not newsworthy. Do you find these points to be reasonable from the company’s memo?
- Legal action against striking employees for all damages caused by the illegal strike (by grievance or lawsuit). You could be personally liable for added production costs, penalties owing to Owner or, even the loss of the contract with our client.
- Contempt of court proceedings for violation of the order entered by the court (the possibility of fines and even potentially jail)
- We also expect that the Owner will be very upset with striking employees. It is possible that the Owner would consider a site ban for those involved.
Actually "refusing to work overtime is considered to be a strike" is certainly not boring from my point of view. I would have expected it to go the other way, i.e. "refusing to work overtime is not considered to be a strike".
But yes, I'm not a media reporter, I'd probably suck at it.
By the way, if someone have a link to the court decision, it should be interesting to read. It was not linked in the article.
If you are going to send labor to jail for noping out of "essential services", you damn well better send a management to jail for failing to plan for staffing essential services. Why do the lowest paid employees carry the highest responsibilities?
The very idea that overtime exists for "essential" services, is insane.
The "go to jail" part seems unrelated to the issue at hand - the company said if the workers also are found in contempt of court (for.. not showing up? or what?) then they could go to jail.
It boggles the mind that workers would give up the right to strike as part of their work agreement. Strikes are like the main tool workers have to defend themselves and their working conditions!
I'm sure there must be a rational explanation, but from the outside it looks incredibly short-sighted. Is this common? Why would unions agree to that sort of concession?
Its a normal part of a decay into a dystopian cooperate hellhole? Sign here and here if you want to eat today. There is inter-generational debtslavery on large parts of this planet, it just migrated west-wards from there.
Next step: A communist party forms and a disenfranchised generation joins it.
What's the point of a company entering a contract with a union if the union refuses to abide by the terms they agreed to? The company agreed to higher rates, better benefits, etc and gets nothing in return.
It's a bad sign for anyone who might consider joining as well- all the benefits you think you get by joining a union or any sort of collective go out the window the moment it becomes inconvenient for the collective to back you.
Next step: you're still disenfranchised, but you've traded the farmer for the pigs.
It doesn’t look like that’s what happened though. The issue is that they are under and active contract and no vote to strike was taken.
Contracts have terms, saying “we wont strike for 3 years if you do x” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and has been part of contract negotiations forever. AND based on the phrasing it sounds like they still could strike, they just need to vote first.
Those involved might have thought that not volunteering to work overtime isn't a strike, and so wouldn't realize that one was required. Clearly this company believes this to be incorrect but [there] must have been some room for misunderstanding.
I do wonder what the overtime take up rate must have been before this. If it was less than 100%, then was it made apparent that this was illegal, or were employees left thinking that it wasn't mandatory and were on strike without realizing it.
Perhaps, it was deemed acceptable for not all employees to take the overtime available. In which case, who decides which employee must work and who need not? If just one takes up the overtime, would it still be a strike?
> “we wont strike for 3 years if you do x” is a perfectly reasonable thing
Without legal protection, "you don't strike for 50 years if we hire you" will be standard legalese in any employment contract. It's the nature of a competitive market place vs a labor market where workers have no individual bargaining power: companies that abuse their workers will be most competitive, and pretty soon they are the only employers left in the market.
This is of course not true for very creative long tail employees, software etc., but it could be argued that such professionals are not representative of the deep labor market; they have such high human capital that are acting as mini-capitalists, during contract negotiation they can force the employer's hand to a degree that no scaffolder or birklayer could ever hope to, so they have no practical need for the power to strike.
Normally these ageeements are time limited to say 1-3 years and then needs to be renegotiated, this is when union requires some certain salary increases over the next agreement period and for that promise to not strike given that the employer hold up the agreement. Should the not come to a agreement during the negotiations, strikes are an option.
Your employer writes the contract and they write it specifically to remove as many rights from you as possible.
Thats the definition of employment you sacrifice your freedom for money so you can buy food and a roof over your head.
In the UK if a contract infringes on your rights then the contract as a whole is void but most employers will still write up illegal contracts to pressure their employees. Most employees don't know what their rights are and if they do they don't know that legally they can't sign away their rights so the contract doesn't matter, but even if the employee knew all their rights its cheaper and easier to get a new job than fight it in court.
