Equity, Diversity & Canadian Labour 9781442684300

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Union Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Looking Back: A Brief History of Everything
3. Bargaining Against the Past: Fair Pay, Union Practice, and the Gender Pay Gap
4. Union Response to Pay Equity: A Cautionary Tale
5. Labour’s Collective Bargaining Record on Women’s and Family Issues
6. We Are Family: Labour Responds to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers
7. Broadening the Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda
8. Racism and the Labour Movement
9. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour: A Comparative Perspective
Afterword
References
Contributors

Citation preview

EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND CANADIAN LABOUR Edited by Gerald Hunt and David Rayside

In recent years the Canadian labour movement has undergone fundamental change in response to demands for greater inclusion and representation by women, visible and sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour explores the efforts made by organized labour in Canada towards addressing discriminatory attitudes and practices in the workplace and within unions themselves. While there has been considerable progress in this regard, persistent impediments to equity and uneven responsiveness to diversity issues remain. This collection of original essays brings together contributors from a variety of academic backgrounds – women’s studies, political science, sociology, industrial relations – and from the labour movement itself to examine union policies, practices, and cultures with respect to diversity. The first comprehensive analysis of Canadian labour’s response to challenges on gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation issues since the 1980s, the book aims to highlight the structural and cultural developments that have taken place within the labour movement around equality rights, and to provide a forum for debate about the extent to which union democracy has been reshaped as a result of equity activism. GERALD HUNT is an associate professor and Chair of the Department of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behaviour in the School of Business at Ryerson University.

is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

DAVID RAYSIDE

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Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour Edited by GERALD HUNT AND DAVID RAYSIDE

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020–8956-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020–8634-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour / edited by Gerald Hunt and David Rayside. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8020-8956-4 (bound) ISBN 978-0-8020-8634-1 (pbk.) 1. Labour unions – Social aspects – Canada. 2. Labour unions – Canada – Political activity. 3. Labour movement – Canada. 4. Labour union democracy – Canada. 5. Pay equity – Canada. I. Hunt, Gerald, 1948– II. Rayside, David M. (David Morton), 1947– HD6524.E68 2007

331.880971

C2007-902827-6

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Preface

vii

Union Abbreviations 1 Introduction

3

GERALD HUNT

2 Looking Back: A Brief History of Everything

25

JULIE WHITE

3 Bargaining against the Past: Fair Pay, Union Practice, and the Gender Pay Gap 49 ANNE FORREST

4 Union Response to Pay Equity: A Cautionary Tale

75

JUDY HAIVEN

5 Labour’s Collective Bargaining Record on Women’s and Family Issues 101 KAREN BENTHAM

6 We Are Family: Labour Responds to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 130 GERALD HUNT AND JONATHAN EATON

7 Broadening the Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 156 DAVID RAYSIDE AND FRASER VALENTINE

vi

Contents

8 Racism and the Labour Movement

181

TANIA DAS GUPTA

9 Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour: A Comparative Perspective 208 DAVID RAYSIDE

Afterword

244

LINDA BRISKIN

References

257

Contributors

283

Preface

This book examines the Canadian labour movement’s response to inequality issues raised by women, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people. Our book grew out of an idea by Gerald Hunt. After finishing his edited collection, Laboring for Rights: Unions and Sexual Diversity across Nations (1999), Gerald vowed he would never edit another book. As most people who have completed edited collections will attest, they are much more work and hugely more time-consuming than they appear. Not only that, but they do not garner the peer recognition afforded journal articles or single-authored books. The thought of another edited collection seemed too daunting. Nevertheless, the idea of a book comparing labour’s engagement with a variety of equity-seeking groups kept niggling away. A casual conversation with Virgil Duff of the University of Toronto Press reinforced the notion that such a book had merit, warranted the work it might involve, and would be published. For both of us, there was a moment when the book idea moved from protest to project. We were at our cottage in the Haliburton Highlands, and Gerald was going on about how worthwhile the book might be, how much he dreaded doing it alone, and how much finding a co-editor would help. We looked at each other and the same thought emerged: do it together? We had successfully published a few articles before, and realized we had complementary skills, our academic interests had been moving closer together for a number of years, and we both thought the book a terrific and worthy idea. Still, it seemed pretty scary, and we both had other big projects on the go. However, by the time we had mulled it over, had a swim in the lake, a bottle of beer, and a barbecue dinner, it had taken flight.

viii Preface

The rest, as they say, is history. We hope our efforts have been worthwhile and that we have produced a book that academics and activists will find useful, interesting, and engaging. We worked very hard as editors, but many others helped to produce this book. Contributors came from a variety of backgrounds, analytical dispositions, and academic disciplines. They all expended great effort to make the book happen. We are deeply indebted to them, and wish to thank them for their extraordinary efforts. In addition to the hard work by the contributors, there are a number of research assistants we would like to thank. Kim Campbell did a wonderful job pulling together library materials and was invaluable in helping to edit the reference list. Adrian Guta tirelessly helped with the final editing and compilation, creating what looked like a book from a pile of paper. Kristy Holzworth did a superb job of transcribing audio tapes. Barbara Stevenson provided excellent editorial assistance on a number of chapters. Cheryl Auger did a super job gathering materials for David Rayside. We would also like to thank our respective institutions, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto, for allowing us time to complete the project, as well as for providing several research grants funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Finally, we would like to dedicate this book to the many activists working for social change within the labour movement. Without their efforts over the years, the remarkable achievements recorded in this book would never have been accomplished.

Union Abbreviations

ABVAKABO ACLA ACTU ACWA AFL-CIO AFSCME AFT APALA BCFED BCGSEU BSCP CAW

CBRE CBRT CBTU CCD CEP CIO CLC

Netherlands Civil Servants’ Union Asian Canadian Labour Alliance Australian Council of Trade Unions Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (aka The Amalgamated) American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees American Federation of Teachers Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance British Columbia Federation of Labour British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (aka Canadian Auto Workers Union, CAW – TCA Canada) Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Council of Canadians with Disabilities Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada Congress of Industrial Organizations (see AFL-CIO) Canadian Labour Congress

x Union Abbreviations CLUW CMG CNTU/CSN CNV COPOH CUPE CUPTE CUPW CUT CWA DGB ETUC FNV FTP/QFL FWTAO GEW GTVA HEU IAM IAMAW IBEW IG Metall ILGWU IWA JLC JTUA LDSWU LO MGWU NALBO NALGAO

Coalition of Labor Union Women Canadian Media Guild Confederation of National Trade Unions / Confédération des syndicats nationaux National Federation of Christian Trade Unions (Netherlands) Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicaped Canadian Union of Public Employees Canadian Union of Professional and Technical Employees Canadian Union of Postal Workers Cloakmakers Union of Toronto Communications Workers of America German Confederation of Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) European Trade Union Confederation National Federation of Unions (Netherlands) Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec / Quebec Federation of Labour Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario German Teachers’ Union (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft) Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association Hospital Employees’ Union (British Columbia) See IAMAW International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers German Metalworkers’ Union (Industriegewerkschaft Metall) International Ladies Garment Workers Union Industrial, Wood, and Allied Workers of Canada Jewish Labour Committee Journeymen Tailors’ Union of America London District Service Workers’ Union Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen I Sverige) Manitoba Government Workers Union National and Local Government Officers’ Association National Association of Local Government Arts Officers

Union Abbreviations xi NAPE NEA NUM NUPGE OBU OCBTU OFL ONA OPSEU ORC OSCP OTEU ÖTV PAFSO PIPSC PSAC QTC RWDSU SEIU TLC TLCHR TU TUC UAW

UBCJ UE UFCW UGW ULFA UNISON UNITE UNITE HERE

Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees National Education Association National Union of Mineworkers National Union of Public and General Employees One Big Union Ontario Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Ontario Federation of Labour Ontario Nurses’ Association Ontario Public Service Employees Union Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen (aka ORC&B) Order of Sleeping Car Porters Office and Technical Employees Union Union of Public Services and Transport (Gewerkschaft Öffentliche Dienste, Transport und Verkehr) Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada Public Service Alliance of Canada Quebec Teachers’ Corporation Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Service Employees International Union Trades and Labour Congress of Canada Toronto Labour Committee for Human Rights International Brotherhood of Teamsters (aka Teamsters) Trades Union Congress International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agriculture Implement Workers of America (aka United Auto Workers) United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners United Electrical Workers United Food and Commercial Workers United Garment Workers University of Lethbridge Faculty Association A British trade union Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (See UNITE HERE) Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees / Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union

xii Union Abbreviations UPW USW

USWA VER.DI WUL

United Packinghouse Workers United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (aka Steelworkers) United Steel Workers of America (See USW) United Services Union (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft) Workers’ Unity League

EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND CANADIAN LABOUR

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1 Introduction GERALD HUNT

There is a clear economic advantage for Canadian workers to belong to a union. Research consistently points to the superior pay, benefits, and working conditions of unionized employees compared to similarly employed workers who are not union members (Akyeampong 2002; Fang and Verma 2002; Gunderson and Hyatt 2005; Renaud 1997). But, does this advantage extend beyond strictly class-based issues? Do unions provide a forum in which inequities that arise from gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and immigrant or minority status are seriously addressed? Does organized labour simply replicate and perpetuate historical sources of bias and discrimination in society, or does it attempt to confront and ameliorate them? As one of the largest and most powerful social and political movements in Canada – 30 per cent of the workforce belong to a union – the house of labour is a force to be reckoned with. Outside of labour studies and industrial relations circles (and sometimes within them), however, labour is sometimes seen as unchanged and of little relevance. This opinion tends to be reflected in the media and public opinion, and is certainly held by many of my own students. In the courses I teach, I find it an uphill battle to get students to shed their preconceptions about the role of unions in contemporary society. This is unfortunate, since there are signs that unions have shifted in important and interesting ways. Even though organized labour’s primary concern is economic equality, there is increasing evidence that a broader set of equity issues is now part of the agenda for many labour organizations across the country. Labour is almost always a visible presence at marches and rallies concerned with issues as diverse as gay pride, women’s rights, reproductive rights, peace, poverty, homelessness, globalization, racism,

4 Gerald Hunt

and excessive policing. The voice of labour is raised during debate on major social and political issues such as Aboriginal land claims, samesex marriage, environmental protection, medicare, and disability rights – and almost always in a progressive rather than a conservative tone. Not all unions or union locals are active in these ways, but there is growing evidence that Canadian labour is undergoing a process of revitalization, and that some of this renewal involves a heightened awareness and response to the representational, leadership, and political advocacy issues that women and minorities bring to the table (Kumar and Schenk 2006). As a result, if this elephant is moving, people should take notice since its movement on issues with broad policy implications is important for all Canadians. The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive and current analysis of Canadian labour’s response to issues raised by gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation in the mid-to late 2000s. The group of Canadian experts assembled here have written original and current essays on particular aspects of the gender-diversity-labour axis by reviewing existing literatures and by reporting on their own research. In some cases these contributors explore terrain on which little research has been previously undertaken. The essays in this book include, among other things, a detailed analysis of the collective bargaining record of unions on issues of concern to women and families, a case study of a union local’s fraught engagement with pay equity, an assessment of union response to transgendered workers, an examination of labour’s agenda on disability rights, and an assessment of racism and the labour movement. Although each author focuses on a specific group or issue, taken collectively these essays provide a unique forum for comparing Canadian labour’s response to equity issues across unions, equity-seeking groups, and equity issues. The final essay then examines these developments in relation to progress in other parts of the world. Overall, the book establishes a launching point for further research and discussion within and outside the labour movement locally, nationally, and internationally. The overarching goal of the book is to assess the depth and breadth of labour’s equity and diversity agenda. Are most unions active? On what issues, and in what ways are they active? Are there variations in response between equity categories and issues? How positively do activists rate change? The book begins with an overview of political and social contexts in which labour operates in Canada, emphasizing the dynamics that serve to support or impede labour’s engagement

Introduction 5

with equity initiatives. This introductory chapter also discusses the things unions might actually do in order to support women and minorities in the Canadian context. The second chapter tracks the progression of union response to equality issues from the late 1800s to the 1980s. The first two chapters set the stage for the next six chapters, which consider specific areas of union activity in relation to women and minorities in the modern period. The final chapter draws on all of the essays to examine and assess the Canadian case within the context of the global labour community. The Canadian Context This section discusses the context in which labour functions in Canada. It begins with an examination of the Canadian industrial relations system, followed by a discussion of the political and social contexts in which labour is situated. From this analysis I conclude that the Canadian environment provides a positive climate and many incentives for the take-up of equity and diversity issues in most Canadian institutions, including unions. The Canadian Industrial Relations System Dunlop (1993) provides the classic framework for the analysis of industrial relations. Drawing on systems theory, he underscores the need to understand the inputs, transformational processes, and outputs that give shape to industrial relations systems. His framework highlights the history, role, ideology, and power of key actors in the industrial relations system (unions, government, and management), the context in which these actors operate (political, legal, social, and economic), and the web of rules, procedures, and norms that govern their interactions. Dunlop’s model can be criticized for downplaying the motivations and attitudes that shape behaviour on the ground, but it is widely viewed as a useful framework for understanding and comparing the general and basic architecture of labour movements. For my purposes, Dunlop’s model also provides a useful analytical frame for exploring the factors that give shape to the particular labour-equity nexus we find in the Canadian case. In comparison to many settings, Canadian labour remains relatively robust. Canadian labour, like union movements around the world, has had to adjust to the globalization of production, trade liberalization,

6 Gerald Hunt Table 1.1 Unionization in Canada (n = 4.1 million) Unionization rate (% in 2004) Total Coverage rate* Men Women Public sector workers Private sector workers Full-time workers Part-time workers Permanent employees Non-permanent employees

30.5 32.4 30.6 30.3 72.3 17.8 32.0 23.6 31.2 25.4

Unionization rate by selected occupations (% in 2003) Secondary/elementary teachers Nursing Support staff (health) Construction trades Professors Food and beverage Machine operators and assemblers Labourers Retail Primary industries

88.6 81.0 54.1 40.6 75.0 8.9 38.0 16.9 12.0 16.1

* Includes union members and persons who are not union members but are covered by collective agreements. Source: Akyeampong (2004).

deregulation, and privatization, but this has not been at the cost of a decimated labour movement. By 2005, there were 275 different unions, with a combined membership of close to 4.4 million, and a union density rate of 30.7 per cent (Bédard 2005). Although union density has declined in the past couple of decades, union membership has been able to keep pace with population growth, and the labour movement continues to be an important voice in Canadian politics. Where there has been significant change in Canada is in the demographics of union members, and the occupations and sectors that are most unionized (see table 1.1). In 1977 only 12 per cent of union members were women, but by 2003 nearly half (48 per cent) of the unionized workforce was female. This rise has been the result of growing numbers of women in the paid workforce, the increased presence of women in the highly unionized public sector, their movement into male-dominated industries and occupations with high union rates, and rising unionization among part-time

Introduction 7

workers who are disproportionately female (Akyeampong 2004). There has also been a rapid rise in the number of people from visible minorities in the workforce over the past thirty years, and with it a rise in the ethnic and racial diversification of unionized workers. Until the 1960s, most immigrants came from Europe or the United States, but by 2001 more than half were arriving from other regions of the world. In 2001, 13.4 per cent of Canada’s population self-identified as visible minority, that percentage having tripled from 1981, when it was under 5 per cent (Palameta 2004). Statistics Canada projects that by 2017, 19 to 23 per cent of the population will be visible minority. Even though statistics charting visible minorities and unions are not available, it is reasonable to believe that at least 10 per cent of union members are visible minority, given the high rate of unionization in the public sector where there have been strong efforts to hire visible minority workers. There have also been changes in union density by industry and sector (see table 1.1; Akyeampong 2004). Union membership in the goods-producing sectors has been in decline, while union membership in the public and service sectors has increased. Over the past several decades, union growth has been strongest among workers in public administration and health care, and in recent years gains have been made among workers in the child-care and home-support fields. By 2003 most government workers, 81 per cent of nurses, and 88.6 per cent of teachers were unionized. In the six-year period from 1997 to 2003, child-care and home-care workers increased their unionization rate by 7.2 per cent. By contrast, over the same period, membership losses were pronounced among workers in non-durable and durable manufacturing. Unionization among machine operators and assemblers decreased by over 2 per cent and the loss in the trades was 2.5 per cent. These demographic and occupational shifts have helped to bring more semi-professionals, women, minorities, and youth into the labour mosaic. Many of the factors that have moderated (or assimilated) the voice of American unions over the course of the twentieth century have also been at play in Canada. The post–Second World War ‘settlement’ in some ways tamed both labour movements, in exchange for recognizing their legitimacy in workplace bargaining (Panitch and Swartz 1988; Heron 1996). And while the social policy commitments that were part of that implicit welfare state bargain were more expansive than those in the United States, they were far from the provisions embedded in most European welfare states. All these factors shaped a union agenda that was, in comparative terms, relatively narrow. But not to the same extent as the American side. The more expansive

8 Gerald Hunt

political agendas associated with social unionism are more prominent in Canada (particularly evident in the differences between the once-affiliated Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and United Auto Workers (UAW) unions). The many unions formally associated with the New Democratic Party (NDP) are tied to an explicitly social democratic party, as distinct from the more centrist Democratic Party in the United States And while political debate and political parties have shifted to the right in Canada, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism has not been as pronounced as in the United States. Unlike some European countries, there are very few employer organizations that come together to engage in the collective bargaining process. Most negotiations take place at the level of the firm between a single union and single employer, rather than at the sectoral level. There are a few exceptions to this in industries such as construction and trucking, but the norm in Canada is for labour relations to be highly decentralized. Non-unionized employers such as Wal-Mart actively resist unions, and many have substitution policies whereby they attempt to match collective bargaining outcomes in similar industries. In general, most employers appear to accept, albeit reluctantly, the fact of unions in Canada, and comply with the rules and procedures governing their operations. As Thompson (2004:96) points out, government in Canada plays a dual role in regulating the employment contract. On the one hand, it regulates the conduct of unions and management through legislation, and on the other, it employs a very large number of workers who are unionized. This has on occasion created conflict since governments have the right to enact ‘back-to-work’ legislation for their own employees. Even though the federal government and each province have their own labour relations legislation – and this does create some variation across provinces in the web of rules – these differences are not large enough to take any single province substantially towards other industrial relations models. As a result, there is relative conformity in the rules governing such things as certification, grievances, and strike activity. Overall, the existing legislation across Canada imposes few rules on the substance of collective agreements, and unions and employers have great flexibility in the areas they may wish to negotiate at the bargaining table. Overall, the particular configuration of the actors in the Canadian industrial relations equation provides the motivation and impetus to take up issues related to diversity. Unions remain relatively strong in

Introduction 9

Canada. Union demographics are now such that significant portions of the membership are women, and many members are drawn from racial and ethnic minorities. These shifts provide the impetus for unions to acknowledge the reality of more diversity in their own ranks, and increases the likelihood of challenges and debate around representation. The management and government sides of the labour equation acknowledge the legitimacy of unions, albeit in some cases reluctantly, and do not in any systematic or organized fashion limit the range of issues, including those to do with equity and diversity, over which unions might reasonably expect to bargain on behalf of members. That said, some individual employers fight hard to avoid or constrict the power of unions. Political and Social Context The political setting in which Canadian unions work also provides the motivation for taking up questions of diversity, and at the same time allows for variation across regions and workplaces.1 These characteristics complicate the process of generalizing about the Canadian case, though they also allow much room for localized or sector-specific innovation. Canada’s political system is highly decentralized, with its provinces (and territories) having wide jurisdiction and extensive powers over taxation and spending. There are few federal regimes in the industrialized world (Switzerland would be a rare example) in which regional governments have as much leverage. Regionalist sentiments are also very strong in some parts of Canada, strengthening the hand of provincial governments. The fact that Canada’s French-speaking minority is so concentrated in Quebec strengthens the impetus towards governmental decentralization and regional identification within that province’s francophone majority. There are constitutional provisions specific to Quebec, and political developments since the original federal system was put in place, that recognize its distinctive place within Canada, even if many Canadian anglophones resist officially declaring that distinctiveness. There are other ways in which the country’s political system has moved towards official or quasi-official recognition of ethnic diversity. In a country with a long history of immigrant waves, ethnicity had always been an important basis of partisan and electoral mobilization. And unlike the United States, there has been less of a nationalist or revolutionary mythology (especially in English-dominated regions) to

10 Gerald Hunt

assimilate towards (Lipset 1970). This relatively passive response to the retention of ethnic differences has been reinforced by the federal government’s official adoption of multicultural policy in the 1970s. There is legitimate debate about how deep governmental or public commitment is to the recognition of such diversity, but the official and rhetorical commitments do matter. At the time that official multiculturalism was being enacted by the federal government, the proportion of immigrants coming from non-European countries was increasing dramatically – especially from East and South Asia. This effectively provided a racial dimension to ethnic diversity, and intensified demands for recognition, especially within the country’s largest cities. These developments provide an especially significant motivator for a labour movement not wanting to be seen as falling behind political commitments to equity. The Canadian rights framework changed in the 1980s in ways that provided a further impetus for labour to recognize diversity. The 1982 entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the constitution did little if anything to enhance the organizing rights of labour, but it did improve the language used for a number of other equality rights. Entrenchment also gave rights claimants and courts more capacity to challenge acts of governments, and by so doing significantly elevated the profile of rights claims based on diversity. This was especially so after 1985, when the major equality rights section of the Charter came into force. That section included disability explicitly, at the time a constitutional rarity, and used open-ended wording in its prohibitions against discrimination that were soon being interpreted to include sexual orientation. With the partial exception of Quebec, the Charter soon acquired considerable popularity among Canadians. And over time, its commitments on equity came to be adopted rhetorically by political leaders as a mark of Canadian distinctiveness. Two medium-sized social democratic parties – the NDP and the Quebecbased, sovereignist Bloc Québécois – had the strongest commitments to equity, but the most centrist Liberal Party slowly acquired affirmative stances on a range of equity issues, even as it moved towards neoliberalism on a variety of economic and social policy fronts. The partisan right has been divided over equity issues over most of the last two decades, weakening the political attack on the recognition of diversity. The former Progressive Conservatives, in power at the federal level for most of the 1980s, was relatively centrist on such issues, and even its commitment to neo-liberal rollbacks of state

Introduction 11

authority were tepid compared to Reaganite and Thatcherite policies (Bashevkin 2000). The 1990s saw a socially conservative and neoliberal breakaway from the Conservatives establish itself as the Reform Party and later the Alliance, but even the latter party had to be cautious about appearing extreme on equity issues. When a new Conservative Party was formed in 2004, it was strategically forced to temper its demands, for example, on women’s reproductive rights and samesex relationship recognition (though still intent on opposing same-sex marriage). It was also intent on portraying itself as welcoming to visible minorities. For most of the last few decades, then, there has been no particularly credible partisan voice officially to declare its opposition to immigration or its determination to eliminate policies favouring equity (with the exception of lesbian/gay marriage). The labour movement has been officially tied to the NDP since that party’s foundation in the early 1960s. Because the NDP has had realistic chances for forming a government only in a few provinces, and never at the federal level, the official link has not provided a sustained linkage to government policy making. The complexity of partisan choices, particularly in the volatile 1990s and 2000s, has also meant that the linkage has usually not translated into member votes. On the other hand, labour’s ties to the NDP placed it in the heart of debates over equity and diversity at a relatively early stage. As a new party distinctly to the left of the centrist Liberal Party, the NDP attracted a large number of activists energized by the social movement protest wave of the period. Feminists were especially prominent, in a country whose women’s movement included a strong socialist current (Briskin and Eliasson 1999). This helped to ensure that from an early period, sources of inequity other than class would have an airing. Also important in creating openings for consideration of diversity within the NDP and the labour movement was the relative weakness of a distinctive working-class culture. In much of Europe, such culture had been secured by stark class divisions and by networks of working-class institutions that reproduced the culture of workers in traditional industrial sectors – an assertively white heterosexual male culture that treated class as towering over all other forms of difference. To be sure, there were regions and workplaces in which such culture persisted in Canada, but nothing to the extent of that found in parts of Britain and the industrial heartlands of continental Europe. The fact that class differences in Canada were less pronounced than in most other parts of the world, and that class was more widely denied as

12 Gerald Hunt

a definer of identity (almost as much as in the United States), left substantial room for the emergence of identities shaped by other dimensions of difference or inequality. This fuelled social movement activism based on gender, race, Aboriginal status, sexuality, and disability, and did so outside the umbrella of the left (socialist or labour). On the one hand, this risked isolating labour from other social movements. On the other hand, it ensured that the labour movement included activists who also had ties and allegiances to other social causes, with social and political identities inflected by more than one allegiance. Restraining Forces At the same time, there are forces that serve to restrain or at least slow down the likelihood of equity initiatives in the Canadian labour movement. Canadian unions were for a long time mainly the preserve of the white, male, presumed heterosexual breadwinner, and many of the organizational structures and values of unions are a reflection of that group’s legacy. As Julie White points out in chapter 2, for much of its early history, labour was as racist, sexist, able-bodied, and homophobic as other Canadian organizations. Historically, labour conspired in pay differences for men and women, helped to perpetuate barriers to the employment of married women, cooperated in keeping racial minorities from access to most labour markets, and helped to legitimize the stigmatization of gays and lesbians. Although labour has moved on from this legacy of flagrant bias and discrimination, it is possible that some of the values and beliefs underlying such attitudes and behaviour might still linger below the surface. Unions in their early period were often shaped by bureaucratic, hierarchical, and competitive norms. They tended to favour a slow rise to the top based on years of dedicated commitment, and leaders were almost always a product of internal succession. Many unions continue to operate within this framework. On the one hand, these practices serve to reward loyalty and produce solidarity. On the other hand, though, these same practices can reduce the potential for newer, younger, and different voices to be heard, gain momentum, and rise quickly into leadership roles. Another foundation for many unions is the establishment of a common set of rules for all workers. Commendable as this is, because it prevents employers from using favouritism and setting workers against each other, it also has the effect of creating rule-bound organizational structures with little room for the flexibility

Introduction 13

needed to accommodate a wider variety of workers and needs. Also at the core of many union cultures is the concept of seniority as a guiding concept for hiring, transferring, and laying off workers. This can have the effect of denying newer entrants (often women and minorities) job security, making them more prone to layoffs, and potentially alienating them from a deeper union engagement. As a couple of the contributors to this volume note, unions such as the postal workers and auto workers have attempted to make appropriate demands at the bargaining table that expand the concept of seniority and make it apply positively and complementarily to equity demands. But for many unions, seniority remains a dominant construct.2 As Yates (1998:93) has argued, ‘unions’ collective identity and organizational structure are critical factors in determining how new union members are brought in.’ As a result, without a substantial rethink of traditional operating norms and practices, women and minorities may remain outside circles of influence or wait years on the sidelines in order to gain a voice. Another reason we might anticipate labour’s engagement with a broader equity agenda to be somewhat muted is precisely because of the widespread recognition of diversity issues throughout Canadian society and its institutions. There has been considerable momentum towards the embrace of diversity as a core social value, with a charter embedding such principles into law. In some ways this can make it easy for unions to ‘opt out’ of diversity initiatives, and to comply with legislation as it unfolds rather than adopt a proactive or activist strategy. Linked to this is the fact that not all unions have had dramatic demographic shifts. In paper mills, for example, 98 per cent of the workforce continues to be male, with little hiring over the past twenty years (hiring that might have produced more diversity). So, even though this is a heavily unionized sector, we would not necessarily expect gender or other equality issues to be the focus of their campaigns. Organizational research shows that change is unlikely to occur in the absence of effective leadership (Kotter 1996). Not all unions can be expected to have the particular combination of central and local diversity champions that might be necessary to bring an equity agenda assertively forward. As White (1990) notes in her case study of the postal worker’s union, it sometimes takes a ‘bad’ employer to get a union sufficiently incensed to take action. She concludes that when the postal workers got the first national agreement on paid maternity leave, it was not that they had mostly women members or active

14 Gerald Hunt

women’s committees, or even progressive union leadership on the issue. What they had was an employer that was Dickensian, helping to create a militant membership and a leadership that moved more and more to a socialist perspective and was increasingly able to view maternity benefits as an issue of fairness within this framework.3 What Can Be Done? Clearly, there is a favourable climate for the take-up of diversity issues by Canadian organizations, including unions. The context is such that all political parties and key actors in the system must at least acknowledge and at the very least rhetorically champion a pro-diversity agenda. The enactment and evolution of a charter championing the rights of minorities reinforces the importance of equality, and has served to embolden gender and minority activists to stand firm on equality claims. When combined with the fact of changed union demographics, whereby half of the membership is female and many members are from minority backgrounds – along with the fact of significant unionization in the public sector where equity issues have been in the foreground for some time – there are strong incentives for labour to develop relatively expansive diversity agendas. But the call for equity is also a call for a change in union structures, cultures, and priorities, aspects of organizational life that can be very resistant to change. As David Rayside points out in the final chapter, unions in other countries have also been under pressure to respond to a broader equity agenda. He suggests several factors helping predict the overall responsiveness of labour to equity issues cross-nationally, such as the extent of demographic change in the workplace; the capacity for building activist presence around ‘new’ equity issues; the support of existing union leadership; the seriousness of union decline; structural characteristics of the labour movement; the embeddedness of a distinct labour culture; and various features of the political context. I have already made clear that several of these forces create favourable conditions for the take-up of equity issues in Canadian labour. This further reinforces the notion that action on equity issues should be at the foreground of Canadian labour’s agenda. Given this pro-equity context and framework, what exactly might Canadian unions do? Briskin (2002:32–40) has explored this question in relation to women, and suggests six strategies unions can use to foster and build an equitable environment, strategies that are equally relevant for minorities. First, unions can provide increased opportunities for representation and

Introduction 15

inclusion by women and minorities on decision-making bodies. This can be done by designating or adding seats on executive committees and boards. Secondly, unions can expand and redefine collective bargaining agendas in ways that address issues of concern to women and minorities, such as child care, employment equity, and pay equity. Third, unions can provide space for separate organizing and constituency building. Such initiatives provide a welcoming space for women (and minorities) to find support, formulate ideas, clarify demands, and confront leadership with their concerns. Fourth, unions can strive to build alliances and coalitions with other social movements. Such moves would help to facilitate and promote a broader political and activist movement for women and minorities within and beyond labour. Fifth, unions can assertively confront and tackle their own internal practices in an effort to find innovative ways to incorporate new constituencies and better represent existing ones. Finally, unions could strive to embrace heightened forms of inclusion and representation in all of their activities in an attempt to have a more democratic and welcoming environment in all formal and informal forums. Ledwith and Colgan (2002:18) suggest such a move would involve ‘a wide range of structural and cultural organizational change(s) … a reallocation of union resources, whereby representing the interests of diversity groupings becomes central to campaigning and to the collective bargaining agenda.’ In their view, this is would help push a diversity and equity agenda to the forefront of union activity rather than its being an add-on or afterthought. This is also in keeping with Hyman’s (1994a) idea that unions may need a ‘radical shift’ if they are to move to new levels of relevance for a wider group of people. In summary, some of the specific actions unions might take towards embracing a comprehensive equity agenda include the following: • Develop formal, inclusive, non-discrimination policies. • Hire equity officers to enforce policies and build momentum for

equity goals. • Support the establishment of committees or caucuses for women

and minority groups. • Reserve seats on boards and management committees for women

and minorities. • Provide broad-based education programs on issues of difference and

diversity. • Bargain collectively around issues that are of particular concern to

women and minorities.

16 Gerald Hunt • Engage in political advocacy and coalition building with social

movement activists. • Aim towards a version of internal democracy that is transformative

in all aspects of union operations. The Evidence so Far This book builds on previous knowledge about labour’s engagement with women and minorities. Contributors to this volume are among a league of scholars that have been actively engaged in this area of research, and they have undertaken to provide a review of literatures relevant to their specific topic as part of each chapter. Previous work highlights the fact that Canadian unions have been challenged to acknowledge that at least some inequities resulted from differences other than class from an early time. As Rayside notes (this volume), Quebec nationalists were forcing debate within labour about the inequities produced by the anglophone minority in that province as early as 1960. And, as White notes (see chapter 2), there has been from a very early time a strong feminist voice in most labour circles. The voice of women was further strengthened by second-wave feminism and the rise of women in the workforce throughout the 1970s. A voice for women was further strengthened by the expansion of public sector unions (many of them with high numbers of women) during this same period. By the early 1980s women were assertively challenging unions to acknowledge the issues they brought to the table. Over the past three decades women have made considerable progress inside unions in terms of representation in union leadership and the prominence of their issues in collective bargaining (Sugiman 1994; Briskin and McDermott 1993; White 1993). By the early 2000s, Briskin (2002:45) suggests the labour movement had become a ‘key player in the women’s movement.’ However Forrest and Haiven (both in this volume) remind us that some of these gains have been at the level of formal policy, and that entrenched gender biases are still at the heart of contentious issues such as pay equity for women. A principled response by labour to a broader collection of diversity issues came after women laid the foundations. Women activists were the first to confront unions about internal structures, bargaining agendas, and representation; other equity-seeking groups followed this lead. Genge (1983, 1998) finds evidence of gay and lesbian organizing as early as the 1970s, but this did not begin to produce significant results until

Introduction 17

the 1990s when same-sex benefits became a logical place for union response (Hunt 1997). Even though racial and ethnic differences have always been part of the mix in unions, a less biased response only began to emerge during the 1980s (Das Gupta 1998). It was not until the 1990s that the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and some of the larger unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) had developed comprehensive policy statements and recommendations for challenging racism in their own ranks and in the labour force (see CLC 1997a, b). Unions have mobilized for workers injured on the job for a long time, but only in the early 2000s did they begin expanding their support for people with disabilities more assertively (see CLC 2000). By the end of the 1990s, most labour federations and many unions did have policies on workplace equity for women and minorities; some had developed new forms or representation, including designated positions on boards; and many unions had undertaken campaigns on their behalf. The essays in this book bring these stories and developments up to date, provide insight into how deep and possibly transformative these changes have been, and offer an agenda for the future. The Stories Told Here As many readers will know, Julie White has long been an activist and independent researcher on labour and equity issues. Her books Women and Unions (1980), Mail and Female: Women and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (1990), and Sisters and Solidarity: Women and Unions in Canada (1993) are three of the earliest books to chart the experience of women in the labour movement, acting as guiding lights for scholars such as myself, who followed in her footsteps. In chapter 2, Julie builds on her earlier work and provides an historical assessment of union response to equity. She examines developments over three time periods (1890–1920s, 1930s–1950s, 1960s–1980s), charting some of the significant changes in the union movement itself and the impact of these evolutionary, and in some instances revolutionary, periods for women, people with disabilities, people of colour, and sexual minorities. To some degree, it is a disheartening account, especially when viewed through the lens of the twenty-first century. White finds that unions in Canada were not in the foreground of activism for equal rights for women and minorities, and in far too many cases actively opposed such aims. She does find examples of unions taking the high road, but these are told as exceptions. Only

18 Gerald Hunt

after the Second World War does White begin to see significant change, a response to increasing numbers of women in the labour force and growing unionization overall. But she reminds us that it is employers who usually have the final say on employment practices and conditions, and that as often as not they have found it convenient and expeditious to undermine union influence by exploiting differences among workers. And, ironically, it could be said that differences among workers lie at the heart of the equity agenda. Many readers of this volume will also be familiar with the scholarly work of Anne Forrest. For several decades, Forrest has been a strong voice reminding us that gender bias against women lies at the historical heart of the employment relationship. In chapter 3 Forrest argues that unions do create openings for equity, but often fail to confront bigger issues such as long-standing, male-centred notions of work, pay, and job segregation. She points out that confronting gender bias in unions, the labour market, and the workplace involves more than tinkering at the edges. She argues that engagement with gender parity must involve radical, systematic, and transformative change if unions are to truly embrace women. At the core of Forrest’s critique is the notion that three fundamental principles of union activity – pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons – must be decoded and deconstructed in order to reveal inherent bias. They must be reconceptualized in new ways if genuine gender equality is to be achieved. In chapter 4 Judy Haiven provides a unique perspective on union response to pay equity and its impact on women. She uses a case study of a local in the Canadian Union of Public Employees at the Saskatoon Catholic School Board to illustrate the strength of resistance to change. The case illustrates the tensions and challenges of implementing pay equity in an institution where the financial costs cannot easily be externalized. Haiven’s case study helps to illuminate the shop floor dynamics that can occur within one union over gender parity. Haiven attests to CUPE’s overall commitment to equity, but helps us understand how translating principled commitments made at a national level to the local level can be a complex and fraught exercise. In chapter 5 Karen Bentham looks at how successfully unions have bargained on issues of particular concern to women and families. Her chapter updates previous research examining collective bargaining gains in this area, with particular reference to Pradeep Kumar’s research from the early 1990s. Kumar (1993a) determined that unions had not adequately dealt

Introduction 19

with issues such as sexual harassment protection, pay equity, affirmative action, child-care facilities, and work-life balance, and challenged them to do better. Bentham concludes that too little progress has been made in the decade between Kumar’s and her studies. She finds that Canadian unions have had some success in becoming more equitable, but that change has been incremental. She notes that more unionized workers have bargained flexible working arrangements and greater access to short-term personal and family-related leaves. But she states that many have collective agreements that do not address issues such as harassment and pay equity. Bentham argues that one of the reasons there has been so little change may be perception. Framing issues as women’s issues, she speculates, runs the (unfortunate) risk of relegating them to low priority. In contrast, in the essay I wrote with Jonathan Eaton (chapter 6), we reckon that labour recognition of gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights has been both significant and swift. We argue that early union support for inclusive non-discrimination policies and equal access to work-based benefit packages has been instrumental in helping to alter the legal landscape for sexual minorities. We point out that unions were involved in a number of landmark human rights decisions involving equal rights for gays and lesbians. We also highlight the emerging role played by labour in respecting the rights of transgendered people. Our investigations find that unions representing auto workers, postal workers, and public sector employees now have non-discrimination and anti-harassment clauses inclusive of sexual identity. Unions have long fought to protect members who are injured or become ill as a result of their work. In chapter 7 Fraser Valentine and David Rayside acknowledge labour’s commendable record in accident prevention and workplace safety, but assert that only recently have unions broadened their framework to include workers (and potential workers) with pre-existing disabilities. They are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for change, citing not only recent policy shifts in a number of labour organizations, but also the steps some unions now take to increase accessibility at their own functions and events, and to include disability in their employment equity statements. They acknowledge that these developments are only a first step, but an important one, towards a more inclusive environment for workers with disabilities. In chapter 8 Tania Das Gupta tracks labour’s engagement with race. She wrote an excellent essay on anti-racism and organized labour (Das Gupta 1998), and here she builds on that essay with new insights and

20 Gerald Hunt

updates. She reports that labour has moved a long way from the exclusionism of the nineteenth century. She argues that labour has responded to internal and external anti-racist activism with policy development, education, and advocacy, but has yet to achieve fair representation in staff and leadership positions. Das Gupta’s essay is enlivened through the use of data obtained from interviews with activists both inside and external to the union movement. David Rayside has written widely on diversity and public policy in Canada, the United States, and Europe (Rayside 1998). To his research he brings an interest in the role labour movements have played in forwarding an equity agenda, and is thus able to situate developments in Canada within a global framework. Rayside begins chapter 9 by stating that the Canadian labour movement has moved as far as any of its counterparts in other countries in recognizing diversity, and perhaps further. He argues, as I have, that these developments can be explained to a significant degree by Canada’s unique configuration of Constitutional rights and its particular industrial relations framework, along with the somewhat unique positioning of multiculturalism and equality in Canadian society as a core social value. Expanding on the Canadian experience with a comparative analysis, Rayside sees encouraging signs of labour-diversity alliances in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, the United States, and Australia. Drawing on analytical insights from Hyman (1994a, b, c, 2001) and a special issue of the European Journal of Industrial Relations (edited by Frege and Kelly 2003) and others, he offers a number of factors that help to explain variations across nations. He cites the extent of demographic change in the workplace, the capacity for building activist presence around ‘new’ equity issues, the seriousness of union decline, the structural characteristics of the labour movement, the embeddedness of a distinct labour culture, and various features of the political context. Our collection ends with an afterword by Linda Briskin. She was one of the first to acknowledge the surge of feminist activism in Canadian unions starting in the 1960s, and to draw attention to its impact. In 1983 she co-edited Union Sisters with Lynda Yanz, and in 1993 she published Women Challenging Unions, edited with Patricia McDermott. Many of the stories reported in this volume confirm her view that feminist organizing inside unions has made a tremendous difference to the Canadian labour movement. In her afterword, Briskin acknowledges the progress that has been made for women, and increasingly for other groups, and highlights the challenges that the equity project inside unions continues to face. In so

Introduction 21

doing, she has set out an agenda for the future. She recommends increased coalition building inside union among and between equityseeking groups; cross-constituency organizing, she suggests, will serve to strengthen the equity project, and help democratize union structures. She also calls for a broadening of the equity project to assertively include marginalized and low-paid workers, regardless of their demographic or union status. Briskin concludes optimistically that ’Canadian labour will continue its trajectory towards inclusive, democratic and progressive unionism.’ Moving Forward The essays in this book suggest that Canadian labour is capable of reinventing and reinvigorating itself into a worker’s movement for all people. These experts claim that labour is not there yet, but that movement since the 1980s has been impressive and dramatic. The overall conclusion these writers reach is that unions have changed, that they have helped to bolster equality for women and minorities within the public policy arena and within the employment relationship. It is now common to find union events held in accessible locations with daycare provisions and language interpreters (including sign language). More and more women and minorities can be found in formal leadership roles. Unions sponsor educational programs covering diversity and difference. Collective agreements are more likely to include provisions that reflect the needs of minorities and families. Some unions have pushed for pay equity. A growing number of unions support identity caucuses for women and minorities, and act on recommendations from these groups. More and more unions and union confederations have designated positions on their boards for women and minorities as a way to bring these groups into the decision-making process. No one argues that unions have been totally transformed. What they do argue is that significant change has occurred, even since the beginning of the century, in terms of representation, inclusiveness, leadership practices, bargaining agendas, educational programming, and organizational cultures. Some point out as well that Canadian labour is also increasingly noted for its progressive voice on equity issues within international labour circles. Yet, these experts also see a flip side to the good news. Many cite the restraining forces I have noted here – such as the difficulty of getting rule-bound, bureaucratic, and hierarchical organizations to

22 Gerald Hunt

change – to highlight the fact that developments have been mixed and uneven. They conclude that the extent of change varies, sometimes quite starkly, across unions, sectors, regions of the country, and equity issues. Every author points out that progress on equity issues has tended to be more pronounced in public sector unions, large and national unions, and in urban union locals. They find that some unions, especially those who represent craft and trade workers, and those with headquarters outside Canada, often acquiesce to new legal requirements rather than take a leadership or supporting role in helping to produce change. Several contributors highlight gaps not just between unions, but between union locals. In some instances members agree with the merits of an expanded equity agenda, and in other instances they opt to make their resistance highly vocal and visible. In making their assessment, however, these authors remind us that unions do not operate in a vacuum from employers and other factors. Lack of substantive evidence of change does not always mean a union has not attempted it. It may speak to particularly intransigent employers. During the 1980s and 1990s, for example, the federal worker’s union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) tried to get the government to agree to a pay equity clause in collective agreements. Despite taking strike action in 1991, and with the pay equity demand still on the bargaining table, the union was not successful in obtaining the employer’s agreement. But this was also the union that achieved court decisions through legislative complaint, and then finally through negotiations, the largest pay equity settlement ($3.5 billion) in Canadian history. The point here is that unions often have no choice but to agree to a contract that is far less than they demanded and mobilized their members around.4 Another example is Chrysler, where the American chief executive officer was so adamantly opposed to gay rights that it was virtually impossible to make gains in this area until he retired his post; at Ford, on the other hand, a more receptive environment allowed workers to gain benefits easier and earlier. It is also important to note that not all equity gains appear in the collective agreement; they may show up as part of a broader set of employee policies and benefits (even when a union was involved). As Eaton and I note in chapter 6, this sometimes happened in the case of same-sex benefit coverage. And, in many cases, equity initiatives are pursued by the employer without pressure from a union, or in conjunction with a union, and the actual contribution of the union may go unreported. We must also remember that Canada has not been immune to the neo-liberal shift of the last couple of decades, and

Introduction 23

many unions in both the private and public sectors have had to concentrate on fighting back against concessions, layoffs, and cutbacks, leaving little energy or time for other campaigns. Clearly, not all unions have taken up the challenge of equity in a serious way, but many have. Every situation has its uniqueness, but the factors that appear to support the take-up of equity in Canadian unions include the following: • Unions that are nationally based and in the public sector have

• • •

• •

tended to be active from the earliest period, but with important exceptions such as the auto workers. Some mainly private sector unions such as the steel workers and the communication workers are now catching up. Unions with a high proportion of white-collar and professionally qualified workers such as teachers and nurses have tended to be in the lead. Unions in which women’s issues have been part of an active agenda for a long time have made the most progress. Unions where traditional blue-collar membership has been under threat, such as the steelworkers, sometimes embrace equity and diversity initiatives as one part of their revitalization and renewal process. Unions in the lead have tended to make autonomous or self-organizing structures available to women and minorities. Unions, not surprisingly, have more success when the employer is not adamantly opposed to equity issues.