In other countries like the US you can sign away your rights apparently Canada is the same, this is metal to me that some one could legal sign them selves into slavery in the USA and Canada and no one has a problem with that?
Because it's something of (potentially great) value to the employer, which can be traded for something of value to the employees.
If the contract is time-limited, then you retain the leverage at the time of negotiating the next contract (though not between: that's the trade-off).
I understand they're also quite normal in some, more consensual, Northern European situations when the relationship between union and employer is sufficiently consensual that the union can be confident a strike is unlikely to be needed in order to address grievances.
It‘s a fundamental part of any Tarifvertrag (collective bargaining contract) in Germany - as long as the contract is in force, strikes that aim to change the contract are illegal. The legal term is Friedenspflicht https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedenspflicht. Some contracts even specify that the Friedenspflicht extends beyond the contract until a first attempt at negotiations, possibly including mediation has failed.
I expect that it’s fairly normal: If the union is actively striking, or threatening to strike, an agreement that doesn’t guarantee a return to work won’t be acceptable to management.
Once the agreement expires and it’s time to hammer out a new one, the whole range of labor and management bargaining tactics are in play again, including strikes and lock-outs.
I don't know anyone who is well paid who goes on strike. I personally would gladly trade away any ability to strike for more money (which, in effect, I do).
If striking looks like an effective path it means you are part of a system that is keeping you poor. The correct response is not to sit there fighting the system. We've seen how this game plays out, there are centuries of incidents to look back on. The system will win, and great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs while economic realities remain the reality.
Instead of playing a game they will lose, workers should adopt better strategies. Eg, grouping together and investing in capital, like what the winners of the game do. Trading away their ability to strike might be an accidental win on their part if it forces them to adopt economic strategies that work.
The "winners of the game" get a nice bailout from US taxpayers when they lose, so it's not particularly impressive. Striking is what got you a 5 day work week and an end to child labor. You may not appreciate the blood that was spilt for your cushy white collar desk job, but from there to tell people that collective bargaining is a waste and something only the poors do? Egregious.
While I tend to agree that for individual optimization, fighting the system tends to be suboptimal, leaving and finding another system tends to be more optimal. The issue is that if everyone does this, over time, all systems will erode against labor rights and there will ultimately be no system to flee to. At some point people have to eat the cost and stand their ground to fight a given system, otherwise you will lose in the long run. We need people who stand up and fight.
> I don't know anyone who is well paid who goes on strike.
No, of course not. People usually strike for better pay or conditions. If you're well paid then you already have better pay, and are probably in demand enough that you will get good conditions or are in a position to negotiate. It doesn't really make sense for e.g. software engineers in the current economy to consider strike action.
Workers don't want to strike in general. It's stressful and costly. It's not usually their preferred negotiating strategy; it has to be less worse than the alternative.
> great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs
It's easy to sneer at "a few crumbs" if you're in a state of privileged wealth. Sometimes small differences in pay can mean going from not being able to pay rent to having some disposable income. And, often, it's not "a few crumbs".
> Eg, grouping together and investing in capital
What did you have in mind? How does investing in capital help you with not being paid well enough to invest?
> I don't know anyone who is well paid who goes on strike. I personally would gladly trade away any ability to strike for more money (which, in effect, I do)
The salaries of Stevedores in the US range from $18,280 to $80,389
The salaries of Stevedores in Australia range from AU$110k to AU$129k
Interestingly the Maritime Union of Australia has a reputation for being quite militant and left wing
I'm not sure if describe collective action as "a game they will lose." Labor laws and the 40 hour work week didn't just get handed down by well meaning capitalists. They happened because of decades of intense coordinated action, largely by unions.
"Not playing the game" sounds a lot like a strike to me. Isn't "Grouping together and investing their capital" exactly what unions do?
A lot of folk going on strike don't have the option to go elsewhere or find another job (which is probably the exact reason that a corporation feels they can underpay them).
I agree that well paid workers don't strike, so i guess this corp should pony up some more money?
In France the right to strike is in the Constitution, so you can't waive it with a contract.
But I'm a bit baffled that not going to overtime is qualified as a strike, they are doing their normal hours, they are not locking the jobsite, and the management has the opportunity to hire more people or call a temp agency, which I guess a vote for a strike would prevent. I'm not very familiar with the anglo striking procedures, here it's an individual choice, it's the other side of being a constitutional right.
In germany, the right to strike is in the constitution (GG, Art 9, (3) https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_9.html) and still, while a collective bargaining agreement is in place, strikes that aim at changing any aspect of that agreement are illegal - and the union/workers may be liable for damages. (Striking for aspects that are not part of the agreement in place would be legal). Collective bargaining agreements here are usually time limited or have termination clauses. I would be surprised if this was fundamentally different in France.
>In France the right to strike is in the Constitution, so you can't waive it with a contract.
I'm not an expert in French law but that's definitely not how it works in common law. Free speech might be protected by the constitution, but you can still enter into contracts that limit that right (NDA or non-disparagement) and the courts will uphold it.
> Is this common? Why would unions agree to that sort of concession?
Yes, it is quite common. In any contract, both sides give something of value to the other. When a union contracts with an employer, the employer makes concessions like improved working conditions and increased wages. What does the union provide to the employer?
Typically, the answer is that the union provides agreement not to strike as long as the employer upholds their end of the contract.
Reading between the lines I am guessing that normally finding people to volunteer for overtime is easy; in some cases the workers are offered it by seniority first, as many blue collar workers see time and a half and holiday pay as very desirable. Hence the contractual concession. But in a heatwave it becomes a different story and now workers are noping out because it isn't worth it. And neither side may have seen this as a a possibility.
They did not give up the right to strike entirely at all. And agreements like this are not uncommon for what are deemed essential services.
> It boggles the mind that workers would give up the right to strike as part of their work agreement
What other option do they have, besides seeking employment elsewhere? (which may not even be an option, if enough companies across the industry have identical clauses in their contracts)
You can't just cross out a line from an employment contract these days. Everything seems to be served via services like DocuSign, which discourages negotiation by presenting the contract as a fait accompli.
This headline seems to be a gross misrepresentation of the situation.
There overtime seems to be voluntary (unless there are not enough volunteers, in which case it becomes a necessary part of employment) and by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Both are reasonable stipulations for utilities and civilisation life support.
There seems to have been a letter circulated which calls for workers to stop volunteering at one location, which is being interpreted as a call for a strike - which I think is a reasonable interpretation.
A better headline would be “Workers at essential service where strikes are not allowed attempt to find a loophole but company is not putting up with it”.
> by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Putting up scaffolding for an oil-drilling company isn't an "essential service".
The agreement not to strike is in the collective bargaining agreement their union negotiated for them. First you form a union; then you can sign up for collective bargaining.
I don't know how "strike" is defined in Canada; but declining to do overtime in the UK would be referred to as a work-to-rule.
I don't know the terms of the collective bargaining agreement; maybe it mentions witholding labour, rather than strikes. At any rate, it seems to be wildcat action, and I imagine it will undermine the union's negotiating position. If you take wildcat industrial action, you can't expect the union to stand up for you when the employer comes after you with lawyers.
> which calls for workers to stop volunteering at one location, which is being interpreted as a call for a strike
No, this is called "working to rule". You don't do anything more than your contract stipulates you must.
What I suspect is happening is that the company has to pay more, or it somehow is not in their interest, when it's mandatory rather than voluntary overtime, so they're threatening people for not volunteering.
No, read the details. Their collective agreement has a process for requiring overtime if no volunteers. The union is saying "don't volunteer" so the courts are saying "ok, that's a strike since you aren't following the collective agreement".
> No, this is called "working to rule". You don't do anything more than your contract stipulates you must.
Working to rule isn't an Ontario legal concept.
Collectively agreeing to restrict the output (i.e. working to rule) is a Strike.
[1]> “strike” includes a cessation of work, a refusal to work or to continue to work by employees in combination or in concert or in accordance with a common understanding, or a slow-down or other concerted activity on the part of employees designed to restrict or limit output; (“grève”)
How can not choosing to do thing voluntarily be seen of as a strike, even if it is coordinated? I (personally) don't see that as a reasonable interpretation.