Any agenda for further change must consider what has been achieved and what remains to be done. An important first step here is to recognize the momentum already in place, and to celebrate what has been achieved. The fact that many unions are increasingly sensitized to gender and minority concerns could be the focus of a public relations and marketing campaign that might draw new members and change perceptions, especially among youth. Traditional unions, especially those in the trades and construction areas, must be pushed harder by their union peers to think strategically about the embrace of diversity and equity. The United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) represent examples of traditional settings with increased focus on diversity, and could be held up as role models and examples. Finally, gaps between policy and practice must be addressed. More creative means must be found to increase the understanding and acceptance of diversity on the ground and shop floor.

24 Gerald Hunt

Unions continue to play a significant role in Canadian society. Although only 30 per cent of the Canadian workforce belongs to a union, this number includes an influential array of occupational groups, including university professors, teachers, nurses, police, and 20 per cent of workers in the private sector. The terms and conditions of employment negotiated by unionized workers are often used generally to establish human resource policies, and they frequently serve as catalysts for change in federal and provincial labour standards. Thus, union-won improvements shape the employment standards of all workers, whether unionized or not. The workplace improvements unions have achieved for their members serve as indicators of progress made on behalf of unionized workers and as predictors of evolving employment standards for others, whether unionized or not, since many organizations aim to match or lead what occurs at the bargaining table. This book offers an early twenty-first-century snapshot of organized labour through an equity lens. It produces a portrait of a labour movement that bears little resemblance to the one that existed a few decades ago, and one that has undergone considerable change since the 1980s. We now see a labour movement that has had to adjust, sometimes uncomfortably, to embrace workers across boundaries of race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. The contributors lament the slowness of change and highlight how much is yet to be done. But overall their tone is positive and the curve upward and progressive. More and more unions appear to be on the equity bandwagon, and the results are showing. Let us hope this trajectory continues. We all stand to gain if it does.

NOTES 1 I am indebted to David Rayside for assistance in constructing this section of the chapter. 2 I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this argument. 3 I am indebted to Julie White for these insights contained in personal correspondence. 4 I am indebted to an anonymous review for these insights.

2 Looking Back: A Brief History of Everything JULIE WHITE

It has been thoroughly documented that unions have not escaped the discriminatory attitudes to be found in other institutions and organizations in society. Equally, it is generally recognized that unions have contributed to the advancement of issues of concern to women and minority groups. Any analysis of union policies and actions must deal with these contradictory tendencies. Ongoing tensions exist between the union movement and the broader society, between the members and union leadership, between progressive and conservative forces. It is worth analysing the role of unions, because they are important to the concerns of women and minority groups. Unions provide the only mechanism whereby working people can place their concerns directly before the employer, and insist upon a response. Moreover, as democratic organizations – arguably the most democratic in society – they are open to influence for positive change. This chapter looks back to consider the history of the union movement, to understand its background with the intention of illuminating the debates of today. What follows is a discussion of the union movement over almost 100 years, from the 1890s to the 1980s. The material is divided into three sections, which roughly characterize three different stages of union development: the craft union, the industrial union, and the public sector union. Each section begins with a brief discussion of the economic, social, and labour-force context that affected the union movement and the way it related to women and other minority groups. I then consider in turn the role of unions with regard to women, race, disability, and gender identity. This chapter offers a launching point for the chapters to follow, which are primarily concerned with the modern period and with a single equity issue.

26 Julie White

1890s to 1920s: The Rise of Craft Unionism In the decades around the turn of the last century, industrialization was underway in Canada, increasing rapidly during the First World War. The first unions had been founded in the 1820s, but not until later in the century were they growing significantly and it was in 1886 that the first central labour body, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), was established. Still, Canada remained a largely agricultural society: three-quarters of the population was rural in 1881, declining to just over half by 1921. Throughout these years, unions affected only a small proportion of the workforce: 5 per cent belonged to unions in 1911, rising to just 10 per cent by 1921 (Logan 1948:19, 78). These early unions were craft unions, meaning that they organized only the skilled workers at a plant or factory, not all the workers. They based their bargaining power on the fact that such workers could not easily be replaced; the exclusion of unskilled workers was fundamental to retaining the leverage to negotiate. Craft unions have been criticized because of their protectionist policies, because they bargained for workers who were already among the best paid, and because they ignored the growing army of unskilled workers, where the small number of women and minorities in the workforce were to be found. Although some of this criticism is not unjustified, it was the power of employers that most influenced who could unionize. Employers fiercely opposed unionization, and were supported in their resistance, more or less violently, by the police and the courts. Unions had no legal recognition and no right to strike. With only a small minority of workers unionized, their bargaining power was limited. For example, of 287 strikes in Montreal between 1901 and 1921, only forty-nine unions achieved any success, ‘most of them involving fewer than 100 workers in highly skilled craft unions’ (Copp 1974:129). Women In 1907 four hundred women operators working for Bell Telephone in Toronto went on strike, protesting poor conditions, low wages, and an increase in working hours. They were not unionized, although the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) claimed jurisdiction over them. In 1893 this union had passed a resolution formally excluding women, although it had been rescinded after protest. In the few locations where the IBEW had organized women operators in

Looking Back 27

America, the women were denied full autonomy and given only half their voting rights. Though the Bell strikers twice passed resolutions to join the union, they remained unorganized, and the union’s lack of support was a factor in the failure of the strike (Sangster 1979). The IBEW’s attitude reflected a more general approach to ’the problem of women workers’ at the turn of the century. Indeed, the formal policy of the Trades and Labour Congress was that women should be excluded from the workforce. In a resolution passed in 1898 and not revoked until 1914, the TLC called for the ‘abolition of child labour by children under 14 years of age and of female labour in all branches of industrial life’ (Klein and Roberts 1974:220). Unions argued that men should receive the family wage: that is, a wage sufficient to support their wives and families so that women need not work. Craft unions operated within the limitations of the period. The prevailing thinking did not recognize that women might work for pay. Victorian and Christian ideology defined women as inferior to men, fragile, emotional, and, above all, domestic. The suffrage movement itself was based in part upon the argument that women should bring their domestic perspective, as wives and mothers, to the political process (McClung, 1915:51). These beliefs were held even more strongly in Catholic Quebec, where the strength of the family was regarded as the root of national survival. The 1922 Annual Report of the Quebec Department of Labour commented: ‘Women’s work outside of the home is one of the sad novelties of the modern world; it is a true social heresy … it would be wonderful if society could, some day or another, find an economic formula capable of doing away with it’ (Copp 1974:68). Indeed, only a minority of women worked outside of the home: 14 per cent in 1911, rising to 20 per cent by 1921. These women were predominantly young and single. Even in 1931, the first year that such data was collected, only 3 per cent of married women were employed for pay. Union support for the family wage reflected the reality of most women’s lives. Women, if they worked for pay at all, did so for a transitory period prior to marriage, when the vast majority became reliant upon their husbands’ wages (White 1993:12). The role of employers was also critical in determining the relationship of women to the union movement. Women were regarded as a source of cheap labour, this being the primary reason for hiring women. As occupations expanded with industrialization, and employers sought cheap labour to offset the costs of expansion, women were hired, wages fell, and men were forced out. This sequence of events

28 Julie White

occurred in teaching, clerical work, and the retail trade, as well as in certain branches of manufacturing, including shoemaking, cigar making, printing, and clothing manufacture (White 1993). The fear of women competing at lower wages for men’s jobs was echoed by many unions, and with good reason. The IBEW represented the skilled craft workers at Bell – the electricians – and were reluctant to organize the far more numerous women operators, fearing that the craft workers’ strength would be undermined (Sangster 1979). Some researchers have suggested that unions should have organized women workers and bargained for equal pay, thereby eradicating the threat of cheap labour. In 1914 the Trades and Labour Congress did replace its exclusionary policy with ‘equal pay for equal work,’ and some unions argued that women should be paid the same wages as men. But unionization and bargaining for equal pay could not at this time provide a solution to the undercutting of men’s wages. Apart from the limited strength of unions to press any such demand, employers refused to hire women when unions insisted upon equal pay. In the cigar industry, for example, women and children had largely taken over the work from men by the 1890s, except in Toronto. In that city, the unionized workers insisted that women be paid the same rate as the men, and the result was that the employers hired only men. Jean Scott, one observer at the time, wrote: ‘There is no doubt that if women were paid the same rates as the men they would not be so largely employed’ (23). In some cases, women insisted upon a lower wage rate, knowing that otherwise they would not be employed (Rose 1987). There is evidence that employers resisted women’s demands for improved working conditions with particular ferocity, given their role as cheap labour. In the case of the 1907 Bell strike, for example, the company hired replacement workers from the first day, refused to speak to the workers throughout the strike, and rehired the women only on the basis that all connection with the union was severed (Sangster 1979). There were exceptions to this situation. Ruth Frager (1992) has described the role of women in the Jewish labour movement in Toronto, where, in 1911, 60 per cent of the 13,500 garment workers were women (19). Rooted in a militant working-class culture, women in the clothing industry, were union members in greater numbers than in any other industry, and they were active in strikes both with men and alone. Despite acceptance as union members, women did not obtain an equal place in the unions that represented them, hampered as they were by additional work at home, the patriarchal attitudes of

Looking Back 29

the men, and the turnover among their ranks as married women left the labour force (Frager 1992). To summarize, the early unions were faced with the reality that single women were a small and transient contingent of the labour force, while the vast majority of married women were dependent upon their husband’s wages. Confronted with the employer’s use of cheap female labour and their own very limited strength, unions were generally unable to move beyond the ideology of women’s domestic nature, most often failed to organize women workers, and turned instead to protective legislation and the idea of the family wage to deal with the problem of the working woman. Race During the decades around the end of the nineteenth century Canada was an overtly racist society. The destruction of Native culture was already well advanced, and the small population of blacks were subject to many restrictions, including segregated schools (Winks 1971:144). Immigration policy for Asians was geared to the need for labour, so that, for example, while Chinese men obtained entry to work on the railways, Chinese women were excluded. It is clear that the union movement promoted the exclusion of non-whites from the country, from employment, and from unions. Waves of immigration almost exclusively from Europe produced a virtually all-white population and labour force. The 1901 census reported 17,400 blacks (0.3 per cent of the population), increasing to only 19,500 by 1931. However, the Chinese population grew tenfold during this thirtyyear period, from 4,400 to 46,500, as labour from China was imported primarily to work on building the railroads (Milan and Tran 2004:2). Muszynski (1988) has described the exploitation of Native and Asian workers in the fishing and canning industry on the West Coast. By 1882, 1,700 Native workers – men, women and children – were employed in the industry at the height of the season. ‘While native labourers, male and female, were paid lower wages than European labourers, women (and children) were paid the lowest wages’ (Muszynski, 1988:135). Chinese workers were in a particularly vulnerable position, and as such they tended to replace the lowest-paid workers, namely women and children: ‘The Indians … complain very much this spring and summer of how they are undermined in the labour market by Chinamen, especially in all kinds of light work, where the Indian women and their boys and girls used to be employed’ (132).

30 Julie White

The response of the union movement was to call for the exclusion of all ‘orientals’ from the country. The Workingman’s Protective Association was formed in 1878 in Victoria for ‘the mutual protection of the working class of B.C. against the great influx of Chinese; to use all legitimate means for the suppression of their immigration’ (Phillips 1967:9). Moreover, this position was not confined to specific unions or regions. The central body of the emerging labour movement, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, appointed a delegation at the 1890 convention in Ottawa to lobby the government for oriental exclusion (21). From 1885 head taxes were levied specifically upon Asian immigrants as a deterrent; and in 1923 the Chinese Immigration Act stopped the entry of Chinese workers entirely. This legislation was not repealed until 1947. In mining, the ‘willingness’ of Asian workers to accept lower wages, work longer hours, and in less safe conditions led the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to call for their exclusion from underground work at the mines. In 1898 labour candidates to the government of British Columbia, with additional leverage because the government was in a minority position, obtained the Coal Mines Regulation Act, which prohibited the employment of Chinese workers underground (Phillips 1967:8, 32). The Chinese population had no influence over such legal restrictions: they had been denied the right to vote in 1875. As immigration from Japan increased, the Japanese population was also disenfranchised in 1895. In the clothing industry in Toronto, men and women at a meeting during a major strike in 1896 ‘pledged to keep foreigners out of the trade,’ and in 1901 thirty women and five men struck against their employer for hiring immigrants, revealing that women shared with men the anti-immigrant perspective of the time (Roberts 1976:40). Working on the railways, black men were confined to the position of porter in the sleeping cars. The Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees (CBRE) refused membership in the union for the black porters working for CN Railways, who organized their own union in 1918, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters (OSCP). An attempt to allow blacks admission to the CBRE at the 1919 convention failed, although it did succeed at the next convention. However, admitting black workers to the union did not mean integration, because the locals of dining car workers and porters retained their separate identities and it was still not possible for blacks to move into the dining car positions (Calliste 1988). ‘The officially enforced segregation … encouraged an uncommon alliance between the company and the union in excluding the

Looking Back 31

African-Canadian porters from promotion to higher-ranking, betterpaid jobs’ (Grizzle 1998:18). Disability Included in the testimony given to the Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labor was that of John Davidson, a woodworker from London, Ontario, on 11 January 1889: – Are there any boys running machinery in your shop? – Yes. Q – What kind of machinery do they run? A – They work on the planer, the rip-saw, the cross-cut saw, sandpapering machines and jointers, in fact, there are boys who can run almost any machine. Every week or two an accident happens. Q – The boys get hurt? A – Yes; their fingers are cut off. (Canada 1889) Q A

The Royal Commission had been established to examine the reasons for growing discontent and conflict in the workplace. As Canada industrialized, conditions were dangerous and unregulated, a major reason for dissatisfaction and unionization of workers. ‘Safety was neglected and accidents were frequent – on the railroads, wrecks – in the coal mines, cave-ins and other calamities – 90 lives lost at Stellarton in one such accident. In factories fire escape facilities were often poor. In the building trades, properly-secured scaffolding was lacking. Again and again, scaffolding collapsed and workers plunged to their doom’ (Lipton 1968:65). Health and safety at work was a major concern of unions from their inception. The first unions of the 1800s were often established based upon the demand for shorter working hours, motivated by the appalling health and safety impacts of working twelve hours a day and seventy hours a week. In 1881 the Toronto Trades and Labour Council proposed to a Royal Commission ‘the enactment of safety and sanitary regulations including protection against fires, shielding for gears and shafts, regular inspection of engines and boilers, and a staff of inspectors to enforce these measures’ (Lipton 1968:74). When 119 miners were killed in an explosion in Nova Scotia in 1891, the labour advocate called for the violation of mine safety rules to be made a criminal offence.

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When accidents and illness occurred, unions collected funds for medical services and for the families affected. Unions helped to take negligent employers to court and pressed for government action to provide proper financial support when injury occurred. Few disabled workers went to court, and very few were successful in obtaining compensation through litigation. At this time, employers could argue that workers knowingly accepted the risks when taking the job and that any element of the situation interpreted as the worker’s responsibility, however minor, exonerated the employer of all responsibility. From 1910 Ontario unions actively campaigned for a fund to provide adequate compensation, a key demand being that the fund be financed entirely by employers. Employers fiercely opposed such a plan, calling it ‘a vicious measure’ (Lipton 1968:117). The breakthrough came in 1914 with the passage of workers’ compensation legislation in Ontario, the first in Canada. Disabled workers were provided with a permanent total disability payment of 55 per cent of prior wages up to a maximum, and contributions to the fund were from employers only. As proposed by labour, a list of diseases, though limited, was included as eligible for compensation, in addition to injury. Within three years medical aid was added to income replacement, while vocational rehabilitation was added in the 1920s (Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board 1997:27). This system of workers compensation was adopted with some variations in the other provinces in the years following. It was a remarkable breakthrough, decades prior to the introduction of unemployment insurance, medicare, pensions, and other social programs. 1930s to 1950s: Union Diversity and Growth Context The Depression of the 1930s meant extraordinary levels of unemployment and a decline in unionization. However, beginning in 1939, the Second World War brought employment not only for men, but also for many women as men left their jobs to join up. Working conditions during the war were often appalling, with long hours and low wages, leading to increased union militancy, which continued in the ongoing economic boom after the war. In the 1930s and 1940s industrial unions challenged the dominance of the early craft unions, organizing all the workers in a plant or factory. In the war years, for the first time, large numbers of unskilled

Looking Back 33

workers were unionized, and between 1939 and 1945 the number of unionized workers doubled, increasing to 725,000 (Palmer 1983). Workers in auto factories, steel plants, logging camps, and mines joined the new unions, as did women workers in the textile, clothing, tobacco, electrical, and food industries. In the five years after the war, an unprecedented wave of strikes occurred across the country in the auto, logging, shipping, mines, railways, steel, rubber, and textile industries, as industrial unions pressed for improvements after wartime conditions and sacrifices. This militancy was bolstered by a new legal context, initially established as a wartime measure in 1944 to regulate conflict between workers and employers, and then permanently legislated in 1948. A union that could demonstrate majority support received legal recognition, employers were then required to negotiate a collective agreement, and unions could not strike during the period of the agreement. The overall impact of this trade-off is debatable, but combined with the Rand formula (which provided automatic deduction of union dues from paycheques), unions did experience a new stability and capacity to organize and negotiate. Women The employment of women and their relationship to the union movement fluctuated radically over these years. During the Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment was high, it was especially hard for women to find work, and unionization declined. The war produced a radical turnaround, first with a call to single women to join the war effort by working for pay. As labour shortages bit deeper, the call was extended to married women, with the government even establishing publicly funded daycare centres for the first time. Women joined the new industrial unions, presenting the male leadership with new challenges, especially where they were working in jobs that had traditionally been done by men. At the end of the war the situation was partially reversed as men returned from overseas. Many women, and especially married women, were laid off and daycare centres were closed. Reflecting the changing environment, the responses of men, of unions, and of women themselves were varied. At Cancar in Fort William, Ontario, for example, 1,200 women were employed in traditionally male jobs during the war, but only three remained after layoffs in August 1945. The women were advised to transfer to ‘women’s jobs’ as stenographers, salesgirls, and social

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workers (Smith and Wakewich 1999). At a plywood factory in Port Alice, British Columbia, 80 per cent of the 350 workers were women during the war. In this case, Klausen (1998) found that the women accepted their lower pay and the temporary nature of the work. At the end of the war, single women were allowed to stay, although married women were expected to leave. The Union of Auto Workers (UAW) was established in 1935 and grew rapidly to 51,000 members in Canada by end of the Second World War, fuelled by job insecurity, health and safety problems, long hours, and management favouritism. Hundreds of women were hired during the war in certain automobile plants, although they were generally segregated into less skilled jobs and paid less than men. At Ford a struggle ensued over equal pay, and the same problem arose as in earlier times. The employer refused to hire women at the same pay rates as the men, but the UAW insisted, even to a strike of Local 200. ‘As soon as Ford officials realized that they could not hire women at a lower rate than men, they cancelled a lucrative government contract and farmed out work to smaller and lower-paying feeder plants’ (Sugiman 1994:45). In this case, union women were caught in the same dilemma as earlier generations. Insisting on equal pay resulted in no work for women, and women were not hired in Ford production jobs until the late 1970s. At the end of the war, many of the women in the auto plants lost their jobs, often with the agreement that married women would go first to give jobs to single women. In a few isolated cases, married women fought their automatic exclusion through the union and even won, but it is clear that even women active in the union were unsure of their position on the question of employment for married women (Sugiman 1994:57–8, 128–33). Nonetheless, a fundamental shift in paid employment occurred during and after the war, especially for married women. While many women were laid off in 1945, this was largely from traditionally male jobs in the war industries. In other sectors, women stayed, including increasing numbers of married women. For example, the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario (FWTAO) had supported the practice of giving preference in employment to single women, but abandoned this policy during the war because so many married women were teaching (Graham 1974:196). In the federal public service, regulations that required women to resign their position upon marriage were rescinded in 1955. Over the twenty years from 1941 to 1961, the number of all women in the labour force grew from 20.2 per cent to

Looking Back 35

29.5 per cent, but the extraordinary change was the increase in married women, up from just 4.1 per cent in 1941 to 14.9 per cent in 1951 and 21.9 per cent by 1961 (White 1993:46). In certain parts of the industrial labour force, women had always been employed, and the important change was the development of the new industrial unions. In 1946, at the Dominion Textile factories in Montreal and Valleyfield, 6,000 workers, most of them women, went on strike for one hundred days. Despite the presence of provincial police and the arrest of union organizers, these women won their first collective agreement, an eight-hour day and recognition of their union, the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) (Clio Collective 1987:294). In the wave of industrial unionization, 17,000 textile workers were organized at forty-seven plants by 1948. However, given the prevailing job segregation, all the union activity in the industrial workforce affected relatively few women workers. Auto and textile workers were not representative of most employed women: only a small minority of women worked in manufacturing, mining, and transportation, where most industrial unions were organizing. Although 30 per cent of women had been employed in manufacturing in 1901, by 1941 this figure had dropped to just 15 per cent. While more women were working outside the home than ever before, they were working in clerical and administrative jobs, as teachers and nurses, and in service and sales. An attempt to organize Eaton’s, the largest department store in the country, failed (Sufrin 1983), and the majority of women were left untouched by the new industrial unions. Race The mainstream labour movement did not become a more progressive force with regard to race until after the Second World War. Shock at the consequences of Nazi racism brought about a new concern for human rights internationally. In Canada, the union movement played a significant part in the demand for equal treatment. The Canadian Jewish Labour Committee was founded in 1936 to help Jewish war refugees. After the war its role broadened to combat all racial and religious intolerance. It was supported initially by the predominantly Jewish clothing unions, and later by some of the larger industrial unions, and at its peak had 150,000 members. From 1946 to 1957 Kalmen Kaplansky was the committee’s national director and played a leading role in initiating union action on the issue (Lambertson 2001).

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In 1947 the Canadian Congress of Labour, the central body for the industrial unions, passed a resolution to ‘fight for full equality of all peoples, regardless of race, colour, creed or national origin.’ The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, still the central body for the craft unions, rescinded its exclusionary policy and agreed to establish ‘trade union committees for racial tolerance.’ Each organization established a committee to work on religious and racial tolerance. To achieve collaboration between the two organizations, Kaplansky took the initiative in establishing joint committees in Toronto, Windsor, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, each with a full- or part-time paid worker. While most of the funding came from the Canadian Jewish Labour Committee and the Canadian Jewish Congress, unions such as the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and the United Packinghouse Workers (UPW) increasingly contributed financial support and other resources. The United Autoworkers created fair employment practices in their locals, and, although some were inactive, others helped in the campaigns for equal treatment (Lambertson 2001). The work of the committees began with a focus on education through pamphlets, forums, films, and radio broadcasts. They also encouraged discussion of human rights in union education programs. The Canadian Jewish Labour Committee distributed a monthly bulletin in English and French to all labour publications and local unions (Patrias and Frager 2001). These committees also played a major role in campaigns for anti-discrimination legislation. In 1944 Jewish activists had achieved an initial step when Ontario made discriminatory signs illegal, but there was no prohibition on any other type of discriminatory behaviour. In the late 1940s the labour committees worked with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), unions, women’s groups, organizations representing blacks and Japanese, and other organizations to press for legislation. The focus of attention in Ontario was Dresden, a town of 1,700 people, 20 per cent of whom were black. In Dresden discrimination was the norm in restaurants, shops, and services, and blacks had formed the National Unity Association to press for change. Publicity about the situation, combined with growing pressure from over one hundred organizations, resulted in legislation in 1951. The Fair Employment Practices Act (5 April 1951, Ontario) and the Fair Accommodation Practices Act (6 April 1954, Ontario) prohibited discrimination based on race, creed, colour, nationality, ancestry, or place of origin, and provided a complaints procedure with the possibility of

Looking Back 37

prosecution. After Ontario’s lead, other provinces and the federal government followed with similar legislation (Lambertson 2001). The National Unity Association of Dresden continued its campaign to have the legislation implemented, with important support from Sid Blum of the Toronto Labour Committee. Using test cases in a restaurant that refused to serve black customers, it took until 1956 for a prosecution to succeed and for the offending restaurant to comply with the new law. Of course the involvement of the union movement in these struggles did not mean that racism was suddenly expunged from the unions. For example, although the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees contributed financially to Kaplansky’s work, the union continued to segregate black and white members who worked for the CNR until forced to merge by a complaint under the Fair Employment Practices Act in 1964 (Calliste 1988). At the federal level, the Canada Fair Employment Practices Act was enacted in 1953 and enabled the black porters working for CPR to challenge the company’s policy of not hiring blacks to work as conductors. A complaint was successful and in 1955 the first three black sleeping car porters were promoted to conductors. But they had to fight for another year to get into the all-white Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen (ORC) (Grizzle 1998). Disability Unions continued their active involvement in the problems of workers injured and disabled at work. In the 1940s, with legal recognition and more stability, unions took increasing responsibility for finding work for those injured on the job. They also pressured for improvements in the workers’ compensation system. The increased industrial activity of the war years resulted in a drastic increase in accidents. Workers’ compensation boards assumed the costs of vocational rehabilitation, and employer contributions were increased. The post-war economic boom of the 1950s allowed for increases in the types and amounts of benefits, in particular the indexing of benefits, while still enabling the worker’s compensation boards to meet their financial commitments (Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board 1997). However, during the 1940s and 1950s, the basis for later problems with the workers’ compensation system was being laid. After the Second World War, an increasing number of chemicals were being introduced into industrial processes. This was to lead to mounting

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problems with work-related disease, because in most jurisdictions injury was the primary focus for workers’ compensation, with only a limited list of diseases covered. At the same time, the improvements in benefits implemented in the post-war economic boom, and particularly the indexation of benefits, placed a strain on the financial basis of the system when inflation began to rise. Sexual Diversity In the 1940s and 1950s male homosexuality was illegal, and in 1953 lesbian activities were first criminalized. Needless to say homophobia was rife, supported by most religious and government institutions. In 1952, for example, changes to immigration policies denied homosexuals the right to immigrate to Canada (Kinsman 1995). For gays and lesbians, secrecy was a necessity in this environment. Gay and lesbian workers in the federal public service were subject to a witch hunt in the 1950s and 1960s. In the cold war environment, homosexuals were considered a security risk, vulnerable to blackmail by spies and subversives. In 1948 an interdepartmental security panel was established to investigate homosexuality in the public service, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) acting as the investigative agent. This entailed identifying homosexuals, and in many cases they were demoted and fired, or they resigned. A memo in 1961 reported that 460 public servants had been identified, of whom onethird had resigned or been dismissed. By the following year the total had reached 850 ‘suspected and proven’ homosexuals in the civil service. RCMP policy was to fire all homosexuals (Kinsman 1995). The RCMP investigation went beyond the civil service. The 1966–7 annual report of the RCMP Directorate of Security and Intelligence states: ’Through interviews of known homosexuals and increased cooperation with other police forces, the index of known and suspected homosexuals has been expanded to approximately 8,200 names’ (Kinsman 1995:142). As Kinsman points out, the fact that homosexuality was criminalized itself created the potential for blackmail. During these years many homosexuals were pursued, cross-examined, transferred, and fired. No research is available on the role of the labour movement in this situation. However, until information is obtained to the contrary, it seems a reasonable assumption that the pre-union civil service associations of the time turned a blind eye to these employment injustices.

Looking Back 39

1960s to 1980s: A Modern Movement Emerges Context Continuing from the 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s were a period of relative growth and prosperity. The public sector was expanding in education, health, and other government services. The economy began to falter in the early 1970s, as inflation and unemployment began to rise, reaching serious proportions in the early 1980s. During these years, the union movement was radically altered as a growing number of public sector workers unionized. With few exceptions, associations of public sector workers had not been included in the legislation that had given recognition to unions in the private sector in the 1940s, and they had no legislated right to bargain conditions of employment. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that public sector workers, in a wave of dissatisfaction and militant action, turned to unionization in unprecedented numbers and forced governments to recognize their right to negotiate collective agreements, and, in some jurisdictions, their right to strike. At the federal level, the Public Service Staff Relations Act was passed in 1967, and federal public service workers obtained the right to bargain collectively for the first time. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) was formed in 1966 by a merger of the former civil service associations in response to the forthcoming legislation. Non-existent in 1966, the following year PSAC became the fourth-largest union in the country: it had 98,000 members, over one-quarter of them (28 per cent) women (Statistics Canada 1967). At the provincial level, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government in Saskatchewan had included civil servants in the Trade Union Act of 1944 (Taylor 1984), but in all other provinces collective bargaining by government employees became legally permissible between 1965 and 1975. The right to bargain was gained after long campaigns and conflicts, and in some provinces legislation permitted public service workers to bargain but not to strike. Over the same period professional associations of nurses and teachers, increasingly frustrated by poor wages and working conditions, also pressed for the right to negotiate improvements. In New Brunswick, for example, where strikes were still illegal, 1,300 hospital nurses out of 1,600 resigned collectively in 1975 to force their demands for higher wages (Laxer 1976: 231). In Ontario the five teachers federations closed elementary and secondary

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schools across the province on 18 December 1973 and marched in protest in the largest demonstration ever held in Toronto. Nowhere was the entrance of the public sector into the union movement more indicative of profound change than in Quebec. In 1971 the Confederation of National Trade Unions/Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CNTU/CSN), the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec/Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ/QFL), and the Quebec Teachers’ Corporation (QTC) joined to form the Common Front to negotiate for all public sector workers in the province. Dissatisfaction with the negotiations resulted in a strike in 1972 that included Quebec government employees, hospital and school workers, teachers, and nurses. It was the largest strike in Canada's history (Heron 1996). In 1963 the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) was created from the merger of two previous unions and continued its organizing efforts among municipal, education, and health workers. Grace Hartman (1979) commented: ‘Our new union caused little reaction in the labour movement because I don’t think the industrial unions took us too seriously at that time’ (52). The craft and industrial unions were taking CUPE a lot more seriously by 1975, when, overtaking the Steelworkers, it became the largest union in Canada. Women Women moved into the expanding health, education, and government sectors and changed the face of the labour force. By 1991 women were 45 per cent of all workers in the labour force, not so far from half of all workers. A major change was the remarkable increase in the paid employment of married women. The trend begun during the Second World War continued, and the proportion of married women in the labour force skyrocketed from 21.9 per cent in 1961 to 61.4 per cent by 1991 (White 1993:46). No longer transient in the labour force until marriage, women were now a permanent, stable, and very significant segment of the workforce. As public sector workers, many of them women, joined the union movement, the impact was profound and the composition of the union movement was radically altered. For the first time women became a significant sector of the Canadian labour movement. Women moved from being just 16 per cent of all union members in 1962, up to 41 per cent by 1992, and by 2000 were at around 50 per cent (Statistics Canada 2004c). Participation in the labour force and in the union movement did not mean that women were accepted as equals. Women worked within their

Looking Back 41

unions to obtain a voice in the hitherto male-dominated organizations. There followed an intense period of new activity in the union movement, with women’s committees, caucuses, and conferences organized for the first time (Briskin and Yanz 1983). These activities by union women intersected with and were influenced by the broader women’s movement, with individual women often involved in both. In 1974 the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) established a women’s committee, following the BC and Quebec Federations of Labour; by 1987 all the provincial federations had followed suit. Starting in 1975, and led by several of the new public sector unions such as CUPE, unions also began to establish women’s committees to examine the needs of women and recommend action. Between 1983 and 1987 most labour centrals made another critical and controversial change. They ensured some representation of women in union leadership positions by establishing seats specifically for women on their elected executive bodies (White 1993). Women also pressed their issues in negotiations, including equal pay, improved maternity and parental leave, employment equity, and protection from sexual harassment (Briskin and McDermott 1993). The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) both pressed complaints for equal pay for work of equal value under the federal legislation of 1978. In 1979 the Common Front in Quebec negotiated maternity leave at full pay for public sector workers; in 1981 the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) struck for six weeks for paid maternity leave. In 1983 the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) negotiated employer-funded child-care centres and, later, affirmative action committees in each plant (White 1993). Race During the 1960s, changes to immigration policy eliminated the preference for immigrants from Europe, and immigration finally became more diverse. By 1991 9.4 per cent of the population was visible minority, rising to 11.2 per cent by 1996. The largest groups were Chinese, blacks, and Indo-Pakistanis, followed by West Asians and Arabs, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Latin Americans, and Japanese. These new immigrants tended to concentrate in the larger cities, and had a more significant presence in the labour force and in the union movement in certain areas than their overall numbers might suggest. Toronto, for example, had the largest proportion of visible minorities

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in 1996, at 32 per cent of the city’s population. Statistics Canada projects that by 2017 visible minorities will account for 19 to 23 per cent of the Canadian population. With regard to participation in the labour force, in 1986 there were 851,500 visible minority workers, comprising 6.4 per cent of the total labour force. In 1981 there were 490,000 Aboriginal people in Canada, including North American Indians, Metis, and Inuit, constituting 2 per cent of the total population. The numbers have have been growing rapidly, in part because more people have identified themselves as aboriginal in succeeding surveys. In 1985, for example, 100,000 more Native women and their children obtained Indian status by legislation, which led to increased self-identification in census surveys that followed. By 2001 the number of Aboriginal people had increased to 976,000 – 3.3 per cent of the total population. However, they constitute a much larger proportion of the total population in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In Saskatchewan, it is estimated that Aboriginal people will constitute 30 per cent of new entrants to the labour force in coming years, given the demographics of an aging workforce and a younger Aboriginal population. As of the 1986 census Aboriginal people were 2 per cent of the labour force, increasing to 2.5 per cent by 2001. In 1989 a special survey made it possible to look at unionization among visible minority and Aboriginal workers, although the two groups could not be separated. In that year, 32 per cent of these workers belonged to unions, compared to 38 per cent of non–racial minority workers. The 271,700 Aboriginal and visible minority union members constituted 5.8 per cent of all unionized workers (White 1993:165). Human rights efforts in the union movement had receded after the activity of the 1950s. As a result of the changes in immigration and therefore in the labour force, these concerns resurfaced in a different form in the 1980s. This time, visible minorities were making their voices heard much more clearly from inside the mainstream union movement. In the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), visible minority union members started holding caucuses in the late 1970s, and in 1981 the OFL held its first anti-racism campaign. In 1987, a seat on the Executive Board was reserved for a visible minority person, the first affirmative action seat for visible minorities within the labour movement. The Canadian Labour Congress had continued to have a human rights committee, but it was largely inactive until revitalized with new members in the 1980s. The first CLC human rights conference was held in

Looking Back 43

1991, including workshops for both visible minority and Aboriginal union members. In 1992, two seats on the Executive Council were reserved for visible minority members and a further seat was added later for a representative of Aboriginal people. By the beginning of the 1990s, human rights committees were again becoming active in the union movement, producing policy papers, offering education, carrying out campaigns, and engaging in employment equity concerns (White 1993). Disability During the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, many unions negotiated long term disability plans as part of their collective agreements. Under such plans individual employers provide disabled workers with additional income over and above workers compensation. According to data from the Workplace Information Directorate in Ottawa, as of 2004, out of 1,106 collective agreements, 54 per cent provide for employer contributions to wage insurance in the case of long-term disability (Human Resources Development Canada 2006). Workers’ compensation continued to be a critical element in the well-being of people with disabilities, including income replacement, medical aid, and rehabilitation. In 1974, for the first time, over one million Canadians were recipients of workers’ compensation benefits (Chaykowski and Thomason 1995:21). However, the system came under pressure in the 1970s, as many workers’ compensation boards accumulated deficits. Contributing to the financial problems were a 33 per cent increase in injuries during the 1970s, high rates of inflation in a context of indexed benefits, and more sophisticated and expensive medical and vocational rehabilitation aid. At the same time, many other overlapping programs had developed that led to confusion and bureaucratic duplication, such as Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) disability benefits, Unemployment Insurance Commission (UIC) sickness benefits, family benefits, welfare assistance, and auto insurance. Assessments on employers for workers’ compensation were increased, leading some to call for the privatization of the system or even a return to court-based, individual litigation. The union movement continued to press for improvements in workers’ compensation, including coverage for more workers and the inclusion of work-related disease and stress, as well as injury. Unions also fought to protect workers’ compensation from attempts to reduce benefits or even

44 Julie White

dismantle the system, while recognizing that the process is flawed. The requirement to prove that disabilities are work-related is problematic, given rising rates of workplace disease and stress, as opposed to the more clear-cut injuries of earlier periods. From the early 1980s the labour movement gave its support to a new concept for supporting people with disabilities: universal development insurance. The proposal is that a new system should ‘provide benefits and rehabilitation programs regardless of the cause of the disabilities or disease (at work, away from work, automobile, congenital)’ (Ontario Federation of Labour 1995:8). This was an important shift away from protecting just workers and towards recognizing all disabilities as a common issue. In the 1980s a new disability rights movement emerged, spurred in part by the International Decade of Disabled Persons. Advocates for disability rights formed the first national organization, which later became the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. At the 1981 convention of the Canadian Labour Congress, a policy statement on disability was presented for the first time. The goals with regard to the union movement have been to have unions listen to the concerns of people with disabilities, allow for selfdetermination, and recognize disability groups as coalition partners. In general, disability issues were handled in the revitalized human rights committees of unions and labour centrals. Some unions were more active than others; for example, PSAC has held four national conferences on disability rights. In 1991 the Canadian Labour Congress established a working group on disability under the human rights division; its first human rights conference, in 1992, with over three hundred participants, included a workshop for people with disabilities. In the 1980s increased awareness of issues for people with disabilities was just reaching the union agenda. However, this period set the stage for the 1990s, when far more activity took place, culminating in 1999 when a seat for a person with a disability was established on the CLC Executive, as well as seats for representatives of youth, retirees, and sexual diversity issues. Sexual Diversity Prior to 1969 homosexuality was illegal in Canada and any activity in relation to issues of sexual diversity risked not just discrimination, but arrest. As a result, sexual diversity is the most recent human rights issue to emerge, and the history of unions in relation to gays and lesbians really begins in the 1970s.

Looking Back 45

While sex, race, and disability were prohibited grounds for discrimination under human rights legislation, sexual orientation was excluded. Equal rights groups and gay and lesbian workers through their unions were still struggling to be included in most human rights legislation during the 1980s. In 1977 Quebec was the first jurisdiction to amend its charter of human rights to include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for discrimination, followed by Ontario, Manitoba, Yukon, and Nova Scotia. As late as 1990 gays and lesbians in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, PEI, and the federal jurisdiction were still not protected under human rights legislation, but the process was underway. A serious inequality faced by gay and lesbian workers was the exclusion of their partners and families from a wide range of benefits. Because a spouse was commonly defined as a member of the opposite sex, same-sex couples were automatically excluded from coverage. This was particularly relevant to the union movement, because of the negotiation of benefits in collective agreements, including health insurance, life insurance, pension plans, dental and vision plans, compassionate leave, and leave for family responsibilities. Gay and lesbian union members had legitimate cause for complaint; they paid the same union dues as other workers but did not receive the same benefits. With pressure from the gay and lesbian community, unions moved to deal with this issue and negotiate coverage for same-sex spouses and their families. In the 1980s a number of unions were successful in negotiating this arrangement. The Canadian Union of Public Employees was at the forefront of this struggle, and produced award-winning documentation of the issues. Where employers and/or insurance carriers refused to include same-sex spouses, court challenges ensued under human rights laws in various jurisdictions. Unions were generally supportive of the need to include same sexes for benefit coverage and provided resources and finances to support the legal battles. For example, Brian Mossop, a federal civil servant, was denied bereavement leave upon the death of his partner’s father. With the support of the Canadian Union of Professional and Technical Employees (CUPTE), he complained under the Canadian Human Rights Act that he had been discriminated against based upon family status. It was not possible to argue the case on sexual orientation since it was not a prohibited ground for discrimination in the act, and in 1993 the case was lost on the basis that discrimination by family status could not be used to include same-sex couples.

46 Julie White

Other cases were lost even when sexual orientation was included in the human rights legislation, because the term spouse was still taken to exclude same-sex spouses. For example, Karen Andrew, with the support of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, took a case against the Ontario Health Insurance Plan for refusing to cover her partner and her partner’s children. The case was lost because spouse was taken to mean a member of the opposite sex, based on definitions in seventynine Ontario statutes. Nonetheless, pressure was building through these court cases. As of October 1991 the Canadian Human Rights Commission had received thirty-three complaints from sixteen complainants, claiming discrimination in employment benefits (White 1993:218). These initial actions in the 1980s were to yield important successes later, as discussed in detail in chapter 6. The first CLC human rights conference was held in 1992. Initially, however, there was no workshop for gays and lesbians, until protest from the floor resulted in the addition of a workshop. The Centrale des Syndicats Nationaux in Quebec was ahead on this issue, and had established both a working group on gay and lesbian issues in 1988 and a central committee in 1991. Unions also began to move on the issue. A Pink Triangle Committee was established at the Canadian Union of Public Employees and held its first meeting in the spring of 1992. The Public Service Alliance of Canada had an Equal Opportunities Committee at the national level, concerned mainly with women’s issues, but in 1991 eight new seats were added for minority groups, including a gay man and a lesbian (White 1993). In 1999, the CLC established seats on its executive council for representatives on sexual diversity issues. Conclusion Assessing the role of unions in relation to women and minority groups is a delicate process. With regard to the past, it is not enough to look back from today’s perspective and comment as if the policies and practices of one hundred or fifty years ago should match our understanding of the world today. Any good historical analysis takes into account the context of the time period and understands events within those parameters. For example, the debate around union support for the family wage must take into account that 97 per cent of married women were outside the paid labour force until after 1931. Women’s organizations recognized this reality, so that for example it was not until the

Looking Back 47

Second World War that the Women’s Teachers Association of Ontario accepted the employment of married women. The union position that men should receive sufficient pay to support their families was reasonable and progressive in the early decades of this century, albeit that it delayed a meaningful union response to the growing number of single working women. Another part of understanding the historical context is that unions reflect, one step behind, the character and development of the labour force. When the labour force was 90 per cent male, it was not inappropriate that most unions called themselves brotherhoods, although this was later a barrier to the acceptance of women workers. Union organizing began among skilled craftsmen, and these unions were not developed to respond to the needs of industrial workers, as large factories and mass production became the norm. It was not until the 1960s that legislation changed to permit large-scale immigration to Canada from countries other than northern Europe, which in turn brought more visible minority workers into the labour force and then into the union movement. Finally, a critical element of any analysis of union action is employer action. More often than unions, it is employers that determine hiring and firing practices, pay and working conditions, and other work-related issues. Exploiting differences among workers has been one method used by employers to undermine union influence. In the past, the struggle of unions against the power of employers took place in a context of street battles and police violence. Now, unions are legally recognized, and many conflicts take place in court or before tribunals and arbitrators. Nonetheless, the imbalance of power and resources remains. None of the above prevents critical comment, but it does ensure that the goal is an accurate understanding of events, requiring analysis within a real and often contradictory context. Obviously unions have not always taken a progressive stand with regard to the needs of women and minority groups, and in some cases have specifically opposed progressive change. It is also the case that unions have moved overall in a positive direction, upheld the rights of workers in the face of employer opposition, and opened themselves to increased influence from the diversity of workers whom they represent. That unions have differed in their responses to women and other equity-seeking groups is in part the result of factors beyond their control. The early craft and industrial unions, for example, took action on injury and disability because they represented workers in industries

48 Julie White

where poor safety standards meant the loss of life and limb in workplace accidents. Likewise, it is not especially surprising that public sector unions, with their large numbers of women workers, were first in the struggle for paid maternity leave, while industrial unions with few, if any, women members would not have placed this item on the bargaining agenda. Shifts in the labour force, decisions by employers, and the nature of different industrial sectors exert an enormous influence over union membership and the capacity to negotiate change. It is within this framework that we can understand the role of other significant factors in producing or preventing change, such as the influence of the women’s movement, the proportion of members from equity-seeking groups, the structure of decision-making, and the part played by individual activists. The chapters that follow will continue the debate, taking it forward from the 1980s to the present time.