I think words sometimes lose their meaning in some places. Clearly, OP doesn't even understand that "voluntarily" doing something means that you only do it if you want to... so refusing to do it is by definition within your rights... what they seem to be trying to do is re-defining what voluntary means... unfortunately, a very common tactic these days.
I think the problem is that some, or even many, would have volunteered if not for the circulated letter. By collectively influencing each others' choices, rather than letting people choose individually without consideration from the union, the court ruled that this is essentially a union strike, especially since it had a purpose of trying to get benefits from the employer.
And that could have been fine, but if I understand the article correctly, the problem is that there wasn't a vote on this action within the union. If it would have been voted on and formally taken as a union action, they would have been acting legally. But without the formal vote, it is an illegal strike according to the region's labor laws.
"Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage, caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances."
Regarding the “work to rule” points, that isn’t being disputed though, is it? The dispute is that choices are being made as a result of a coordinated action, which implies a strike.
“Workers who don’t volunteer are being threatened with jail” is not the story, and is incomplete.
“workers are jeopardising voluntary work schedules in a coordinated action” is the story. The debate should be around whether that constitutes a strike.
Absolutely. Think the point here is that someone went around telling everyone else not to volunteer at a certain time, which is a different thing altogether.
'Voluntary' in this case seems to be a way of allowing the affected workers to make the decision of who's going to be working rather than management choosing. Ideally this avoids having management assign Bob (whose daughter has a dance recital he'll miss) instead of George (who's saving for Stanley Cup tickets) so the staff who want overtime get to choose to have overtime. I think there's a word for that, it's right at the tip of my tongue.
Reading between the lines I am guessing that normally finding people to volunteer for overtime is easy; in some cases the workers are offered it by seniority first, as many blue collar workers see time and a half and holiday pay as very desirable. Hence the contractual concession.
But in a heatwave it becomes a different story and workers are noping out because it isn't worth it. And neither side may have seen this as a a possibility when the contract was signed,as it may have never been an issue before.
Possibly, but the essential service classification is not essential for the point to still stand. Someone thought it was essential enough to negotiate a no-strike agreement, and union thought it was essential enough to agree.
The article helpfully links to the agreement currently in force between the company and the union. The relevant clause is:
> Overtime shall be voluntary except that where there are insufficient volunteers to perform the required work, then the Union and the employees agree that the Employer may require the employees, who have the skill, ability and qualifications to perform the work, to do so on the basis of reverse seniority by shift and classification.
According to this, the company has the right to require overtime work to be performed, but must first offer it to volunteers. If not enough volunteers are available, then the company can require specific employees to perform the overtime work.
Without any wider context or passing judgment on the wisdom of agreeing to this clause in the first place, everything the article describes points to the company following the agreement and the union not holding up their side of the deal.
> everything the article describes points to the company following the agreement and the union not holding up their side of the deal.
While this is true, I wonder if the union is still representative of the workers.
If the union has negociated a deal without the workers' agreement and is, obviously, not able to make them respect it, that would cast a very different light on the issue.
>>While this is true, I wonder if the union is still representative of the workers.
In my experience, people negotiating the contract rarely have the best interest of the rank-and-file employees.
I have negotiated several union contracts, if we knew we would need to cut positions in the near future, all you had to do was promise a small jump in pay to the senior employees (usually the ones negotiating across the table from you) - and they then happily threw the new hires and junior people under the bus to pad their own paychecks.
Worked like magic every-time. Literally tell the person negotiating the contract that they could personally get a $5K bump in pay (i.e. by offering a longevity bonus in the contract) , and they would give the green light to cut as many people as we needed to make that happen.
The article sensationalizes the topic by putting "voluntary" in quotes. Per their contract, it's not voluntary if no one volunteers, it is mandatory, and then people are chosen by seniority and classification.
So yes, people are being forced to work overtime, and the article conflating it with "voluntary" is misleading.
Of course, if requiring overtime is to such a point where they are threatening legal action, wouldn't it be easier to hire more people?
These are two very good questons that aren't addressed in the article.
Also of interest would be the conditions that led to the current situation despite a collectibe bargaining agreement being in play.
I certainly wonder whether the company had pushed the requests for overtime to the point where a perhaps relatively small workforce felt themselves to be overextended beyond compensation, but this is all speculation without more detail, ideally from viewpoints on either side of the disagreement.