3 Bargaining Against the Past: Fair Pay, Union Practice, and the Gender Pay Gap ANNE FORREST

This chapter analyses how changes in the law of equality in Canada have transformed the union concept of fair pay, the limits of that transformation, and the impact on gender equality in wages in the union sector. On one level, there has been remarkably little change over time. The same three principles – pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons – that shaped union wage demands in the 1940s and 1950s continue to govern wage bargaining today. Nonetheless, the interpretation and application of these principles by unions in wage bargaining is profoundly different now. Whereas sixty years ago unions used these principles to protect and advance male privilege and disadvantage women, nowadays, they are integral to the union goal of gender equality. Feminist organizing in the post–Second World War period has produced two significant changes in the law of gender equality that together demarcate three distinct equality regimes. The first period, which I call formal inequality, ended in the early 1970s, when discrimination on the basis of sex was made illegal. Prior to that time, women’s gender difference marked them as less entitled than men to economic protection. Fair pay in the union sector meant inferior terms and conditions of employment for women, who were limited in the jobs they could hold and the wages they could earn simply because they were women. In the second period, the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, women were formally equal to men in law – that is, insofar as women were the same as men they were entitled to what men had – and the union construct of fair pay shifted to reflect this change in women’s status. Collective agreements were rewritten in gender-neutral language, women were no longer restricted to certain jobs, and those who performed the

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same jobs as men were entitled to earn the same wages. Nonetheless, union women as a group continued to earn less than equivalently qualified union men because they continued to be disproportionately employed in ‘women’s work.’ The third period, substantive equality, which began in 1982 with the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, remains unfinished business. In this regime, women’s entitlements are determined by what they need to overcome their historic disadvantages, not by their similarity to or difference from men (MacKinnon 1990). In the workplace, this means (among other things) equal pay for work of equal value, which unions have begun to adopt as one measure of fair pay. The analysis of union fair pay practices offered here expands our understanding of what unions have done and have the potential to do beyond that presented in industrial relations texts. Following Freeman and Medoff’s innovative study, What Do Unions Do? (1984), many researchers have investigated the impact of collective bargaining on wages and demonstrated that, on balance, unions enhance economic fairness and equality.1 However, they have come to this conclusion without examining the impact of collective bargaining on gender equality within the union sector. There are many studies that estimate the size of the union wage premium by comparing the wages of similarly endowed and similarly situated union and non-union workers. A common finding is that both union men and union women are substantially better off than their non-union counterparts.2 But the conventional analysis goes no further. Notwithstanding widespread evidence of systemic male bias in union practice, past and present, there are no studies that compare the wages of union women with union men. Indeed, the gender gap in pay is not a concept typically found in the industrial relations literature.3 The result is that unions are uniformly presented as equality-enhancing institutions – which they are in many respects – without considering their limitations. My purpose is to bring the one-sidedness of the conventional analysis to light. I do this by examining in detail the aforementioned three union fair pay principles: pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons. This in itelf is an unconventional approach. References to these principles seldom appear in the index of industrial relations texts. Indeed, modern-day industrial relations scholars pay little attention to the mechanics of achieving fairness and equality even though it is widely agreed that reduced wage inequality is one of the economic benefits of unionization. An

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exception to this rule is Freeman and Medoff (1984), who identified union-initiated, single-rate policies as the means by which unions intended to enhance fairness and equality in the workplace. Their term, single-rate policies, bundles together what I have identified as the three distinct fair pay principles. Because their objective was to measure the overall impact of union pay policies on the size and distribution of earnings, Freeman and Medoff’s all-in-one approach was adequate. However, it does not suit my purpose because each of these fair pay principles has had a particular impact on the gender gap in pay. My analysis begins by describing the traditional union construct of fair pay in the context of its times. To do otherwise would be to suggest that unions were peculiarly sexist, when in fact they were no more committed to the preservation of male privilege than employers or governments. In reading this chapter, it is important to remember that job segregation by gender and low pay for traditional women’s work were the outcomes of employer and government policies that preceded industrial unionism. Subsequent sections describe and analyse the three fair pay principles under study – pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons – each in turn. I explain why these principles have been important to the union goal of fairness and equality, and illustrate how their application in wage bargaining has both obstructed and enhanced gender equality. Where possible, I take into account the legal constraints imposed on unions by labour relations policy and law to demonstrate that discriminatory union attitudes and practices were only one dimension of an industrial relations system that both assumed and perpetuated women’s economic disadvantage. I conclude by arguing that the industrial relations academic community needs to catch its analysis of unions and wage equality up to date by examining the particular effect of unions on gender inequality. An important limitation of the analysis offered here is the paucity of data about the gender gap in wages in the union sector. I argue that gender wage inequality in the union sector declined over time as union understanding of fair pay followed social thinking from a regime of formal gender inequality, to formal gender equality, to substantive equality between women and men. However, in the absence of data, this conclusion is tentative rather than confirmed. A second limitation is my exclusive focus on wages. An analysis of union fair pay in relation to fringe benefits must be left for another time.

52 Anne Forrest

Fair Pay, Past and Present: Historical Context Negotiating fair pay is the essence of what unions do, and what workers expect them to do. Any number of traditional union bargaining principles illustrate the centrality of fairness and equality in the union project. But this commitment to fair pay has not always meant gender equality. Fair pay traditionally defined was not a promise of economic equality for women. Though popularized in gender-neutral language, union fair pay practices were initially applied to men alone. For men, fair pay wage bargaining promised a breadwinner wage and a more equitable distribution of earnings within and between unionized workplaces. Fair pay in this sense was not a union woman’s right, in theory or practice, until well into the 1980s. I do not mean that unions are bad for women. On the contrary, by every economic measure, organized women are significantly better off than their non-union counterparts. Many studies have documented this advantage. By comparison with equivalently qualified women in the non-union sector, women in unionized establishments are more fairly rewarded for their skills and abilities. In addition to greater job security, union women by 1997 were earning an average wage of $4.25 (31.2 per cent) more than non-unionized women, and had access to better fringe benefits (Drolet 2001:28; Akyeampong 2002). However, this does not mean that union women are now equal to union men; they are not. Collective bargaining has narrowed but not eliminated the gender gap in pay, which remains substantial. On average, union women earned $2.77 (13.4 per cent) less per hour than equivalently qualified and similarly situated union men in 1997 (28), plus an unquantified difference in fringe benefits (Currie and Chaykowski 1995).4 The persistence of this gender gap in pay is the legacy of union bargaining principles that initially put the needs of men ahead of those of women. The founding purpose of industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) was justice for working-class men, and most particularly, for unskilled and semi-skilled men. This bargaining agenda both advantaged and penalized union women. Women in the union sector benefited from the union preference for across-the-board, cents-per-hour wage increases that raised the wages of the lowest paid disproportionately, but were disadvantaged by collective agreements that reserved better-paying jobs for men, undervalued jobs performed primarily by women, and prescribed lower ‘female’ wage rates for jobs performed by both women and men. The outcome of these contradictory forces was both an

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increase in the wage advantage of union women in relation to non-union women (as discussed above) and a gender gap in wages that may have been larger in the union than in the non-union sector into the 1970s (Simpson 1985:168; Robinson and Tomes 1984:113). Unions were not alone in their pursuit of male privilege. The assumption that women ought to earn less than men simply because they were women was widespread in Canada in the post-war period. This understanding was part of the social consensus that ascribed to men the role of family breadwinner and assumed that women were essentially wives and mothers who worked outside the home only temporarily or to supplement the breadwinner’s income. The male breadwinner – female family caretaker discourse normalized labour market discrimination against women in the name of the workingclass family. However, the main beneficiaries were employers. So long as women were not ‘real’ workers, employers could legitimately underpay women and traditional women’s work in relation to men and ‘men’s work.’ In this context, employment practices and laws that confined women (and racialized minorities) to poorly paid, dead-end jobs in the secondary labour market were not thought unjust. Few people objected to workplace policies that denied pensions and promotions to women because they were women or forced women to resign because of marriage or pregnancy. Fewer still protested against statutory minimum wages that were lower for women than men, women’s restricted access to unemployment insurance benefits, or an industrial relations system that normalized the gender gap in wages between union women and their male co-workers. The belief that women had lesser entitlements as workers and union members was integral to the Canadian system of union-management relations. Contemporary industrial relations policy and law, which date from the 1940s, were shaped in response to a wartime crisis in traditional men’s work and reflect this purpose. The particular features of this system – highly regulated right to organize, fragmented union representation, decentralized collective bargaining, and restricted right to strike – articulate the compromise between organized labour and capital that simultaneously acknowledged and constrained the right of (male) workers to bargain collectively through unions of their choice. For men – at least for those employed in manual occupations in large primary and secondary sector firms – the result was higher/breadwinner wages and improved job security (Forrest 1997). Not so for women, who were (and are) systematically disadvantaged by a labour relations system that assumes a ‘male’ and ‘industrial’ model of work and unionism (Forrest 2004).

54 Anne Forrest

The long process of reform began in the 1960s. Influenced by secondwave feminism, union (and non-union) women developed a growing consciousness of their rights as women and as workers (Luxton 2001). Sugiman (1994) tells the stories of UAW women in Canada who confronted the limitations of their union’s professions of fairness and equality. What she says about the UAW – that the men presented unionism as gender-neutral in principle but treated it as a masculine institution in practice (63) – was broadly true of organized labour into the 1980s. Frustrated by their inability to make change from within, many activist union women allied themselves with middle-class women’s organizations to change the law; first, in the 1960s, to make discrimination on the basis of sex illegal, and, later, in the mid-1980s, to entrench the principle of equal pay for work of equal value as women’s right.5 Together, these significant changes to the law of equality have transformed the union construct of fair pay from one that self-consciously advanced the rights of union men at the expense of union women to one that champions the right of union women to be fully equal to men. In the next three sections I discuss the three different but related principles of fair pay that have been used in collective bargaining. I begin with one of the most prominent of these, what I refer to as the ‘pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle.’ The Pay-the-Job-Not-the-Worker Principle The principle that employers should pay the job not the worker is the starting point for wage bargaining in unionized establishments. The idea that the wage should be the same for all who perform a job speaks directly to workers’ sense of equitable treatment. Whereas employers often prefer to reward individuals or work groups based on their performance and productivity, unionized workers favour the pay-the-jobnot-the-worker principle because it minimizes managerial discretion and limits favouritism. Wages that vary from worker to worker violate the expectation that ‘likes must be treated alike,’ and have proven to be a serious source of discontent that has led workers to unionize in industries as disparate as steel and banking. The preference for fixed over variable pay in unionized workplaces also means less reliance on pay systems that tie wages to outcomes, for example, profit-sharing, employer stock option plans, pay-for-skill-orknowledge, and productivity gain-sharing. Two surveys from the early 1990s reported by Betcherman, Leckie, and McMullen (1994) confirmed

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that variable pay practices were less prevalent in unionized workplaces. Surveying collective agreements covering 500 or more employees, Fawcett (1998) also found that incentive pay systems of all types (individual, group, gain-sharing, profit-sharing, and other) were few in number in the union sector and that the most popular of these – piece rate systems – had fallen by one-third between 1988 and 1998 to less than 5 per cent of collective agreements, according to Giles and Starkman (2001:295). The popularity of the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle in the union sector helps explain the flatter wage structure typical of unionized workplaces. Freeman and Medoff (1984:87) concluded that the widespread application of the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle explains why wages in the union sector are less responsive to workers’ personal characteristics. Many others have said the same. In two-thirds of the Canadian industries studied by Meng (1990), wages were more equitably distributed in the union sector, notwithstanding the fact that the non-union workers were more alike in their income-earning characteristics. Summing up the findings of the research, Benjamin, Gunderson, and Riddell (1998) concluded: ‘Simply stated, union wages are typically found to be less responsive to the personal characteristics of workers. The relationship between earnings and factors such as age, experience, education, and even marital status is weaker (i.e., ageearnings profiles are flatter, albeit higher) in the organized sector’ (559). The pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle should be good for women (and other marginalized groups) who are commonly disadvantaged by arbitrary assessments of their skills and abilities. Yet, prior to the 1970s, when gender discrimination was lawful and the strict application of the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle by unions would have benefited women most, it was not applied in a gender-neutral manner. For a myriad of reasons, women were thought to be profoundly unlike men, with the result that unions pressed employers to apply the pay-the-job principle to union women only when they worked with other women on jobs designated ‘female.’ The rule was not enforced when women and men performed the same job or when women performed a job labelled ‘male.’ The federal Department of Labour found the practice of paying women less for performing the same jobs as men to be widespread in 1959, despite fair pay legislation to the contrary adopted by eight jurisdictions earlier in the decade. Unions championed these laws in theory, but rarely enforced them to women’s benefit (Fudge and Tucker 2000:281).

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In industries where women’s labour was integral to the production process (for example, in auto parts, electrical appliances, food processing, and clothing), unions and employers agreed to formally designate certain jobs ‘male’ and others ‘female’ in the collective agreement, each grouping with its own gender-specific pay scale and seniority list. Without exception, the ‘female’ jobs were paid less than the ‘male’; commonly, the highest paid woman earned less than the lowest paid man, regardless of skill or seniority. An example from General Motors in the 1960s provided by Sugiman (1994:145–6) makes this clear. In a newly acquired diesel engine plant in London, Ontario, the company and union agreed to create four female and nine male classifications, with a maximum starting rate of $1.96 per hour for women compared to a minimum rate of $2.19 for men. However, she also notes that by the 1950s women who moved temporarily into ‘male’ jobs were paid the full job rate at the union’s insistence (123–4). In those relatively rare circumstances where women and men performed the same jobs, for example, in some departments of auto parts and electrical appliances plants, unions routinely negotiated ‘male’ and ‘female’ wage rates for these cross-over jobs, the latter always lower that the former. This was the case at the GM Oshawa plant. Under the 1961 collective agreement with the UAW, the hiring rate for a female assembler or bench hand was $1.87 per hour when starting rates for men in the same jobs were $2.16 and $2.07, respectively (Sugiman 1993:172). In some instances, these differential rates must have been in violation of provincial fair pay legislation, but the violation could be obscured by small differences in job duties – for example, a lower rate for assembler-female than assembler-male because the men were occasionally required to lift items considered too heavy for women. Fudge and Tucker (2000:281–2) argue that employers became adept at exploiting this legal loophole and unions did little to counter this strategy until the 1970s. Prior to that time, the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle was as likely to be enforced against women as on their behalf. In industries where production was traditionally done only or primarily by men – for example, in mining, transportation, steel, and auto assembly – manual jobs were informally labelled male and unions cooperated with management – in some cases, struck against management – to block the hiring of lower paid women. In the case documented by Sugiman (1994:42–7), the UAW’s insistence that women be paid the rate for the job arose at Ford Canada when the company tried to hire

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women to perform assembly work during the 1940s. The issue provoked a strike, the union won, and the women were not hired, which Sugiman argues is just what the union wanted. (Ford Canada did not hire women into production jobs until 1983.) In her view, the fact that the UAW continued to negotiate different rates of pay for women and men who performed the same jobs in other factories for many years to come demonstrated the union’s true purpose (47). These practices were the norm, even in unions that prided themselves on their commitment to social justice. Though widely regarded as a highly democratic union, Sugiman (1993) argues that the UAW held to a gendered vision of social justice during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Leaders ‘adopted a narrow definition of unionism that advanced the general principles of democracy, equality, and worker unity, yet failed to question the blatant sex-based inequalities in employment’ (172). These included gender-segregated jobs, gender-specific seniority lists, and low pay for women that persisted until discrimination on the basis of sex was made illegal. Similar dynamics were at work in the United Electrical Workers (UE), according to Guard (1996), despite the leadership’s public commitment to eliminating sex-specific job rates and categories. UE women were more secure in their jobs and better paid in relation to men than in other unionized industries; nonetheless, the ‘vast majority … achieved equal pay only after legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex was passed in 1970’ (166). Remarkably, ‘separate job categories and separate seniority lists persisted in plants organized by the UE until the late 1970s’ (167). Where the issue of low pay for women and ‘women’s work’ was pursued with conviction prior to 1970, the primary objective was to protect male jobs from undercutting by poorly paid women. The legal prohibition against sex discrimination, achieved in Ontario in 1970 by an amendment to the human rights code and contemporaneously in other jurisdictions, annulled terms and conditions of employment that disadvantaged women simply because they were women. Collective agreements were rewritten in gender-neutral language. Women could no longer be confined to a specific list of ‘female’ jobs or paid lower ‘female’ wages when performing the same jobs as male co-workers. At first, many employers tried to dodge the new law by agreeing with their unions to re-label jobs ‘light’ and ‘heavy,’ for example, by changing assembler-female to assembler-light, with women assigned only to the lower paid ‘light’ jobs. But this practice soon ended. By the late 1970s, there was broad social consensus that

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women were entitled to be paid the same wage as men when performing the same job in the same establishment.6 Yet, even today the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle is not fully implemented in the union sector. Vestiges of the pre-1970s, genderlinked wage system remain insofar as unionized part-time and other so-called non-standard (for example, casual, seasonal, own-account, and contractually limited) workers are treated differently from their full-time counterparts. Although better paid than equivalently qualified non-union workers, unionized part-time workers commonly earn less per hour than unionized full-time workers, even when they perform the same jobs in the same establishment (Jackson and Schellenberg 1999). They also have more limited access to the better-paying, full-time jobs. Where full- and part-time workers are both organized, the former are generally given preference for full-time vacancies, even if their part-time competitors are better qualified and have as much or more seniority (Zeytinoglu and Muteshi 2000:148). Paying part-time workers less than full-time workers who perform the same job duties in the same establishment is a form of gender discrimination, as the pay equity debate reveals. Historically marked as a form of ‘women’s work,’ part-time jobs continue to be undervalued for ideological, not economic, reasons. Discussing the impact of Ontario’s Pay Equity Act, Todres (1990: para. 45) defended the legislation’s inclusion of part-time workers.7 In and of itself, part-time does not mean less responsibility, less skill, or less value to the employer, she argued. The federal government’s Pay Equity Task Force (2004) came to the same conclusion. Seeing no reason ‘why value attached to the work done should be affected by the number of hours worked or the number of weeks or months an employee is in the workplace,’ members of the task force unanimously recommended that part-time, casual, seasonal, and temporary workers be covered by pay equity legislation (185). The failure of unions to enforce the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle on behalf of part-time workers reflects a well entrenched bias against non-standard work and workers of all types (part-time, casual, seasonal, own account, and limited-term contract). The touchstone of entitlement in the union sector remains the male/industrial norm of full-time, full-year work. Long-standing union fears about cheap women displacing more expensive male breadwinners include an aversion to part-time work and part-time workers well documented by the Task Force on Part-Time Work (Labour Canada 1984). Non-standard workers are ‘Other’ to the main business of collective bargaining.

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Their distinct and separate status means that lower rates of pay for part-time employees are legitimate outcomes of collective bargaining from the union perspective even though differential pay for parttimers violates the pay-the-job-not-the-worker principle. Union discrimination against non-standard workers is consistent with the law. Labour relations policy and law do not accord part-time and other non-standard workers equal status with full-time workers. Examples are many. Prior to the mid-1990s, the labour relations board in Ontario institutionalized the part-time/full-time distinction by excluding part-time workers from full-time bargaining units on the (untested) assumption that part-timers were less committed to their jobs and so did not share a community of interest with their full-time co-workers. Other labour boards include part-time workers in the same bargaining unit as full-time workers, but only if their inclusion does not prevent full-time workers from winning certification (G. Adams 2003). In any event, in all jurisdictions, inferior terms and conditions of employment for unionized part-time workers, including part-time workers in the same bargaining unit as full-time workers, violate neither an employer’s duty to bargain in good faith nor a union’s duty of fair representation, even if the group adversely affected is female-dominated. The tests applied by labour boards in ‘duty’ cases are largely procedural rather than substantive. If outcomes are considered they are evaluated against external benchmarks such as industry standards, which, in the case of part-time employees, are of no help at all (Christian 1991). There could be no clearer statement of the pay-the-job-not-theworker principle than the concept of equal pay for work of equal value/pay equity, which links wages to job duties and job duties alone. Yet, the male/industrial model is so deeply fixed in industrial relations practice that even pay equity legislation may not close the gap in wages between full- and part-time workers. Kainer’s (2002) analysis of pay equity bargaining in Ontario’s food retail industry led her to conclude that part-time members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Union (RWDSU) were poorly served by their unions. By her account, the pay equity exercise in this industry did more to legitimate male breadwinner privilege than challenge it because union leaders consistently put the interests of a small number of full-time workers, most of whom were men, ahead of the majority of the workforce, who were part-time workers and mostly women. In so doing,

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union leaders failed to identify part-time work as a women-dominated job class that could have been compared to better paid, full-time, male-dominated jobs. Not all unions adhere to this tradition. The rapid growth in nonstandard work in all industries has necessitated changes in attitudes and bargaining practices. As a rule, part-time workers are better off in women-dominated unions such as the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA), where non-standard work is understood to be a ‘women’s issue’ intimately linked to women’s family responsibilities. In this setting, the better treatment of part-time workers reflects the union’s commitment to gender equity. Yet, concern for women and gender equity is not the only reason why unions seek to narrow the pay gap between full- and part-time workers, as Julie White’s (1990:83-100) account of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ (CUPW) struggle to improve the terms and conditions of part-time workers demonstrates. In her view, the union was motivated to act because it needed to protect the job security of full-time (male) members The same tensions between the rights of women and men in the union movement are demonstrated by the ‘equal-pay-for-equal-work principle,’ which I will now discuss. The Equal-Pay-for-Equal-Work Principle Equal pay for equal work is the fair pay principle for which unions are best known. Although often used colloquially as a catch-all for fair pay claims of all types, in this chapter, equal pay refers specifically to the problem of negotiating equitable wage differentials in unionized establishments. How jobs are paid in relation to each other is of critical importance to workers whose assessment of fair pay is set, first, in relation to those with whom they work everyday, and then in relation to others in the same firm and industry. Workers’ discontent over chaotic pay hierarchies and inequitable skill and effort differentials is a well documented source of pro-union sentiment in organizing drives, past and present. The need to address wage disparities explains why unionized workplaces are more likely to have well organized internal labour markets with jobs clustered into job ladders according to technology, skill, employer practice, or social custom. Where a job fits in the wage hierarchy is determined by its demands relative to others in the same job ladder, and, by extension, in relation to the work process as a whole

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because job ladders are also ranked. How this ranking is accomplished varies. In many unionized workplaces the wage distribution is the product of formal job evaluation, while in others it is the result of direct bargaining to correct perceived wage anomalies. In either case, the union’s goal is equal pay for jobs considered equal in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Job evaluation requires that each job be described and its value established in relation to others according to its relative skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. This orderly and superficially scientific approach to wage determination appeals to managers but its uptake by unions has been variable. Formal evaluation is nearly universal in the public sector where it helps unions reconcile the wage demands of widely disparate occupational groups, and somewhat less common in the primary and secondary sectors where bargaining units are more narrowly defined. Slichter, Healy, and Livernash (1960:559–64) describe job evaluation as a managerial initiative that many private sector unions formally opposed but quietly accepted in order to resolve the wave of pay grievances that followed unionization in the 1940s and 1950s. In the absence of a scheme for allocating one job’s worth in relation to others, the resolution of one worker’s pay grievance often led to another premised on a claim of comparability. Opposition lessened, as well, when the introduction of job evaluation was accompanied by across-the-board wage increases so that everyone appeared to benefit, albeit some more than others. But not all unions were convinced. Job evaluation has never taken root in the auto or metalworking industries because of opposition from the UAW/CAW and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). From the union perspective, the best job evaluation plans are those that correct for managerial bias; that is, where the technical exercise of determining the benchmarks of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions and their relative weights is closely attuned to workers’ values. To be effective, work study ‘must be rooted in already existing norms of effort,’ Hyman and Brough (1975:14) argue: ‘Its main function is to standardise and systematize … often imprecise normative assumptions,’ Chief among these is the union belief that management tends to overvalue the contributions of high-skill workers in relation to unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Slichter, Healy, and Livernash (1960:564-71) cite job evaluation in the steel and pulp and paper industries as examples of schemes that won union approval because they corrected for this

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bias by assigning greater weight to the responsibility and working condition factors than is generally the case. These same ends have been accomplished by the UAW/CAW and IAMAW on behalf of less skilled workers through direct bargaining without formal job evaluation. Union efforts to regularize and narrow skill differentials have been highly successful. This was one of Freeman and Medoff’s (1984) principal findings, and the basis of the union reputation for fairness and equality. Data from Canada show a similar effect. Chaykowski and Slotsve (1999), Renaud (1997), and Christofides and Swindinsky (1994) all concluded that unionization narrows wage disparities and benefits unskilled and semi-skilled workers more than skilled workers. Importantly, however, this is not the case for union women. Whereas union men experience a sharp decline in the size of the union/non-union differential as skill increases, the limited research on this subject suggests that the union premium earned by highly skilled women is almost as large (Lemieux 1993) or even larger (Dorion and Riddell 1994) than that of less skilled women. The particularly disadvantaged place of less skilled women in the union pay hierarchy can be traced to the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle in the context of widespread job segregation by gender. Job segregation is as sharply defined in the union as in the non-union sector,8 with the same negative consequences for women because traditional equal pay wage bargaining protects only those whose jobs are the same or substantially similar to a male-dominated job in the same establishment, and only if they are the same or similar to men’s on each dimension of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. This is the model of equal pay set out in employment standards legislation, and unions did little to improve on it until well into the 1980s. Using this approach, unions won pay increases for women employed in jobs that mirrored those performed by men, for example, male and female cleaners or nursing aides and orderlies (Brown 1998). However, these successes were comparatively few in number. Because pay systems benchmark job worth in relation to traditional men’s work, union adherence to the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle has legitimatized rather than challenged low pay for the majority of workers employed in unskilled and semi-skilled ‘women’s work.’ In workplaces of all sorts – public and private, white-collar and bluecollar, with and without job evaluation schemes – the wage structure reflects a ‘male’ bias that, in the union sector, is accentuated by an ‘industrial’ bias. These biases are revealed by the higher value

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accorded to formal qualifications and job-specific training over general education; physical effort and strength over mental effort and endurance; responsibility for capital equipment and product over the stress of working with vulnerable populations; and the dirt and grease of factories, mines, and construction sites over the tears, urine, and feces common in ‘women’s work.’ No surprise, then, that union women have been disadvantaged in relation to union men or that this gender penalty has fallen hardest on the shoulders of the least skilled. Consider the case of Beatrice Harmatiuk (Harmatiuk v. Pasqua Hospital, 1983), whose housekeeper job at Pasqua General Hospital was paid less than the caretaker job in accordance with the negotiated job-evaluation scheme. Although similar in skill, responsibility, and working conditions, the caretaker job, which was done exclusively by men, scored ahead of the housekeeper job, which was done exclusively by women, because of its marginally greater physical demands. By contrast, the extra mental effort required of housekeepers who interacted with patients was invisible to both the union and employer, despite two appeals by the women affected. In the end, Ms Harmatiuk was forced to take her complaint to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission because, by the standards of collective bargaining, she had incurred no wrong. There was no violation of the collective agreement – she was paid the standard rate for her job – and no violation of the union’s duty of fair representation. So long as the union proceeded in good faith – that is, so long as it took her complaint seriously and investigated the matter fully – it was entitled to settle the issue with the employer as it saw fit (Christian 1991). Beatrice Harmatiuk’s dilemma was not unique. The inadequacies of the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle have long been clear to union women, some of whom fought to put the more woman-friendly model of equal pay – equal pay for work of equal value/pay equity – on their union’s bargaining agendas in the early 1970s. Yet, despite its self-evident benefits to women, the pay equity model of equal pay did not become a central bargaining demand for most unions until required by law. Equal pay for work of equal value/pay equity addresses the issue of low pay for traditional women’s work head-on. Whereas equal pay for equal work entitles women to be paid ‘like men’ only when their jobs are the same or substantially similar to those performed by men, equal pay for work of equal value/pay equity entitles those employed in traditional women’s work to be paid ‘like men’ employed in the same establishment, even when there is institutionalized job segregation by

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gender. The goal of pay equity bargaining is to eliminate the male bias in the definitions of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions by requiring that all jobs be evaluated using a gender-neutral job evaluation scheme appropriate for the workplace as a whole. A full application of pay equity requires that workers in female-dominated jobs be paid the same wage as workers in male-dominated jobs where the sum total of the points for all job factors is the same. Or, in workplaces where there are no exact comparators, workers in female-dominated jobs are paid in proportion to workers in male-dominated jobs as determined by the job evaluation process.9 The final report of the Pay Equity Task Force (2004:111-40) provides ample evidence of the benefits to union women10 of the shift away from equal pay for equal work to equal pay for work of equal value. In the federal public service, pay equity bargaining has raised the wages of many predominantly female job classes, including librarians whose jobs were found to be of equal value to those of predominantly male historical researchers; nurses and X-ray technicians, whose jobs were found to be of equal value to those of predominantly male paramedics; clerks, typists, cashiers, and communications operators, whose jobs were found to be of equal value to those of predominantly male security attendants, engineering draftsmen, and fire and safety servicemen; and food, laundry, and personal service workers, whose jobs were found to be of equal value to those of predominantly male messengers and custodial, building, and stores workers (Canadian Human Rights Commission 1992:10–41). Todres (1990:29–30), likewise, reported average pay equity increases of $2,000 to $3,000 in the federal civil service and $4,000 in the Ontario public service. However, these benefits have not been equally distributed. By all accounts, pay equity adjustments have been smaller in the private sector even though the gender gap in pay is larger (Gunderson and Lanoie 1999; Pay Equity Task Force 2004). In theory, pay equity bargaining could substantially narrow the gender gap in wages in the union sector. Yet, its full-scale incorporation into union practice remains uncertain. At present, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is vigorously implemented by unions only where, and to the extent that, legislation prescribes.11 And, in these settings, the practice adopted is regular pay bargaining first, followed by pay equity bargaining. Union preference for this ‘two tables’ model of wage bargaining is widespread, as evidenced by the submissions to the federal government’s Pay Equity Task Force,12 and

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justified on the grounds that equal pay for work of equal value is a human right that should not be traded off against other demands or ‘disregarded under the guise of financial restraint’ (Ontario Federation of Labour 2002:4). Yet, this approach means that the gender bias of traditional pay bargaining is left unchallenged and unchanged. Unions that adopt the two-tables model, in which ‘real’ pay bargaining is followed by the pay equity adjustment, allow themselves to ignore the extent to which traditional fair pay principles perpetuate the gender gap in wages. The use of pay equity as a corrective for conventional bargaining suggests that union commitment to the pay equity construct of equal pay remains tentative. At present, pay equity is incorporated as a stock-in-trade fair pay principle where it disrupts established bargaining practices least; namely, where workers employed in women-dominated job classes find their male comparators in the same bargaining unit. This occurs most often in government employment where bargaining units are broadly defined to include a wide range of both female- and maledominated jobs. In these circumstances, the introduction of a unified, gender-neutral job evaluation system can close the gender gap in pay (even if it cannot break down job segregation by gender), and do so legitimately in the eyes of union members. In this setting, full integration of the equal-pay-for-equal-work principle invokes no special privilege on behalf of women; it simply guarantees that workers employed in female-dominated jobs are paid at the same rate for their skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions as their co-workers/co-unionists in male-dominated jobs. And the benefits for women are more enduring. Any subsequent effort to restore the male wage premium would challenge the equal pay/ pay equity construct embedded in the pay structure.13 But pay equity bargaining is not so straightforward for workers in women-dominated bargaining units who must look beyond the boundaries of their collective agreements for male comparators. This is the situation faced by most women employed in the quasi-public and private sectors where bargaining units are much more likely to be gender-segregated and the gender gap in pay larger. In these settings, workers in women-dominated jobs who identify male comparators outside the boundaries of their bargaining unit run afoul of the third union fair pay principle of fair comparisons, even when their choice of male comparators is sanctioned by pay equity legislation. This principle is discussed in the next section.

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The Fair-Comparisons Principle It is well documented that fair comparisons between establishments within industries and labour markets are central to the wage-setting process in the union sector. Hyman and Brough (1975:74-5) cite the research of many industrial relations scholars who say that wage comparisons are what inform workers’ ideas about fair pay. Fair comparisons in collective bargaining (as in the economy as a whole) are based largely on customary relationships between types of jobs and earnings. Over time, ‘equitable comparison links together a chain of wage bargains into a political system which displays many of the characteristics of an equilibrium relationship’ (Ross 1947:798). Changes are, then, ‘viewed as unjust or inequitable, and the work group will exert economic pressure in opposition to them’ (Doeringer and Piore 1971:85). That the choice of comparators in bargaining is also strategic is demonstrated by the fact that comparisons are more salient upwards than downwards (Chaykowski and Verma 1992). According to Ross (1947:799), ‘comparisons play a large and often dominant role as a standard of equity in the determination of wages under collective bargaining’ because they establish the ‘dividing line between a square deal and a raw deal.’ ‘Under what circumstances do comparisons have the most compelling effect? When does a difference become an inequity?’ he asked (801). Hyman and Brough’s (1975:41-2) answer is that workers’ sense of well-being depends on the frame of reference through which they assess their situation, commonly, by looking to others who they believe are ‘in the same boat’ as themselves. In Ross’s (1947:799) view, this means that workers accord the greatest legitimacy to comparisons of ‘like with like’: ‘The “equal work” orbits are generally the most coercive,’ he argued, which explains why unions try to negotiate equal wages for similarly situated workers on a company- or industry-wide basis. Typically, these initiatives link up workers in the same occupational and/or industry group; for example, production workers in auto assembly, skilled trades in industrial and commercial construction, or nurses in Ontario’s hospitals. Union desire to ‘take wages out of competition’ by equalizing pay across a product or labour market is the ‘most widely heralded union wage policy,’ according to Slichter, Healy, and Livernash (1960:606). And the benefits to workers are real: wages are higher and more uniformly distributed among establishments in the same industry when unions bargain across a sector.14 Reviewing the research findings about

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the size of the union premium, Benjamin et al. (1998:556) concluded that the union/non-union wage differential is larger when a higher proportion of workers in a union’s jurisdiction (whether industry, occupation, or region) is organized. Freeman and Medoff (1984:84–5) attributed their finding that average wages varied less from establishment to establishment in the union sector of fifty-six of the sixty-one industries for which they had data to this practice. Thus, despite legal impediments to company- and industry-wide bargaining in Canada, Chaykowski (2001:239) describes the former as widespread. Almost one-third of collective agreements covering 500 or more employees were negotiated on this basis during the 1990s (Craig and Solomon 1996:264). Broad-based bargaining is particularly good for women because it allows direct comparisons between the job duties and wages of femaleand male-dominated jobs at the same bargaining table. The gender gap in wages is smallest in countries where wage determination is more centralized, even when there is extensive job segregation by gender (Evans 2002:193). Kidd and Shannon (1996) concluded that the gender gap in wages is smaller in Australia than Canada because of Australia’s stronger union movement and more centralized wage determination process. Analysing Australia on its own, Reiman (1998) concluded that the gender gap grew larger as a result of the emergence of enterprise bargaining. The male advantage was smaller prior to 1991 when wage determination was more centralized but increased over time as bargaining became more fragmented, that is to say, more like bargaining in Canada. Broad-based bargaining may be good for women but its development in Canada is obstructed by union practices that produce and reproduce gender-specific notions of fair comparisons. Common sense ideas about what constituted appropriate work for women and men were rigidly fixed in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s when the pattern of union representation and wage bargaining was determined. Male worker preference for occupational unionism sorted male- and femaledominated job groups into different unions and different bargaining units within and between establishments. The result was a highly gender-segregated pattern of wage comparisons that persists, even though many previously all-male unions such as USWA and CAW now organize in women-dominated occupations and industries. Closing the gender gap in wages for the mass of women union members requires bargaining in alliance with male-dominated bargaining units and establishments; however, there is no such tradition in Canada. Where it exists, multi-bargaining unit bargaining in the private sector tends to

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follow the single-gender lines established by union organizing in the immediate post-war period. Union preference for gender-segregated union representation and wage bargaining was institutionalized by labour relations policy and law. Unlike other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the majority of collective bargaining in Canada involves only a portion of the workforce in one establishment. This high degree of fragmentation is the consequence of what Woods and Ostry (1962:270) called a ‘bias’ in labour law that originated in the 1940s. Outside of the public sector, bargaining units are narrowly defined: commonly, units are single-establishment, and, within establishments, separate units are required for blue-collar, white-/pink-collar, sales, and craft workers, professionals, security guards, and full-time, part-time/casual, and dependent contractors. Not all of these distinctions are made in all jurisdictions – Ontario is at the high end and British Columbia at the low – but whatever the policy, bargaining rights follow certification rights. In all jurisdictions, the law undercuts the possibility of broader-based bargaining by mandating each bargaining unit, however small or isolated, to negotiate its own collective agreement. Though not unlawful in itself, it is a violation of the duty to bargain in good faith for a union to make its desire for broader-based bargaining a strike issue (Forrest 1989). Historically, these policies and structures insulated Canada from the high degree of industry-wide bargaining (and accompanying high wages for male, blue-collar workers) prevalent in the United States in the immediate post-war period (Forrest 1997). Today, they also block the creation of cross-gender bargaining structures and so perpetuate low wages for traditional women’s work in the union sector. Women, more often than men, find themselves in the smallest bargaining units and the smallest establishments (Drolet 2002) where wages are lowest. Examining collective agreements covering more than 200 workers in Ontario, Currie and Chaykowski (1995) found that average wages were lowest in women-dominated bargaining units and highest in male-dominated bargaining units in both the public and private sectors. Bargaining on their own – or even with other female-dominated groups, for example, hospital nurses within a region or librarians within a municipality – workers in women-dominated bargaining units are poorly placed to close the gender gap in wages. To some extent, pay equity legislation overcomes this structural disability because it legitimates wage relationships that would never result

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from the conventional application of the fair-comparisons principle. Where pay equity legislation applies, workers in female-dominated bargaining units who cannot find appropriate male comparators in the same bargaining unit are entitled to compare their wages with maledominated jobs in a different bargaining unit in the same establishment. Using this pay equity construct of fair comparisons, Ontario’s Pay Equity Tribunal in Regional Municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk (1989) ruled that public health nurses could be compared with police officers in the same regional municipality. In collective bargaining terms, this was an extraordinary outcome. Ordinarily, a union of public health nurses would have no legitimate claim to be paid on a par with police officers. As counsel for the employer argued, this was not a fair comparison because police officers and nurses perform ‘specific and specialized work … in no way similar in [the] functions they provide or the regulatory agencies which govern them’ (31). In the absence of pay equity, a union of police officers would consider wage comparisons with police officers in other municipalities or even firefighters in the same municipality to be fair, but never with unionized nurses.15 The idea that pay equity could override the collective bargaining construct of fair comparisons is worrying to many. Arguing, in effect, that union men have a right not to be used as wage comparators in a pay equity exercise that will undermine their economic advantage, knowledgeable labour relations commentators such as Weiler (2002) defend the existing fragmented, gender-segregated system of union representation and collective bargaining as essential to workers’ right to self-organize. In his view, any application of pay equity that ‘allows comparisons of the value of work regardless of bargaining unit boundaries would wholly undermine the notion of free collective bargaining.’ For this reason, he agreed with two 1998 decisions of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Canadian Human Rights Commission and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) v. Canadian Airlines International Ltd. (decision T455/ 1096) and Canadian Human Rights Commission and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) v. Air Canada (decision T456/1196), which denied workers in the female-dominated flight attendants union the right to compare their wages with either of the male-dominated pilots or ground crew unions of the same employer on the reasoning that each of the three unions should be bound by the trade-offs made in bargaining and degree of militancy of their members. As he explained to the federal government’s Pay Equity Task Force, a female-dominated bargaining unit/union that wants the benefits of wage increases negotiated by a

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male-dominated bargaining unit/union should become part of the bargaining unit rather than be free riders. This critique of pay equity fails to take account of the obstacles to broader-based wage bargaining in the Canadian context. The final report of the Pay Equity Task Force (2004) concluded that collective bargaining on its own cannot produce gender equality because gender-based pay inequities are built into its functioning. Institutionalized job segregation by gender means that ‘bargaining units as they now exist cannot be relied on to provide a sound basis for conducting the unbiased examination of compensation patterns which is necessary for the elimination of wage discrimination’ (469). In their view, revitalized pay equity legislation ‘should not privilege collective bargaining relationships, or unnecessarily restrict the range of comparisons which can be used as part of the process for achieving pay equity. While there may be circumstances in which the bargaining unit and the bargaining relationship provide the best framework within which to carry out pay equity analysis, we do not think it should be assumed that this is always the case’ (469). Collective bargaining ‘as usual’ cannot produce wage equality because gender segregation is too deeply embedded in public policy, employer interest, and union behaviour to be taken up as labour relations reform. Yet pay equity legislation designed to overcome these impediments is also problematic because it violates deeply held beliefs about workers’ entitlements. When workers in women-dominated occupations look for appropriate male comparators outside the boundaries of their bargaining unit, their claim for wage equality violates the union principle of fair comparisons. In these circumstances, legislated pay equity gains are fragile, Warskett (2001) warns, because they are not the outcome of the traditional collective bargaining process. Union reliance on pay equity legislation to achieve these increases means that ‘future collective bargaining cannot build on the experience and learning that might have taken place if the entire union had been mobilized over the issue’ (210). If fair comparisons of the sort required by women to achieve gender equality are not asserted by unions as part of the regular bargaining process and subjected to the test of the picket line, ‘the fight against women’s low pay may not become the main business of the union and an integral part of its embedded traditions’ (210). In an industrial relations system where the wages of union members are determined by their bargaining power, workers in women-dominated bargaining units who benefit from legislated pay equity increases they have not ‘won’ for themselves appear to get more than they deserve.

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Conclusion My analysis of three union principles of fair pay – pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons – demonstrates a remarkable transformation in the meaning of fair pay in the union sector over the past sixty years. Adapting to changes in the law of gender equality, unions have shifted from a model of formal inequality that legitimated discrimination against women because they were women, to a model of formal equality that granted equality to women who fit the male/industrial model of work and worker, to a model of substantive equality that advances women’s claim to economic equality with men regardless of circumstances. The impact of these changes has been far from uniform. All union women have benefited; however, some groups benefited sooner than others, some more than others, and some very little. Over the period as a whole, women employed in traditional men’s work and welleducated women in the public and quasi-public sectors have benefited the most. Less-skilled women, most particularly those employed in traditional women’s work in the private sector, have benefited less handsomely. Least well protected are part-time workers who continue to be penalized for taking up this stigmatized form of ‘women’s work.’ As I have shown, the first shift towards gender equality, from formal inequality to formal equality in the 1970s, allowed women entry into traditional men’s work on the same basis as men and guaranteed they would be paid ‘like men.’ What may not have been clear from the analysis is the relatively limited impact of this change for union women. Even now, unionized, breadwinner jobs in resource production, transportation, construction, and capital-intensive manufacturing continue to be overwhelmingly male. Consequently, it was the more recent shift from formal to substantive equality that broadened the pool of beneficiaries significantly. This shift in thinking brought higher wages to well-educated union women employed in the public and quasi-public sectors. These two groups now earn the breadwinner wage that unions originally defined as fair pay for union men alone. The benefits to other groups of union women have been less handsome. The shift from formal inequality to formal equality benefited lower paid, less skilled women who worked in gender-mixed jobs or in jobs substantially the same as those performed by men in the same workplace by eliminating the lower ’female’ wage scale common in collective agreements prior to the 1970s. Women benefited, as well,

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from the shift in union attitudes. Unions began to actively press the case for wage equality between women and men whose jobs were virtually the same. Overall, however, the wage gains for these women were modest because even small differences in job duties were often grounds enough to legitimate the gender gap in wages. It was not until unions were forced to confront their sexist assumptions about the value of ‘women’s work’ in relation to that traditionally performed by men that the gender gap in wages for this large group of union women was narrowed significantly. But here, again, the results have been mixed. On the whole, less skilled workers employed in traditional women’s work in the public sector have benefited more than their private sector counterparts, both because they are more likely to be covered by pay equity legislation and because they are more likely to be in gender-mixed, multi-occupation bargaining units where the legislation works best. Yet, even these gains are modest. Even when they are paid ‘like men’ in the pay equity sense, their wages fall well short of the breadwinner ideal. The final group of women – those least affected by the transformation from formal inequality to substantive equality – are those employed in part-time jobs or other forms of non-standard work. For these union women, the shift in thinking about fair pay over the last forty years has had almost no effect, principally because unions fail to define part-time work and workers as ‘like’ their full-time counterparts. Sadly, this source of gender wage inequality has not been remedied by the shift to substantive equality. Unions have been slow to grasp the potential of pay equity for part-time workers, arguably because fair pay for parttime workers violates deeply entrenched ideas about who is and who is not a ‘real’ worker. This analysis of the union construct of fair pay and its changes over time requires industrial relations scholars to rethink the established interpretation of unions as equality producing organizations. The evidence offered here demands a more nuanced interpretation. It is not sufficient to evaluate the union impact on the wage structure without examining the particular impact on women. In taking up this project, researchers will find that unions have both improved and exacerbated the gender gap in pay. The more equitable distribution of wages that accompanies unionization is offset by the indisputable fact that unions have a history of discriminating against their women members. Granted, the union bargaining agenda today includes equality for women; however, this goal remains elusive, in part because of a continuing commitment to traditional union principles.

Bargaining against the Past 73 NOTES The author wishes to thank Ralph Johnson, Rena Isenberg, and Steve Brennan, without whose support and encouragement this essay would never have come to press. 1 A summary of this research for Canada is provided by Renaud (1997). 2 Using 1999 data, Fang and Verma (2002) estimate the size of the union premium to be, on average, 7.0 per cent for women and 7.5 per cent for men. Estimates for the 1980s were at least twice as large. See Renaud (1996), Dorion and Riddell (1994) Christofides and Swindinsky (1994), and Lemieux (1993). 3 But see Elvira and Saporta (2001). Dorion and Riddell (1994) and Shamsuddin (1996) are partial exceptions. 4 In 1997, non-union women earned an average of $4.19 (23.5 per cent) less per hour than equivalent qualified non-union men (Drolet 2001: 28). 5 The Pay Equity Task Force (2004) provides a useful summary of pay equity legislation in Canada. 6 Notably, this does not mean that all workers who perform a job are paid the same wage rate. Employment standards legislation requires only that a woman must not be paid less for performing the same job as a man simply because she is a woman. The law does not require equal pay for equal work among workers of the same gender in the same establishment, or between women and men in the same establishment if the pay difference results from factors other than gender, for example, differences in seniority or job performance. 7 Casual workers are excluded if they are employed for less than one-third of a normal work week, or irregularly (Elliott and Saxe, 1992: 33). 8 Using collective agreement data from Ontario for the years 1980 to 1990, Currie and Chaykowski (1995) estimated that almost two-thirds of women workers would have to change jobs in order to eliminate gender segregation. This is higher than the Duncan indexes estimated for the economy as a whole (Fortin and Huberman 2002: Suppl. 23). 9 This is a generic statement. For a discussion of the complex issues involved in converting pay equity principles into legislation see Pay Equity Task Force (2004). 10 All studies of the impact of pay equity legislation on women’s wages are agreed that union women benefited more than non-union women. 11 For a description of pay equity legislation in place, see Pay Equity Task Force (2004: 63–74). 12 As of May 2007, submissions to the task force can be found at www. justice.gc.ca/en/payeqsal/4400.html. The ‘two tables’ model is also the preference of the Pay Equity Task Force (2004:141–74).

74 Anne Forrest 13 In Stevenson Memorial Hospital (1999–2000), the Ontario Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal disallowed larger wage increases for male-dominated jobs said to result from differences in bargaining strength where both the male- and female-dominated jobs were in the same bargaining unit. 14 Company- and industry-wide bargaining also enhance job security. ‘Considerations of equity for one group and job security for the other move hand in hand,’ Kerr (1957: 173) argued, because workers in higher-wage workplaces feel uneasy about possible unfair competition that could threaten their jobs. 15 These public health nurses were entitled to compare their wages with police officers only because the Pay Equity Tribunal defined ‘employer’ more broadly than is the case under Ontario’s Labour Relations Act. Even though the nurses’ union bargains with a different branch of the regional municipality than the police union, for purpose of pay equity, the regional municipality as a whole was determined to be the employer.

4 Union Response to Pay Equity: A Cautionary Tale JUDY HAIVEN

Tim Reiner* sorts through the boxfuls of reports, awards, and photos that remind him of his successful years as union leader. Over the years he earned certificates in eighteen courses and workshops, such as occupational health and safety, Saskatchewan labour law, stress in the workplace, public speaking, and collective bargaining. He was president of a large Saskatoon local in the Canadian Union of Public Employees and seemed destined for a staff position with CUPE. But then came a campaign orchestrated against him in the mid-1990s by union brothers, angered by his support for a pay equity plan designed to address inequities between women and men working with the Saskatoon Catholic School Board. The end result was a split in the union he fought for, and his exclusion from all areas of influence within the new union local he found himself in. ‘It’s like I don’t exist; I’m an asshole and a skirt.’ This story – more about this later on – illustrates the real inequities within traditionally gendered workplaces, and the strength of the forces for change inside the labour movement. But it also demonstrates the power of resistance on the ground to the reconceptualization of value and worth that is necessary for genuine equity. It also highlights some of the complexities and other challenges entailed in translating the principle of pay equity into concrete results. There is much evidence of Canada’s labour movement having taken up issues related to gender inequity over the last two and a half decades, and this includes a principled attachment to the principles

* All names of those involved in the schoolboard case have been changed.

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underlying pay equity. The 1960s and 1970s saw major increases in the number of women who entered the labour force permanently, and demands for equity in the workplace and inside the labour movement were soon being articulated. Unions had already been committed to the removal of the most obvious discriminatory practices, but women’s caucuses were calling now for a more radical agenda. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were signs that such activism was bearing fruit (Munro 1999; Kumar 1993a; White 1993; Briskin and McDermott 1993; Cuneo 1993; Martin 1995), though unevenly across unions and across gender issues. Gains were recorded in the extension of formal recognition to women’s committees, the increase of women’s representation in union executives, the development of training programs, and bringing issues of sexual harassment and child care to the fore. Pay equity is a complex issue, though, and union engagement with it shows evidence of hesitation and resistance. Long ago, unions agreed with feminists outside the labour movement that workplace equity required moving beyond notions of paying women and men equally for the same work. The continued gendering of the workforce means that most women simply do not do the same work as men, even at the present time. More than that, the work that most women do in such areas as clerical work, retail sales, cleaning, nursing, and education is typically paid at levels below the work that men do with broadly similar levels of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions (Broad 2000; Phillips and Phillips 1993). What the principle of pay equity therefore requires is equal pay for work of equal value and a comparative assessment of such value across quite different jobs. By the mid-1980s, the leading voices in Canadian labour were declaring their allegiance to this principle. At the same time, they were uncertain about what mechanisms were most likely to give it effect, and whether true equity was attainable in isolation from radical changes in the economy. The need for pay equity is undeniable. In unionized workplaces, women employed full time and year-round earn on average 82 per cent of what men earn (Hadley 2001), and the income gap doubles when non-unionized, part-time, and contract workers are added to the mix. Persistent imbalances in domestic responsibilities, particularly around the care of children and elders, are more likely to impel women than men into part-time work, or to limit their income-earning work hours. And, even with significant incursions into traditionally maledominated professions, women in other sectors are highly concentrated in female job ghettos that are paid less than men’s work and have more limited career prospects.

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Feminists have challenged the patterns of segregation that reproduce gaps in incomes and job security, but they have also challenged the notions of ‘value’ that produce relatively low pay for women’s work. The pressure applied by such feminists and by significant elements in the labour movement have resulted in some legislating of pay equity principles. The federal government was among the first jurisdictions in Canada to do so, when it included pay equitiy in the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1977.1 This legislation affected employees in the federal government, Crown corporations, and private sector companies under federal regulation (for example, in the transportation, communications, and financial sectors). In subsequent years Ontario legislated pay equity for the public sector and at least some portion of the private sector. Several additional provinces instituted pay equity but only for the public sector – as is the case in Saskatchewan.2 Statutory moves such as these varied widely in their coverage, in the mechanisms used to evaluate jobs and in their overall effectiveness, but they did help legitimize the principle of paying equally for work of equal value. Such legislation has provided vehicles through which unions have been able to support equity claims by women. As we shall see, important gains have been won recently through labour’s pursuit of two high-profile cases launched by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) on behalf of federal government employees and workers at Canada Post.3 Other forces, too, have contributed to a slow narrowing of gender gaps in wages and incomes, though with painful slowness. There are a variety of impediments to equity, some rooted in the resistance of men (and women) on the ground, some in the entrenched practices and cultures of unions, some in the very structure of the economy. I begin the chapter with an account of the Saskatoon Catholic School Board’s engagement with pay equity, an account that illustrates a number of such impediments. Methodology When this work was originally undertaken, I was not an academic, but a journalist. Data for this research came from a variety of sources. The researcher personally interviewed Tim Reiner and other members of a local union at length and over a period of two years. The interviews were open-ended and built around, but not confined to, a questionnaire.4 In addition, the researcher interviewed four union representatives of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) who had

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experience with school board employees, including two representatives who had once worked as school secretaries.5 Susan Miller, an expert in pay equity at CUPE national headquarters in Ottawa, was interviewed by telephone.6 Daniel Girard, formerly a manager at the school board was also interviewed. Most interviews took place between 1994 and 1995, in Saskatchewan. Articles, union newsletters, and other documents were also gathered. Note that all names in this section are pseudonyms. Tim Reiner and Saskatoon’s Catholic School Board As a child in the late 1950s, Tim Reiner emigrated with his family from eastern Europe to Saskatchewan.7 After dropping out of high school, he worked on the production floor of a meat-packing plant, on construction sites, and then as a cleaner. In 1983 he landed a job as a fulltime caretaker at an elementary school in a Saskatoon suburb. He started attending meetings of the union to which he belonged – Local 2268 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – and in 1984 he was elected to his local’s negotiating team. He was eager to take up training opportunities offered by his own union and by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), and eventually completed eighteen courses and workshops in such areas as occupational health and safety, workplace stress, labour law, collective bargaining, and, notably, sexual harassment and pay equity. From his early days on the negotiating committee, Reiner was struck by the absence of job descriptions for anyone in the local. Over subsequent years, he was also struck by the discrepancy between the pay for support staff (all but a few, female) and service staff (overwhelmingly male). Seasoned secretaries earned 30 per cent less than similarly experienced caretakers, and teachers’ aides earned even less than secretaries. Income inequalities were further sharpened by the fact that the support staff worked on ten-month contracts, and the men worked year-round. Reiner kept hammering away at these inequities, though in a context in which the provincial government was resisting pressure to enact pay equity legislation. The initiative would have to come from individual union locals or employers. CUPE Local 2268 had been formed in 1982 as a result of merging separate locals representing maintenance and support staff.8 The local’s 1992 anniversary yearbook described the merger this way: ‘The caretakers explained that they thought an amalgamation between the two groups

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[the caretakers and support staff] was a good idea because the contracts for both locals were basically the same, the major difference being the wage scales. Furthermore, they suggested that Local 2268 would benefit because [the caretakers] might be able to bring a small amount of cash from their portion of the equity assets of Local 34 and they would strengthen local 2268 by increasing the number of members. This meant more revenue from union dues and more people to do the work of running a local.’9 Separate collective agreements and separate locals, or branches, for the maintenance and support staff may have stemmed from the 1970s, when typically there was a scale for ‘male’ and ‘female’ wages.10 Though these two wage scales have long since vanished as a result of the law ensuring equal pay for those working at the same jobs, separate collective agreements for so-called male jobs (maintenance) and female jobs (office or secretarial) at one workplace are not rare in school boards across the country.11 Two examples of employers today with separate contracts – one for maintenance and one for teachers’ aides, secretaries, and library technicians – are Regina Public Schools and Saskatoon Public Schools.12 In the case of the Saskatoon Catholic School Board, the demographics of the workplace were changing in ways that gave prominence to such issues. The union local was once dominated by men, both in numbers and influence. In the 1970s, caretakers and tradesmen represented a large contingent relative to the whole non-teacher employee group, and their wives’ management of the domestic arena left them time for union work. But by this time, the majority of workers were secretaries, teaching assistants, library workers, and cafeteria staff – almost all women. Women were still likely to bear most of the weight of domestic responsibilities, but the imbalance of expectations on women and men was not as stark as before, since the wives of more of the men were also in the workforce. By the 1980s, women who were prepared to take up union responsibilities had access to a plethora of CUPE courses and campaigns, some of them specifically geared to women.13 Eventually, in 1991, the union local and the school board’s management agreed to devise a formal system outside the regular collective bargaining process to evaluate jobs with a view to achieving pay equity. The school board also set aside a specific fund to allow for the upward adjustment of employee wages as a result of pay inequities, the amount to be allocated over and above normal wage increases

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negotiated in collective bargaining.14 The Joint Job Evaluation Committee (JJEC) was then created, with three representatives each from the board and the union, Reiner among them. Members drew on the expertise of an experienced national staff member in CUPE in devising an evaluation system, with little disagreement on design between union and management representatives. The committee’s evaluation process began with the preparation of a 35-page questionnaire for each employee, requiring four-to-six hours for completion. It was designed to assess each position on the basis of 11 factors: knowledge, experience, judgment, mental effort, physical effort, dexterity, accountability, safety of others, supervision, contact with others, and disagreeable conditions. Some workers had trouble understanding the forms, others resisted out of distrust of the process, many more did not complete them fully. Some caretakers took pains to write, for example, that they helped children who were lost or hurt on playgrounds, while secretaries did not, only later acknowledging that they did those things all the time but never thought of writing it down. Once employees were coaxed into answering the questionnaires, the committee began sorting through the results in order to develop an evaluation scheme that all representatives could agree on. This task took over 80 meetings stretched over two years, eventually producing eight pay categories. The proposed rebalancing of wages meant that increases would be capped for some relatively well-paying jobs (beyond 1994), or ‘red-circled’ (i.e., not eligible for pay increases until salary became equalized with a new pay system). Altogether, 23 positions were red-circled, in contrast to the 233 that were deemed to be underpaid.15 The committee’s conclusions provoked widespread debate and stiffened resistance in some quarters, particularly among the men. For example, a small but vocal contingent of men in the service area refused to accept the results, claiming that the comparative assessments of secretarial and custodial work made no sense. According to Reiner, what these men saw was a secretary sitting at her desk answering the phone; they did not see that the job also included counting cash and responding to sick children, all in a stuffy, overcrowded office.16 There were also the headaches and back pain that resulted from squinting at the office’s ancient computer screen. Commenting on one secretary’s job, one maintenance man claimed: ‘She just bought a house and owns a new car. I know secretaries who are doing very well in this system.’17 Later, he disparaged any claim that the work women performed could be worth more pay than his: ‘Secretaries don’t want to

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work that hard. TAs [teachers’ aides] look after one kid all day: they are trying to say the TA is worth $400 to $500 more than me ... If a kid got locked in a school and there’s a fire, my butt is on the line; a secretary, her biggest responsibility is to switch off the computer at the end of a day.’18 Tim Reiner defended the evaluations: ‘The caretaker can choose what to do; it was too hot yesterday to cut the grass so [he’ll] cut it this morning. Being a secretary is a demanding job. Exams and notices have to be done on time. Also, secretaries take on some of what the principals used to do, like budgets, stock, and inventory. When a kid acts up in the classroom, the teacher takes him down to the office and asks the secretary to look after him.’ In January 1993, a union meeting was called to discuss the Joint Job Evaluation Committee report. Some of the men lined the hallways jeering at women members who came early for the meeting. One of them said to the crowd: ‘There’s no damn secretary who’s gonna make as much money as I am.’19 A majority of employees in attendance voted to approve the committee report, but most of the men voted against it. In subsequent union meetings, opposition to pay equity persisted. As Reiner recalled, ‘They used to come to local meetings and disrupt or sit out in the parking lot with video cameras aimed at anyone walking into the meeting. Then the guys would come in and make a motion to adjourn the meeting before we’d even started.’20 There was some suspicion that the resistance of maintenance staff was encouraged by their manager. As Terry Sharpe, a member of Local 2268’s executive argued, ‘The boys are his power base, and over the years they’ve been treated differently.’21 Some of the hostility of service workers against support workers, she felt, was encouraged by the manager, in part by a number of practices that set his staff apart from the others, perhaps in part as a divide-and-conquer strategy.22 Caretakers and tradesmen began holding their own meetings, and they kept out the union executive, including Reiner and the women. Talk of forming a separate union was rife, and the caretakers at the forefront of the initiative began urging their co-workers to sign statements supporting a union of their own. At one such meeting, a motion was introduced to split the union, and in an open vote a majority approved it within just a few minutes.23 But the Catholic School Board as a whole did not want the union to split. As Terry Sharpe, a school support worker and union executive member recalled, ‘The board fought the certification quite hard. They hired a lawyer in February or March 1994 and there was an all day

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hearing with at least four people attending. But CUPE never fought it. The advice from CUPE was not to. Our certification order was a mess. CUPE told us the Labour Relations Board might require a vote and the union might not win. Our union could be decertified.’24 Still, CUPE Local 2268 executives – including Reiner, Sharpe, and CUPE executive member Sandra Lemm – argued against a split. As Reiner explained, ‘The breakaway group hired a lawyer and dug around and found out there was no record of Local 2268 having been certified back in 1978, though the board had been negotiating with the union for more than 15 years. It was a mere technicality, but in Terry’s eyes, they ‘blackmailed us.’ The breakaway group said they would move to have Local 2688 decertified unless they agreed to give them their own local union.’25 Ellen Street was the CUPE national representative newly assigned to servicing Local 2268. She claimed it would have been hard to fight a decertification campaign and that there were no guarantees the union would win.26 Decertification would put 300 workers at risk of no union representation, plus the union itself stood to lose thousands of dollars in union dues.27 According to Street, ‘there was also the issue of local autonomy. Local unions in CUPE by dint of the CUPE constitution, had the right to autonomy and it is not the role of the parent union to snuff out a local moving to split the local.’28 But could the women members, by dint of their numbers alone, prevent the split? Though the female membership was about two-thirds of the union’s membership, there was the concern that the acrimony around the joint job evaluation and the poisoned work environment limited some female members’ participation in the union. Few women, according to Reiner, were coming to union meetings. In addition, in many instances a husband and wife both worked for the school board – he as a caretaker and she among the support staff. Reiner suggested that the wife might favour the split, in order to avoid upsetting the husband. There was also a fear about a decertification vote because of the many divisions among the support staff. Unionized support staff included school secretaries, clericals, teachers’ aides, library workers, computer operators, and technical workers. Another issue was that much of the support side within the local union had become atomized and dispirited, for a number of reasons: – The women worked at different schools across the city and had little chance to meet.

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– There was little support or direction from the CUPE regional office.29 – Most of the women were hired on ten-month contracts, which were renewed each fall. This meant there was a measure of anxiety each summer whether or not they would be rehired. – According to Reiner, the union executive felt bombarded and inexperienced, and they feared the outcome of a decertification vote. – There was the genuine concern, given the momentum based on the animosity about the job evaluations, that the ‘men’s’ local would get out in full force to vote, and the female-dominated support staff would not. CUPE’s provincial office put up little resistance, and was now raising questions about the pay equity recommendations. It had supported a systematic job evaluation process, but was now balking at a red-circling that would prevent the negotiation of wage increases for some workers.30 Union officials had seemed supportive earlier on, and had tried to respond to complaints that the pay equity process had been twisted by school board management. But their resolve diminished when they were confronted with the possibility of decertification and of serious conflict among employees. A round of bargaining for a new collective agreement began in 1994, and a new union, Local 3730, was created. The resistance to red-circling was now firm, but at least one woman, a CUPE national representative who had once been a school secretary, doubted that there was another way of achieving equity: ‘I don’t know any way of achieving pay equity without freezing the higher wages until the others catch up ... If there hadn’t been any red-circling, if the men hadn’t taken the stance they were losing something, it may have worked. They didn’t seem to be upset when they were getting over $3,000 a month and I was taking home $1,200.31 There were other ways, as shall be discussed later in this chapter. But at that time, any move towards equity was doubly hampered by serious constraints in the bargaining room of public sector workers across Canada, and no less in cash-strapped Saskatchewan. The provincial bargaining pattern in the public sector, already established, was to allow no wage increases in the first year of a three-year agreement, none in the second year, and 2.5 per cent in the third year. In any event, the split in the union local effectively scuttled the pay equity plan. In fact, among the very few employees to receive more than the total of 2.5 per cent agreed to in collective agreements were maintenance staff, through promotions. To some union members, it

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looked as if pay equity was going the wrong way! Tim Reiner was now a member of the new Local 3730, and its executive had no intention of allowing him to participate in the new union’s governance: ‘It was the end of my involvement in the union. I no longer sat on the local executive. I had to give up my position and couldn’t run for office in the CUPE Saskatchewan division, because you have to have credentials from the local union to be on the division. I could not be on any committees. I don’t bother going to any meetings of the local now, and I hear they have poor turnouts for their own meetings. What bothers me is that none of them have any training at all, and they still have tunnel vision.’32 Impediments to Change This Saskatoon story provides ample illustration of the kinds of barriers confronting proponents of change in pay equity, and on a range of gender issues. Some of the barriers are specific to the particular union local in that particular place. But many are more systemic, and have parallels in countless other workplaces. Social Construction of Work and Pay What counts as serious and valued work is highly gendered in many workplaces, and the inequalities implicit in those norms are fully evident in the Saskatoon Catholic School Board. The approach to job evaluation questionnaires had strongly gendered characteristics, including the tendency for women to under-report the range of tasks associated with their jobs, and of men to disdain the whole process. Much starker was the backlash to the report that resulted from the job evaluation process, as we have seen, in which a number of men categorically rejected the idea that a secretary or teaching assistant might make as much as they did. The tenacity of such views may well be influenced by the Saskatchewan location. Despite the election of successive social democratic governments, the region’s population seems to retain rather traditional views on gender and family issues. The resistance to pay equity within the provincial government of the day has certainly provided some backing to the men who were resisting it on the ground in Saskatoon’s Catholic schools. The particular makeup of the school board’s CUPE local may well have exacerbated the conflict. Male-dominated positions were in

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maintenance and the trades, areas that are among the strongest holding areas for traditionalist views of labour value. Among workingclass occupations, in other words, these were long holders of high status within the labour movement and defensive of the value traditionally associated with their work. The management of maintenance and trades workers in the school board may well have contributed to their seeing themselves as in a category apart from other staff. But the defensiveness of workers in such positions is not unusual, and derives in part from the strategic location in work processes often occupied by maintenance staff, and the historic privilege accorded craft work in the labour movement. As much as in any male-dominated work, the status and pay associated with this work were mirrors of self-worth, and any adjustment of value in favour of women’s work was a threat. Lying right on the surface or just below it was also the view that men ought to be the principal breadwinners for their families. Female-dominated positions held by CUPE members included those who were becoming more highly educated, and in a school system that was demanding more than ever from teaching and non-teaching service staff. Many women in these positions acquiesced in traditional conceptions of the value of their work, but many were prepared to challenge them. When they did so they faced uncomprehending male co-workers. The resistance may well have been more forceful in Saskatoon than we would find in many other work settings, but not categorically dissimilar. Some male resistance also comes from simply not understanding what pay equity means. Among employees of the Saskatoon Catholic School Board, there were certainly employees who saw the term as speaking only to equality of treatment – paying women caretakers the same as men caretakers. It simple did not occur to them that equity required that comparisons be made across very different jobs – as some would say, apples and oranges. Comparing these jobs systematically with one another deeply challenged their views that such jobs were simply too different from one another. Some, of course, understood precisely what the term meant, but simply argued that equity was not possible. Union Difficulties in Translating Equity into Daily Practice Despite important commitments to equity, the reactions of CUPE provincial officers to the divisions within the school board local displayed patterns of organizational traditionalism. Once divisions were in the open, the maintenance of peace seemed to become more important

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than equity. Officials also fell back to the position that pay equity could only be reached through a collective bargaining process that would never deny any worker a pay increment. This would doom to an extraordinarily slow pace any movement towards equity, and risked entrenching male resistance to any movement at all. But, using collective bargaining hold it to standard operating procedures, and retained the fiction that equity could be attained without holding back anyone who held a position thought by equity standards to be relatively overpaid. CUPE attempted to temper male backlash to the assertive pay equity positions it had in theory staked out by opposing red-circling, but this was in fact part of a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to convince members that pay equity entailed no cost to anyone. Anne Forrest, in this volume, outlines a variety of ways in which day-to-day union bargaining retains elements of gendered traditionalism that undermine principled commitments to equity. The school board story also illustrates the reluctance of unions to acknowledge male resistance on the ground, and the difficulties men face in confronting such resistance when they meet it. As much as any set of organizations, unions face challenges in the implementation of principles on the ground, and in particular when they call for rethinking standard operating procedures. Sometimes issues such as these open up serious divisions between locals and their national unions, as witnessed in a celebrated harassment case in Saskatchewan. In the early 1990s two women who worked in a Saskatoon dairy were essentially driven from their jobs by the starkest forms of sexual harassment (Haiven 1994; Weils 1992), after being denied help by their local Teamsters union. A formal complaint eventually (after four years) yielded a Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruling that the company and the union were jointly responsible. The national union agreed to compensate the women, but the local denied any wrongdoing on the part of its members, and six shop stewards resigned in disgust at the settlement. They had insisted that the women follow standard in-house procedures for lodging grievances against fellow union members, an option that the women felt no security in pursuing. Unions have a legally enshrined duty to represent their members, and this usually means that they will defend any member against disciplinary action. This also means that union locals will defend members against grievances brought by other union members, for this is in large measure how unions respond to complaints. Union locals whose

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leadership is dominated by men are especially likely to react defensively when male members are accused of sexual harassment, whatever the policy commitments of their national or provincial unions. The process that kicks in when complaints are easily registered makes the local obsessive about process to the exclusion of equity policy, with one highly probable outcome being the retention of the status quo. Framing Pay Equity as a Women’s Issue There was striking congruence between debates over equity among employees of the Saskatoon Catholic School Board and among politicians in the provincial government. In both cases, pay equity was seen by most men not as an issue of social and economic justice, but as a concern of women – a special interest. In the early 1990s the New Democratic Party (NDP) was in control of the provincial government, but its minister of labour described pay equity as a women’s issue, not a labour issue, arguing in solidarity with the rest of the cabinet that the government would not be presenting comprehensive pay equity legislation in line with that approved in Ontario and Quebec. Within the union movement there were rumblings that women were asking for special consideration. This dovetailed with widespread notions that white men were paying for past injustices against women and minority groups. If pay inequities are acknowledged, and they frequently are not, they are construed as not the fault of men. They also might be thought the fault of management, but more likely they are seen as the fault of the women themselves. As a result, any remedy introduced is widely suspected to constitute ‘reverse discrimination.’ And, framing the issues as women’s issues implicitly questions their ’fit’ with established notions of union solidarity. As Carl Cuneo (1993:123) has pointed out, union members who complain about the behaviour of their union ’brothers’ or who call for realignment of wages and benefits are considered equivalent to anti-union scabs. These are not the terms in which such policies are now debated in national policy conventions, but it is often how they are characterized on the ground. Pay Equity as a Redistributive Process The resistance to pay equity among maintenance and trades workers in Saskatoon came in part from a recognition that their wage gains were being jeopardized. The school board had set aside some funds for

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equity-based compensation to those whose work was being undervalued, but movement towards equity that was speedier than glacial still required red-circling. Even if it had not done so, the adjustment of wages would still have slowed wage gains for some employees and accelerated them for others. Those men (and women in traditionally male positions) who agree that the values associated with work have elements of gender discrimination inappropriately built into them will still resist any concrete action because they accurately perceive it to cost them wage gains they would otherwise not win. Such resistance will be stronger in those settings where wage gains are unlikely or modest. The Saskatoon case was just such a one, with a three-year contract holding out the promise of only a 2.5 per cent gain overall. The 1980s and 1990s were a period in which the average wage earner across the country faced similar prospects, especially in the public sector. A have-not province like Saskatchewan would see even more depressive wage pressures. In such circumstances, even slight shifts towards pay equity would more inescapably seem to be zero sum. But is there another way to achieve equal pay for work of equal value without sowing bitterness among the workforce? The next section explores this question. The Complexity of Job Evaluation Processes The job evaluation process used in this case provides a graphic illustration of the challenges involved in developing a systemic evaluation of jobs. The members of the joint committee each spent at least two weeks in training before setting out on their evaluation, and this was with a template already developed by CUPE. As we saw, the questionnaire they developed then took up to six hours for employees to complete, with countless returns to secure more complete or accurate responses. Once the questionnaires were in, the committee itself met for hundreds of hours to develop a job evaluation system. Members then spent much additional time responding to union member questions and complaints. The apparent precision with which the committee analysed jobs failed to confront gendered constructions of what merits higher pay (i.e., the work women have traditionally done gets devalued without a larger rethink concerning the value of tasks; for example, tasks associated with nurturing). We can draw an illustration from mid-to late1980s Ontario, which had just seen expansive pay equity legislation

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passed by the provincial Liberal government, after a process shaped in important ways by feminist activists. The University of Toronto was just one employer obliged by law to develop a pay equity plan, including job evaluation systems. The evaluation scheme drawn up for nonacademic employees was clearly developed with an eye to ensure gender equity, with batteries of questions about skills, expertise, responsibilities, and working conditions that sought to capture the full range of valueladen characteristics of work in traditionally male and female positions. But in its detail, the questionnaire still could not avoid some gendered unevenness in the qualities of work it probed. Questions about working conditions leaned heavily towards the sources of unpleasantness associated with men’s work – noisy machinery, dirty conditions, and so on – and hardly touched the unpleasant conditions women in secretarial positions will often identify: interruptions, lack of privacy, repetitive keyboard motions. Questions about skills were more detailed concerning work done by mechanical technicians and their non-electronic machines than they were of keyboard work. It is not that the job evaluation system was entirely unchallenging concerning gendered constructions of work, but even very conscious attempts to ensure such challenge could not fully eliminate them. Job evaluation systems also inevitably reproduce most of the norms about what is valued in work that are reflected either in the free market or in the other processes by which wages and salaries are determined. Typically, for example, poor working conditions are given much less weight than ’responsibility’ in the additions of points that produce an overall value scale. This is part of an overall pattern of work valuation that creates very significant income differentials. It is also gendered, as long as supervisory and managerial positions are more likely held by men than women – this quite apart from what gets counted towards unpleasant working conditions on one side and responsibility on the other. The sheer complexity of job evaluation systems easily obscures the basic impetus behind them. As Judy Fudge (1991) puts it: ‘Pay equity embodies the simple idea that people should not be paid less because they work at jobs that have become identified as women’s work. But the problem is that this simple idea has become obscured by a complex maze of statistics and procedures generated by economists and lawyers (60).’ Unions will sometimes acquiesce in this process because they see it as divisive for unions and therefore best left to experts. Some unions will resist this, but then find themselves in a paralyzing bind.

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It used to be that only management consultants, who charged thousands of dollars in fees, directed the job evaluation process. But in the last two decades, with the push for pay equity from trade unions, at least one union, CUPE, has gained considerable expertise and fashioned a gender-neutral job evaluation program, with trained staff at its national headquarters. These union consultants are dispatched to local unions across the country to help locals – and management – conduct gender-neutral job evaluations which will lead to pay equity. This service is free of charge for local unions. Was red-circling the only way to achieve pay equity? Not necessarily, says Judy Fudge, professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, ‘The technique is so technical, it is driven by consultants and lawyers.’33 However, even with professional assistance, job evaluation is a long and tedious process – one that without adequate preparation of the membership – particularly for the men – can be explosive and controversial. Some argue that pay equity is only one solution. Fudge contends that the single thing which would benefit working women the most is raising the minimum wage.34 After all, she argues, many women are in service and sales work and are not covered by collective agreements and by unions that are going to fight on their behalf: ‘Pay equity is a goal – to increase women’s wages relative to men’s. Increasing the minimum wage will do that and increasing unionization will help foster it. A comparable worth strategy like job evaluation is really hard and very expensive. Now many more women who supported pay equity strategy [in Ontario] don’t think it’s worked very well. Certainly it is not going to work for the worse off women who are not unionised.’35 However, that said, it is a major failing that the Saskatchewan government has refused to pass pay equity legislation for all but provincial government employees. Legislation, while not a definitive solution, tends to push the issue forward and into the public eye, and in the process some equality can be realised. The inability of job evaluation systems to break away fully from established norms about work value have led some writers to question their worth as remedies for pay inequities (Fudge 1991; Fudge and Tucker 2000). Some have argued that being in a unionized environment in itself is quite effective in reducing gender inequities. However, there is little evidence from the literature that unions have been able to reduce inequities merely by developing gender neutral job evaluation systems. The Saskatchewan story told here suggests a cautionary note on that front.

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The Limits of Legislation and Human Rights Processes Most provinces do not have pay equity statutes that extend beyond the public sector (some not even that).36 Even more expansive legislation typically has limitations in coverage, or in its guarantee that pay inequities will be comprehensively evaluated and corrected. Ontario’s mid1980s legislation was at the time thought to be the country’s most assertive, and was enacted in the face of strong corporate resistance. It covered both the public sector and many private sector employers (Gunderson 2002). But the initial wave of equity plans posed a formidable monitoring challenge for officials. And the attention to equity since that time has substantially waned. As one observer wryly noted at the time, the legislation started with the assumption that private and public sector employers warranted close scrutiny as they developed pay equity plans in the immediate aftermath of the legislation’s passage; but once such plans were approved and implemented, the employers were assumed to be permanently innocent. Most pay equity legislation has required that comparator groups be found within a single workplace. The extent of job segregation still evident in the Canadian labour market makes such comparators difficult to locate under such systems, effectively stripping pay equity systems of their meaning (Fudge 2000; Fudge and Tucker 2000). The health-care field is filled with such challenges (for example, in finding comparisons for nurses), and so are many other arenas in which women typically work. Securing equity has often depended on employers, sometimes with union backing, proceeding through human rights tribunal systems. This, however, entails very slow-moving processes, testing the endurance and resources of claimants and supporters. One relatively straightforward complaint was launched in Regina fifteen years ago by a Safeway store employee, who thought it unjust that she and her fellow cashiers were earning less than food clerks (generally male) who stocked shelves and set up displays. Ten years later her complaint had still not been fully dealt with by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, at which point the issue was taken up in the collective bargaining process (Saskatchewan Executive Council 1999). Impetus to Change There are forces for change, in some cases prevailing over the impediments. We saw in the Saskatoon Catholic School Board a major change

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in workplace demographics. The balance between women and men in the original CUPE bargaining unit shifted in ways that gave more prominence to women’s voices. The educational qualifications expected for some of their positions also increased their skill level and their preparedness to challenge existing practices in the workplace and the union. The unions themselves had also changed in ways that gave women and their allies at the local level access to support and expertise. Courses were now on offer that dealt with gender issues, and women prepared to be active in the union were more likely to be given encouragement to take them. Expertise on pay equity issues was now available at the provincial and national levels, and CUPE as a whole was taking gender-related issues more seriously than ever in policy discussions and at the bargaining table. CUPE was in fact a leader on equity issues from the 1980s onward. CUPE has not been alone in campaigning for pay equity. The Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) have fought hard for it, for example, and so has the Canadian Labour Congress and some of its provincial affiliate federations. In some cases, unions have been prepared to seek remedies through the courts and human rights tribunals to secure pay equity settlements. Unions have pressured public sector employers to agree to settlements that have helped women at the federal level and in those provinces with expansive pay equity legislation. They have also secured major victories with private employers reluctant to agree to such settlements. In the 1980s and early 1990s, federal government employee unions backed pay equity claims that eventually resulted in victories.37 More recently, the Public Service Alliance of Canada spearheaded one of the largest pay equity claims in Canadian history, eventually winning a ruling with a price tag of more than $3 billion.38 The Canadian Union of Public Employees has also developed a particularly strong commitment to pay equity, fashioning an elaborate gender-neutral job evaluation program and training staff at national headquarters to help locals in applying it. A number of unions across Canada have mounted challenges to provincial governments who resisted pay equity. The Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE/NUPGE), and a coalition of health-care unions sought to challenge the provincial government’s 1991 claim that fiscal constraints prevented pay equity settlements for thousands of health-care workers.39 The union challenge was

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ultimately lost in a final 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling which ‘upheld the original arbitration hearing but at the same time found that the province was justified in withholding payment because of dire financial circumstances.’40 In Ontario in 2001, five unions, the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the United Steel Workers of America (USW), the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU), the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), plus four individuals, launched a challenge to the provincial government’s policy that made pay equity virtually unattainable for about 100,000 female public sector workers.41 The problem was that the provincial government had repealed the ‘proxy provisions’ of the Pay Equity Act as a cost-cutting measure. The ‘proxy provision’ allows the use of a nearby workplace in which there is an identified wage differential between male-dominated and female-dominated jobs to be used in assessing a workplace in which there is no male comparator group.42 An example would be a nurse in a nursing home, compared to a nurse in a municipal home for the aged.43 In 2003, a $414 million settlement was reached with the unions and the individuals. In 2003, after 17 years, women emergency dispatchers for the Vancouver Police Department won a major pay equity settlement. CUPE supported a human rights challenge by the women aiming to secure wages comparable to male fire dispatchers (the wage discrepancy was between $22,000 and $33,000 per year). This challenge directly confronted the difficulty in existing law entailed in comparing groups of workers beyond a single employer. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union launched a complaint at the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 1996.44 At the heart of it was the struggle for pay equity by Bell Canada’s telephone operators. The CEP in western Canada had initiated a ‘Put Bell On Hold’ campaign to boycott Bell’s products, such as cellphones, to draw attention to the pay equity battle of their members.45 This is an important private sector claim which could result in payouts to about 5,000 telephone operators.46 To date (February 2006) the case is still not settled. If it succeeds it will be based in part on the fact that the coverage of federal legislation on pay equity will have been extended beyond the public sector to include federally regulated firms.

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Conclusion The pay equity victories won or supported by unions have been much celebrated across the Canadian labour movement, and may well signal an overall shift towards more sustained commitments on gender equity. Beyond this issue, most of Canada’s largest unions have adopted policies that respond to the concern raised by feminists within the union movement. Unions such as the Canadian Auto Workers union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, several other unions representing provincial public sector workers, and a number of the country’s largest union federations, have seen the formation of active women’s committees, and given them official status (White 1993; Kumar 1993a; Cuneo 1993). These have formed crucial organizing bases for those women, and for men seeking equity, to develop policy, mount educational programs, and support union activists within locals across the country. The Reiner story, though, is a cautionary tale, and this in a union at the forefront of campaigning for pay equity in Saskatchewan. The story illustrates the depth of resistance within union locals to serious equity programs, and the difficulty that unions have in facing down such resistance among their own members. It also points to the challenge faced by all complex organizations – translating principled commitments at a national level into thoroughgoing change at the local level. What made the pay equity challenge especially difficult for the employees of the Saskatoon Catholic School Board was that the men and women whose labour was being compared were in the same bargaining unit, and the costs of equity were clear to most of the workers in maledominated positions. What made pay equity fights in the successful cases, flagged above, easier to secure was the apparent ‘externalization’ of the costs of equity. What was won with union help was ‘extra’ money to raise the wages or salaries of employees in female-dominated jobs. In the long run, of course, all pay equity settlements result in some employees foregoing income they would otherwise have received in a regime where male privilege was unchallenged. But such long run changes are less obvious, less painful, and less challenging. The school board debates and dissension illustrated the great difficulties facing equity claims in work settings where the costs cannot be easily externalized. In addition without prodding by a pay equity law, employers and even unions can afford to sit back and wait to redress inequities. But this case also illustrates that traditional conceptions of

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work value are still widespread, and that the reconceptualization of value required for genuine equity represents a major challenge for unions. It also shows that unions with principled commitments to equity can easily run into local level impediments for which they are ill-prepared. Pay equity is a gender issue that can be difficult for workplaces and unions to fully embrace precisely because it does raise such fundamental questions about work value, and does risk confronting some elements of the hard fight for status associated with male-dominated jobs. The rhetorical commitment to equity may well focus on augmenting the status and value associated with female-dominated positions, but many men (and some women in male dominated jobs) do not see it that way. Conceiving of work value outside the forces of the market, and other factors that now shape remuneration, runs up against the interests of capital and of management in public sector institutions, but it also runs up against deeply set social values that are widely held among workers themselves. Unions might imagine that they are confronting only management in aiming for greater gender equity, but that is not entirely true. Pay equity is a difficult issue for unions, too, because activists in the labour movement do not always agree on how achievable equity is within the existing economic order, and what route is most likely to secure gains. This reflects debates within the broader feminist movement about what is winnable, and by what mechanisms. These debates arise largely from the extent to which inequities in pay are so deeply embedded in the very structure of employment – a structure in which gendered divisions of labour are still pronounced. Women are still more likely than men to have to fit work around family needs; and they are, as a result, more likely to need or want to find part-time work, or work that does not require overtime. Women more often have to interrupt their work lives, and will more likely be laid off on the basis of low positioning on an unchanged seniority system. Times do change. By 2007 Sandra Lemm is once again on the executive of CUPE Local 2268. The local has more than doubled in size to 500 teachers’ aides, library technicians, and clerical staff.47 She says that today it is an entirely different union: ‘It was the best divorce ever. As the years have gone by the split has proven to be very good. Our collective agreement is phenomenal. Our teachers’ aides are being paid $18 per hour, much better than before. Secretaries are now classed as ’office coordinators’ and get higher wages; I’m up to

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$21 per hour – I used to be paid $13 per hour.48 Frankly, we have exceeded the wages of head caretakers and building operators in the other union [Local 3730].’49 Lemm maintains that management began to take the support staff local more seriously after the split, for three reasons.50 ‘First, the split gave us the opportunity to talk about men’s and women’s work. We asked, ’Why do men get paid more than we do when our skills are constantly changing?’ For example, we used to use typewriters and now we publish booklets, reports, and do spreadsheets. Secondly, the teachers ’got a kick in the teeth’ when they settled for 0-1-1 per cent over three years. Yet, the school superintendents received a wage increase of 15 per cent. The teachers were riled up. Then I gave an interview to the Prairie Messenger [a Catholic weekly newspaper] saying that we Catholics at the school board were among the working poor. Then I was called in to explain myself to the new board director and the trustees. Of course I was worried about losing my job. But I was confident.’51 On a provincial level, CUPE is now taking another tack to narrow the gap between men’s and women’s wages. Jerry Smith, a CUPE national representative explains: ‘We can’t freeze salaries – that gets the men mad. But there is a step we can take. We can merge existing school board locals into one collective agreement across the province. Then we can ask for extra resources to go to female employees. With a collective agreement with the provincial government we can address wage disparity.’52 He points out that in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, CUPE has negotiated this kind of framework agreement. The hope is that it will be extended throughout the province.53 Some writers have argued that pay inequities can be confronted more effectively outside the usual pay equity framework. For example, Fudge (2000), has suggested that an emphasis on increasing unionization of women’s workplaces and raising the minimum wage would be a more effective strategy. Beyond pay equity, stories from other front lines show that there are still major impediments facing equity activists. As in the wider society, union locals harbour distrust of feminism, and wariness of the women and men who express support for goals seen to arise from feminism. Calling Tim Reiner a ’skirt’ is one version of the kind of derision that sometimes greets men who campaign for gender equity. Women interested in union activism also still face the double burden of a paid job and primary responsibility for the domestic arena. Women

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in union office will still face double standards on what constitutes appropriate behaviour. As Judy Darcy, former president of CUPE, once wrote, women were often labelled ‘shrill and strident and even hysterical for speaking forcefully on a convention floor when [their] brothers, who say exactly the same thing and bellow as if they ate megaphones for breakfast, are heartily congratulated for their fire and brimstone speeches’ (White 1993:138). Over ten years ago, Carl Cuneo (1993) argued that sexism and sexual discrimination were still rooted in the informal culture of unions. While that is true on the one hand, on the other women have made great gains in the world of work and the world of trade unions. Since 1976 women’s overall participation in the paid labour force has grown from 37.1 per cent to 45.9 per cent (McQuarrie 2007: 568). In 1962 only 16.2 per cent of union members in Canada were women (Akyeampong 2004). By 1970 that number had risen to 25 per cent (Forrest 2001: 648). By 2003 almost 50 per cent (48.5 per cent) of all union members in Canada were women – triple the figure forty years earlier. With more women bolstering the ranks of Canadian unions, issues such as pay equity are liable to turn up more regularly at the bargaining table.