If this is enforceable, that's ridiculous. People should not be allowed to be coerced into agreeing to give up their right to decide not to work (overtime or whatever, really).
Doesn't striking pretty much by default mean "not holding up their side of the deal"? Or are you saying that because the deal exists, they can never strike?
Really would like to know what happened at the labor board meeting. The sentence about the letter is so wish-washing it almost sounds like they don't have a single copy of it (i.e. may not exist). What was written on that that would _only_ "suggest" and "claim".
[1]> An anonymous letter was circulated to the Employees suggesting that Employees
collectively refuse to work overtime shifts for the purpose of compelling incentives from
the Employer, including improvements in compensation or working conditions, starting
on Monday, August 22, 2022.
Readit News
If I understand that right:
- the company can request overtime from its workers, first by asking for volunteers
- the workers collectively decided not to volunteer, as is their right
- the company can force workers, according to their skills and other factors, to work overtime. There doesn't seem to be any difference in pay between voluntarily accepting overtime and being forced to work overtime (at least none that I could find in the memo or bargaining agreement, I didn't read the law on that matter)
- the problem, then, seems to be that workers refuse to work overtime at all.
A much more reasonable headline, if I understood the story correctly, would be, "workers refuse to work mandatory overtime, and courts ruled that to be a strike, which is forbidden by their collective bargaining agreement".
That makes a lot more sense: workers don't want to work overtime because the conditions are bad and didn't think it would constitute a strike, but the courts disagreed, which seems like a reasonable ruling (IMO, it could have gone both ways before the ruling).
The memo is absurd all on its own. Outside of the threats to jail employees, the final bullet comes off as infantile and petty.
Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract? That seems to be the most wildly absurd component of the entire story.
Memo: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wzy0sn
Union agreement: https://sp.ltc.gov.on.ca/sites/mol/drs/ca/Real%20Estate%20an...
Nonsense. While the current agreement is in force, it's perfectly legitimate to start negotiating a new agreement. It's quite possible for that to happen without first staging a strike. Industrial action is for when negotiation has failed; you give due notice to terminate the existing agreement, on the grounds that it has failed, and hold a vote on action.
> Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract?
The threat in the letter is that jail time might be a possibility if workers violate court orders (contempt of court is mentioned). It's not simply for breaking a contract. If you break an employment contract, the contract is arguably void, and you are no longer employed, that's all.
Strikes always have been of grey legality, because the law has always been much more responsive to the concerns of business owners and investors than to those of the workers. There are many examples of historical strikes that ended in workers being gunned down by the army.
The bargaining table is always going to be tilted away from the workers, which is how you end up with collective bargaining agreements like this: with clauses that allow workers to be forced to work involuntary overtime and that make workers using their power to renegotiate the agreement illegal.
But that doesn't mean we should accept that fact or call it "reasonable". It's not. It never has been. It never will be.
This is why I don't believe unions are the solution to issues of inequity and abuse in the workplace. They are a bandaid and a poor one at that. The solution is for the people who are doing the work to also be the ones governing the business. And for the people who provided the capital to merely be given a reasonable return, and nothing more.
I just tried to figure out the actual situation in a way that would actually make sense, assuming everyone involved was reasonable and tried to abid by the law.
This is a garbage ruling because obviously there was consensus among the workers otherwise it would never have been a problem and gone to court. And the point of the vote is to demonstrate consensus.
How can it even be legal to give up the right to strike in a collective agreement? How can it be legal to work overtime without extra pay?
I’m once again shocked by the sorry state of working laws in the USA.
The idea is to give both sides some assurance that what has been agreed is stable and not up to the whim of either the employer or the union.
"This union agrees with <employer X> that, while negotiations are ongoing, the union will not sanction industrial action by its members". It seems pretty reasonable to me that nobody should have to negotiate with a gun to their head.
I don't think there should be a right to strike while your union is negotiating. If you think your union negotiators are crap, you can join a different union, and urge your fellow workers to join you. The collective agreement is between the employer and the old union; it wouldn't bind members of the new union.
Wildcat industrial action, without the backing of a union, is dangerous.