NOTES 1 See Section 11, Canadian Human Rights Act (1977). See http://canada. justice.gc.ca/en/news/nr/2001/doc_26468.html, retrieved 5 February 2006. 2 Saskatchewan enacted pay equity legislation for most public service workers in 1997. In 1999, health-care workers were added. For a list of which provinces enacted pay equity legislation in which year, see http:// www.justice.gc.ca/en/payeqsal/1100.html, retrieved 5 February 2006. 3 In March 2000, more than 230,000 PSAC members who were former and current federal public service employees won their case for pay equity from the Treasury Board of Canada. See ‘Details on Pay Equity Payments,’ http:// www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/nr-cp/2000/0324_e.asp, retrieved 5 February 2006. In October 2005 PSAC won pay equity for thousands of clerical workers at Canada Post. See ‘PSAC Wins Pay Equity Adjustments for Canada Post Workers.’ http://www.psac-afpc.org/news/releases/2005/450-1005e.shtml, retrieved 5 February 2006. 4 The questionnaire for interviews with union members included their names (which it was agreed would not be disclosed), their jobs, how long they had been working, and contact information. Questions included:

98 Judy Haiven a) Has the pay equity initiative affected your job? If so, how? b) What is your opinion of the management/union move towards pay equity? c) Do you think this move has affected the union? In what way? d) What is your view of the union executive? e) Do you support splitting the union into two sections? f) Other comments related to the struggle for pay equity at the school board. 5 Interview with CUPE staff representative Ellen Street, 15 October 1994. Interview by telephone with CUPE national representative Jean Summers, 3 November 1994 (Summers used to work as a school secretary). Telephone interview with Jerry Smith, CUPE national representative, 3 February 2006. 6 Susan Miller is a job evaluation specialist with CUPE. She was interviewed by telephone on 2 December 1994. 7 Material for the pages surrounding events at the school board and the Reiner case were gleaned from interviews with the following: Tim Reiner, ex-executive member of Local 2268, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – interviews in March, April, May, and July 1993, and two interviews in 1994; Sandra Lemm, union executive member, interviewed in April, June, and September 1994 and in February 1995); and two maintenance members of the local union (who declined to be identified), interviewed in May 1994 and June 1995. 8 Anniversary yearbook Local 2268: History, Ten Years 1982–92 (Saskatoon: privately published, 1992). 9 Ibid (my emphasis). 10 In 1974 the author worked at the Inglis appliance plant in Toronto. The collective agreement had two wage scales, one for female and one for male workers. This was routine in collective agreements up to the late 1970s. 11 Even in production workplaces (factories) there are sometimes two collective agreements. At DeHavilland Aircraft in Toronto there is a collective agreement for the mostly male production workers and another for the office workers. 12 From a telephone interview with Jerry Smith, CUPE national representative, on 3 February 2006. 13 See ‘Women and Equality: Still a Long Way to Go,’ http://www.cupe.ca/ www/EqualityWomen/ART3ffc1f4880ba3, retrieved 3 February 2006. See also http://tao.ca/~cupe3903/web/?q=node/22, retrieved 3 February 2006. 14 One per cent of payroll in 1993; half of 1 per cent in 1994; a third of 1 per cent in 1995, and a fifth of 1 per cent in 1996. 15 From an interview with Tim Reiner on 3 May 1994. 16 Ibid. 17 From a telephone interview with a school maintenance worker who did not want to be identified, 15 June 1994.

Union Response to Pay Equity 99 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39 40 41

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Terry Sharpe, a support worker at the Saskatoon Catholic School Board, and a member of the Local 2268 executive, 15 March 1995. Ibid. Interview with Tim Reiner, 15 March 1995. Ibid. Interview with Reiner, 7 October 1994. Interview with Ellen Street, CUPE national representative, 10 May 1995. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Red-circling is a term that means after a job evaluation has taken place, an employee is deemed to be earning more money than the value of the job itself. This could mean that red-circled job holders receive no further wage increases until the rest of the salary grid catches up. Interview with Jean Summers, CUPE national representative and former school secretary, 15 July 1995. Interview with Tim Reiner, 3 March 1995. Telephone interview with Judy Fudge, January 2004. Ibid. Ibid. Only Quebec and Ontario have enacted comprehensive legislation. The remaining provinces have legislation pertaining to government employees and sometimes to those who work for the provincial government’s agencies or boards. For example, in Saskatchewan the legislation covers provincial government employees and those employed by Crown corporations such as SaskTel and SaskPower. According to the National Association of Women and the Law, the federal Treasury Board paid more than $3.5 billion to mainly female civil servants in a pay equity settlement for a claim that began in 1985 and concluded in 1999. See Andrée Coté’s radio interview heard on The Current, CBC Radio One, 19 January 2004. Ibid. See ‘Newfoundland offers to negotiate pay equity settlement,’ http:// www.nupge.ca/news_2005/n07de05a.htm, retrieved 5 February 2006. Ibid. See http://www.opseu.org/news/Press2003/june132003.htm, retrieved 5 February 2006.

100 Judy Haiven 42 For a definition on ‘proxy’ workplaces in relation to pay equity, see http://www.opseu.org/news/Press2003/backgrounderjune12_03.pdf, retrieved 5 February 2006. 43 Ibid. 44 See http://www.cep.ca/human_rights/equity/bell/chronologie_e.html, retrieved 4 February 2006. 45 See http://www.putbellonhold.ca/. Retrieved 4 February 2006. 46 See http://www.cep.ca/human_rights/bell/youshouldknow_2.html, retrieved 5 February 2006. 47 Telephone interview with Sandra Lemm, union executive member, CUPE Local 2268, 9 February 2006. 48 According to the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator, if a secretary (such as Lemm) earned $13 per hour in 1994, adjusted for inflation that would equal $16.22 in 2005. However, secretaries are earning $21 per hour in 2005 – more than 25 per cent more than a decade ago. To calculate inflation, see http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/inflation_calc.html, retrieved 13 February 2006. 49 Telephone interview with Sandra Lemm, president of CUPE Local 2268, 9 February 2006. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Telephone interview with Jerry Smith, 3 February 2006. 53 Ibid.

5 Labour’s Collective Bargaining Record on Women’s and Family Issues KAREN BENTHAM

The increasing proportion of women in the labour force has been cited as one of the most profound changes in the Canadian workplace in the past half-century. The unprecedented migration of women into paid employment, combined with the shift away from traditionally unionized, male-dominated industries towards service-oriented industries (Chaykowski and Powell 1999), has had profound effects on unions and the labour movement. Fifty years ago, the typical Canadian union member was white, male, and employed full time at a blue-collar job. Today, Canadian union members are as diverse as our population, a sizable proportion of them work part-time, and they are equally likely to be white-collar workers. Most notable, however, is that union sisters are almost as prevalent as union brothers. As the demographics of unions changed, their political and collective bargaining goals evolved. From both inside and outside the labour movement, women challenged unions to address their unique concerns and to modify unions’ traditionally male-dominated decision-making structures to adapt to the changing face of Canadian labour. As feminism grew in North America in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, so too did the pressure on unions to embrace the elimination of gender-based labour market and workplace inequities as a high-priority goal. Sexist language was eliminated from collective agreements, women’s committees and conferences became a part of virtually every Canadian union’s and labour federation’s structure, and labour joined in – indeed often led – the fight for legislative reform. Decades later, however, women continue to be significantly disadvantaged with regard to both pay and benefits. This chapter does not attempt to address the very complex issues surrounding the efficacy or relative success of unions’ political activism on

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behalf of women. Nor does it address the stubborn and ubiquitous persistence of male-female earnings differentials.1 Rather, it provides a brief explanation of how internal union structures have changed, in order to ensure that the interests of female members are articulated and forwarded; it then focuses on the degree to which unions have been successful in doing what they do best: negotiate improvements in the terms and conditions that govern the everyday working lives of their members. What it finds is that Canadian unions have had some success in incrementally shaping more equitable workplaces, but that success has indeed been incremental. A number of unionized Canadian men and women now enjoy more flexibility in work scheduling, greater access to short-term personal and family-related leaves, and, for those working part-time, a greater likelihood that they will receive benefits. However, a distressingly large proportion are still not covered by collective agreement provisions regarding issues as fundamental as freedom from harassment and equality of pay and opportunity. Examining collective bargaining gains is important for a number of reasons. While unions utilize a variety of methods to forward equity goals, collective bargaining remains the single most important vehicle through which unions can shape the terms and conditions of employment and collective agreements that govern the working conditions of approximately one-third of the working women in Canada (Statistics Canada 2005a). Furthermore, the terms and conditions of employment of unionized workers are often benchmarked by non-unionized employers in order to establish their human resource policies, and these have frequently served as catalysts for change in federal and provincial employment and labour standards. Thus, the degree to which unions have achieved workplace improvements for their members serves as a valid indicator of not only progress made on behalf of unionized women but also as a proxy for the general pace of progress towards equity goals for all working women, whether unionized or not. While the changing prevalence of collective agreement provisions provides temporal comparisons, it does not provide a complete picture either of unionized employees’ terms and conditions of employment or of union’s attempts to incorporate equity provisions into collective agreements. Terms and conditions of employment may also be contained in employer policies and practices or in legislative provisions, either of which may be sufficient to convince unions to direct their limited bargaining power towards other issues. Furthermore, even when unions incorporate equity issues into their bargaining agendas, there is

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no guarantee of success in negotiations. Indeed, employers have often proven recalcitrant in their resistance to incorporate such things as employment or pay equity provisions into their collective agreements. Regardless of the difficulty of negotiating equity provisions, however, it is important to monitor unions’ progress on this front. Equity provisions within collective agreements supplement legislative protections, specifically operationalize them within a workplace, provide members with demonstrable evidence of their union’s commitment to equity, and ensure that equity issues can be effectively and expeditiously enforced through the grievance procedure. Thus, even where equity rights are articulated in legislation or in employer policy, unions should strive to ensure that they are also enshrined in collective agreements. The next section of this chapter discusses the change in gender composition of Canadian union membership, how women attempted to make their voices heard and their influence felt, and how unions responded to the calls for equity in the workplace and within internal union structures. The following section uses data from reports provided by the Workplace Information Directorate (WID) of the Labour Program, Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) to trace the progress unions have made in incorporating provisions of particular interest to women into collective bargaining agreements. Note that throughout this chapter, when reference is made to a percentage of employees covered by a certain provision, the percentage is of employees included within the WID samples. Data from interviews with representatives of four large Canadian unions supplement the empirical data. The last section of the chapter asks why progress has been so slow, examines some of the impediments to change, and makes recommendations to help forward unions’ equity agendas. Women’s Presence and Women’s Organizing The dramatic rise in female labour force participation rates over the past century reflects the changing role of women in Canadian society. In 1901 women made up only 13 per cent of the labour force, and those who were employed were predominantly young and single; only a few ‘unfortunate’ women continued to work after marriage (White 1993). The Second World War brought a dramatic change as married women entered the labour force in support of the war effort. This trend continued in the years following the war, and, by 1950, 22 per cent of labour force participants were female (Leacy 1999), a significant proportion of

104 Karen Bentham

those being married women. By 1975, when women made up 41 per cent of the labour force (Leacy 1999), the participation rate of married women rivalled the overall female labour force participation rate (White 1993). Today more than 47 per cent of the Canadian labour force is female (Statistics Canada 2005b), and the expectation of workforce participation, but for brief periods when their children are young, is the norm. As their presence in the labour force increased, so too did women’s presence in the labour movement, albeit with somewhat of a lag. At the turn of the century the union movement generally ignored and excluded women other than in their roles as consumers, wives, and mothers (White 1993). In 1921 only 3 per cent of union members were female; in 1951 fewer than 1 in 10 (Bain and Price 1980). By 1975, however, 26 per cent of union members were female (Statistics Canada 1999), and by 2005 49.4 per cent of Canadian union members were women (Statistics Canada 2005a). Women’s increased presence within unions, especially following widespread unionization of public sector workers in the 1960s (White 1993), brought increased scrutiny regarding the representativeness and inclusiveness of union leadership, internal decision-making structures, and collective bargaining agendas. Women unionists began to question whether male-dominated leadership, which until then had adopted a definition of solidarity informed by ‘the notion of a generic worker with a homogeneous and selfevident set of interests’ (Briskin 2002: 33), could reflect or appreciate their unique interests and needs. Recognition grew that if their voices were to be heard and their goals embraced, female union members needed to become involved at all levels of unions’ internal structures. The 1970s saw the advent of progress towards that end. In 1971, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) tabled its first report on the status of women within its union (Boehm 1991). During the early to mid-1970s, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) passed several resolutions on issues of concern to women, and in 1974 established its first Women’s Committee, following the lead of the Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec Federations of Labour. By the end of the United Nations’ International Women’s Decade in 1985, every provincial labour federation save for Prince Edward Island’s, and most major unions had established women’s committees (White 1993). In larger unions and labour federations, women’s committees were later backed by annual or biennial women’s conferences, although the conferences were mainly informal and educational in nature and the committees were virtually all advisory to the executive committees and empowered only to report and make

Women and Family Issues 105

recommendations (White 1997). Variously criticized as being relatively powerless, weakening union solidarity, contributing to the marginalization of women’s issues, and bleeding off the time and energies of militants, women’s committees nonetheless served as an important tool through which women articulated their concerns and pushed for the translation of union policies into political action and bargaining demands. Beyond their participation in separate structures such as women’s committees and conferences, women also sought to articulate their concerns both as unionists and as women by seeking other positions of leadership, influence, and authority within their unions. Ironically, given the unionespoused values of solidarity and equality for all (Bail 1985), the gendered composition of union bureaucracies proved tenaciously resistant to change. Women’s participation in union decision-making was disadvantaged by a wide variety of factors, including: their lack of knowledge about, and experience within, unions’ administrative and governing procedures; their tendency to underestimate their abilities; persistent misperceptions that males were better suited to union officer positions; the difficulties for many of adding more hours to their already double work day, especially when those hours were unpaid; for mothers, the absence of child care while they engaged in union activities (Chaison and Andiappan 1989); the absence of role models and mentors; election processes that often favoured incumbent candidates; and the many obstacles inevitably encountered by all women seeking to lay claim to any heretofore maledominated positions of power. All too often, when women overcame barriers to participation, their presence in union educational activities or at conferences or conventions was only reluctantly tolerated. Verbal and other types of harassment were commonplace (Cuneo 1993). What was perhaps the most consequential modification of internal union structures came as a result of the recession of the early 1980s and the resultant mass layoffs that disproportionately affected women due to their recent entrance into non-traditional and often highly unionized occupations (Boehm 1991). As the precariousness of women’s gains became apparent and unions pushed employers to implement affirmative action programs, they found themselves faced with similar demands from their female membership. Thus, during the 1980s most labour federations and many large unions – often at the behest of their women’s committee – implemented internal affirmative action programs that designated or added on a certain number of executive seats for women (White 1997). These programs increased the number of women in top leadership positions and increased awareness of

106 Karen Bentham

representational issues, which led to greater gender equity in local leadership, equity representation in educational courses, and employment equity for union staff, as well as affirmative action programs for visible minorities, and gays and lesbians (Briskin 2000). Partially as a result of affirmative action programs, women increasingly took their place on committees and bargaining teams, not just as the representatives for women’s issues but as unionists who happened to be women. Women in both formal and informal leadership and decision-making roles made their influence felt at all levels of their unions and labour federations, forwarding both traditional bread and butter issues and issues of special interest to women. However, women continued to be disadvantaged by their less-than-representative participation, particularly due to the majority-rule nature of union decision-making. Their disadvantage was nowhere more apparent than in the formulation of bargaining agendas where priorities need to be set and trade-offs are inevitable; ‘women’s issues’ continued to be viewed as separate and secondary, and even when these ‘special interests’ made it onto bargaining agendas, they were often the first demands to be dropped. Initially, ‘women’s issues’ had been articulated by unions as including workplace concerns such as equal pay, equal access to jobs, eradication of sexual harassment (Kumar and Acri 1992), job sharing, and health and safety for pregnant women (Creese 1996). A woman’s work experiences, however, cannot be neatly excised from her non-work experiences; thus, women raised issues such as child care, abortion, violence against women, and parental and family leaves, challenging unions to broaden their view of what constituted a legitimate union issue (Briskin 1983), to reconsider what is relevant to the workplace, and to increase their support for social unionism (Briskin 2002). Women’s way of working within unions and their prevalence in local, as opposed to executive, leadership positions also forced unions to rethink traditional conceptions of leadership and influence (Briskin 1990). Female unionists often introduced alternative decision-making processes, and emphasized ‘process, accountability and constituency building, and participation rather than representation’ (Briskin 2000). The question, however, is whether women’s influence – in whatever form or forum – has translated into significant tangible gains. To what degree have issues of special concern to women come to be reflected in the terms and conditions of employment articulated in Canadian collective agreements? The remainder of this chapter investigates this question by comparing the prevalence and evolution over the course of

Women and Family Issues 107

almost two decades of collective bargaining of provisions concerning discrimination, pay equity, employment equity, sexual harassment, parenting leaves, child care, family care leaves, flexible work scheduling, and benefits for part-time workers. Women’s Impact in Collective Bargaining Previous research has explored the prevalence at various points in time of collective agreement provisions of particular interest to women. While comparisons between various researchers’ findings are difficult due to differences in sample sets, what can be determined is that as of the early 1990s unions had mixed success in bargaining provisions that addressed the unique concerns of women. Gains were documented in specific areas, mainly those addressed by legislation such as prohibition of discrimination and maternity or parental leaves. Where statutory protections were limited or non-existent, such as equal pay for work of equal value, employment equity, benefits for part-time workers, family care leaves, flexible work schedules, and provision of childcare subsidies or facilities, collective bargaining gains were far more modest (Kumar and Acri 1992; Kumar 1993a). Some research suggests that by 1998 Canadian unions had made progress in bargaining equal pay for work of equal value, employer top-up of employment insurance during maternity leave, flexible work time, and protections from sexual harassment (Jackson and Schellenberg 1999). Data Collection Methods To provide an update and a more accurate picture of the pace of change over the last two decades, information about collective agreement outcomes between 1986 and 2005 was collected from the Workplace Information Directorate. The WID database details the prevalence of various types of collective agreement provisions, reporting both the number/ percentage of agreements that contain that provision and the number/ percentage of employees covered by each provision. Samples pre-dating 1986 were not utilized, as data collection for the WID reports only began in 1985, and, in fact, 1986 is the earliest year for which these tabulation statistics on working conditions are complete. This study – measured at four-year intervals between 1986 and 2002 and then again in 2005 – reports the percentage of employees covered in May of each of the sample years. However, due to changes in WID’s sampling methodology

108 Karen Bentham

beginning in 2001, caution must be exercised in comparing the statistics for 2002 and 2005 with those from previous years.2 Prior to 2001 the samples were of all Canadian collective agreements covering 500 or more workers under provincial jurisdiction and 200 or more under federal jurisdiction. Since January 2001 the WID has used a stratified random sampling method that draws on the total population of Canadian bargaining units with 100 or more members. This has resulted in samples with: a much higher proportion of small bargaining units (those under 500); a smaller, more representative proportion of medium-sized units (500 to 1,999); and a higher proportion of private sector bargaining units. Given the greater success public sector and large unions have had in achieving progressive collective agreement language (Kumar and Acri 1992; Kumar 1993a), the post-2000 statistics regarding the prevalence of progressive, equity-focused provisions would be expected to be somewhat lower than if the former sampling method had been maintained; however, the newer data are more representative of conditions of employment for unionized female workers as a whole. To supplement the empirical data and assist in understanding current bargaining outcomes and future bargaining goals, national representatives from four large unions – the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), United Steelworkers of America (USWA), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) – were interviewed regarding their bargaining agendas on equity issues. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by telephone in the spring of 2003, and in each case the respondent was the union official responsible for ‘women’s issues, such as the director of equity or human rights director. These unions were selected based upon their size and because of their inclusion in previous research of this nature (see, for example, Kumar and Acri 1992; Kumar 1993a). Furthermore, between them, these four unions have members in both the public and private sectors, in all jurisdictions in Canada, and in virtually every industry in Canada, and, as of January 2005, represented over 28 per cent of all union members in the country (Bédard 2005). Protection from Gender-Based Discrimination The most fundamental collective agreement provision designed to ensure equitable workplaces is that prohibiting discrimination based on sex or gender. By 1986, the majority of collective agreements had some type of clause prohibiting discrimination, and between 1986

Women and Family Issues 109 Table 5.1 Equity and harassment provisions in Canadian collective agreements (percentage of employees covered) 1986a 1990b Anti-discrimination provision Clause delineates prohibited grounds Incorporates human rights code Equal pay Equal pay for work of equal value g

Affirmative action/employment equity Sexual harassmenth Harassment help provision

1994c 1998d 2002e

2005f

43.4 13.6

48.3 19.8

46.2 24.7

38.2 26.7

– –

– –

0.8

12.6

19.0

23.8

–

–

5.9

9.2

14.7

17.8

26.8

29.3

27.5 –

45.5 –

51.8 –

53.1 –

54.5 5.0

53.9 5.0

a

May 1986: 1,010 collective agreements covering 2,198,700 employees. May 1990: 1,140 collective agreements covering 2,603,238 employees. c May 1994: 1,047 collective agreements covering 2,450,788 employees. d May 1998: 927 collective agreements covering 2,092,230 employees. e May 2002: 1,134 collective agreements covering 2,224,945 employees. f May 2005: 1,129 collective agreements covering 2,305,865 employees. g Beginning in 2001, provisions providing for the hiring and promotion of target group members were classified as Employment Equity rather than Affirmative Action. h Now titled Harassment Complaint Procedure. b

and 1998 the trend was towards incorporating reference to the human rights statute of the jurisdiction (see table 5.1). Since 2001, the Workplace Information Directorate’s tabulation statistics of working conditions have excluded anti-discrimination provisions. This is perhaps due to the decreased importance of such provisions in light of recent legal developments that expand arbitrators’ jurisdiction to resolve workplace disputes that allege violation of statutes – such as human rights legislation – regardless of whether the collective agreement contains reference to the statute.3 Any ongoing bargaining efforts seem to be directed towards extension of protections to groups not yet formally included in human rights legislation, such as transgendered employees. Recognizing that anti-discrimination provisions are ineffective in addressing most forms of systemic discrimination, many unions have also negotiated provisions for equal pay, pay equity, and employment equity. The prevalence of collective agreement provisions mandating equal pay for equal or substantially similar work has changed little since 1986, when only 3.8 per cent of employees were covered. Legislative protections in all Canadian jurisdictions apparently

110 Karen Bentham

obviated the need to direct bargaining efforts towards standard equal pay provisions. Furthermore, given the gender composition of the workforce, standard equal pay provisions are ineffective in addressing one of the most significant sources of the male-female pay gap: occupational segregation and the devaluation of women’s work. Equal pay for work of equal value, or pay equity, seeks to address this source of pay discrimination through gender-neutral job evaluation systems that ensure female-dominated jobs are not paid less simply because of their gender composition. In 1986 fewer than 1 per cent of employees were covered by collective agreement provisions mandating equal pay for work of equal value. By 1998 considerable gains had been made: 23.8 per cent of employees were covered. Somewhat inexplicably, the new WID sample includes neither basic equal pay nor equal pay for work of equal value provisions; however, an on-line search of WID’s Negotech4 database in December 2005, revealed that only 23.2 per cent of collective agreements contained any reference to pay equity. Virtually all of these were in the public sector, and in the vast majority of cases simply referenced or operationalized legislatively mandated processes. The handful of private sector collective agreements that mention pay equity simply reference the relevant Pay Equity Act,5 or mandate compliance with the pay equity requirements of the Canadian Human Rights Act.6 Thus, few collective bargaining gains have been made independent of legislative imperatives, virtually no progress has been achieved since 1998, and the majority of employees still do not enjoy collective agreement guarantees of gender-neutral pay systems. Collective agreement provisions mandating proactive auditing of human resource practices to identify and eliminate sources of systemic discrimination were rare in 1986: only 5.9 per cent of employees were covered by employment equity provisions in their agreements. Almost 20 years later, that number has increased dramatically, but more than 70 per cent of employees are still not covered by such provisions. It appears that many unions prefer to rely on legislative protections where they exist rather than focusing bargaining efforts on incorporating either pay equity or employment equity provisions into collective agreements. Of the four unions interviewed, only CUPE and USWA classify pay equity as a high-priority bargaining issue. Only CUPE, which of the four unions interviewed was the only one in which a majority of members were female,7 ranked bargaining employment equity provisions as a high priority. Interestingly, CUPE and USWA,

Women and Family Issues 111

whose membership was 24 per cent female, are also the only two unions that identified improving women’s pension benefits as a bargaining issue of very high importance, both currently and for the future. They recognize the direct link between pay and pension benefits, and that given the growing number of female workers approaching retirement, equitable pay and equality of opportunity have never been more important. In fairness, it may be that many unions have pushed both pay and employment equity at the bargaining table but have encountered fierce resistance from employers. For example, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) finally had to pursue their pay equity demands through a human rights complaint after the federal Treasury Board refused – through several successful rounds of bargaining and even a strike – to incorporate a pay equity provision into their collective agreement. Collective agreement provisions providing protections from sexual harassment were more common in 1986 than either employment equity or pay equity provisions, with 27.5 per cent of employees covered. By 1994, 51.8 per cent of employees were covered by antiharassment language and complaint procedures, but that number has only increased 2.1 percentage points in over a decade. However, in 2005, 5.0 per cent of employees were covered by ‘harassment help’ provisions. Recognizing the extremely sensitive nature of harassment complaints and the pervasiveness of violence against women, these provisions are designed to provide support for workers experiencing harassment or other forms of abuse; for example, they may provide for a women’s advocate, a female union representative to whom women facing workplace harassment or domestic violence may turn. Strengthening anti-harassment, or respectful workplace, language continues to be a relatively high-priority bargaining issue for the unions interviewed. They seek to include more harassment help provisions and to support policies with training and monitoring. Most recognize that in order to be effective, collective agreement provisions prohibiting sexual harassment must be supplemented by joint union-management efforts aimed at changing workplace culture and establishing and enforcing new modes of behaviour. The CAW and CUPE are also seeking accommodations and workplace protections for women facing violence in their personal lives, and they rank this as an issue of high importance with which they have made noteworthy progress at the bargaining table. Some of their accomplishments include jointly developed programs, special provisions within employee and family

112 Karen Bentham

assistance programs, commitments from the employer to consider a women’s domestic situation prior to taking any disciplinary action, and a plant-wide minute of silence on 6 December, to commemorate the victims of the Montreal massacre at l’École Polytechnique. In summary, collective bargaining gains and subsequent legislative and arbitral developments now provide women significant protections from direct discrimination based on gender. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of employees in the sample, collective agreements still do not promise protection from systemic discrimination. Nor have unions’ campaigns in support of legislated pay and employment equity been sufficiently successful to justify the absence of collective agreement provisions addressing issues as fundamental as equity of pay and employment opportunities.8 Pay equity and employment equity legislation is confined almost exclusively to the public sector, with the latter rare even there, and collective agreement provisions seldom extend or enhance employers’ statutory obligations. Sexual harassment remains a widespread problem, both in terms of the incomplete coverage of collective agreement clauses prohibiting harassment and in terms of the efficacy of these clauses in the absence of supportive training, monitoring, and workplace advocates. Parenting: Family Leave and Child Care MATERNITY AND PARENTAL LEAVE

Whether one attributes the historic and continuing division of family and household labour to women’s ‘greater biological investment’ (Badgett and Folbre 2001:334), or to coercive social norms that hold women to ’higher standards of family responsibility than men’ (327), sex-role stereotypes remain most traditional with respect to male and female parenting roles. Due to these tenacious gender differences in responsibilities for child care and household work (McQuillan and Belle 1999), workplace equality demands that a woman’s income and career advancement not be compromised by absences occasioned by either childbirth or child care. Towards that end, unions have long campaigned for legislatively mandated maternity and parental leaves and bargained for collective agreement protections, both with considerable success. By 1986 well over half of employees in the sample were covered by collective agreement provisions that provided for between seventeen and twenty-six weeks of maternity leave (see table 5.2). Between 1986 and 1998, there occurred a slow increase in the proportion of employees

Women and Family Issues 113 Table 5.2 Maternity leave in Canadian collective agreements: Maximum duration (percentage of employees covered) Maternity leave

1986

1990

1994

1998

2002

Up to 16 weeks

0.6

0.4

0.5

0.5

2.0

3.3

17 weeks

18.7

17.3

27.7

26.4

30.3

35.8

18 to 25 weeks

22.3

28.7

24.2

28.4

23.5

22.8

26 weeks

15.2

15.6

13.8

5.6

1.4

1.1

27 to 51 weeks

6.3

6.8

8.1

6.6

9.6

3.5

52 weeks

2.3

2.9

2.5

2.3

0.1

2.9

More than 1 year

0.4

0.2

0.2

2.2

1.1

0.6

42.8

53.1

56.2

49.2

–

–

Seniority: Full or partial accumulation

2005

entitled to between seventeen and twenty-five weeks and a corresponding decrease in those entitled to twenty-six weeks. The data for 2005 show this trend to be virtually ubiquitous: only 1.1 per cent of employees continued to be entitled to twenty-six weeks of maternity leave. This convergence is due in large part to Employment Insurance (EI) changes that came into effect on 31 December 2000, which more clearly differentiated between maternity leave, which is intended to provide mothers time to recuperate after giving birth, and parental leave, which is intended to provide time off from work to care for young children, a task that may be performed by either parent. Under the modified scheme, maternity leave benefits extend for a period of fifteen weeks, following a two-week waiting period. A further thirty-five weeks of leave may be accessed by either biological parent, as well as by adoptive parents. Following these changes, most Canadian jurisdictions modified their employment standards legislation to accord with the national employment insurance scheme, resulting in relative harmonization of basic maternity and parental leave durations across Canada.9 Such harmony does not exist with regard to eligibility requirements, leave extensions, maintenance of benefits, retention or accumulation of seniority, or special assignments for pregnant or nursing employees; nor do the WID tabulations provide data about collective agreement provisions regarding these aspects of maternity and parental leaves. Great variation also exists in employees’ entitlements to incomeprotected maternity leave beyond basic employment insurance benefits. The data arguably belie Jackson and Schellenberg’s (1999) contention

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that readily documentable progress has been made with respect to paid maternity leaves. In fact, the progress is better characterized as slow in terms of the proportion of employees covered, marginal with regard to level of income protection, and almost exclusively confined to the public sector. In 1986, 40.5 per cent of employees were covered by some provision for employer supplement of employment insurance benefits, a figure that represented only 225 of the 1,010 agreements in the 1986 sample. By 2005 the number of collective agreements providing any level of supplement to EI benefits had increased to 341, covering 48.2 per cent of employees in the sample, virtually all in the public sector (Marion 2003). The most common level of income protection in 1986, covering 14.1 per cent of employees, was 93 per cent of salary for twenty weeks. In 2005 the most common level of income protection, covering 15.1 per cent of employees, was 93 per cent of salary for seventeen weeks. While the maximum duration of partially paid maternity leave has increased dramatically, from twenty-one weeks to fifty-four, these bargaining gains benefit only a very small proportion of employees, and diffusion of these longer-duration plans has been very limited. In 2005 only one collective agreement, covering a total of 770 employees, provided employer supplemented income protection for fifty-four weeks and only four other agreements provided for between twenty-seven and fifty-four weeks. What has diffused quickly is the modification of collective agreements to reflect the EI and employment standards move towards a more clear distinction between maternity and parental leave. While this trend would seem to provide greater freedom to families who wish to share responsibility for child care, in practice the gender distribution of takeup rates in Canada (Statistics Canada 2004a) suggests that parental leave serves more as an almost automatic extension of maternity leave than as a widely accessible or effective means to allow both parents to share work and family responsibilities. A number of factors beyond prevailing social norms interact to contribute to this phenomenon: EI benefits are low, both in terms of the proportion of income they replace and maximum insurable earnings;10 very few employers supplement EI parental leave benefits (only 17.6 per cent of employees in the 2005 sample were covered by provisions for any level of supplement); and, since women tend to earn less than men, for many families having the mother take parental leave and accept the income reduction is the only economically rational, or indeed viable, choice. One way to minimize the penalties associated with career intermissions is to ensure that parents’ seniority continues to accrue during

Women and Family Issues 115

leaves. WID’s more recent tabulations exclude a measure of whether the collective agreement mandates that seniority accumulate during maternity or adoption/parental leave, a right to which approximately half the employees in the 1998 sample were explicitly entitled. Employees are generally assumed to accumulate seniority during temporary absences unless the collective agreement states otherwise (Brown and Beatty 2004), but it is risky to deduce that no bargaining efforts need be directed towards ensuring this maternity or parental leave right is expressly protected. The retention of seniority during maternity leave is protected in all Canadian jurisdictions, but its accumulation is only legislatively mandated in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and the federal jurisdiction. Since for the foreseeable future the majority of members who take family-related career intermissions will be women, progress towards gender equity demands that unions continue to push for collective agreement protections for both income protection and seniority accumulation. FAMILY CARE LEAVES

Until relatively recently, many workplaces were structured as if parenting responsibilities virtually ceased once the parent returned from maternity or parental leave. This especially disadvantages women, who continue to carry a disproportionate share of responsibility for child care. In 1986, 27.6 per cent of employees in the WID sample had access to short-term paid leave in the event of an illness in the family (see table 5.3). Unpaid leave was available to 7.8 per cent of employees specifically for illness in the family and 38.1 per cent could access unpaid personal reasons leave. Slightly over 6 per cent of employees could access paid personal reasons leave, but the majority of parents were forced to take unpaid leave if it was available, take vacation days, or construct makeshift arrangements to juggle work and family responsibilities. Since 2001 the WID tabulations have included a number of new types of short-term personal and family leaves, reflecting collective bargaining responses to the needs of two-income and single-parent families. The trend is towards a greater variety of leaves of various lengths, and a greater likelihood of at least some portion of the leave being paid. For example, in 2005 26.0 per cent of employees had the right to take paid time off for personal reasons, up from 8.5 per cent in 1998. The greater variety of leaves is demonstrated by the nclusion of three different types of leave provisions in the newWID tabulations, presumably in the place

116 Karen Bentham Table 5.3 Short-term family care leaves and child-care provisions in Canadian collective agreements (percentage of employees covered) 1986

1990

1994

1998

2002

2005

Illness in family Paid Unpaid

27.6 7.8

27.1 13.2

27.7 18.5

21.3 22.6

– –

– –

Personal reasons leave Paid Unpaid

6.4 38.1

5.1 45.9

6.7 56.7

8.5 52.1

22.9 77.0

26.0 76.9

Care/Nurturing of a child

–

–

–

–

24.0

19.7

Care of a parent

–

–

–

–

12.5

8.5

Family members related Paid Unpaid

– –

– –

– –

– –

24.6 22.3

16.5 28.7

Child-care provisions: Reference to day/child carea Facility exists in the workplace

2.8 –

1.8 –

6.1 –

6.1 –

9.4 2.5

9.4 0.8

a

Beginning in 2001, the category that measured the presence of a provision addressing daycare facilities was divided into two measures: (1) Daycare facility exists in the workplace; and (2) Other reference to child care. The former clause more closely parallels the pre-2001 measure.

of illness in the family leave: (1) care of a parent; (2) care and nurturing of a child; and (3) family member-related responsibilities. The tabulations do not distinguish between paid and unpaid leave with regard to the first two new measures, but in 2005 16.5 per cent of employees were covered by some provision for paid family member-related responsibilities leave. Other personal-leave provisions such as divorce leave, leave for medical appointments, and self-funded long-term leave made their debut in the 2001 tabulations; however, even WID’s sampling of leave provisions does not do justice to the wide and innovative variety of leaves designed to assist employees in achieving work-life balance (Rochon 2000). Time off to attend to needs as diverse as donating organs or bone marrow, undergoing medical procedures related to a physical change from one gender to another, and accompanying family members to health-care appointments, court dates, or convocations/graduations, while still not common, are increasingly seen in collective agreements. Overall, unions appear to be making progress in the area of family-care leaves, but much work remains to be done. For example, long-term leaves to care for either an ailing child or parent were collective agree-

Women and Family Issues 117

ment rights available to only 19.7 per cent and 8.5 per cent, respectively, of employees in 2005. As the ranks of the ‘sandwich generation’ swell, family-care leaves will become increasingly important especially to sandwiched women, who spend twice as many hours providing care to seniors as their male partners (Statistics Canada 2004b). CHILD CARE

The entry of large numbers of mothers into the paid workforce is not a nascent social trend, yet the demand for affordable, high-quality child care continues to far exceed supply. This shortage is an issue of critical importance to women, as the availability of affordable child care plays a significant role in a mother’s decision to participate in the labour force (Cleveland, Gunderson, and Hyatt 1996; Powell 1997), especially with regard to her choice between full-time and part-time employment (Powell 1998). Labour-force participation decisions made during her children’s pre-school years will have far-reaching effects on a woman’s career path, occupational status, and future earnings. Unions have tended towards political action in pursuing quality, affordable child care, often in conjunction with other equity-seeking groups such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) or within coalitions such as the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. Nonetheless, many unions have pushed child care as a bargaining issue, with some, like the CAW, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and unions in the university sector, achieving meaningful inroads (Rochon 2000). The prevalence of child-care clauses in collective agreements rose from 2.8 per cent in 1986 to 9.4 per cent in 2005. A more accurate temporal comparison, however, includes both the child-care clauses included in the post-2001 WID samples; in 2001, WID began to differentiate between clauses that provided for a child-care facility in the workplace and those that contained some other reference to child care such as subsidies. If the 0.8 per cent of employees who were covered by the five collective agreements that provided for on-site child-care facilities are added to the 9.4 per cent who were covered by the 29 agreements that made some other reference to child care, a total of 10.2 per cent of employees were covered by child-care clauses in 2005. While this documents an almost fourfold increase in child-care provisions between 1986 and 2005, the fact remains that 99.2 per cent of employees do not have collective agreement guarantees of access to child-care facilities in the workplace, and nine out of

118 Karen Bentham

ten employees are covered by collective agreements that make no reference whatsoever to child-care services or subsidies. Furthermore, even the existence of child-care facilities in the workplace provides no guarantee that all workers’ children can be accommodated, that all shifts will be covered, or that the services will be subsidized or affordable. In summary, the tendency towards unions making their greatest bargaining gains in areas addressed by legislation generally holds true with regard to family-care leaves and child care. Consistent with, or somewhat superior to, employment standards across the country, the majority of employees are covered by collective agreement provisions for between seventeen and twenty-five weeks of maternity leave, and the right to unpaid parental leave is more commonly and consistently articulated. In areas not covered by employment legislation, such as employer supplements to employment insurance benefits during maternity or parental leave, progress has been agonizingly slow. The most common duration for income-protected maternity leave is three weeks less than it was eighteen years ago, and the proportion of employees covered by any level of employer supplement is only 7.7 percentage points higher than it was in 1986. Progress has also been slow with regard to child care, another area not covered by legislation; only a very small minority of employees in the sample either have access to child-care facilities in their workplace or are covered by some other provision for child-care services or subsidies. One area in which unions have made bargaining gains well beyond legislated minimums is the variety of short-term leaves now available to a significant proportion of employees in the sample. Personal reasons leave, family member-related responsibility leave, and leave to attend to ailing children or parents are all becoming more common and permit greater ease in balancing work and family responsibilities. Flexible Work Scheduling and Part-time Work Provisions The increasing prevalence of double-income and single-parent families has put pressure on unions and employers to negotiate work schedules amenable to today’s hectic lifestyles. Flexibility in work scheduling and compressed work weeks do not ordinarily decrease total work hours, but they facilitate greater control over how time is divided between work and non-work activities, something especially important to women as they attempt to balance their work and family responsibilities. Similarly, the

Women and Family Issues 119

ability to refuse or limit overtime, or to exercise the option of converting overtime into time off, enables employees to limit the encroachment of work responsibilities into their personal lives. Voluntary job-sharing and part-time employment allow employees to strike a balance that may include more time spent caring for children, fulfilling other personal or family responsibilities, or improving educational qualifications. Flextime has become increasingly popular, with a strong trend towards placing greater control in the hands of employees. Between 1986 and 1998, provisions that permit employees to choose their start and finish times but require them to maintain their chosen schedule were far more prevalent than the more permissive provisions that enable employees to vary their start and finish times as long as they are present during a core period. The former arrangement, or limited flex-time, increased in prevalence between 1986 and 1990, then held relatively stable until the 2002 sample, which showed an abrupt decline. The latter arrangement, flex-time, remained relatively rare until 2002 when it covered 22.6 per cent of employees in the sample. This dramatic about-face is at least partially a function of different coding procedures, but may also be attributable to differences in the post-2000 sample, such as the much higher proportion of small bargaining units where it may be easier for employers to weigh the balance in favour of flexibility rather than standardization. Nonetheless, the 2005 data document a move back towards limited flex-time and away from the more permissive provisions. Compressed work-week provisions, where employees work the same number of hours in three or four days as they would normally work over the standard five-day week, allow employees to spend less time commuting to and from work and spend more full days engaged in non-work activity. Such provisions have increased in prevalence, from covering 19.0 per cent of workers in 1986 to 30.8 per cent in 2005. Unlike the trend in flexible work scheduling, the evolution of employees’ discretion when it comes to working overtime is less clear. Between 1986 and 1998, clauses providing employees the unfettered right to refuse overtime accrued slowly, from covering 7.3 per cent of employees to 12.5 per cent. Meanwhile, the prevalence of clauses conferring the right to refuse overtime under certain conditions or placing restrictions on employers’ ability to assign overtime very slowly decreased between 1986 and 1998. The post-2000 samples include only one measure of limits on the use of overtime. It approximates the previous measure where overtime can be refused under certain conditions but now covers a somewhat smaller proportion of employees: 16.5 per cent in 2005.11

120 Karen Bentham

While caution must be exercised in comparing pre- and post-2000 measures, these statistics suggest that unions have had little success in protecting employees’ right to refuse overtime. On a positive note, however, clauses that allow workers to take time off in lieu of overtime pay, and thereby allow them a modicum of control over the amount of time they can dedicate to non-work activities, are now more common, covering 56.4 per cent of employees, up from 36.9 per cent in 1986. Overall, then, it is not clear how much headway unions have made in ameliorating the difficulties that overtime demands place upon workers attempting to balance family and professional responsibilities. Job-sharing, an arrangement between two or more employees to share a full-time position normally held by a single person, is formalized in more collective agreements than in the past, from covering only 2.6 per cent of workers in 1986 to 16.9 per cent in 2005. These statistics may not reflect the actual prevalence of this practice, as job-sharing arrangements may be made on a case-by-case basis but not be formalized in the collective agreement. On the other hand, job-sharing may be a collective agreement right not often exercised by employees due to the availability, or perhaps surfeit, of part-time positions. An important distinction between part-time hours accomplished through job-sharing and other part-time positions is that when employees sharing a job decide to discontinue the arrangement, the full-time, bargaining-unit position remains. This accords well with the goal of many unions, including three of the four surveyed, which is to maximize the number of full-time positions.12 Parttime workers, 68.8 per cent of whom were female in 2004 (Statistics Canada 2005c), are likely to earn lower wage rates than comparable full-time workers, and are significantly less likely to be entitled to extended health, dental, and other occupational benefits (Lipsett and Reesor 1999). While the majority of Canadian women who work part-time do so voluntarily (Statistics Canada, 2003b), a sizable minority accept part-time work because they cannot find suitable full-time employment. In fact, many women cobble together part-time jobs to approximate full-time hours and wages, yet remain ineligible for many of the employment benefits associated with full-time positions (Kimmel and Powell 1999). Table 5.4 evinces slow but steady progress in bargaining provisions that extend benefits to part-timers, with over half of employees included in the sample covered by vacation and holiday provisions in 2005, some of which presumably provide greater than the legislated minimums. Health and welfare benefit clauses also now cover 52.7 per cent of employees, up from 26.6 per cent in 1986, and sick leave has increased in

Women and Family Issues 121 Table 5.4 Flexible work scheduling and part-time work provisions in Canadian collective agreements (percentage of employees covered) 1986

1990

1994

1998

2002

2005

10.2 1.2 19.0

24.7 0.2 21.7

22.9 0.4 24.0

21.3 2.9 23.8

5.9 22.6 27.0

10.6 18.7 30.8

7.3 23.1

10.7 24.5

12.5 22.7

12.5 21.8

– 21.9

– 16.5

36.9

39.8

49.1

48.8

53.4

56.4

Job sharing Provision exists Agree to discuss if circumstances arise

2.6 1.2

4.8 1.0

16.4 0.6

15.2 0.6

15.9 –

16.9 –

Benefits for part time workers Hours of work provision (min. or max.)e Vacation Holidaysf Health and welfare benefits Sick leave Seniority Pensions Severance pay General reference to benefits pro-rated Limits on ratio of part-time to full-time

32.6 33.7 33.1 26.6 29.7 31.9 8.5 21.0 10.1 1.7

36.2 40.7 37.6 34.4 40.7 39.3 6.5 22.0 19.8 2.4

43.3 45.3 44.0 36.3 43.1 40.7 13.0 26.9 19.8 2.5

40.5 37.9 39.5 40.0 38.7 41.3 19.0 20.0 18.2 3.0

40.0 53.3 55.3 49.2 43.7 45.7 27.2 – – 2.8

49.8 53.7 54.8 52.7 46.1 46.7 26.6 – – 4.7

Hours of work – Flexible scheduling Limited flextimeb Flex-time Compressed work week

a

Overtime Unconditional right to refuse Right to refuse under certain circumstancesc Compensating time off d

a

The post-2000 measures differentiate between clauses covering white-collar and bluecollar workers. Flexible work scheduling is more common among white-collar workers; the data in this table use these statistics as representative, since adding the two sets of data would overstate the true prevalence of flexible work provisions. b Limited flex-time, where the worker can choose her start and finish times but must maintain these from day to day. c Post-2000 measure applies if all regular employees have choice to accept or decline overtime, or if restrictions on overtime exist. d Job-sharing should not be confused with work sharing, which typically is a general reduction in hours in order to avoid layoffs. e This is a combination of two measures: maximum hours of work normally allowed, and minimum guaranteed hours. f Includes statutory holidays and other regularly occurring paid days off.

prevalence from 29.7 per cent coverage in 1986 to 46.1 per cent in 2005. Seniority provisions are also more frequent than in the past, with 46.7 per cent of employees now covered, although there is no evidence as to what

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proportion of these place part-timers on the same list as their full-time colleagues and measure seniority from date of hire rather than prorated according to hours worked. The extension of pension plans to part-time workers is an area where unions have seen considerable progress at the bargaining table, but where considerably more improvement needs to be made; only slightly more than one-quarter of part-time employees in the 2005 sample were covered by a pension provision, a shortfall of great consequence to many female workers. Unions’ attempts to discourage the proliferation of part-time positions have met with little success, especially in recent years as newly created jobs have disproportionately been part-time, temporary, or contract positions, often referred to as non-standard forms of employment (Zeytinoglu and Muteshi 2000). Collective agreement limits on the ratio of parttime to full-time positions have increased only very minimally in almost two decades, from covering 1.7 per cent of employees in 1986 to 4.7 per cent in 2005. Unions will continue to face great difficulty, especially in the trade and services industries where the pressure to increase flexibility and reduce costs will continue to encourage employers to rely heavily upon part-time and other non-standard forms of employment (Kimmel and Powell 1999). Such jobs are more likely to be filled by women than men, especially the most precarious of them, temporary part-time (Cranford, Vosko, and Zukewich 2003). Thus, the equity agenda for unions must include recognition of their responsibility to acknowledge the increasing importance of part-time, contract, and temporary employment relationships and ensure that full collective agreement rights, including benefits and undifferentiated seniority, are extended to these workers. In summary, collective bargaining gains have been made with regard to flexible work scheduling, though these provisions still extend to only about one-quarter of employees in the sample. Gains cannot be documented with regard to limits on employers’ use of overtime, but employees can increasingly opt for time off in lieu of overtime pay. Unions have made gains in extending benefits to part-time workers: the collective agreements covering about half the employees in the sample extend vacation, holiday, sick leave, health and welfare, and seniority benefits to part-timers, while pension benefits for parttimers cover about one-quarter of the employees. Finally, unions have not been successful in limiting the proliferation of part-time positions, making extension of full collective agreement rights to these workers a priority issue on the equity agenda, especially considering the genderdifferentiated nature of this type of employment.

Women and Family Issues 123

Impediments to Change Over a decade ago, in his analysis of unions’ collective bargaining gains, Kumar (1993a) listed areas of serious concern to women not dealt with adequately through collective bargaining. Tellingly, his list remains entirely relevant today: ’Sexual harassment in the workplace, affirmative action, child-care facilities, equal rights and benefits for part-time workers, training and retraining for job mobility and advancement, and flexible work schedules and leaves for better balance between work and family responsibilities’ (224). The WID data offer no evidence regarding training and retraining for job mobility and advancement; however, data presented in this chapter suggest that every other area of concern remains one not yet adequately dealt with through collective bargaining. Some progress has been made, but for the most part it has been incremental and agonizingly slow. Almost half the employees included in the sample still are not covered by collective agreement clauses prohibiting sexual harassment, and the efficacy of many existing provisions needs to be buttressed with training and processes for reporting and investigating complaints that recognize the sensitivity of the issue. Collective agreement provisions mandating affirmative action, or employment equity, cover only slightly more than one-quarter of employees, and most of these agreements simply operationalize legislated requirements. Equal pay for work of equal value has fallen off the radar screen for many unions even though pay equity legislation is virtually absent in the private sector and gender-neutral pay structures are by no means universal. Only 38 of the 1,129 collective agreements in the 2005 WID sample contain any reference whatsoever to child care. Years of bargaining efforts have resulted in some improvements in equal rights and benefits for part-time workers, yet the proliferation of part-time, casual, and temporary employment negates much of the gain. Gradual improvement has been seen in flexibility of work arrangements, both in terms of scheduling and in the provision of leaves to assist workers in balancing the demands of career and family; however, the vast majority of workers in this sample do not have access to flex-time, compressed work weeks, or the many innovative family-care leaves some unions have been able to negotiate. Paid or partially paid maternity leaves are marginally more common, but certainly not as common as one might expect given that legislative changes have permitted unions to drop bargaining demands regarding availability and length of maternity

124 Karen Bentham

and parental leaves, and to focus instead on income protection. Parental leave seems to serve as more of an extended maternity leave than a viable option for either parent, partially due to the fact that incomeprotected parental leave is still rare. One of the reasons for such agonizingly slow progress on issues of importance to women is the problem of perception. Casting specific bargaining goals or collective agreement provisions as women’s issues causes them to be perceived as special needs rather than as universal rights (Creese 1996) and risks blinding unions and their members to the gendered nature of traditional bargaining issues (Creese 1997). Furthermore, agenda items viewed as special needs of women workers are likely to be considered of lower importance, less likely to even be included in the bargaining agenda, and more likely to be sacrificed at the bargaining table in favour of gains in other areas. These perceptual biases are difficult to combat, but some unions are enforcing changes in behaviour that may eventually lead to changed attitudes. For example, CAW’s national president sends a letter to all staff identifying key bargaining goals, including equity agenda items. Should local bargaining committees encounter difficulties achieving any of the mandated items, they must seek approval before these demands may be dropped. Perceptual biases have also contributed to many unions’ adherence to the notion that they should fight the creation of any positions other than those that are full-time and permanent. The poorer terms and conditions of employment for part-time and non-permanent positions are due at least in small part to their characterization as ‘other.’ Considering full-time, permanent employment typical and describing all other forms of employment as non-standard or atypical ignores the gender implications of characterizing these heterogeneous and increasingly female-dominated forms of employment only as they contrast to the traditional male norm (Lotte Hansen 2002). Unions might better serve the interests of their female members if they abandoned the notion of a one-size-fits-all job and focused instead on ensuring that jobs of every description are equally available to both men and women and are afforded full collective agreement benefits. Another reason for slow advancement on equity agenda items is gender imbalance in unions’ decision-making structures and processes (Kumar 1993a) – a problem that in recent years has been mitigated but not eliminated. Women are increasingly represented on bargaining

Women and Family Issues 125

committees and among the union executive, but proportional representation still eludes most unions. Not only is equity for women dependent upon their influence at the top, women’s active participation in other decision-making structures is a key indicator of unions’ commitment to equity agendas (Kumar 1993a). Yet, internal equity is difficult to achieve. Women face similar obstacles to union activism and participation as they face in their day-to-day working lives. They have had to struggle against the same sexism, stereotyping, negative attitudes towards female leaders, and marginalization of their experiences and views (Muir 1997). Furthermore, the very structures to which women seek access may be a product of male hegemony and illsuited to more gender-neutral decision-making processes (Briskin 1998). Gender equity demands not just a count of the female members in decision-making bodies but a reconsideration of the forms of governance and decision-making that facilitate participation, inclusivity, and genuine democracy. Also contributing to the slow progress towards equity is the fact that unions have failed to recognize how little the traditional definitions of the business of unions have evolved as compared to the dramatic changes in both their membership and the types of work they perform. The practice of collective bargaining and the process of articulating bargaining agendas have changed little since union members were predominately male, full-time workers in traditionally unionized industries. The majority of union members – both male and female – are unaware of how many traditional union-supported practices and principles, such as job evaluation and seniority systems, reinforce gender discrimination and recreate male privilege while rendering it invisible (Creese 1996:453; Forrest 2001). The visibility of women’s issues often engenders a backlash against what many perceive to be special privileges (Creese 1996), yet those who point out the special privilege many traditional union practices bestow upon men risk being labelled anti-union (White 1990; Forrest 1993). Gender mainstreaming,13 the process of considering the implications for both men and women of any planned action or agenda item, would increase awareness of the gender implications of traditional bargaining practices and issues, and even reveal how these may counteract efforts directed towards equity agenda items. Responsibility for slow progress does not rest solely on the shoulders of unions. Employers’ reticence to pioneer practices to promote gender equity discourages many unions from focusing bargaining efforts on

126 Karen Bentham

issues until social and political gains mainstream them at least to some degree, thereby reducing resistance from both employers and members. In other instances, for example when employers seek to implement employment equity programs either on their own accord or due to legislated mandates, employers may be more receptive to modifying policies and practices, such as selection and promotion procedures, than unions themselves (Forrest 1993; Cockburn 1991). Employers, unions, and their members seem to be more receptive to equity agenda items when they are cast in terms that make their gender ramifications less obvious. So, for example, rather than directing available dollars towards a pay-equity plan, attempts to address the results of occupational segregation and the devaluation of women’s work are often camouflaged in the form of lump-sum – rather than percentage – wage increases or increases applied only to jobs at the lower end of the pay scale. Unions also seem to avoid the political problems associated with directing precious bargaining power towards issues that are perceived to benefit only a particular group of employees by slating ‘women’s issues’ for their political rather than their bargaining agendas. Pay equity, employment equity, and child care, for example, are issues that virtually all major Canadian unions have long campaigned for and recognized as priorities, yet only a limited number have vigorously pursued at the bargaining table. The mythical fixed-pie of bargaining power causes many to perceive a direct trade-off between women’s issues and other bargaining goals even when no such relationship exists. Anti-harassment training, employment equity, flexible work schedules, and leaves to facilitate work-life balance, for example, are issues the parties can more successfully address in an integrative manner than in the traditional concession-trading approach. There is no valid reason that jointly addressing many of the sources of systemic discrimination in the workplace should come at the cost of wage increases or require the sacrifice of any other bargaining goal. What success on this front does threaten is the balance of power, both between the sexes and within many unions. Many of the changes that are necessary to eliminate systemic discrimination and ensure gender equity, by their very definition, shift power and privilege away from men. While many unionists are ardent feminists, an equal or greater number have resisted initiatives such as pay and employment equity as threats to the principles of union solidarity and ’equal treatment for all’ (Forrest 1993; Cockburn 1991). It is not surprising that the women’s issues with regard to which unions have made the greatest gains at the bargaining table, are those that both perpetuate existent

Women and Family Issues 127

gender roles and power relationships and hold appeal to both sexes: flexible work scheduling and short-term personal and family-related leave. Thus, the last two decades of bargaining have resulted in both men and women gaining greater latitude in balancing their work and family lives, yet workplaces – and indeed many unions – remain stratified by gender and equality of pay and opportunity remain elusive. Conclusions The data presented in this chapter call into question Canadian unions’ genuine commitment to bargaining collective agreement provisions that promote gender equity. While some unions have made important inroads and laudable progress, overall the collective bargaining gains of the last two decades are unimpressive. Internal union structures and processes that perpetuate male privilege have not been fundamentally challenged nor have gender equity goals that threaten existing gender and power relations been vigorously pursued. Unions truly committed to gender equity must acknowledge this lack of progress, reconsider their strategies, and take steps to ensure that equity agenda items are not only touted as, but also treated as, priorities. Internally, unions must look beyond headcounts to critically evaluate whether governance structures and procedures promote participation, inclusivity, and democracy to the greatest degree possible. Gender mainstreaming should become a part of all decision-making processes, especially those that relate to bargaining agendas and goals. Finally, both unions and employers need to recognize that the elimination of systemic discrimination is a goal of equal value to both parties that must not be traded off at the bargaining table. Integrative processes, both within unions and at the bargaining table, offer promise of a renewed perspective on many gender equity goals.

NOTES 1 These issues are discussed by Anne Forrest in chapter 3, this volume. 2 As economic shifts reduced both the number of large bargaining units and the proportion of the workforce included within these units, the directorate’s information on collective bargaining became less representative of the industrial, sectorial, and regional composition of the Canadian workforce. Therefore, the directorate adopted a stratified random sample

128 Karen Bentham

3

4

5 6

7

8

9 10

11

methodology that draws from the total population of Canada bargaining units of 100 or more workers. The total population is stratified according to a combination of jurisdiction, sector, and size attributes, and sampling ratios are applied that are designed to ensure a more representative sample, most especially in terms of bargaining unit size, and sector (Roy 2000). See, for example, Weber v. Ontario Hydro ( 1995), 125 D.L.R. (4th) 583 (Supreme Court of Canada) and New Brunswick v. O’Leary (1995), 125 D.L.R. (4th) 609 (Supreme Court of Canada). Negotech is an on-line searchable database developed and maintained by the Workplace Information Directorate. The database contains all Canadian collective agreements under federal jurisdiction, all collective agreements covering 500 or more employees under provincial jurisdiction, and a sampling of collective agreements covering fewer than 100 employees in the provincial jurisdiction. Full text searches of the two most recent agreements can be performed, http://206.191.16.137/gol/ main_e.shtml. Pay equity legislation covers portions of the private sector only in Ontario, Quebec, and the federal jurisdiction. Section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (R.S. 1985, c. H-6) makes it a discriminatory practice for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees in the same establishment who are performing work of equal value. At the time the interviews were conducted, the percentage of each union’s membership that was female was the following: CUPE, 62 per cent; CAW, 30 per cent: USWA, 24 per cent; CEP, 18 per cent. Equal pay for work of equal value is mandated through a complaintbased system in the federal jurisdiction and in the Yukon’s public sector. Proactive pay equity legislation covers the public sectors of Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and both the public and private sectors in Ontario and Quebec. Employment equity programs are only required of those employing 100 or more in the federal jurisdiction or in the public and para-public sectors in Quebec. Some minor variations exist. For example, Alberta mandates only 15 weeks maternity leave while Quebec and Saskatchewan provide for 18 weeks. Benefits provide 55 per cent of income up to a maximum of $423 per week. For low-income families receiving the Child Tax Benefit and earning less than $25,921 per year, a Family Supplement may augment these benefits. Seniority-based overtime allocation systems were included in the pre-2001 tabulations but are not included in the new measures, presumably since, regardless of the allocation method, at the end of the line as many people as

Women and Family Issues 129 the employer requires will have to do overtime whenever the employer deems it necessary. 12 It should be noted that while limiting the number of part-time positions has been a goal of many unions, some criticism has been levelled at this practice as it perpetuates a normative perspective without critically examining its gender implications (Forrest 1993). 13 Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as of men an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of mainstreaming is to achieve gender equality (from the International Labour Organization 2002, citing the 1997 United Nations Economic and Social Council’s 1997 definition).

6 We Are Family: Labour Responds to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers GERALD HUNT AND JONATHAN EATON

Like most seventeen-year-old students graduating from high school, Marc Hall wanted to go to the prom with a date. But Marc’s Catholic high school principal told him he couldn’t take his date to the prom because they were of the same sex. In the face of an intransigent school board, Marc became an instant activist by appealing to the Ontario courts on the grounds of sexual orientation discrimination. Marc’s case quickly became a national news story, with support pouring in from across Canada. Among his allies was Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto Workers, and Mike Shields, President of CAW Local 222 in Durham Region, where Mark lived. Together they helped organize a news conference of labour leaders, intervened at school board and courthouse hearings, and supplied a bus to take supporters from Toronto to protest in front of the courthouse where Marc’s case was being heard. To the casual observer, it might have seemed odd that the auto workers’ union was so deeply involved in Marc Hall’s legal appeal to take his same-sex date to a high school prom in the outer suburbs of Toronto. To those in the know, however, it was one more bit of evidence that the auto workers’ union was taking sexual orientation discrimination seriously and was willing act on its progressive rhetoric. Canada can claim to have one most progressive records on sexual diversity issues in the world. By 2007 a series of court rulings had removed the formal discrimination between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and Canada had become one of very few countries where same-sex marriage was possible. Still, a number of serious problems remained: homophobic hate-crimes, biased policing, lack of information and support in schools,

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 131

regional variations in the level of tolerance, and, in a few jurisdictions, uncertainty concerning adoption rights. In December 2006 the newly elected Conservative government tabled a motion to reopen the samesex marriage debate. Although it was defeated, it signalled the fact that ‘gay marriage’ could be revisited and possibly overturned. Still, in a global context, Canada has stood out as a queer-positive nation. Over the years, the Canadian labour movement has played an important role in altering the legal and constitutional landscape for sexual minorities (Hunt 1997, 1999a, 2002). Labour’s early support for more inclusive access to work-based benefits – specifically those routinely accorded to heterosexual partners in both marital and commonlaw relationships – has been instrumental in making these benefits available to same-sex couples. Labour’s involvement was initially limited to large federations, public sector unions, and the auto workers’ union, but over time union involvement has become more widespread. This chapter looks at the evolution of labour’s engagement with discrimination issues raised by gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the trangendered (GLBT). It explores the impetus to change and the impact of labour’s uptake on these issues, and provides an assessment of what the future may hold. The first part of the chapter considers labour’s response to gays and lesbians. Bisexuality as a separate issue has not been widely addressed by unions, in part because it has been difficult to isolate such issues from concerns raised by gays and lesbians. The second part considers labour’s more recent but growing response to issues raised by transgender workers.1 Methods Information for this chapter was collected from a variety of sources. Hunt has been following union engagement with GLBT issues for several years (Hunt 1997, 1999a, 2002; Hunt and Rayside 2000). For this chapter, he was able to draw on this previous research, and to update his information by interviewing union and confederation officials (equity officers and/or human rights officers), collecting archival materials and newsletters, reviewing web-based materials, attending GLBT-union conferences, and interviewing GLBT and union activists. Hunt also undertook an extensive case study of the CAW using interviews with union officials and activists, collecting print materials (newsletters, reports, newspaper articles, etc.), and reviewing webbased materials. In addition, he collected information about human

132 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

rights cases involving unions from existing sources. Eaton collected information about labour’s response to transgender issues by conducting a survey of the eight largest unions in the country, to determine their response to gender identity and transgender issues. These unions represented public and private sector workers and about one-third of unionized workers in the country. Eaton also undertook to review the legal cases related to unions and transgender issues. The Road to Liberation For most of the twentieth century, Canadian society’s response to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered was extremely hostile. Legal marginalization combined with a lack of social, family, religious, or political support meant that most individuals who were in any way ‘out’ faced life as outcasts. Gary Kinsman’s (2000) research looking at the public service in the post – Second World War period has revealed that hundreds of public servants were demoted or fired when it became known or suspected that they were gay or lesbian. As recently as the 1970s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were using undercover surveillance, blackmail, sweeps of gathering places, and intimidation to collect the names of people suspected of being homosexual. In 1968, for instance, Kinsman estimates there were over 9,000 people on the RCMP’s list of ‘suspects.’ According to the logic of the RCMP and the Canadian government, homosexuals presented ‘security risks’ and needed to be purged. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of GLBT people in the federal government and almost all other work settings felt it was too dangerous to disclose their sexuality. Some people adapted by leading complex double lives, aiming to pass as ‘straight’ in the workplace and ‘out’ in other settings (see Woods 1993). As Warner (2002) points out, a more vocal, assertive, and activist gay and lesbian liberation movement began to take shape in the 1960s and early 1970s, propelled into action by the decriminalization of homosexual acts in 1969. The movement took as its mantra the importance of coming out as the first step towards social change and sexual liberation. In 1971, as a measure of the growing sense of entitlement some people felt, more than 200 people rallied on Parliament Hill in the first significant ‘gay pride’ march ever held in Canada. Among the demands were an end to discrimination in housing and employment, the right to serve in the armed forces, and full equality for same-sex couples. Feeling empowered by activism such as this,

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 133

and bolstered by equity challenges from other quarters, such as the civil rights movement, a few brave souls fought back publicly when they were fired or discriminated against for being openly gay or lesbian. One of the first was Doug Wilson, a teacher-in-training at the University of Saskatchewan. In 1975 he was barred from school placements because of his open gayness, a move that meant he would never be able to qualify as a teacher. His appeal to the Human Rights Commission, backed by a demonstration by more than 400 people, was unsuccessful. Barbara Thornborrow went public when she was fired from the armed forces in 1977. John Argue, a Toronto teacher and swim coach, came out at work in the late 1970s, and immediately had limits imposed on his interaction with male students as well as on the style of bathing suits he could wear. John Damien, an exemplary horse-racing jockey and steward, was immediately fired in 1975 once his sexuality became known. Although Damien was prepared to fight his case on the basis of wrongful dismissal, he died before his case could be heard by the courts. These and other cases served to focus the burgeoning gay rights movement on the importance of fighting employment discrimination. Workplace issues began to move to the centre of activism, and this increased pressure on organized labour to acknowledge such discrimination and take seriously its duty to represent all workers, including gay, lesbian, and bisexual members. Activists soon began to mobilize within the labour movement itself, challenging it not only to protect its own members, but also to fight for broader political and legislative change. Women had been the first to challenge union orthodoxy, and activists concerned with sexuality issues were able to benefit from the changes in attitudes, policies, and structures that had been achieved by women. In many instances, lesbian and gay issues were first raised within women’s committees, often by lesbians who felt their concerns warranted more attention both from women and within the broader union membership. These activists (using the skills and strategies they had learned within women’s groups) then formed separate support groups and caucuses to deal specifically with issues related to sexuality. These separate caucuses subsequently became an organizing base for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people, a place where they could gain self-confidence, build political strength, and determine strategies, just as they had been for a previous generation of women activists. One of the first of these caucuses was formed at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the largest union in the country.

134 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

Gays and lesbians are reported to have ‘found’ each other at conferences as early as 1980, at first for social support and later as a political force pushing for change within their union. By the early 1990s, the group had been officially recognized by the union leadership as the Pink Triangle Committee, and had prepared a manual on sexual orientation issues covering topics such as homophobia and collective bargaining priorities. Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual (GLB) caucuses also formed quite early at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), and the CAW. Labour Responds to the Rights of Gays and Lesbians The first set of demands made by gay and lesbian activists who were working within the labour movement was to be included in human rights and anti-discrimination policies. In particular, they pushed their unions to bargain for the inclusion of sexual orientation in nondiscrimination policies. These clauses were then used to help secure same-sex relationship recognition in benefit and pension programs, especially since they provided the basis for grievances and arbitration. Activists also sought to secure more inclusive and welcoming working environments, including formal representation in decisionmaking structures. Policy Recognition, Inclusion, and Representation From an early stage, activists targeted national and provincial labour federations and union headquarters, pressing them to take an active role in fighting sexual orientation discrimination. The Canadian Labour Congress, along with the Ontario Federation of Labour were the first to accept this challenge, followed by federations in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. The CLC amended its constitution to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in 1986, and at its 1990 convention passed a resolution to make same-sex benefit bargaining a priority for all Canadian unions. At its 1994 convention, the CLC passed a comprehensive policy statement on gay and lesbian rights, calling for workplace education concerning homophobic harassment, political action, public campaigning, and legal action. In 1997 the CLC organized Canada’s first lesbian and gay labour conference, and in 2000 created a vice-presidential seat to represent sexuality issues on

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 135

its governing board. The OFL sanctioned a gay and lesbian issues committee in 1994, became the first labour organization in Canada (possibly in the world) to add a position on its executive board for a vice-president to represent the interests of its gay and lesbian membership in 1997, and in 1999 became the first provincial federation to sponsor a GLB-labour conference. In Quebec, the three labour federations came together in 1997 and formed the ‘forum des gais et lesbiennes syndiqués du Québec’ to apply pressure on the government to amend discriminatory laws and regulations. Two years later, the group was victorious when 28 provincial statutes in areas such as family law, inheritance, and taxation were modified to ensure homosexuals and heterosexuals were treated the same way. By 2007, all of the major labour federations in Canada could be described as queer-positive, at least on paper. There remain however, significant variations between regions of the country in how active the federations are prepared to be on GLB rights issues. Federations in the more populous regions are more likely to have caucuses and to have fought against discrimination on issues such as legalizing same-sex marriage. Another early target for activists was union headquarters. Here, the objective was to convince union centrals to amend constitutions, manifestos, and policy statements to incorporate sexual orientation as a protected ground for non-discrimination. Once this was achieved, activists pressed their centrals to make collective bargaining on samesex benefits a priority and to support the fight for the rights of GLB people inside and outside the labour movement. Larger public sector unions, such as such as CUPE, PSAC, those representing provincial government and health-care workers, as well as the CAW, were among the first to respond and take action. Apart from formal commitments to equality, lesbian and gay activists from the beginning sought to make union cultures more inclusive and to be formally included in union decision-making. As a result, there has been increased emphasis over the years on expanding the number and mandate of GLB caucuses, developing educational activities such as seminars and conferences that highlight issues related to sexuality, and increasing the explicit representation of sexual minorities on governing boards and councils. Table 6.1 provides a summary of the success activists had achieved by the year 2007, on issues related to policy initiatives, inclusion, and representation in selected labour organizations. As can be seen, federations

136 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton Table 6.1 Response of selected labour organizations to sexual orientation issues CLC

OFL CUPE PSAC CAW

CEP CUPW USWA

Sexual orientation in human rights policy / constitution

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

GLB awareness and education initiatives

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

GLB caucus/ support group(s)

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

Equity officers with mandate for GLB issues

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

Reserved seats for GLB on board

9

9

Conferences about sexuality issues

9

9

9

9

9

TU

UBCJ

9

9

Abbreviations: CLC (Canadian Labour Congress); OFL (Ontario Federation of Labour); CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees); PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada); CAW (Canadian Automobile Workers); CEP (Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada); CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers); USWA (United Steel Workers of America); TU (International Brotherhood of Teamsters): UBCJ (United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners).

such as the CLC and OFL, and unions such as CUPE, PSAC, and CAW, continued to be at the forefront of broad-based support for GLB issues. These organizations now support caucuses and have equity officers with a focus on GLB issues. With the exception of the CAW, and more recently the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), private sector unions have been less likely to respond to concerns raised by sexual minorities. Unions representing workers in the male-dominated trades and crafts, such as carpenters, plumbers, and transportation workers, and most of the American-based unions, have taken only

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 137

limited action to make their organizations more welcoming for GLB members. One sign of change, however, has been the formation of a GLBT caucus in 2004, and a constitutional amendment in 2006 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, by the Teamsters Union (affecting both its Canadian and American branches). Collective Bargaining Collective bargaining for better wages, benefits, and working conditions is the nucleus of union activity at the local level. The results of collective bargaining, as a result, are a tough and important guide to the seriousness of union engagement with an issue. Not surprisingly, the first target for activists was to have sexual orientation included in the non-discrimination provisions of collective agreements. Sue Genge (1983, 1998) undertook the first significant accounting of the status of gays and lesbians in the labour movement, and found that by 1980 ‘a few unions’ had negotiated collective agreements that included a nondiscrimination clause inclusive of sexual orientation. The number of collective agreements with such a provision continued to grow throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Collective agreements covering university professors, postal workers, librarians, health-care workers, and federal and provincial government workers, as well as teachers, nurses, and auto workers, were among the first to get these provisions. A 1999 study of 240 collective agreements, covering nearly half a million workers found just over half had non-discrimination clauses specifically covering sexual orientation (Brown 2003). The same study found these provisions were much more likely in large membership and public sector bargaining units. As a result, the number of workers actually covered by such provisions is probably close to three-quarters of the unionized workforce. The fact that provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation began to appear in collective agreements at a relatively early period in the gay and lesbian rights movement lent support to the fight to get similar provisions in broader human rights legislation. At the same time, collective bargaining itself was influenced by the fact that such provision started to be encoded in law. Quebec became the first province to add sexual orientation to its Chartre de droits in 1977, making it the first jurisdiction to formally protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination. This development provided ammunition for labour activists to use in convincing decision-makers to

138 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

put similar non-discrimination provisions on the bargaining table and not fall behind legislators in protecting workers’ rights. Similarly, gay and lesbian activists were able to argue, as a part of their strategy to achieve legislative change, that unions were beginning to take such actions. It is also important to note that many of the first collective agreements to add non-discrimination provisions for gays and lesbians were negotiated with public sector unions. This probably helped to make the idea of expanding coverage into human rights codes less alien to at least some legislators. It could also be argued that the fact that the amendment of some collective agreements to add anti-discrimination protection for gays and lesbians played a role in convincing non-unionized organizations to add similar provisions to their employment policies. Given the level of legal protection that had emerged by 2007, one might argue that it is no longer necessary to formalize such provisions in collective agreements. But this is wrong. Non-discrimination clauses with specific reference to sexual orientation continue to be important because they provide workers with a local grievance mechanism, making redress quicker than through human rights appeals; they also provide an affirming statement to broader union membership.2 (Unfortunately, it has become difficult to assess union progress in this area because in 2001 the Workplace Information Directorate, the main depository of collective agreements in Canada, decided to discontinue coding for anti-discrimination provisions – under the false impression that it no longer mattered.) Beyond the inclusion of sexual orientation in non-discriminating language, the most important set of issues for activists centred on the recognition of same-sex relationships for benefit coverage. This became a priority from the late 1980s onward, and for many lesbian and gay activists it became a litmus test of union commitment. As with non-discrimination language, such coverage first began to appear in the collective agreements covering education, health care, and government workers, gradually fanning out to a wider range of organizations. By 1998, for example, unionized workers at General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Northern Telecom, and Pinkerton had same-sex benefit coverage; and unionized workers at places as different as the University of Toronto and CAMI (the Suzuki auto subsidiary of General Motors) had negotiated same-sex pension benefits. Unfortunately, there has not yet been a completely satisfactory study to determine how extensively same-sex relationships are recognized in

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 139

collective agreements for benefit coverage. Eaton and Verma (2004) used a collective agreements database maintained by the Workplace Information Directorate of Human Resources Development Canada to track same-sex coverage for contracts negotiated in 2002. The database included information on same-sex coverage for the following provisions: short-term leave, long-term leave, and group insurance plans. Eaton and Verma (2004) found that of 780 collective agreements in four industry sectors (manufacturing, transportation, primary industries, and business and personal services) 94 (12 per cent) had same-sex coverage in at least one of these three provisions. Weighting by the size of the bargaining unit reveals that 16 per cent of workers were covered by a contract that included same-sex recognition. They were particularly interested in the CAW, and found it had better than average coverage, at 44 per cent overall, 44 per cent in manufacturing, 44 per cent in transportation, 49 per cent in business and personal services, and 65 per cent in primary industries. Another study done by Brown (2003) found only a very small number of the 240 collective agreements he considered included such coverage, although his study was seriously handicapped by the amount and type of information he collected. Both studies failed to take into account a number of important points. In some instances, same-sex benefit coverage is embedded in the general human resource policies of a given organization, rather than in a collective agreement, even if a union had been behind some of the pressure for change. Also, making an accurate assessment difficult is the fact that same-sex coverage may be contained in side documents, constitutional statements, memoranda of agreement, appendices, grievance decisions, or master agreements, and this makes electronic searching of collective agreements a less than reliable indicator of the extent of coverage. As a result, a reliable count of collective agreements (and their side documents) that contain specific language for same-sex benefits is not available. Throughout the 1990s, court rulings were forcing more and more Canadian employers to provide equal benefits and pension packages to all employees regardless of sexual orientation. And, from 2000 onward, this principle was firmly embedded in law. This helps to explain why specific coverage in collective agreements is low, even though union support was growing, since it could be argued that fighting for such coverage at the bargaining table was made redundant. Nevertheless, activists continue to believe that explicitly providing

140 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

equal benefit coverage in collective agreements is important because it provides a mechanism for local grievances, reinforces union commitment, and provides higher visibility on the issue.3 Grievance, Arbitration and Legal Challenges4 Once sexual orientation was listed as grounds for non-discrimination in collective agreements, activists undertook to lodge grievance and arbitration proceedings based on such discrimination. In particular, these clauses became the basis for grievances when employers refused to recognize same-sex relationships for employment-based benefits and pension plans. Even if the overall union record on securing such benefits through collective bargaining may be mixed, the support of some unions for such benefits through grievance and court challenges was crucial to the universalization of these benefits in Canada. A west coast local of CUPW is credited with initiating the first grievance case involving same-sex benefits that subsequently went to arbitration. The case, resolved in 1985, involved a lesbian wishing a special leave in order to care for her partner of sixteen years who was ill, a provision readily available to heterosexual couples. Even though her collective agreement contained a clause prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the case was lost. It was, however, the first time a union had supported a challenge over same-sex benefits all the way to arbitration. The first successful arbitration case occurred in 1993, lodged by PSAC on behalf of a member who had been declined family and bereavement leave provisions because it involved a same-sex relationship; the arbitration panel ruled that there had been discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Another landmark decision, in 1994, was lodged by the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association when a member was denied access to family benefits because of a same-sex relationship; the arbitration panel ruled that same-sex benefits coverage should be made available to academic staff. These cases initiated a pattern of success, and subsequent arbitration cases fought on the basis of discrimination in areas such as bereavement, marriage, and parental leave, were all successful. An important policy grievance settlement occurred in 1998, when the CAW was successful in winning same-sex spousal and family benefits at Chrysler, an organization that had been intransigent on such issues in both Canada and the United States. Table 6.2 summarizes selected early grievance and arbitration cases involving sexual orientation discrimination.

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 141 Table 6.2 Selected grievance and arbitration cases Date of Province decision

Claimant

Union

Issue

Outcome

1985

Quebec

Unspecified

CUPW

Leave provisions

Failed on grounds that same-sex partner did not fit recognized understanding of common law relationships

1992

Ontario

Chalkley

LDSWU

Same-sex benefits

Failed on basis that Human Rights Code did not recognize same-sex spouses

1993

Ontario

Lorenzen

PSAC

Family and bereavement leave

Successful. Ruled there had been discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation

1994

Alberta

Unspecified

ULFA

Same-sex benefits

Successful. Awarded same-sex benefit coverage for academic staff

1995

Ontario

Aebly

CUPW

Bereavement leave

Successful. Ruled that same-sex partner qualified as spouse

1997

NS

Boutillier

PIPSC

Marriage leave Successful. Ruled that marriage included same-sex commitment ceremony

1997

British Gold Columbia

BCGSEU

Parental leave Successful. Affirmed rights of same-sex parents

1998

Ontario

CAW

Same-sex benefits

Policy grievance

Successful in winning same-sex spousal and family benefits but not pension benefits for Chrysler workers

Abbreviations: CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers); CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees); LDSWU (London District Service Workers’ Union); PSAC (Pubic Service Alliance of Canada); ULFA (University of Lethbridge Faculty Association); CMG (Canadian Media Guild); BCGSEU (British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union) Sources: Summary of selected cases in Petersen (1999) and M. Smith (1999), with additional information supplied by authors.

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Unions were sometimes party to court cases on sexual orientation discrimination and same-sex recognition. The first court case involving same-sex benefit coverage was lodged by CUPE and heard in 1987. This was followed by a case involving coverage for dental benefits, lodged by the Manitoba Government Workers Union (MGWV). Both were unsuccessful. The first successful court challenge was undertaken in 1991 by the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) of British Columbia. The court found that same-sex couples were included in the definition of spouse for the purposes of the Medical Services Act. Then, in 1992, an Ontario board of inquiry ordered that reference to ‘persons of the opposite sex’ be removed from Ontario’s definition of marital status, in a case supported by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). And, in 1998, CUPE won a groundbreaking case requiring an inclusive definition of spouse to be read into the Income Tax Act. Another important measure of union support for legal challenges took place in 2002, when the CAW offered its considerable resources to assist Marc Hall in his successful bid to take his same-sex partner to his graduation prom. Table 6.3 summarizes a number of the landmark human rights cases that have been supported by unions. Responding to the Rights of Transgender Workers The term transgender is generally accepted as an umbrella term to encompass all people who do not fit into a binary conception of gender identity or expression.5 It can include people who challenge stereotypes about gender in terms of dress, cosmetics, and ‘acceptable’ behaviour. This is a group that probably faces the sharpest edge of discrimination that society and the workplace has to offer. Transgender activism has been late to emerge as a social movement, building to a large degree on openings created by gay, lesbian, and bisexual activism – sometimes incorporated into this larger group, sometimes remaining apart from it as a separate movement. Labour’s engagement with transgender issues was in a formative stage by the mid-1990s and began to take off in the early 2000s. The Emergence of Transgender Activism Until 1998, there had been just one human rights complaint by a transgender person in Canada in which a tribunal had issued a decision. In Quebec v. Anglsberger,6 the Quebec Provincial Court held that transsexuals were protected under the category of ‘civil status’ under that

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 143 Table 6.3 Landmark human rights cases supported by unions Date of Province/ Plaintiff decision Court

Union

Issue

Outcome

1991

BC Knodel Supreme Court

HEU

Same-sex benefits

Successful. Court found that same-sex couples were included in the definition of spouse for the purposes of the Medical Services Act.

1992

Ontario Board of Inquiry

Leshner

OPSEU

Same-sex benefits

Successful. Tribunal ordered that reference to persons ‘of the opposite sex’ should be deleted from Ontario's definition of marital status. The ruling ordered the government to offer same-sex spousal benefits to OPSEU workers.

1993

Supreme Mossop Court of Canada

CUPTE

Bereavement Failed but established leave precedent for same-sex spousal rights in Charter.

1995

Supreme Egan and CLC Court of Nesbit (intervener) Canada

Old Age Security (OAS) provisions

Successful in getting recognition that the Charter's equality guarantee covered discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but not successful in gaining OAS benefits for samesex partner.

1998

Ontario Appeal Court

Income Tax Act

Successful. Decision required an inclusive definition of spouse to be read into they act.

1996

Canadian Akerstrom PSAC PAFSO Foreign Human and Moore PIPSO service Rights benefits Tribunal

Rosenberg and Evans

CUPE

Successful. Decision required the federal government to extend same-sex spousal benefits to all public servants.

144 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton Table 6.3 Landmark human rights cases supported by unions

(continued)

Date of Province/ Plaintiff decision Court

Union

Issue

Outcome

2002

CAW, CUPE, PSAC (interveners)

Right to take same-sex partner to school prom

Successful. Injunction against the Durham Catholic District School Board allowed student to attend prom.

Ontario Superior Court

Marc Hall

Abbreviations: HEU (Hospital Employees’ Union, British Columbia); OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union); CUPTE (Canadian Union of Professional and Technical Employees); CLC (Canadian Labour Congress); CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees); PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada); PAFSO (Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers); PIPSC (Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada). Sources: Summary of selected cases in Petersen (1999), White (1993), and M. Smith (1999), with additional information supplied by authors.

province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The court found that a restaurant owner had illegally discriminated against a male-tofemale transsexual by refusing to serve her and then throwing her out of the restaurant. While human rights commissions in other provinces had processed complaints from transgender individuals before, none had reached the tribunal stage.7 Between 1998 and 2004 there were at least eight human rights tribunal decisions in Canada in response to complaints by transgender persons, and they were all successful. The best known of the cases, Nixon v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society, dealt with a post-operative male-to-female transsexual who was denied the opportunity to be trained as a volunteer with the Vancouver Rape Relief Society because she had not been born a woman.8 In a preliminary decision in this case, the British Columbia Supreme Court held that the ground of sex in the British Columbia Human Rights Code included a prohibition forbidding discrimination against transsexuals and transgender individuals.9 A human rights tribunal subsequently found that Nixon had been the victim of discrimination; however, this decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2003. The court’s decision, in this case, overturned the tribunal decision, but reaffirmed the principle that protection against discrimination based on sex in human rights legislation includes transsexuals. Nixon’s appeal to the British Columbia Court of Appeal was dismissed in December 2005.