Except that, as the article mentions, this is happening in Canada. But you know, let's keep the outrage machine going Facts don't matter.
However just to confirm for you, the first words of the article are:
> Last week, AlumaSafway, a Canadian scaffolding company,
In this particular case, the overtime is paid: 1.5x the normal rates for nights an 2x for weekends and holidays. It also takes place in Canada, which has a distinct set of labor laws as compared to the USA.
This story takes place in Alberta, Canada.
"Courts ruled that to be a strike"? BORING.
Gotta spice that story up. "Company forces employees to work overtime or get fired".
Yeah, that's more like it. That'll pull in the ad revenue we need.
- Legal action against striking employees for all damages caused by the illegal strike (by grievance or lawsuit). You could be personally liable for added production costs, penalties owing to Owner or, even the loss of the contract with our client.
- Contempt of court proceedings for violation of the order entered by the court (the possibility of fines and even potentially jail)
- We also expect that the Owner will be very upset with striking employees. It is possible that the Owner would consider a site ban for those involved.
But yes, I'm not a media reporter, I'd probably suck at it.
By the way, if someone have a link to the court decision, it should be interesting to read. It was not linked in the article.
The very idea that overtime exists for "essential" services, is insane.
In a union shop? There's a good chance there's a legal minimum multiplier for any overtime pay, and a union contract might have that higher.
I'm sure there must be a rational explanation, but from the outside it looks incredibly short-sighted. Is this common? Why would unions agree to that sort of concession?
Next step: A communist party forms and a disenfranchised generation joins it.
It's a bad sign for anyone who might consider joining as well- all the benefits you think you get by joining a union or any sort of collective go out the window the moment it becomes inconvenient for the collective to back you.
Next step: you're still disenfranchised, but you've traded the farmer for the pigs.
Contracts have terms, saying “we wont strike for 3 years if you do x” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and has been part of contract negotiations forever. AND based on the phrasing it sounds like they still could strike, they just need to vote first.
Those involved might have thought that not volunteering to work overtime isn't a strike, and so wouldn't realize that one was required. Clearly this company believes this to be incorrect but [there] must have been some room for misunderstanding.
I do wonder what the overtime take up rate must have been before this. If it was less than 100%, then was it made apparent that this was illegal, or were employees left thinking that it wasn't mandatory and were on strike without realizing it.
Perhaps, it was deemed acceptable for not all employees to take the overtime available. In which case, who decides which employee must work and who need not? If just one takes up the overtime, would it still be a strike?
Without legal protection, "you don't strike for 50 years if we hire you" will be standard legalese in any employment contract. It's the nature of a competitive market place vs a labor market where workers have no individual bargaining power: companies that abuse their workers will be most competitive, and pretty soon they are the only employers left in the market.
This is of course not true for very creative long tail employees, software etc., but it could be argued that such professionals are not representative of the deep labor market; they have such high human capital that are acting as mini-capitalists, during contract negotiation they can force the employer's hand to a degree that no scaffolder or birklayer could ever hope to, so they have no practical need for the power to strike.
Thats the definition of employment you sacrifice your freedom for money so you can buy food and a roof over your head.
In the UK if a contract infringes on your rights then the contract as a whole is void but most employers will still write up illegal contracts to pressure their employees. Most employees don't know what their rights are and if they do they don't know that legally they can't sign away their rights so the contract doesn't matter, but even if the employee knew all their rights its cheaper and easier to get a new job than fight it in court.
In other countries like the US you can sign away your rights apparently Canada is the same, this is metal to me that some one could legal sign them selves into slavery in the USA and Canada and no one has a problem with that?
\m/
Well placed typo! :D
I agree with you though. That a society would allow a private contract to take precedence over law is something I can't fathom.
If the contract is time-limited, then you retain the leverage at the time of negotiating the next contract (though not between: that's the trade-off).
I understand they're also quite normal in some, more consensual, Northern European situations when the relationship between union and employer is sufficiently consensual that the union can be confident a strike is unlikely to be needed in order to address grievances.
Once the agreement expires and it’s time to hammer out a new one, the whole range of labor and management bargaining tactics are in play again, including strikes and lock-outs.