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 145

In 2000 the Ontario Human Rights Commission adopted a policy stating that a progressive understanding of the ground of sex in the Human Rights Code would be used by the commission to protect individuals who are subject to discrimination based on gender identity. All of the cases decided in Canada to date have followed this approach, reaffirming the principles that protection against discrimination based on sex in human rights legislation includes discrimination based on gender identity. Reports in both British Columbia and at the federal level have recommended that gender identity be included as a formal ground for protection in their jurisdiction’s human rights law. In 2002, the Northwest Territories became the first jurisdiction in Canada to include this provision specifically in its human rights legislation. Labour Responds In recent years, transgender activists within the labour movement have pushed for greater recognition beyond just being the ‘T’ in GLBT, and some have succeeded in leveraging the power of the much larger GLB network within organized labour to achieve changes. Transgender activists have argued that they should be included in human rights policies, protected from harassment by co-workers, managers, and customers, and included in benefit coverage for procedures not covered by provincial health plans. Other issues for transgender workers include dress codes, washroom policies, and accommodations when transitioning. The first human rights tribunal case involving a union, Ferris v. Office and Technical Employees Union, Local 15, did not place the union in a positive light.10 Both the employer and the union badly mishandled a complaint within the workplace regarding a transgender employee’s use of the company’s female washroom. The employee was terminated, and, with little help from her union, was unable to gain redress from her employer before she filed a human rights complaint. The employer settled with Ferris, but her complaint against the union was heard by the tribunal. In reviewing the evidence the tribunal found that the union’s conduct departed far from even a minimal standard of responsibility of a union to its members in relation to an incident arising in the workplace. It concluded that the complainant’s transsexual status was a factor in the union’s inadequate representation. The union was ordered to cease its discrimination and to pay her damages of $1,000 for lost wages and $5,000 in

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compensation for injury to her dignity, feelings, and self-respect. Since this case there have been more positive signs of labour’s preparedness to tackle transgender issues. Policy Recognition and Inclusion As with GLB issues, several of the federations have taken a leadership role in developing policies related to transgender discrimination. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, for example, provides a course called ‘Inside and Out’ at the popular Prairie School for Women, which includes transgender issues, and their ‘Out Positive Space’ campaign includes transgender on its campaign promotional material. Similarly, the OFL now includes gender identity as one of its grounds for nondiscrimination and has called on the Ontario government to reinstate medical coverage for sex reassignment surgery. At the 1997 CLC Solidarity and Pride conference, there was just one ‘out’ transgender delegate present, Gail Owen, a staff representative with PSAC. A forceful activist, Gail is credited – as one insider puts it – with ‘bringing transgender issues out of the closet and into the union hall.’ Through her efforts, a number of delegates at the conference argued that the CLC needed to take up the issue of equality rights for transgender workers. As a result, the CLC’s Solidarity and Pride Working Group decided in early 1999 to include transgender issues in its mandate. After meeting with transgender activists in three provinces, the working group issued a discussion paper in 2001.11 This paper recommended that unions negotiate collective agreement protections for transgender workers, lobby for rights, and expand education programs. At the CLC’s 2001 Solidarity and Pride conference, transgender issues were prominent throughout the conference, and delegates identified transgender rights as among the most pressing issues for the labour movement to confront. The impact of this activism could be seen the following year when the CLC constitution was amended to include ‘gender identity’ in the preamble, and at the 2005 Solidarity and Pride conference in Quebec City when a number of workshops were devoted to such issues. Among Canadian unions, CUPE has taken the lead in raising transgender issues. In 2001, the national convention of CUPE amended the equality statement in the union’s constitution to include transgender members. Delegates to the CUPE national convention also adopted resolutions calling on the union to develop educational

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 147

resources concerning transgender issues; work to ensure that human rights protections for transgender persons are explicitly written into federal and provincial human rights legislation; work towards the decriminalization of sex work, since many transgender people are involved in the sex trade; and expand the mandate of CUPE’s National Pink Triangle Committee to include up to three transgender members.12 A CUPE policy statement entitled ‘Transphobia: A Union, Issue’ states that ‘Unions play an important role in supporting trans members and helping them fight for their rights. Member education, advocacy, and collective bargaining are all ways to advance these issues within a local.’13 CUPE has developed a workshop called Pride in CUPE that is designed to provide members with the tools to recognize and tackle homophobia, heterosexism, and transphobia in the workplace, union, and larger society. At the national level the union has lobbied for restored funding for sex reassignment and related treatments. In 2002, CUPW amended its anti-harassment policy, which is part of the union’s constitution, to include transphobia. CUPW now integrates transgender issues in its human rights training, and transgender members of the union participate in CUPW’s National Human Rights Committee. The USWA has not formally added ‘gender identity’ to its human rights policy, but the union includes transgender issues in its anti-harassment and human rights training for union officers and activists. Similarly, the CEP includes transgender issues in their Equality Action Bargaining Agenda education program. PSAC has also incorporated transgender issues into its human rights program, including its first ever national GLBT conference held in November 2003. Collective Bargaining Following the Nixon case, human rights policies and collective agreement provisions that refer to discrimination on grounds of sex can now be considered to include discrimination on the ground of gender identity. At the most basic level, an employer cannot simply fire an employee for being transgendered. Nevertheless, transgender activists argue that protections should be negotiated at the local level as an educational tool to ensure that specific rights (for example, leave related to sex reassignment surgery) are set out. Similarly, the CLC policy paper on transgender issues advises unions to add gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination in their

148 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

collective agreements. The paper notes that ‘trans workers may be protected by language prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, or on the basis of disability. But, it is preferable to have clear language expressly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity.’14 Few unions have yet achieved this goal. A search of the federal government’s Negotech database identified only two Canadian collective agreements, out of exactly 5,000 in the database, that included the term gender identity. In addition, there have been no reported collective agreement arbitration decisions involving the assertion of transgender rights.15 The most comprehensive collective agreement language has been negotiated by a CUPE local representing teaching assistance and part-time faculty at York University. This collective agreement prohibits discrimination against transgender workers, and provides partially paid transition leave related to sex reassignment surgery.16 The largest number of workers covered by protection based on gender-identity work is in the automobile sector. The CAW negotiated a letter of understanding with each of Ford, General Motors, and Daimler Chrysler in 2002 that recognizes gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination under their respective collective agreements. A Shifting Target A summary of initiatives taken by selected public and private sector unions in Canada is presented in table 6.4. It is clear that significant movement has occurred within the labour movement on the issue of transgender rights within a relatively short amount of time, but there is still a long way to go. Of Canada’s largest unions, only the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) had not adopted any policy or initiative related to transgender rights by 2004. Important to note is that changes seen in other unions have been initiated by activists rather than by the leadership. However, this has not been based on a broad membership mobilization. Instead, a small group of transgendered activists has been able to work through GLBT networks within the labour movement to gain leadership commitment on this issue. Once the change has been codified at the top (seen, for instance, in the constitutional amendment adopted by the CLC, and policies adopted by the CAW, CUPE, and CUPW), the trend reverses to a ‘top down’ pressure to diffuse these changes at the local level.

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 149 Table 6.4 Labour responses to transgender issues, 2004 CLC

CUPE

CAW

CUPW

PSAC

USWA

CEP

UFCW

2,300,000

521,580

260,000

49,690

150,000

180,000

150,000

220,000

Gender identity in human rights policy / constitution

9

9

9

9

Transgender policy paper or resolution adopted

9

9

9

9

At least one collective agreement with nondiscrimination covering gender identity

NA

9

9

Transgender awareness and education initiatives

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

Transgendered members active in GLBT support groups

9

9

9

9

9

9

Number of membersa

9

b

c

a

Government of Canada, Directory of Labour Organizations in Canada. http://labour.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/millieudetravail_workplace/ot_lo//index.cfm/doc/english. b Letter of Understanding c Contract for staff employed by the union

GLBT – Labour Alliances Move Forward Following on the pioneering work of a few unions and labour federations, more labour organizations are now active in the area of GLBT rights. Nearly all the provincial labour federations have GLBT-inclusive policies; those in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia have a formally recognized GLBT caucus. Unions such as CUPW, after a period of relative inactivity, now seem poised to re-engage more assertively. CEP offers an example of a union moving much more assertively on equity issues generally and GLBT issues in particular. Unions representing workers in the services, hotel, and restaurant sectors have also been nudged towards a more and more GLBT-positive position, in some instances limited to policy statements, but progress is being made.

150 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

Still, public sector unions (especially teachers, health-care workers, and government workers), large unions, and Canadian-based unions continue to stand out among those actively addressing the employment-based issues of concern to GLBT people. Unions representing workers in the traditional, male-dominated trades, such as plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, continue to be the group that has taken little action, opting merely to comply with changing legal requirements. International unions with headquarters in the United States, which still represent many of these trades, have tended to be the least active. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, however, is one union that has recently undertaken a number of initiatives to support change in the area of GLBT rights. The Auto Workers: A Case Study in Change The National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers’ Union is better known as ‘the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW).17 It is one of the largest private sector unions in the country and provides an excellent illustration of one very progressive union’s engagement with sexual diversity issues. The CAW was formed as a result of a split with the United Automobile Workers in 1985. The first CAW constitution contained a clause indicating that it wished to unite all workers without regard to, among other things, ‘sexual preference.’ The call for a more inclusive union came primarily from locals associated with automobile manufacturing plants in southwestern Ontario, and airline customer service agents. One woman recalls putting an advertisement in her local newspaper as a way of drawing out gays and lesbians in her community who were members of the union. Discovering she was not alone, and that other people also wanted the union to do more around harassment and benefit issues, provided the momentum for an activist campaign. The appeals of activists for action received a quick and principled response at CAW headquarters, helped by the presence of a sympathetic union president and a Human Rights Department that had already been mapping strategy in the area of lesbian and gay rights. • 1990. The first CAW gay and lesbian caucuses are formed in Toronto

and Vancouver. By 2006 there are six regional GLBT caucuses, and three local standing committees (funded by union locals).

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 151 • 1990. CAW successfully negotiates same-sex benefits at CAMI auto-

•

•

• • •

• • • •

•

•

•

•

motive (a GM subsidiary). The union also forces the company to have same-sex pension benefits paid out of general revenue until the issue of same-sex pensions is resolved by the federal government, in 1998. 1994. Same-sex benefits are negotiated at Northern Telecom, Pinkerton, Nissan, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Falconbridge, and Brampton Hydro, among others. 1994. A union local president challenges the CAW’s position in favour of negotiating same-sex benefits during a council meeting. National President Buzz Hargrove indicates that the union’s position on gay rights is generating extraordinary amounts of mail from members, most of it negative. The union’s position is reaffirmed. 1994. Same-sex benefits are negotiated at General Motors. 1996. A decision is made that same-sex benefits can only be withdrawn from the bargaining table with permission of the national president. 1997. A training video called ‘This Ain’t Going Away’ is prepared concerning a lesbian who is being harassed by co-workers after applying for same-sex benefits. 1998. CAW wins an arbitration case ordering Chrysler to provide to same-sex couples all non-pension benefits available to union members. 1998. ‘Bisexual’ and ‘Transgender’ are added to Pride banners. 1999. A vote is taken to recognize transgender issues in bargaining. 1999. The first National Pride conference is held in Ontario followed by a regional one in British Columbia in 2002, a national one again in 2002 in Ontario, and another regional conference in Halifax in 2003. A commitment is made to have a national conference every two years with a regional conference in the intervening years. 2001. A float is entered in the Toronto Pride Parade, the first time a union has sponsored an ‘official’ float (although CAW representatives had been marching in the parade, with flags, since the early 1990s). 2001. Pride in Print is launched and distributed to all locals. This formal newsletter replaced the Black and Pink Triangle mailings that had been going out to activists since 1991. 2002. CAW puts its support behind seventeen-year-old Marc Hall in his successful legal challenge to bring his boyfriend to his graduation prom against the wishes of his Catholic school. 2003. A pride policy statement outlining a far-reaching commitment to GLBT issues is passed. All campaigns, educational material, documents, and bargaining agendas are to be specifically

152 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton

transgender inclusive, and included in all human rights and anti-harassment training material. • 2007. GLBT issues become more and more integrated into the work of the union, and caucuses are held at every major union meeting. Conclusions Canada’s unions have demonstrated a commitment to fighting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Labour’s early support for grievances and arbitrations based on sexual orientation bias helped to set the stage for successful constitutional challenges that directly affected the working lives of unionized and non-unionized GLBT people. By the second half of the 2000s, unions could claim to have offered political support for equity in law, prohibited discrimination in their own operations, established GLBT caucuses, pushed locals to bargain for inclusive benefits programs in collective agreements, and attempted to confront prejudicial and hostile cultures in their own organizations. These kinds of initiatives were initially more pronounced in large, public sector unions and in the auto workers union, but a growing list of private sector unions are now active as well. Labour’s commitment to sexual diversity issues does vary across employment sectors, regions of the country, and union categories. Some unions, especially those who represent craft and trade workers, and those unions headquartered outside of Canada, often acquiesce to broader political and legal changes rather than take a leadership or supporting role, and not all union members agree on the merits of tackling sexual diversity bias. The overall theme that emerges is that the good unions get better, the number of newer entrants grows, and a group of not so good unions stay about the same. Early union activity was concerned with issues raised by gay men and lesbians. Initiatives designed to provide protection for individuals facing dismissal, demotion, and harassment on the basis of their sexuality resulted in inclusive non-discrimination clauses in collective agreements. These clauses provided the basis not only for addressing individual claims of discrimination, but also for grievance and arbitration cases based on same-sex relationship discrimination in pension and benefit programs. CUPE’s successful legal challenge in 1998 to heterosexual bias in the Income Tax Act also represents an important milestone in labour’s engagement and commitment to equality. Labour has

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 153

continued to demonstrate its solidarity by supporting the extension of access to civil marriage for same-sex couples, and fighting for sexual orientation to be listed within hate-crime legislation. Union response to discrimination based on gender identity has come later, and is still in a formative stage. There has been a major shift in the legal and social environment related to transgender rights in Canada, but this shift has not yet been reflected in collective agreement language. Only the CLC and a couple of unions have embedded transgender rights into anti-discrimination and harassment policies. Nor has there been much indication of a significant shift in social acceptance at the grass roots of the union movement. Nevertheless, transgender rights have become a significant issue within a growing number of decision-making circles. Progress on transgender rights has been a direct result of earlier work on GLB rights, and in many ways has followed a similar trajectory. A small number of transgender activists within and external to the union movement have increasingly been able to leverage the power of the much larger network of GLB activists (again, inside and outside of unions) to get recognition and support for transgender issues. Where there has been change, it has been driven initially by transgendered activists, subsequently supported by GLB activists, and recognized at the leadership level. All developments that have taken place have benefited from early activism by women. Feminists were the first to challenge union orthodoxy by raising post-materialist issues such as violence and harassment, suggesting that male-dominated union cultures were part of the problem. Women also developed the concept of separate committee and caucus organizing as forums to offer support, build confidence, and articulate demands. Women’s caucuses were also settings where many of the first tentative demands for change related to GLB issues were raised and debated. Too little research has been conducted at the local union level. While we do know that more and more unions have laudable policies to confront sexual orientation discrimination, little is known about the actual spread and depth of these initiatives. Too little is known about how thoroughly these policies have been implemented, and with what impact at the local level (one exception is Hunt and Haiven 2006). As a result, it is at the local level where further research is needed, and where unions might now concentrate their efforts for change.

154 Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton NOTES 1 Both GLB (gay, lesbian, and bisexual) and GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trangender) are used in order to distinguish points in history when the ‘T for transgender’ in GLBT is not being addressed. 2 Note that arbitrators in Ontario have the power to enforce human rights legislation (affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in Parry Sound (District) Social Services Administration Board v. O.P.S.E.U., Local 324, [2003] S.C.R. 157). As a result, a union member who is the victim of discrimination would have a local grievance mechanism, even if his or her contract did not specifically refer to sexual orientation. 3 See note 2 above. 4 We are indebted to the pioneering work of Petersen (1999) for some of the information in this section. 5 Some of the material in this section is based on Eaton (2004), and is used with permission. 6 (1982), 3 C.H.R.R. D/892 (C.P.Q). 7 Ontario Human Rights Commission. 1999. Toward a Commission Policy on Gender Identity: Discussion Paper (October). OHRC. 8 [2002] BCHRTD No. 1 (B.C. Trib.). 9 Vancouver Rape Relief Society v. British Columbia (Human Rights Commission) (2000), 23 Admin. L.R. (3d) 91 (B.C.S.C.). 10 (1999), 36 C.H.R.R. D/329 (B.C. Trib.). 11 Canadian Labour Congress, Solidarity and Pride Working Group, Transgender Discussion Paper (2001). 12 One transgender activist joined the union’s National Pink Triangle Committee after this last resolution was passed. At the time of writing, the committee was seeking to recruit two additional transgender CUPE members. CUPE’s Ontario Pink Triangle Committee also has one transgender member. 13 Canadian Union of Public Employees, Transphobia: A Union Issue (2 June 2002). www.cupe.ca/www/EqualityPride/4190/. 14 CLC, Transgender Discussion Paper. 15 There have been just a handful of reported arbitration decisions in which transgender workers are mentioned at all. In Halkin Tool Ltd. (2001), 100 L.A.C. (4th) 312 (Glass), the union challenged an employer’s refusal to post a notice on a union bulletin board publicizing a ‘Working With Pride’ conference for ‘CAW lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists and their allies.’ Arbitrator Glass found that this refusal violated the collective agreement, and ordered the employer to post the notice. In Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, [2001] O.L.A.A. No. 35 (Keller), a social worker was suspended

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers 155 for two days, in part because he had jokingly introduced a female doctor to a relapse prevention group saying the doctor was ‘not a transsexual.’ Arbitrator Keller concluded that this comment was inappropriate, could cause embarrassment for the subject of the comment, and reflected bad judgment by the griever. However, the arbitrator found the penalty for this comment was too harsh, and substituted a written reprimand for the two-day suspension. In Central Neighbourhood House (2005), 137 LAC (4th) 314 (Harris), the union grieved against the employer’s practice of filling shift vacancies by gender rather than strictly adhering to the seniority provisions of the collective agreement. The employer (which operated shelters for the homeless) claimed that it was necessary to ensure that both genders were present on shift in order to provide appropriate services for its clients. In upholding the union’s grievance, the arbitrator concluded that the policy of assigning specific sexes to relief shifts was ‘mired in gender stereotypes.’ In making this finding, the arbitrator was strongly influenced by the employer’s own written standards ‘Meeting the Needs of Transgendered/Transsexual/2-Spirited Residents,’ which afforded clients the opportunity to define themselves in terms of their gender identity. In a fourth case, the Alberta District Court upheld the termination of a teacher/vice-principle who was dismissed after fifteen years of satisfactory service because of his ‘abnormal behaviour’ as a ‘transvestite.’ He had stolen minor items of women’s clothing, and wore some of the items at school. He was convicted of possession of stolen goods and was given a conditional discharge. Based on the criminal offence alone, the court found that the school board had acted reasonably. See Glass v. Warner County School Committee (1979), 17 A.R. 313 (Alta. Dist. Ct.). 16 Collective agreement between York University and Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, ratified 5 January 2001. 17 Material for this section is derived from interviews with CAW staff and union members and home information available at www.caw.ca/pride.

7 Broadening the Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda DAVID RAYSIDE AND FRASER VALENTINE

People with disabilities are still marginalized in the labour force. A majority often have great difficulty finding work at all, and many who do so find themselves in low-wage and vulnerable jobs that deny or undervalue the intelligence and skill they bring to their work. The Canadian labour movement has long provided support for their members who have been injured or who have fallen ill as a result of their jobs. They have also fought for health and safety promotion at the workplace. Only in the last few years, though, have unions broadened their disability agendas in the directions laid out by disability rights activists outside the labour movement. We do not yet know how effective union engagement with reframed thinking on disability will be for those who are not yet part of the workforce and not yet union members. But there are encouraging signs. Labour’s engagement with disability includes pressing for improvements in workplace safety, for programs to support those whose health has been compromised by the job, and for provisions to allow those with injuries to re-enter the workplace. But it also requires serious commitment to employment equity, and the promotion of improved access to work for those whose disabilities have traditionally justified exclusion. It entails enhancing the presence of people with disabilities in the labour movement at all levels, and ensuring their representation in policy making arenas. It includes political advocacy on disability issues, in cooperation with autonomous activist groups. And it requires educational programming to improve the understanding of disability among union members and the general public. Are these improvements urgent? Very much so, according to The 2001 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (Statistic Canada 2002). People

The Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 157

with disabilities and their families face severe obstacles to participation in the labour force. During working-age years, they are much more likely to be out of the labour force (among adults, 43 per cent compared to 13 per cent), and more than twice as likely to have to live with low incomes (22 per cent compared to 9 per cent). Among all equity-seeking groups, women with disabilities have made the fewest gains in the workforce, and on some scores lost ground in the mid-1990s (Office for Disability Issues, 2003). The disadvantage is particularly widespread among women: the gender gap in income among women with disabilities is almost 40 per cent. It is also stark among Aboriginals with disabilities, who are only half as likely to be employed as Aboriginals without disabilities (Canadian Labour Congress 2004). There are two broad analytical perspectives that speak to the likelihood of unions responding to disability claims. One is that the labour is heavily encumbered by bureaucratic institutionalization and by cooptation to restrictive collective bargaining frameworks. In other words, labour is no longer in any essential way an activist movement. And to the extent that it does occasionally mobilize opposition to employers and to the state around issues beyond its usual preoccupations with wages and benefits, it still does so with an outlook and set of practices shaped profoundly by the experiences of the white male worker. If disability is incorporated into that agenda at all, it is to protect those who have been injured or impaired on the job. The demands made by pressing for the recognition of diversity are generally met with active or passive resistance in the labour movement. Hunt and Rayside’s (2000) review of the literature on Canadian and American union responses to diversity includes numerous references to literature reflecting this pessimistic framework. Some variants of this view, though more vocal in the 1980s and 1990s than now, bifurcated the world of social movement activism into ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ activism (Melucci 1980; Offe 1990). They saw social movements as essentially raising issues based on identity and recognition and not on income and other material gains. They operated outside existing political, economic, and social institutions, and in opposition to them. In such analytical frameworks, the labour movement was traditional, and the disability rights movement emphatically ‘new.’ On the other side of the debate are those who see unions as at least open to change (Briskin and McDermott 1993; Briskin 2002; White, this volume). Among the forces creating opportunities for activist intervention are the changed demographics of the labour force, and the urgent

158 David Rayside and Fraser Valentine

challenges created by the neo-liberal surge that began in the mid-1970s. Unions have been faced with a decline in their traditionally core constituencies, with a dramatic increase in the numbers of women and visible minorities in the workplace, and with a dramatic undermining of their strength in relation to employers and governments. They may well have been slow to respond to such challenges, but there are many encouraging signs (in a range of countries) of labour adaptation, and even of serious engagement with new questions of difference and equity. Implicit in this view is a rejection of the categorical distinction between new and old social movements. All social movements have both confrontational and reformist currents; all have some activists with close relationships to the state and other established institutions, alongside others who reject such links. Almost all have ‘materialist’ concerns, along with objectives related to identity or recognition or quality of life. Most have strongly institutionalized groups along with more informally organized formations. Disability issues fit interestingly with in this debate. As on other diversity fronts, disability rights activism first emerged outside existing institutional systems. And, as much as activists on other equity fronts, those who focused on this issue were more likely to see the labour movement as part of the problem than as part of the solution. Some of what such activists demanded, in fact, struck at the very core of union traditions, most especially in calling for attention to those who were not now in the workforce but who strove for the independence to enter it. They also framed their activism around a conception of autonomy that could easily collide with union preoccupations. On the other hand, concern for workers who had been injured or impaired on the job was major for even the most traditional of unions responsible for organizing workers in mining and construction. Disability rights, then, are important windows onto questions of how much the labour movement has embraced diversity, and how much it has done so beyond its traditional organizational culture. The analysis to follow is based on wide experience in advocacy on disability issues on Valentine’s part, on a systematic analysis of labour union policy statements and conference documents on disability, and on interviews with activists and policy makers over the past decade. It takes as a starting point the important shift in disability activism away from medical and charitable models towards a more assertive set of claims to autonomy and full citizenship rights (Driedger 1989; Valentine and Vickers 1996). Rather than being the object of concern by

The Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 159

experts and care providers, a new wave of activism that began in the 1970s was led by people with disabilities themselves. They recognized that central to the activist agenda was not only the accommodation of workplaces and co-workers to people with disabilities, but the creation of genuine labour-force openings to people who had been effectively excluded. This would require that unions recognize the needs of the vast majority of people with disabilities, who are not now seen as a part of their constituency. The Historical Marginalization of Disability The early twentieth century, and particularly the years following the First World War, saw increased public and policy attention to disability. Industrialization had led to increased workplace injuries, and medical advances had improved the survival chances of those who suffered disabling injuries or sickness either on or off the job. Most important of all, the war brought home to Canada a large number of service personnel whose wounds created permanent disability. The last years of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth were also witness to a wave of social and political reformism. Such activism included campaigning for improved treatment of those with mental and physical disabilities, even if framed by medical and institutional models that gave them limited voice, little independence, and effectively no access to the workforce. The period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath transformed Canadian society and public policy in major ways. The labour movement grew substantially in scale and legitimacy, and the right to collective bargaining was secured by federal and provincial policy. The labour relations regime put into place in the 1940s was constraining of labour’s political agenda, but it helped usher in a thirty-year period of relatively high unionization rates and influential political intervention. This was also a period of substantial expansion of the welfare state, deepening and broadening income supports in circumstances of need. This period of the post-war ‘settlement’ implied an expansion of ideas of citizenship to include entitlement to basic social supports, health facilities, and education (Marshall 1963). But it was also a period in which more traditional concepts of civil and political equality were given more careful attention, primarily as a result of the revulsion to Nazi ideology and practice. Ideas of universal human rights were

160 David Rayside and Fraser Valentine

given more urgency, and were encoded in formal conventions (for example, at the United Nations and in the Council of Europe). At this stage, disability was not prominent in public discussion of prejudice and discrimination, nor in public policy. The first two postwar decades saw the formation and growth of a number of groups addressing the needs of people with particular disabilities – for example, the Canadian Association for the Mentally Retarded, the Canadian Muscular Dystrophy Association, the March of Dimes, and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (formed decades earlier). But these groups were dominated by experts, family members, and caregivers, not people with disabilities themselves. And, for the most part, they were still shaped by traditional models of dependency and charity. People with disabilities were not in any significant way party to the language of rights and workplace equality. Some government policy attention was given to rehabilitation, reflecting in part medical and technical developments. Federal authorities had approved funding for vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities in a 1952 Order in Council. Nine years later a legislative commitment to sharing costs with the provinces was enacted to ease the labour force re-entry of those with physical and mental disabilities. As Michael Bach and Marcia Rioux (1996) argue, though, the welfare state expansion of the period did not shift traditional thinking about disability: ‘Investment in institutional facilities, special education, segregated vocational training, and employment and community services exclusively for persons with disabilities grew substantially during the postwar period. In this way the postwar framework for securing the welfare and well-being of Canadians ironically institutionalized exclusion for people with disabilities (318).’ In the 1940s and 1950s the labour movement had not moved significantly towards a prioritization of equity across lines of gender, ethnicity, race, or other grounds. The movement was overwhelmingly shaped by the experience of men with northern European and French ethnic origins, by notions of solidarity that did not much acknowledge such questions of difference, and by strong currents of prejudice that prevailed in the population at large. Workers who were injured on the job, or who succumbed to ill health because of work, were worthy of support while away from work. But unions were not assertive in seeking to place in high profile the right of disabled workers to a dignified place in the labour force. The ‘protest cycle’ of the 1960s and 1970s placed issues of difference firmly on the public agenda. The American civil rights movement, the

The Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 161

women’s movement, and the gay/lesbian movement all emerged with force and visibility. Important currents of activism on these and other fronts posed radical challenges to the priorities of existing state and corporate institutions, and of the labour movement (which also had radical challenges within). However, this protest wave did not at first trigger a surge of disability rights organizing. There were social and scientific developments in rehabilitation in the 1960s and 1970s that would soon expand workplace potential for people with disabilities, but they themselves were not yet in a position to form their own activist groups and to re-frame the issues away from the traditional models that still had such tenacious hold. Activism did surface in the 1970s, drawing on the organizing models and frameworks of recognition developed by social movements taking up issues of race, gender, aboriginal status, and sexuality. It was relatively small in scale, however, and not very focused on access to the labour force. Changes in the Rights Regime in the 1980s and 1990s The 1980s and 1990s saw a major shift in the human rights regime in this country, with potential for real impact on the lives of people with disabilities. It was also a period of rights activism on disability issues, eventually supported by important players in the Canadian labour movement. Drafting a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms created a political opportunity that mobilized significant numbers of disability activists, and secured the support of a broad coalition that included organized labour (Lepofsky 1985). With the 1982 constitutional entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada became the first country in the world to explicitly include disability (both mental and physical) in its formal rights regime. The Trudeau government had at first rebuffed activist pressure on the issue, arguing that the standards of what constituted disability were unclear, and that the costs of ensuring equity were too great. Under pressure from a coalition of disability, women’s, and church organizations, the government first agreed to include physical disability, and eventually all forms of disability (Peters 2003). Human rights statutes were also developing at the provincial and territorial level during this period, and eventually they were all subject to legal and political pressure that ensured their alignment with the Charter. Quebec’s charter was an early product of this wave of human rights legislation, and the first (in 1977) to explicitly include disability.

162 David Rayside and Fraser Valentine

Canadian prohibitions on discrimination from this period onward moved away from requiring proof of intent and towards a recognition of systemic factors. Courts and policy makers, emboldened by the wording of the Canadian charter, came to see that institutional practices could easily exclude one group or another without prejudicial human intervention. Human rights advocates had urged that ‘reasonable accommodation’ to people with disabilities be required of institutions. Large-scale mobilization on this issue resulted in the inclusion of provisions laying out the duty to accommodate in the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1998-1999. The changes came with the significant escape hatch that ‘undue hardship’ could not be imposed on employers, but still represented a gain for activists. This constituted a noticeable shift towards recognizing people with disabilities as active members of the labour force. Two rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada placed disability issues on the workplace agenda. The 1992 decision in Renaud v. Board of School Trustees, School District No. 23 (Central Okanagan) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 523 indicated that both employers and unions had an obligation to make efforts to accommodate workers with disabilities. Even more significantly, the court’s 1999 ruling in the Meiorin case made clear that discrimination need not be direct to be subject to the Charter’s prohibitive language. (This was a case brought forward by the British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGSEU) on behalf of Tawney Meiorin, a forest firefighter.) Work requirements had to be developed in ways to avoid a discriminatory effect, accommodating individual and group differences up to the point of ‘undue hardship.’ The court developed guidelines for determining whether occupational requirements were unreasonably discriminatory in their impact. In another case ruled on in the same year (Grismer), the court extended the Meiorin test to the provision of services. Employers and service providers, then, had to eliminate barriers to full participation for all groups identified in human rights law (including people with disabilities) embedded in policies and practices, up to what was ‘reasonably possible’ or what did not create ‘undue hardship.’ The court’s Grismer ruling included this: Employers and others governed by human rights legislation are now required in all cases to accommodate the characteristics of affected groups with their standards, rather than maintaining discriminatory standards supplemented by accommodation for those who cannot meet them …

The Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 163 This means that employers and service providers should ensure that all their corporate programs and activities, including policy-making, development of rules, standards or programs, purchases of new technology or equipment, real property decisions, and information provision are barrier free. (British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles) v. British Columbia (Council of Human Rights 1999)

Unions were implicated as employers themselves, and also implicated alongside employers concerning the duty to accommodate in unionized workplaces. Elements of collective bargaining agreements could be overridden in the name of accommodation. Labour movement materials were soon including outlines of what obligations were implicit in that (for example in the CLC’s ‘MORE’ campaign). The federal Employment Equity Act of 1986 represented an important expansion of the rights regime in its inclusion of disability. The legislation was weak, applying only to federally regulated institutions (covering about 10 per cent of workers in Canada), and requiring only the reporting of employee numbers in the four ‘designated groups’ (the others being women, members of visible minorities, and Aboriginals). But it was important for its conceptual shift in the direction of affirmative action, and for the visibility it gave to the underrepresentation of these groups in all or parts of the labour force, and especially in its better paid and higher-status sectors. Even if tangible improvements in the employment of people with disabilities are hard to find, the Employment Equity Act increased pressure on employers, particularly those in the public sector. It also increases pressure on a labour movement that sees itself as widely committed to equity. The Emergence of Politicized Disability Rights Activism People with disabilities took the lead in advocacy on their issues in the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, and reframed those issues around claims to rights and independence. In the process, they rejected the dependency models lying at the heart of the work of older and established groups centred on single disabilities or diseases. The transformative objectives of the rights advocates also led to changes in some of these groups, though, building the strength of the movement for equity. The development of local and regional nodes of activism led in 1976 to the establishment of the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the

164 David Rayside and Fraser Valentine

Handicapped (COPOH), in 1993 becoming the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD). In the mid-1980s, the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW) was formed to support workforce integration, through programs designed to increase public awareness and policy attentiveness. In the early 1990s, Disabled People for Employment Equity (DPEE) was developed as an informal coalition of groups (primarily located in Ontario) pressing for workplace access. The disabled-led activist movement developed a strong national presence during the 1980s and 1990s. This was in part because the Charter’s drafting, and the human rights developments that flowed from it, concentrated activist attention on federal developments. The government in Ottawa also provided funding for the establishment of disability groups, the organizing of conferences, and the mounting of court challenges based on the Charter. As in other social movements, Quebec activists were more oriented towards the Quebec government than to Ottawa, though they maintained some links to the movement in the rest of Canada. There were other groups formed long before this that responded to separate illnesses or disabilities, and were shaped by apolitical paternalism. Some such groups reframed their work, or re-established themselves on more politicized footings. Even if they were less focused on workplace issues than the more purely rights groups, they contributed to the activist profile on labour force issues. The Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres (CAILC) was established in the 1980s on the foundation of cross-disability local resource centres. It embodied the emphasis on de-institutionalization, and the creation of supports to make independent living in the community possible for people with disabilities. It was also part of the new wave of organizations led by people with disabilities themselves – as opposed to parents and/or professionals. The shift in thinking embodied by such centres and by a range of other groups pushed work issues to the fore in the 1980s and 1990s. Their emphasis on autonomy dovetailed with an intensified interest in schooling opportunities, and a continued improvement in technical and disability supports. This focus did not always dovetail with the preoccupations of the labour movement. The attention to workplace issues was also amplified by the neo-liberal political discourse that had become dominant over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s. The re-envisaging of the citizen as autonomous consumer and taxpayer in some ways dovetailed with the drive towards independence among disability activists. Employability was coming to be emphasized more than ever as a marker of the ‘deserving’ poor.

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This does not mean that disability activists bought into the neo-liberal agenda, for they were fierce defenders of the social supports and income programs that were still required to allow for independence, and strong advocates of employment equity. But the rhetorical centring of the autonomous individual in the neo-liberal agenda allowed some room for activist manoeuvring that was denied many other groups. Such room was secured in part by the widespread perception that people with disabilities were ‘worthy’ claimants, not counted among the many ‘unworthy’ groups claiming state recognition and support. Strains in the Relationship Between Disability Activism and the Labour Movement A 1983 report based on a study jointly undertaken by the National Union of Provincial Government Employees (NUPGE) and the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped (COPOH) talked optimistically about the natural links between the labour movement and disability rights organizing: ‘[The] trade union movement has historically developed from a philosophy based on social justice and equality for all members of society – that includes the right to participate fully in the political, social and economic structures of society. This philosophy is rooted in the support the trade union movement gives to the collective struggles of persons striving to gain control over their own lives’ (Fudge and Holmes 1983:110). This claim belied the fact that there were strains in this relationship that created barriers to full cooperation. The focus on autonomy and independence among disability activists constituted a direct and explicit challenge to the institutional pattern that had prevailed in the social and political response to disability through most of the twentieth century. The success of this challenge led to job losses in a relatively unionized sector, and this led some unions to defend patterns widely discredited among people with disabilities themselves. More serious, though, were (and are) the support systems widely used to replace institutions. Personal attendants have been widely used by people who wish to ensure as much control over their lives as possible. But there is usually insufficient funding available to pay such attendants well. As Hazel Self, a leading figure in the Toronto Centre for Independent Living, puts it, there are often low skill sets on both sides of this relationship: ‘You get problems that arise between attendants and people with disabilities, and a vacuum is created; then comes in unionization to

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solve all the problems – then it’s a confrontation approach, and the whole flavour changes.’1 The shift away from institutions, and the strong preference for funding provided directly to people with disabilities, has much to do with control over service delivery. Harry Beatty is an activist and lawyer, and has a similar view: ‘There is tension between the Independent Living movement and the attendants’ unions in terms of autonomy. Then, there is tension between institutional groups and [such activist groups as] People First around issues of de-institutionalization and sheltered workshops – this has always been very divisive. At the corporate level, between unions and disability groups, there is a willingness to work together, but on the ground there is much more tension, and even a sense that they are enemies.’2 There are still doubts among some disability activists about how committed unions are to the employment of people with disabilities who are not already union members. The Canadian labour movement has for some time recognized the importance of union organizing drives in job sectors by groups historically on the margins of the workforce. But this has not been seen to translate very strongly into on-theground organizing for people with disabilities. There are also of course many such people who do not now work. This requires a firm commitment to employment equity that has not always been unequivocally evident in union priorities. Organizing workplaces dominated by women, by immigrants, and by racial minorities can be challenging enough. But taking serious steps to ensure access to work for those with disabilities involves even more daunting impediments, and can easily entail significant workplace investments. Union engagement with issues of disability has also been focused on those who have become disabled as a result of work, and on the prevention of such injuries. Disability activists focus primarily on people who have disabilities, however derived, and who seek full acceptance whatever the impairment. The frame used in the former is one centred on worker rights; the frame used in the latter is centred elsewhere. One of the issues that often creates tension between trade unionists and equity-seeking activists outside the labour movement is seniority. The defense of seniority rights has long been seen as a central bulwark against what is seen to be management arbitrariness and favouritism. But such rights often undermine commitments to equalize opportunities for those groups traditionally on the margin of the labour force. Seniority can often protect employees sickened or injured on the job, but impede the employment prospects of those seeking entry to work

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from a position of disadvantage. In 2003 an arbitrator found in favour of Gary Kivela, who had filed a complaint against his employer and his union for failing to accommodate his disability. Among the arbitrator’s findings was that both the City of Regina and CUPE ‘made no attempt to modify the seniority standard in the collective agreement to take into account the negative impact it had upon workers with disabilities’ (Canadian Labour Congress 2004). The difficulty in developing coalitions between labour organizations and disability rights activists has at times been explicitly acknowledged by labour. A bargaining manual created by the Canadian Labour Congress (2004:3) provides an illustrative comment on the experience of the two social movements coming together: ‘The result is, at times, a closer, more co-operative process to expand opportunities for people with disabilities and injured workers. It has not always been smooth; misunderstandings have resulted, as is often the case, in coalition work. Organisations of people with disabilities mistakenly see unions as the gate keepers to employment and unions, at times, neglect to consult with disability organisations thus increasing the tension.’ Forging Activist Linkages in the 1980s As we have already argued, union interest in the workplace safety and the support of workers whose health has suffered because of work is long-standing. The labour movement has fought for improved working conditions for all, and enhanced supports and work re-entry rights for employees who have become disabled as a result of workplace injuries. This could have helped establish a basis for cooperation with disability activists, though would clearly require thinking outside the box of injured workers. Feminists working inside the Canadian labour movement helped create political space for discussions of differences and discrimination other than those based on gender. They not only raised questions about long-established union practices and deeply entrenched cultural norms, but they also put on the table the substantial rethinking required to take diversity seriously. Diversity challenges on grounds of race, sexuality, Aboriginal status, and disability all raised distinctive issues, but they built on this crucial foundation. The political openings provided by the creation of a new human rights regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped promote political cooperation. This was particularly the case as the negotiations

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concerning the Charter of Rights and Freedoms heated up, since there was widespread sentiment among a range of players that the new rights instrument should not simply replicate previous rights statutes. Enough negative experience had been accumulated, for example, with the twenty-year-old Canadian Bill of Rights (not constitutionally entrenched) to open the door to substantial revision. The fact that the labour movement already had a core of activists from among the ranks of injured workers, and that unions had been paying more attention to workplace health and safety, meant that there was some potential for rights-focused activism within unions. Union programs in a few Ontario cities had been created to train counsellors on programs to support workers whose health or ability had been compromised at work. In 1979 the Canadian Labour Congress had surveyed local unions about programs and services to assist people with disabilities, helping to lay the ground for more serious policy attention to those issues. In 1980 the CLC developed its first major policy statement on disability, outlining the responsibilities of the labour movement to support people with disabilities. It dwelt substantially on the support for union members who were disabled because of work, but it also urged greater work opportunities for all people with disabilities, and encouraged political action to move public policy in that direction (Canadian Labour Congress 1980). The CLC reflected this in a 1980 brief that it presented to a special parliamentary committee on the disabled. It urged coverage of disability in human rights and affirmative action statutes, commitment to full employment and income security, establishment of incentive programs, and critical scrutiny of ‘sheltered’ workshops. These were all reflective of priorities in the emerging disability rights movement. A campaign mounted in 1981 to urge changes to the federal minimum wage also brought disability issues to the fore. People with disabilities had been excluded from coverage by the minimum wage in federal and most provincial law, and labour unions joined with disability activists in seeking the removal of that exemption (Fudge and Holmes 1983). This largely successful campaign forged links that then produced the joint study prepared by COPOH and the National Union of Provincial Government Employees on employing disabled Canadians. The 1982 CLC convention approved a resolution that not only supported activism on disability issues, but recognized the legitimacy of activist voices outside the labour movement. It read in part: ‘Whereas

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disabled Canadians are demanding that they be given the opportunity to represent themselves in all matters that affect their activities of daily living … Therefore be it resolved that the Canadian Labour Congress recognizes the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped as the representative voice of disabled Canadians; and be it further resolved that the Canadian Labour Congress establish a strong working relationship with the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped for the purpose of bringing about social justice for all disabled Canadians.’ COPOH’s 1981 convention had passed a mirror resolution urging closer cooperation with the labour movement (Fudge and Holmes 1983). At the provincial level, the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) was an early leader in taking up disability issues (Ontario Federation of Labour 2001). As early as 1963 an OFL convention had called on the provincial government to enact legislation encouraging employers to hire people with disabilities. In 1981 the federation issued a statement on the employment of the disabled, calling for equal access to a full range of employment opportunities, to the educational system, and to transportation and other community services. In 1985 it called on affiliated unions to negotiate employment equity provisions that included disability, as well as job modification and rehabilitation programs for injured workers. Policy statements later in the decade called for action to respond to systemic barriers facing people with disabilities. By the late 1980s the British Columbia Federation of Labour (BCFED) had also developed policy that clearly embraced the rights language of the disability rights movement. Its 1988 convention adopted a policy on employment that criticized traditional approaches and called for the sorts of income support, employment standards, and affirmative action required to secure greater independence for people with disabilities (BCFED 1988). While there are positive features of the approach taken by the B.C. Federation of Labour, their policy statements have tended to devalue the abilities of persons with disabilities when what they truly need and want is independence. Further, we recognize that the resources now expended on financially supporting persons with disabilities can be better utilized by investing in changing our society’s systems so that people with disabilities can play a productive role. Still, the BC ‘Fed’ had an unusual opportunity to engage disability issues. On the one hand, the importance of resource industries in the province, and the safety risks historically associated with that work,

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gave union affiliates such as the International Wood and Allied Workers (IWA) an incentive to take the concerns of injured workers seriously. On the other hand, the large white-collar and public sector unions had a history of social progressivism, and of linkage to other social movements. The Solidarity coalition that mobilized against the Bennett government of the 1980s helped develop these connections, however fragile, at a relatively early stage. The Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) was not focusing that kind of attention on disability, but it did include it in its wider engagement with equity issues. Through the collective bargaining process, it secured the creation of joint labour-management equity programs with some employers (including General Motors) in 1984 – programs that covered people with disabilities. In 1986 an annual human rights conference was inaugurated, and one year later, the union’s national convention supported a resolution favouring mandatory hiring quotas for employing people with disabilities. The first wave of the AIDS epidemic was a contributor to heightening the visibility of disability issues in these years, since it posed urgent questions about discrimination based on what was widely framed as a disability. The epidemic also raised the issues for job retention among many employees, and the provision of supports in the event that staying in the job was impossible. A number of individual unions developed strong policies on HIV/AIDS, as did the CLC. The mobilization of activist pressure to ensure the inclusion of disability in the new Charter facilitated the development of links across disability groups and with other groups, including women’s movement organizations and labour unions. The year 1981 was also the International Year of Disabled Persons, and this heightened interest in the issues across potential allies. The Charter activism was successful, and in significant ways it secured a more open door for greater cooperation between the two movements. It would still be some time before full advantage was taken of that open door, though changes in Canada’s rights regime would provide a boost to the visibility of disability issues in the political arena more generally. Union Engagement with Disability from the Late 1990s Full labour movement engagement with disability issues would require moving beyond formal policy pronouncements that the CLC’s convention approved in 1980 and 1982. It would mean:

The Labour Movement’s Disability Agenda 171 • Development of contract language offering supports for workers

• •

•

• •

injured or made sick by their work and securing job protection or retraining for them; Devotion of serious union attention to accommodating the workplace and particular jobs within it to people with disabilities; Commitment to employment equity programs that create work opportunities for people with disabilities now effectively marginalized or excluded; Ensured access to all union activities by people with disabilities, and support for the advocacy of people with disabilities by caucuses, committees, conferences, and representatives on executive bodies; Development of educational programming to counter prejudice based on ability, directed to union members and the general public; Application of political pressure on governments to improve legislative recognition of disability, combined with a willingness to pursue litigation to secure such recognition, all in cooperation with disability activist groups outside the labour movement.