If striking looks like an effective path it means you are part of a system that is keeping you poor. The correct response is not to sit there fighting the system. We've seen how this game plays out, there are centuries of incidents to look back on. The system will win, and great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs while economic realities remain the reality.
Instead of playing a game they will lose, workers should adopt better strategies. Eg, grouping together and investing in capital, like what the winners of the game do. Trading away their ability to strike might be an accidental win on their part if it forces them to adopt economic strategies that work.
While I tend to agree that for individual optimization, fighting the system tends to be suboptimal, leaving and finding another system tends to be more optimal. The issue is that if everyone does this, over time, all systems will erode against labor rights and there will ultimately be no system to flee to. At some point people have to eat the cost and stand their ground to fight a given system, otherwise you will lose in the long run. We need people who stand up and fight.
No, of course not. People usually strike for better pay or conditions. If you're well paid then you already have better pay, and are probably in demand enough that you will get good conditions or are in a position to negotiate. It doesn't really make sense for e.g. software engineers in the current economy to consider strike action.
Workers don't want to strike in general. It's stressful and costly. It's not usually their preferred negotiating strategy; it has to be less worse than the alternative.
> great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs
It's easy to sneer at "a few crumbs" if you're in a state of privileged wealth. Sometimes small differences in pay can mean going from not being able to pay rent to having some disposable income. And, often, it's not "a few crumbs".
> Eg, grouping together and investing in capital
What did you have in mind? How does investing in capital help you with not being paid well enough to invest?
The salaries of Stevedores in the US range from $18,280 to $80,389
The salaries of Stevedores in Australia range from AU$110k to AU$129k
Interestingly the Maritime Union of Australia has a reputation for being quite militant and left wing
"Not playing the game" sounds a lot like a strike to me. Isn't "Grouping together and investing their capital" exactly what unions do?
A lot of folk going on strike don't have the option to go elsewhere or find another job (which is probably the exact reason that a corporation feels they can underpay them).
I agree that well paid workers don't strike, so i guess this corp should pony up some more money?
But I'm a bit baffled that not going to overtime is qualified as a strike, they are doing their normal hours, they are not locking the jobsite, and the management has the opportunity to hire more people or call a temp agency, which I guess a vote for a strike would prevent. I'm not very familiar with the anglo striking procedures, here it's an individual choice, it's the other side of being a constitutional right.
I'm not an expert in French law but that's definitely not how it works in common law. Free speech might be protected by the constitution, but you can still enter into contracts that limit that right (NDA or non-disparagement) and the courts will uphold it.
Yes, it is quite common. In any contract, both sides give something of value to the other. When a union contracts with an employer, the employer makes concessions like improved working conditions and increased wages. What does the union provide to the employer?
Typically, the answer is that the union provides agreement not to strike as long as the employer upholds their end of the contract.
They did not give up the right to strike entirely at all. And agreements like this are not uncommon for what are deemed essential services.
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What other option do they have, besides seeking employment elsewhere? (which may not even be an option, if enough companies across the industry have identical clauses in their contracts)
You can't just cross out a line from an employment contract these days. Everything seems to be served via services like DocuSign, which discourages negotiation by presenting the contract as a fait accompli.
There overtime seems to be voluntary (unless there are not enough volunteers, in which case it becomes a necessary part of employment) and by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Both are reasonable stipulations for utilities and civilisation life support.
There seems to have been a letter circulated which calls for workers to stop volunteering at one location, which is being interpreted as a call for a strike - which I think is a reasonable interpretation.
A better headline would be “Workers at essential service where strikes are not allowed attempt to find a loophole but company is not putting up with it”.
> by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Putting up scaffolding for an oil-drilling company isn't an "essential service".
The agreement not to strike is in the collective bargaining agreement their union negotiated for them. First you form a union; then you can sign up for collective bargaining.
I don't know how "strike" is defined in Canada; but declining to do overtime in the UK would be referred to as a work-to-rule.
I don't know the terms of the collective bargaining agreement; maybe it mentions witholding labour, rather than strikes. At any rate, it seems to be wildcat action, and I imagine it will undermine the union's negotiating position. If you take wildcat industrial action, you can't expect the union to stand up for you when the employer comes after you with lawyers.
No, this is called "working to rule". You don't do anything more than your contract stipulates you must.
What I suspect is happening is that the company has to pay more, or it somehow is not in their interest, when it's mandatory rather than voluntary overtime, so they're threatening people for not volunteering.
Working to rule isn't an Ontario legal concept.
Collectively agreeing to restrict the output (i.e. working to rule) is a Strike.
[1]> “strike” includes a cessation of work, a refusal to work or to continue to work by employees in combination or in concert or in accordance with a common understanding, or a slow-down or other concerted activity on the part of employees designed to restrict or limit output; (“grève”)
[1]: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/95l01
And that could have been fine, but if I understand the article correctly, the problem is that there wasn't a vote on this action within the union. If it would have been voted on and formally taken as a union action, they would have been acting legally. But without the formal vote, it is an illegal strike according to the region's labor laws.
“Workers who don’t volunteer are being threatened with jail” is not the story, and is incomplete.
“workers are jeopardising voluntary work schedules in a coordinated action” is the story. The debate should be around whether that constitutes a strike.
So this is akin to a mugger saying "Give me your money voluntarily, or I will force you with his gun"
Sorry but "Voluntary or else" is not Voluntary
'Voluntary' in this case seems to be a way of allowing the affected workers to make the decision of who's going to be working rather than management choosing. Ideally this avoids having management assign Bob (whose daughter has a dance recital he'll miss) instead of George (who's saving for Stanley Cup tickets) so the staff who want overtime get to choose to have overtime. I think there's a word for that, it's right at the tip of my tongue.
Seems dystopian. Striking seems very justified, agreement or no.
Reading between the lines I am guessing that normally finding people to volunteer for overtime is easy; in some cases the workers are offered it by seniority first, as many blue collar workers see time and a half and holiday pay as very desirable. Hence the contractual concession. But in a heatwave it becomes a different story and workers are noping out because it isn't worth it. And neither side may have seen this as a a possibility when the contract was signed,as it may have never been an issue before.
> Overtime shall be voluntary except that where there are insufficient volunteers to perform the required work, then the Union and the employees agree that the Employer may require the employees, who have the skill, ability and qualifications to perform the work, to do so on the basis of reverse seniority by shift and classification.
According to this, the company has the right to require overtime work to be performed, but must first offer it to volunteers. If not enough volunteers are available, then the company can require specific employees to perform the overtime work.
Without any wider context or passing judgment on the wisdom of agreeing to this clause in the first place, everything the article describes points to the company following the agreement and the union not holding up their side of the deal.
While this is true, I wonder if the union is still representative of the workers.
If the union has negociated a deal without the workers' agreement and is, obviously, not able to make them respect it, that would cast a very different light on the issue.
In my experience, people negotiating the contract rarely have the best interest of the rank-and-file employees.
I have negotiated several union contracts, if we knew we would need to cut positions in the near future, all you had to do was promise a small jump in pay to the senior employees (usually the ones negotiating across the table from you) - and they then happily threw the new hires and junior people under the bus to pad their own paychecks.
Worked like magic every-time. Literally tell the person negotiating the contract that they could personally get a $5K bump in pay (i.e. by offering a longevity bonus in the contract) , and they would give the green light to cut as many people as we needed to make that happen.
So yes, people are being forced to work overtime, and the article conflating it with "voluntary" is misleading.
Of course, if requiring overtime is to such a point where they are threatening legal action, wouldn't it be easier to hire more people?
Also of interest would be the conditions that led to the current situation despite a collectibe bargaining agreement being in play.
I certainly wonder whether the company had pushed the requests for overtime to the point where a perhaps relatively small workforce felt themselves to be overextended beyond compensation, but this is all speculation without more detail, ideally from viewpoints on either side of the disagreement.
This one wasn't an exception either.
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The company didn't require the employees do anything, it only demanded it.
The managers demanded compliance virulently, but again, just people squirting words at each other.
There's some lingering logical issues having workers who are, in their own view, not workers.
[1]> An anonymous letter was circulated to the Employees suggesting that Employees collectively refuse to work overtime shifts for the purpose of compelling incentives from the Employer, including improvements in compensation or working conditions, starting on Monday, August 22, 2022.
[1]: http://www.alrb.gov.ab.ca/decisions/GE_08829.pdf