Until the late 1990s, the signs of significant initiatives on such fronts were scattered, with the notable exception of initiatives to improve health and safety standards in the workplace, and protections for employees injured or made sick on the job. For a considerable time, Canadian unions have prioritized health and safety issues in collective bargaining, aiming to secure higher standards as well as a say for employees in monitoring safety issues. (Ontario law actually requires a health and safety committee, with union representation in collectively organized settings, for large and medium-sized firms.) Labour has also bargained for improved sick leave, medical coverage, and disability insurance, and for provisions on work reassignment and retraining. In 1990, the Ontario Federation of Labour established the Occupational Disability Response Team to enhance training for employees and union representatives concerning workplace insurance issues. The union-supported creation of the Canadian Injured Workers Alliance (CIWA) is one manifestation of labour engagement. Here is an area in which unions with membership primarily in manufacturing and resource extraction have good track records, without having played particularly progressive roles on other equity issues. Even on this front, change has come slowly, though probably as much from employer intransigence as from slow or partial union engagement with the issues. A 2000 study of over 1,000 collective

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agreements undertaken by the CLC showed that 69 per cent of them had no provision for health and safety committees, and 75 per cent had none for the work environment. Over 60 per cent had no provisions for training or transferring an employee who became disabled because of work, and only 7 per cent gave workers the right to such transfer or training (Canadian Labour Congress 2000). The fact that the CLC had undertaken a survey focusing on disability, of course, was itself a significant marker of its growing interest in the issue. One front on which there has been notable uptake has been in the application of political pressure on governments to enhance rights frameworks for people with disabilities, and to ensure social and economic supports (including minimum wage regulation) to prevent destitution. Labour has been a central player in advocating stronger social programs and rights claims, other than those based explicitly on disability, which are especially important for those with disabilities. On disability rights specifically, we have already seen that the CLC was part of coalitions formed in the 1980s to secure the inclusion of disability in the Charter and in employment equity legislation, and to eliminate the exceptions for people with disability in federal minimum wage laws. In 1989 the OFL was calling for legislation to force a modification of workplaces to accommodate workers with disabilities. In 1991, the CAW issued a policy letter on the duty to accommodate, specifically pointing out to union locals the need to accommodate members with disabilities in union activities. During the early 1990s, activists in the federal public sector, particularly in Ottawa itself, were making their voices heard within the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) (Public Service Alliance of Canada 1997a). They formed the first PSAC Members with Disabilities Ad Hoc Committee (MDAC) in 1990, and secured the resource assistance of the PSAC human rights officer. They were soon meeting PSAC leaders and making presentations within a range of union settings – including the 1991 Triennial Convention. Soon after that meeting, the PSAC national board approved a policy requiring that accessibility be taken into account in the planning of all association functions. In 1992 PSAC’s Equal Opportunities Committee was expanded to include representatives from various traditionally marginalized groups, including people with disabilities. One year later, PSAC supported ACCESS ‘93, the first national conference on disabilities in Canadian labour movement history, and one that drew seventy-five members from PSAC and other unions. This was a threshold-crossing event in PSAC’s engagement

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with disability issues, and it helped spawn MDACs across the country (for example, in Montreal, Winnipeg, Whitehorse, Toronto, Halifax, and St John’s). The challenge of maintaining activist energy was daunting, and not all of these groups endured. A 1992 survey conducted by the MDAC in the National Capital Region also found only very limited awareness of disability issues among leaders of the unions making up the sub-groups of PSAC. But the inclusion of disability in PSAC’s policy agenda was secured. During this time, it supported a number of disability-related cases in court or through labour tribunals. The 1994 Triennial Convention approved a resolution calling for the development of a comprehensive PSAC policy on disability, one that was drafted by Yvonne Peters (a disability rights activist) and approved three years later. A second ACCESS conference was held in 1995, and its preoccupations signalled a shift from a focus on making unions themselves more accessible to a preoccupation with promoting change in the workplace and the broader community. The federal government’s consideration of amendments to the Employment Equity Act in 1995 occasioned a number of union presentations on disability issues, and most briefs suggested a widening policy response to them, and the sort of reframing that disability activists had been advocating. Among the labour groups that made submissions to the parliamentary committee examining the act were the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), PSAC, and the CLC. The second half of the decade saw a quickened pace in labour’s engagement with disability. One of the developments most striking for disability activists was the 1996 development of a program of support for union members who had children with disabilities by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. The Special Needs Project represented another new departure in the labour movement. The funds available to union members resulted from a child-care fund negotiated in the collective agreement with Canada Post. One marker of increased labour engagement was the heightened interest in questions of voice and representation. By the turn of the century, caucuses or committees existed in a number of labour organizations, including CUPE, CUPW, the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU, a CUPE affiliate in BC), PSAC, and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). Some of these had secured the representation of people with disabilities on their own equity or human rights committees (for example, PSAC, BCGSEU, CUPW), and the inclusion of their issues within union educational programming.

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The CLC was providing support for its own Disability Rights Working Group, first established in 1994, and with a clear focus on disability rights. In 1999 the CLC designated an executive position on its national executive for a person with disabilities. The following year, it held its first Disability Rights Conference, drawing almost 300 activists to Montreal. Some of those in attendance were from the Canadian Injured Workers Alliance, the DisAbled Women’s Network, and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. Union members with disabilities then elected Derek Fudge to the CLC executive position designated the year before. (A second conference was held in late 2004, with workshops on such topics as ‘moving forward at the bargaining table’ and ‘the duty to accommodate.’) In 2001 the CLC also launched a campaign entitled Mobilize, Organize, Represent and Educate (MORE) to raise awareness of disability issues. Like other recent initiatives, the language used and materials developed for this campaign were very much reflective of the rights frameworks used by disability rights activists. They explicitly rejected the ‘medical model’ that so long shaped public policy and the activity of ‘caring’ organizations, taking up instead a more political model that pointed to systemic discrimination (Canadian Labour Congress 2004). As with campaigns mounted on other equity issues, this was important for recognizing that the barriers facing people with disabilities included the prejudice of union members and the unresponsiveness of union officials. It was also in 2001 that the CLC Winter School in Ontario first offered a week-long training course on workers with disabilities. The educational work embodied in this and other initiatives was largely new, though earlier questionnaires on disability (for example, the 1979 survey by the CLC) might well have started the process of increasing grassroots union awareness. From that time on, there were a few other attempts at promoting education on the issues – one notable initiative coming in 1979 from the Winnipeg Labour Council. Another came in 1993 from CUPE, which surveyed locals to find out what jobs were held by people with disabilities, and what difficulties they faced. Among CLC affiliates, the OFL and BCGEU were still prominent in the profile they were giving disability issues at the turn of the decade. The OFL was regularly intervening in provincial consultations on legislation that directly or indirectly affected people with disabilities, and criticizing the provincial government for its weak legislative record. It also developed an accessibility facilities guide to help unions plan meetings and other activities in a barrier-free manner. By this time, disability issues were emerging in other federations – for example, the

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Alberta Federation of Labour – which in 2001 issued a wide-ranging policy paper at its annual convention. The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) (grouping a significant number of provincial public sector unions) has also developed educational materials deeply reflective of the frameworks used by disability rights activists. It has developed educational modules and fact sheets that discuss not only union members with disabilities, but also the need to address a wide range of social policies through the lens of disability, and the importance of labour unions reaching out to communities seeking equity. One of NUPGE’s equality fact sheets was based on a presentation to the National Union’s Equality Leadership School by Michael Bach, executive vice-president of the Canadian Association for Community Living. A 2003 policy statement refers to disability rights as ‘an integral part of our union’s agenda’ (National Union of Public and General Employees 2003a). The turn of the decade saw a widening of labour organizations’ taking up disability issues seriously. The early starters were primarily to be found among labour federations, and now they were routinely addressing disability in submissions to legislative bodies. Public sector unions were also among the early starters; for example, CUPE and those grouped within PSAC and NUPGE. As was the case on women’s issues and sexual orientation, the CAW was also taking up disability issues ahead of the pack, and was now submitting briefs to legislative committees with expansive positions on the issues going beyond traditional preoccupations with the currently employed. But by now there were others with noteworthy policies and some indication of movement beyond policy. The Steelworkers established a Human Rights Committee in 1997 and held its first national human rights conference two years later. Disability issues moved to the foreground, particularly in 2004, with the staging of a national policy conference titled Opening Doors. It flagged the likelihood of increased incidence of disability with an aging workforce, recognized the importance of including the commitment to accommodate employees with disabilities in collective agreements, and acknowledged the importance of affirmative action programs. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) had adopted an Equality Action Plan in 1998, and while it focused much more on women and visible minorities than on disability, the latter was then included in guides prepared for the inclusion of equality issues in collective bargaining, and for responding to harassment. Though still

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operating within a relatively traditional framework, the IWA organized a Disability Management Conference in 2000. In the late 1990s, it had recognized that court decisions on the duty to accommodate were moving beyond what the union had done in the past. By decade’s end, more and more unions were showing interest in adjusting the workplace and the allocation of work to accommodate employees with disabilities. This dovetailed with the longer-standing concern for the rights of union members already in the workforce, and for securing employee rights to retain a job or shift to work more suitable to their disabilities. The Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling on duty to accommodate also focused labour’s attention on its own legal obligations on this front. Among the labour organizations that had developed educational materials for its members and training manuals for its officials were PSAC (on the duty to accommodate and on disability insurance), CUPE (on disability rights in the workplace), and NUPGE (on the duty to accommodate). Unions were increasingly taking grievances over accommodation to labour tribunals or courts (Canadian Labour Congress 2004: App. 1). In 1998 the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association (GVTA) won a claim that the local district must do more to accomodate employees with disabilities. Two years later, an Alberta local of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) won with a claim that sought a bundling together of jobs to accommodate an employee with disabilities working for Canada Safeway. In 2003 a different local of the same union won a claim that the employer had to consider work location issues and commuting hardship for an employee with a disability. (There have been many other cases in which the duty to accommodate has been invoked, although some claims appear to merely use this argument opportunistically to bolster otherwise weak arguments. There have also been a few cases in which unions have been targetted by disability-based claims alongside employers.) Where unions have moved least is on employment equity – on the advancement of concrete measures designed to ensure that people now excluded from or marginalized in the workforce have more options for work. Several labour organizations, and particularly the federations, have lobbied governments to strengthen legislative measures directed at increasing access to decent work for those traditionally on the margins, including people with disabilities. Some have talked of moving beyond exhortation to firmer measures to overcome what are widely recognized as systemic barriers. But labour’s traditional focus on the interests of its existing members (in some respects a legal obligation) has represented a

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drag on the development of concrete measures to increase workplace access for people with disabilities. On some equity issues, labour has moved beyond that preoccupation by launching organizing drives in sectors with traditionally disadvantaged workers. Disability, as we have seen, is different, and there have been no organizing drives that have registered with great impact on disability activists. In 2002 the CLC reiterated how little progress had been made in the workforce in a submission to the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities: ‘It is worth repeating the reasons why employment equity and equality issues are important to the labour movement. Our submissions to various levels of government serve as policy instruments; but equally important to us, they are educational tools for our membership. Union members work with these documents to talk to each other, educate each other, and debate these issues as a way of building solidarity in the workplace and communities where they live’ (Canadian Labour Congress 2002a:1). In this and other policy documents, the CLC has called for increased access to employment and to decent wages for people with disabilities, a national income security program that recognizes the costs associated with disability, comprehensive support systems (such as home care and transportation), and support for families having children with disabilities. In this agenda, the CLC seems in accord with disability activists attending its 2000 national conference in Montreal. A few unions have incorporated employment equity language into their collective agreements. The current agreement between CEP and Northern Telephone, for example, specifically includes people with disabilities alongside women, visible minorities, and aboriginals, and acknowledges that equality includes taking special measures to accommodate difference, not simply treating everyone the same. Overview and Conclusion Unionization improves conditions for employees with disabilities. It boosts their wages, and it increases the likelihood that they have access to training (Canadian Council on Social Development 2004). This does not necessarily result from bargaining that specifically targets people with disabilities, but is a by-product of the more general benefits that accrue to employees when they unionize, and particularly employees in traditionally disadvantaged jobs.

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Workplaces that have collective bargaining units are also more likely to provide openings for employees to influence health and safety, and supports for those that become disabled while in the labour force. The obligation to provide at least some accommodation to disabled employees wanting to return to work is not restricted to unionized settings, but the existence of a union is likely to embolden employees who want such accommodation, particularly since that union shares in the obligation to accommodate. It is fair to say, though, that the Canadian labour movement has only begun to move beyond its traditional foundations in addressing disability. The early 1980s saw the first significant coalitional linkages between labour and disability activists, based in part on newly politicized rights frameworks. The early 1990s saw only a few unions and federations taking steps to officially recognize people with disabilities in their midst. But it was in the late 1990s that engagement with disability began to ‘take off’ inside the labour movement. A number of highly encouraging steps have been taken since then, but it is too soon to know whether there is yet much impact on the ground. The response of labour organizations to questions of disability displays some of the patterns found in their response to other equity matters. Union federations and public sector unions are more likely than others to respond favourably. White-collar unions are generally more advanced than blue-collar; female-dominated unions more than maledominated. There are exceptions, however. As on other diversity fronts, for example, the CAW has a relatively good record. But on issues related to health and safety, and on the provision of supports to those who are disabled during their work lives or as a result of their work, some otherwise quite traditional unions have made important gains. It is, after all, precisely in resource extraction and manufacturing sectors that workplace dangers can be most acute. But the fact remains that the sources of tension between the disability rights movement and the labour movement have not simply disappeared. The wariness within disability activism is in part a function of the relative size and weight of the labour movement. The disability movement has always been a frail one, heavily dependent on government funding. Organizing across disabilities has been a hallmark of the politicized activism that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, but the differences across groups remain pronounced and the difficulties of maintaining activist energy formidable. Any relationship between disability activists and unions is inevitably an unequal one. Carol MacGregor founded the Disabled Persons for Employment Equity, and now works

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for injured workers within the labour movement. But even she acknowledges the challenges: ‘It has always been about ‘them’ and ‘us,’ because the unions were perceived as having all the power to do big changes, and they are obviously much larger organizations.’3 There are real and intractable differences in orientation on important issues, at the heart of which lie questions of power and autonomy. The language with which major representatives of the labour movement have taken up questions of disability shows some recognition of those sources, but continued alliance building will require the two movements to recognize that their interests strongly coincide on many issues, but not on all. Among the encouraging signs is a growing recognition, most obviously within labour federations, of the need to work with disability rights activists outside the union movement. Also significant is the fact that some labour leaders recognize that disability activists often do not see unions as their allies (Ontario Federation of Labour 2001). What then of the broader analytical debate over the adaptability of the labour movement to challenges from groups seeking recognition of diversity? There are certainly grounds for rejecting any suggestion of categorical distinctions in the demands made by disability rights activists and labour unions. There are unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, differences in orientation on some issues, but clearly an overlap in concern for workplace accessibility and a decent wage. There are also significantly shared concerns about retaining a strong state role in securing income supports and social service programs. There are also strong indicators, however belated, of Canadian unions having taken up disability issues beyond purely rhetorical commitments. They have marshalled their research arms and their political voices to call for legislative change. Some have been pushing in particular for stronger employment equity provisions to secure greater employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Several have taken steps to increase the accessibility of their own functions and events. Many more have provided more emphasis than ever on workplace safety, and on the provision of supports and workplace re-entry rights for those who have become disabled while employed. But there are also indications of how slow union practices and norms are to change, and how much labour actions are still framed in traditional ways even if their equity language is not. As much as on any diversity issue, then, we see mixed messages. But we also see the pace of change quickening, demonstrating that significant change in unions is possible even on this most challenging of issue fronts.

180 David Rayside and Fraser Valentine NOTES This essay benefited enormously from the research assistance of Kimberly Campbell. It is based in part on personal interviews with disability rights activists conducted in 2002 by Fraser Valentine, in conjunction with PhD dissertation research. Both Valentine and Rayside express their profound appreciation to those informants for their time and insight. 1 Hazel Self, interview by author. Toronto, 13 May 2002. 2 Harry Beatty, interview by author. Toronto, 14 May 2002. 3 Carol MacGregor, interview by author. Toronto, 13 May 2002.

WEB SITES CONSULTED Web sites of several unions and federations were consulted; many relevant documents are available through these sites: Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). www.afl.org. British Columbia Federation of Labour (BCFed). www.bcfed.com. British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU). www.bcgeu.ca. Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). www.caw.ca. Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). www.clc-ctc.ca. Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). www.cupw.ca. Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). http://www.cupe.ca/. Canadian Union of Public Employees, BC (CUPE-BC). www.cupe.bc.ca. Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). www.cep.ca. Confederation des syndicates nationaux (CSN). www.csn.qc.ca. Federation des travailleures et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ). www.ftq.qc.ca. International Woodworkers of America (IWA). www.iwa.ca. National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE). www.nupge.ca. Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). www.ofl-fto.on.ca. Ontario Public Sector Employees’ Union (OPSEU). www.opseu.org. Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). www.psac.com. Steelworkers (USWA). www.uswa.ca.

8 Racism and the Labour Movement TANIA DAS GUPTA

A number of studies in the last few decades have documented the existence of racism in the Canadian labour market. Using 1999 data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from Statistics Canada, Jackson (2002) reported that people of colour1 earned an average of $19,895 in 1999, while all other workers earned $23,764, a difference of 16.3 per cent. On the basis of census data from 1996, Galabuzi (2001) noted that individuals of colour had poverty rates of 35.6 per cent compared to a general poverty rate of 17.6 per cent. He also argued that economic apartheid exists in Canada. Another study of the city of Toronto, by Ornstein (2000) and based on the 1996 Canadian census, concluded that non-European groups suffer a family poverty rate of 34.3 per cent, more than double the rate for Europeans and self-identified Canadians. Income disparities and high poverty levels reflect other factors, such as higher unemployment rates and the segregation of workers of colour in low-end jobs in processing and manufacturing, sales, and service, and in industries such as clothing and textiles. In addition, these sectors often have high concentrations of women of colour. High unemployment rates, over-representation in low-end jobs and industries, and under-representation in high-end jobs and industries occur through systemically racist hiring and promotional processes and through the devaluation of foreign education and professional experience. Henry and Ginzberg (1985) and Das Gupta (1996) have demonstrated that racism in the form of exclusion or segregation in workplaces can result from such systemic practices as word-of-mouth hiring, differential treatment at the screening or pre-screening stages, biased interview processes, and the use of vague and subjective criteria in hiring, performance appraisals, and promotions.

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Unions have a crucial role to play in the fight against racism, both in the labour market and in counteracting systemically racist practices in specific workplaces. Galabuzi (2001) showed that income disparities between white workers and those of colour were reduced to 8 per cent among unionized workers, indicating that unionization reduces wage disparities between differently racialized workers. Jackson (2002) argued that unionized workers of colour also have better protection from layoffs, and may have more access to promotions coupled with seniority and grievance procedures if they are subjected to racial harassment. Unfortunately, workers of colour are less unionized than white workers. In 1999 only 22.2 per cent of workers of colour were covered by collective agreements while the rate for all other workers was 32.0 per cent (16). This chapter analyses anti-racism in unions, a movement that has had to overturn a long legacy of racism and exclusion of workers of colour. I argue that the labour movement was blatantly and unabashedly racist prior to the 1930s, followed by a period of neo-racism (Simmons 1998) in which white dominance took on less blatant and more systemic forms. Since the 1990s the movement has been progressing towards antiracism, although it is not quite there yet. Many challenges remain, including implementing employment equity within unions themselves, equitable representation in union leadership, advocating for the implementation of employment equity in workplaces, and translating policies into practical procedures. Significant progress is evident in the development of anti-racist, anti-harassment, and equity policies, as well as in developing and implementing educational activities for members. Methods In writing this chapter, I have relied on scholarly literature dealing with racism and anti-racism in the labour movement, although this is seriously limited. I have also relied on interviews conducted with labour union activists who work in the areas of anti-racism and human rights. Interviews were conducted with representatives of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Canadian AutoWorkers (CAW), United Steel Workers of America (USW), Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), and Asian Canadian Labour Alliance (ACLA). These interviews were conducted in two time periods, 1995 and the summer of

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2003. In addition, I have also attended a number of key conferences and workshops where union members have deliberated on these issues.2 Although my information is Toronto-based, I believe that the larger issues raised are relevant for the country as a whole. According to the 2001 census, 73 per cent of immigrants who arrived in the 1990s settled in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver; 58 per cent of these newcomers were born in Asia, including the Middle East (Statistics Canada 2003a). In 2001 people of colour constituted about 37 per cent of the population of Toronto. More than three-quarters of all immigrants today are people of colour (Jackson 2002). The History of Anti-Racism Activism 1880s to 1920s: Union Exclusionism This was a period marked by widespread support for the explicit exclusion of workers of colour from unions, from professions, and from Canada itself. In 1885, the Chinese Immigration Act imposed a head tax of $50 on Chinese Canadians, who were required to carry a special identification certificate. There was a subsequent increase in the head tax, and any violations of the act resulted in a $500 fine or twelve months in jail. The Immigration Act of 1910 gave immigration officials the power to restrict the entry of ‘immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.’ The application of these policies was particularly striking on the West Coast, and labour organizations themselves were centrally involved. Unions in British Columbia spearheaded such groups as the AntiChinese Union, the Asiatic Exclusion League, and the White Canada Association. In addition to lobbying white politicians to restrict the entry of non-white workers to Canada, these unions also instigated popular violence against them (Das Gupta 1998), such as the Vancouver riot of 1907 aimed at Japanese and Chinese immigrants. By excluding non-white workers from their ranks and in some cases negotiating differential salaries and working conditions into collective agreements, white unions took part in perpetuating differential labour standards on the basis of race. For instance, according to Creese (1991:34), Chinese workers earned anywhere from one-quarter to one-half the wages earned by unskilled white men in the same industries. Avery (1979) illustrates that unions were not only supportive of racist state immigration policies, but also xenophobic towards eastern,

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central, and southern European immigrants. Their fear of competition in the labour market became racialized particularly during periods of economic downturn. Despite the coercive tactics of the Canadian state and of individual employers, and the open hostility of white unions, Asian and black workers formed unions of their own to protect their interests (Creese 1991; Ward 1978). In the 1860s, at the end of the First World War, and in the early part of the Depression, Chinese workers went on strike for pay equity with white workers, shorter working hours, licensing rights, and an end to discrimination, racial assaults, and the exploitative contracting system. Creese (1991:37) writes that there ‘were over two dozen strikes’ during these periods, including one by laundry workers, cooks and restaurant workers, shingle weavers, and crewmen on steamers (Creese 1991; Wickberg et al. 1982). These strikes were aimed at forming associations, resisting wage reductions, standardizing wages, raising wages, regulating hours of work, and resisting racist exclusion. The situation was similar for black workers. Most Canadian railways had a practice of hiring black men as porters, except the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), which had employed black cooks and waiters until it amalgamated with the Canadian National Railway (CNR) in the 1920s (Calliste 1987). Following the GTR’s amalgamation with the CNR, black cooks and waiters were replaced by whites. The black employees then filed a complaint, which was heard by a board of arbitration. As a result, black cooks were retained, and a compromise was reached whereby laid off waiters were put back on the payroll of the CNR and eventually given jobs as porters. With agreement from the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees (CBRE), the CNR instituted two separate classifications: Group I for more highly paid white workers, such as inspectors, dining-car stewards and sleeping-car conductors; and Group II for black workers, including porters and former GTR cooks (Calliste 1987:3). Promotions were restricted within each group. Countering the racist exclusion practised by the CBRE until 1919, black porters employed on the Canadian National Railway formed the Order of Sleeping Car Porters (OSCP) in 1918 (Calliste 1988). It appears that the railway companies preferred to hire black migrant porters from the United States, rather than Canadian Black and West Indian porters because the latter were often union organizers and had families and communities to support them in Canada. OSCP put pressure on Canadian railway companies to hire Canadian black porters. Members of the Order who tried to organize porters working

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on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) were fired without cause. These workers pursued a hearing of their grievances under the 1907 Industrial Disputes Investigation Act. As a result of the OSCP’s pressuring the CBRE for racial integration, it was incorporated by the CBRE as an auxiliary, and in 1920 given full status within the larger organization. The segregation of Group I and Group II was maintained until 1964 when the groups merged. Thus, the racial segregation practised by the employers was reproduced by the union. Frager (1992) writes that between 1900 and 1939, unions in the clothing and fur industries in Toronto suffered from racial tension between predominantly Anglo-Celtic Christian workers, many of whom were skilled tradesmen, and eastern European Jewish workers, many of whom were non-English-speaking and allocated to deskilled work. As a result of the language barrier and the prevailing climate of antiSemitism, workers were often organized into separate locals. Some union papers were known to print anti-Semitic jokes, and some leaders used racially derogatory terms to refer to Jewish members. In fact, Frager writes that anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant feelings led to the formation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), apart from the non-Jewish Journeymen Tailors’ Union of America (JTUA) and the United Garment Workers (UGW). Despite efforts to merge these unions, Jews and non-Jews remained divided. According to Frager, the division between workers was best illustrated during the 1932 general strike in Toronto’s fur industry, when hundreds of Jewish workers walked off the job and non-Jews refused to join them. In contrast to the exclusionism of the mainstream labour movement, some radical leftist unions, more inclusive of workers of colour, did emerge. They included the One Big Union (OBU) and the Workers’ Unity League (WUL), which actively recruited Chinese workers, opened leadership positions for them, and integrated their specific issues into general union demands (Creese 1991). Chinese lumber workers, some of whom were members of the OBU, struck in 1920 when a wage increase was refused. White workers stood in solidarity with them, and together they were able to negotiate the wage increase (Creese 1992). Unfortunately, these unions were short-lived. Moreover, some research indicates that not all communist-inspired unions were egalitarian. For instance, Frager (1992) points to sexism in the Toronto cloakmakers union in the interwar years, while Muszynski’s (1996) research into fishing unions in British Columbia shows racist and sexist preferences in organizing practices and differential wage rates.

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1930s: Industrial Unionism and Radical Challenge According to Ward (1978), racism in the labour movement began to be less overt in the 1920s. This development may be linked to a new progressivism in the Canadian union movement in Canada, which was characterized by industrial unionism, and influenced by socialism and anti-Americanism (Williams 1975). Going beyond organizing mainly white, male craft-workers, industrial unionism in the tradition of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the United States focused on organizing unskilled and previously unorganized workers, many of whom were presumably women and workers of colour. In 1935 the communist-inspired Workers’ Unity League (WUL) organized thousands of unemployed workers for the famous ‘trek to Ottawa’ (149). Avery (1979) reports that at the 1928 annual convention of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), there was a struggle between those who wanted the government to ensure that 75 per cent of immigrants should be English-speaking and others who felt that such quota systems were reactionary. In the end, the latter group won the debate, although the former remained a strong grass roots minority. In its 1931 convention, the TLC dropped its racially exclusionist position and called for extending voting rights to all Canadian-born people, including people of colour. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), formed in 1932, pushed for greater inclusion of Asian Canadians. There is no doubt that the Jewish Labour Committee (JLC), founded in 1935, as well as black and Chinese unions and associations, brought pressure to bear on the labour movement. Black porters on the Canadian Pacific Railway were unionized by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), an American union, in 1942, and their first agreement was reached in 1945 (Calliste 1989:9). Along with gaining much improved working conditions for black porters on the CPR, the BSCP also urged the CPR to grant permanent employee status to temporary migrant porters who had worked regularly for two and one-half to three years. The union also advocated that immigration authorities should grant Canadian immigrant status to those migrant porters who had been in Canada for two years (Calliste 1989:11). Panitch and Swartz (1988) state that ‘an era of free collective bargaining’ in Canada was inaugurated in 1944 by the federal government’s Order-in-Council 1003, which legally established the right of private sector workers to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike if

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necessary, and which promised to sanction any employer who prevented these rights from being exercised. In 1948 these workers’ rights were made permanent in the Industrial Relations Dispute Investigation Act. Panitch and Swartz further argue that these legislative changes were a response to labour militancy in the preceding years. There is little record of the role of women of colour in unions in these years. This could simply reflect the fact that women of colour were generally excluded from Canada or severely marginalized within it because their reproductive capacities were viewed as threats to the whiteness of the Canadian population. According to Frager (1992), unions in the clothing industry in Toronto, which employed a large number of immigrant Jewish women in the early 1900s, failed to include them in a meaningful manner due to the sexism of male leaders. The Canadian feminist movement of the time did not support them either, due to racialization and antiSemitism. 1950s and 1960s: ‘Human Rights’ Decades From the 1940s to the 1980s, the labour movement can be characterized as non-racist. It removed racist exclusion, advocated for the enfranchisement of Asian Canadians, and campaigned for human rights legislation both provincially and federally. However, its basic structure remained unchanged. Unions stayed largely white and male, particularly in the character of their leaders. This may not have been official policy, but a result of past policies, procedures, and practices. It amounted to systemic or institutionalized racism whereby apparently standard policies disadvantaged people of colour. That in turn reproduced still widely accepted notions about people of colour being unreliable or incompetent, or lacking leadership qualities. Nevertheless, the Jewish Labour Committee pushed the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) to bring human rights provisions into its constitution. Leah (1999) notes that a new awareness of human rights arose because of the racism, anti-Semitism, and genocide of Hitler’s regime, as well as the suspension of civil rights within Canada, particularly in the case of Japanese Canadians who were interned in labour camps as ‘enemy aliens.’ Several thousand Japanese internees were deported at the end of the Second World War. In addition, during the war years, a shipload of Jews seeking refuge from Germany was

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turned away, leaving no doubt that anti-Semitism and racism were institutionalized in Canada. The National Committee on Human Rights was formed within the CLC. Labour committees for human rights were established in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver to work against discrimination outside the scope of collective bargaining. They investigated and documented cases of discrimination in employment, housing, and services (Das Gupta 1998; Hill 1977). Supported by the Toronto Labour Committee for Human Rights (TLCHR) and the Fair Employment Practices Act of 1953, black porters in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers (CBRT) won promotional rights into higher positions, such as sleeping car conductors. The loss of seniority upon being promoted was successfully challenged by a CBRT local as a racism issue. However, according to Calliste (1987), porters’ unions never took responsibility for their part in perpetuating racial discrimination against black porters. 1970s: The Feminist Challenge In an earlier paper (Das Gupta 1998), I pointed out that by the 1960s some of the labour human rights committees became inactive, the desired legislation having been passed. In 1962 immigration policies were de-racialized, so that race and ethnicity were no longer criteria for the admittance to Canada of landed immigrants. Instead, the focus was on taking immigrants with the skills, education, and expertise demanded by a rapidly growing capitalist economy. Although most immigrants continued to arrive from the United States, Britain, and other western European countries and were predominantly white; increasing numbers, for whom English was a second language, began to come from parts of southern Europe and so-called Third World countries. Most women of colour and immigrant women arrived either as wives and ‘dependants’ of male immigrants or as domestic workers. The supposedly non-discriminatory Points System made it difficult for most women applicants to qualify as independent immigrants. This had implications for the lives of women who entered as ’dependants’ and remained as second-class immigrants for up to ten years (Das Gupta 2000). Domestic workers and other migrant workers were prohibited by law from unionizing, and immigrant women were largely in sectors which were non-unionized or precariously unionized, such as

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garment factories, house cleaning, and farms. Both migrant and immigrant women felt vulnerable to the intimidation tactics of employers or to deportation clauses if they were to become active in union or other associational activities. Even in unions where immigrant women were in the majority, such as in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), entrenched racism and the stereotypes held by white male leaders and staff members silenced rank-and-file members. Ng (1995:34), the first Chinese-speaking organizer hired by the ILGWU, in 1977, writes that her presence was ‘quite unsettling’ for union staff, who expected her to be a ‘passive, sweet, quiet’ Asian woman. She further writes: ‘All the executive members were white men of European backgrounds … all the staff representatives and business agents were men … servicing the membership was done in a patriarchal and patronizing manner … The union as a workplace was no different from a garment factory in upholding the pattern of occupational segregation on the basis of gender and race.’ (35). Similar power relations have been pointed out by others who have researched the garment industry in more recent years (Gannage 1986). Within this context, Hill (1977) has discussed how unions became involved in promoting the rights of women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Women’s committees were formed in unions. In 1979 the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) hired its first human rights director responsible for women’s issues (Ng 1995). Ng writes that feminist struggles within the union movement did not include the issues of women of colour or of immigrant women. This was reflective of second-wave feminism, a movement largely dominated by white women. Anti-racism became a preoccupation of ethno-racial organizations at a grass-roots level, and many organizations of immigrant women and women of colour started developing an anti-racist feminist approach (Das Gupta 1986), which would present a major challenge to mainstream feminism in the following decade. A community organization that was key in developing anti-racism educational materials, resources, and programs for unionized and non-unionized workers was the Cross Cultural Communication Centre (CCCC) in Toronto. Educational resources were developed in consultation with labour and community activists. A ten-week course developed by centre staff called ‘Combating Racism in the Workplace: A Course for Workers’ was offered regularly through the Humber College Labour Studies Centre.

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1981 to Today: Towards Anti-racism Elsewhere (Das Gupta 1998; Ng 1995), it has been argued that antiracist organizing in the community at large was a precursor to and a catalyst for anti-racist work in unions. Police racism and brutality against black men in particular, and random cases of racial assault against South Asians in public spaces, sparked anti-racist demonstrations on the streets of Toronto in the 1970s and 1980s. Another incident that launched a large community campaign was media racism as demonstrated by an episode of the CTV program W5, called ‘Campus Giveaway,’ in which faces of Chinese students were flashed on the screen to illustrate that Canadian medical schools were being ‘taken over by foreign students.’ After much public protest, CTV issued an apology for its ‘irresponsible journalism’ (Ng 1995). Another galvanizing case was that of Mr Wei Fu, a security officer with the Ontario government, whose supervisor subjected him to racial harassment. Thirty-nine labour and community organizations in the Chinese and non-Chinese communities came together to express their outrage at this blatant example of workplace racism (Ng 1995). Mr Fu lost his human rights complaint despite what appeared to many to be overwhelming evidence in his favour. However, the four years of public campaigning, education, and cooperative effort solidified an environment for anti-racist work. It also pushed the Ontario Human Rights Committee to review the Human Rights Code and to redefine racial harassment to include ‘indirect’ harassment (Ng 1995). It was in this context, in 1981, that the Ontario Federation of Labour launched its campaign called ‘Racism Hurts Everyone’ (Leah 1993). An anti-racism coordinator was hired for one year. His main project, along with a staff member from CCCC, was to train a group of union activists to become educators on anti-racism. They, in turn, would be able to train others to work on behalf of anti-racism. In 1983 the OFL became the first provincial body to allocate designated seats for women and people of colour on its executive (Ng 1995). However, the OFL’s reluctance to sustain its commitment to anti-racism was demonstrated by its failure to renew the position of the anti-racism coordinator beyond one year. Ng suggests that the Racism Hurts Everyone campaign was marginalized within the organization and touched neither its central activities nor its leadership. In my view, however, the OFL campaign was not completely wasted. A core group of anti-racist activists was formed, and many of

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them became instrumental in establishing a key anti-racist organization in the labour movement called the Ontario Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (OCBTU). This body defined the term black to include ‘all workers who are non-white’ (OCBTU 1987:4). Mirroring anti-racist thinking in Britain, the founders of OCBTU wanted to ‘share resources and coordinate the particular struggles waged by black, Chinese and South Asian trade-unionists’(3). Although this approach – creating a broad anti-racist coalition among trade unionists of different ethnoracial backgrounds – was laudable, it lacked appeal beyond its original core members. The formation of the OCBTU put pressure on the OFL and other mainstream labour organizations to take concrete action to address racism. In its second phase, the OCBTU became chiefly associated with trade unionists of African/black heritage. It advocated effectively within the labour movement, which had already started to improve its racial representation. To begin with, responding to pressure from the OCBTU and communities of colour, the OFL created a permanent position within the organization to coordinate its anti-racism work. A number of workshops and conferences were held and documents written on the need to conduct anti-racism training, to remove biases in hiring, to negotiate non-discrimination clauses into collective agreements, and to translate documents wherever possible into languages used by the membership. During the 1990s significant developments took place within the Canadian Labour Congress. At its 1990 convention in Montreal, Dory Smith, a black male member, ran for election to the executive committee and got a large number of votes. Although he did not win, it was a significant challenge to the slate of white candidates who were elected. Many see this as a turning-point in anti-racist organizing inside the labour movement. In 1992 a task force on structure which the CLC had created to review its constitution came back with the recommendation to create a designated space on the executive for a person of colour. Members of colour, including the OCBTU, saw this as tokenism. They demanded and got two spots. The CLC wanted to insist that the two seats would go to a man and a woman of colour. The OCBTU response was that the caucus must decide whom to elect. Over the years, the caucus has elected one male and one female. In addition to these two executive positions, a staff member was hired to provide direction and to coordinate anti-racist work within the CLC.

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One of OCBTU’s most significant actions took place at this convention when it issued a ‘report card’ to various unions regarding their racial representation. OCBTU members today feel that the report card embarrassed white leaders of the time to agree to the demand for two designated seats on the CLC board for workers of colour, in addition to others designated for Aboriginal peoples, women, those with disabilities, and GLBT members (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered). The two members of colour elected to the designated positions presented a resolution to create an anti-racism task force, which would travel across the country, hold public hearings, and document racism as it affected CLC members. The resolution was passed but the initiative took several years to complete. The final report, entitled Challenging Racism: Going Beyond Recommendations, came out in 1997 with a series of recommendations. Regional consultations were held in major cities across Canada to develop strategies for implementing these recommendations. In the 1990s the OFL and affiliated unions became integrally involved in drafting Bill 79, the precursor to the Employment Equity Act, which the New Democratic Party (NDP) government of Ontario would steer forward into law in 1994. The provincial labour movement was at the forefront of this development, along with community organizations of women, people of colour, people with disabilities, and Aboriginal peoples. Since 1993 the OFL and affiliated unions had been involved in developing educational materials related to employment equity, training trainers, and creating local leaders in nine cities, all in preparation for the new law. Impressive educational programs were organized by affiliated unions to reach thousands of workers in local units (Das Gupta 1998). But this was also a time of economic downturn. Restructuring was in full force in both the private and public sectors, and as a result thousands of workers were being laid off or displaced. There was a great deal of anxiety over job retention. In this context, the prospect of implementing employment equity for certain historically marginalized groups did not find universal support among white workers. It was during this time that Ontario Conservative Party leader Mike Harris was able to capitalize on workers’ anxiety over jobs and to accentuate myths around employment equity, and he succeeded in coming to power on an anti-equity platform. Upon his election in 1995, he eliminated the Employment Equity Act with a bill entitled An Act to Repeal Job Quotas and to Restore Merit-Based Employment Practices, and simultaneously eradicated much of the work that had

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already been done to support the equity law. It was a devastating blow to anti-racist activists and groups, many of whom worked within or with unions, and a serious undermining of all they had achieved to date. However, the work around employment equity in Ontario strengthened the unity of women activists and those of colour who were organizing against sexism and racism, a process which had started around 1987. Another issue which brought women and people of colour together was that of workplace harassment. Leah (1999) writes that at its human rights conference in 1994, the CLC made an effort to address the concerns of women of colour with a workshop on multiple oppression. Concrete evidence of the convergence of anti-sexism and anti-racism work is seen in the Women’s Work Project (Canadian Labour Congress 1998), which issued an interim report on International Women’s Day in 1997, written by long-time feminist and anti-racist activist, Winnie Ng. The project’s objective was to research women’s experiences across the country, with particular reference to economic restructuring. A CLC discussion paper notes: ‘While for many women, feminism still does not mean being inclusive and welcoming to women of colour, it is becoming increasingly clear that for a “feminist” model to be successful, it must involve organizing in difficult sectors and build the diversity of the labour movement. It must integrate and be inclusive of race, class and gender’ (CLC 1998:1). The whiteness of women’s educational programs and the maleness of a particular local executive committee were noted and connected in principle to the structural barriers that prevent inclusion at different levels of union structure. It was further recognized that it is not sufficient that traditionally marginalized group members are represented in caucuses, special committees, and conferences; they need to be present and active throughout the entire union structure. In 1994 the CLC constitution was amended to include one ‘visible minority vice-president’ and one ‘Aboriginal vice-president’ on the CLC executive committee (CLC 1997:100). OCBTU was renamed the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), Ontario Chapter (CBTU) in May 1996 when it received its charter as the only international chapter of the U.S.based CBTU, which had been in existence for some twenty-five years. The CLC organized a conference for workers of colour and aboriginal workers in Montreal in 1997, attended by 600 delegates. Another followed in 2003. That same year, a workers-of-colour conference was organized by the Labour Council of Toronto and York Region, which again was extremely well attended. The Canadian labour movement

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has made great strides in certain areas of anti-racism work, while challenges remain in others. The following is a discussion of work that is still to be done. Major Themes Self-Organizing When we look at the history of anti-racism in labour unions, we realize that self-organizing on the part of workers of colour has been crucial. In the early part of the twentieth century, separate union organizing was a matter of survival. Today, self-organizing is a means of pushing forward the agenda of anti-racism within mainstream movements where membership is increasingly diverse ethno-racially. Bev Johnson, past president of CBTU, says: ‘We are the conscience of the labour movement. Our objectives are to make sure that issues of Black unionists stay on the table and get addressed; to empower ourselves to move into leadership and provide support for them; to educate members to get them to join us.’3 As an example of CBTU’s intervention, Johnson talked about the fact that at the 2003 CLC anti-racism conference, a caucus was organized for the first time for African and Africandescended members. This conference was taking place in Toronto at a time when the issue of racial profiling was at the forefront of the community’s agenda, yet this critical issue was nowhere to be found on the conference agenda. CBTU members raised the issue in the caucus, and that led to a resolution being made on the floor. Union leaders were made to confront the issue and the CBTU has continued to be part of a community coalition on this topic. Although CBTU members are strong trade unionists, their coalition is an autonomous group. June Veecock, human rights and anti-racism coordinator of the Ontario Federation of Labour, has stated: ‘[We] don’t want to become too close with the labour movement. Want to maintain some autonomy so it can speak critically about them. Need a respectful working relationship with the labour movement.’4 This autonomy has meant that CBTU receives little financial support from it, other than through its participation in CBTU’s annual fundraising dinners and other similar events. The OFL has helped in kind by providing storage space, access to mailing lists, and communications services. Past and present OFL presidents have attended CBTU conventions and been very supportive, and it is now possible for

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CBTU members to attend this convention on work-time rather than vacation-time, which had been the practice before. Apart from fundraising activities, CBTU’s membership dues are its only source of funding, and most of that has to be sent to the United States. A parallel organization, the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, was created in May 2000. Inspired by its American counterpart, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) as well as by CBTU, a number of Asian-Canadian trade union activists met during Asian Heritage Month in Toronto to set up an alliance for Asian Canadian trade union members, Asian Canadian workers, and the Asian community at large. A British Columbia chapter of ACLA also exists. Unlike the CBTU, ACLA is not part of its American counterpart (APALA), as there was a desire to start an organization that would be unique to the Canadian experience. But in parallel with CBTU’s mandate, ACLA has a major commitment to promote and support Asian representation within the leadership of the labour movement. However, there are not many active Asian labour activists in Canada (Kishi and Ahn 2002). Thus, ACLA employs a two-pronged strategy of bringing labour leaders and rank-and-file members of Asian-Canadian heritage together, and forging connections among activists from Asian communities, in order to create a culture that is union-friendly overall. To achieve these goals, ACLA (2003) is strongly committed to reaching into various Asian communities to generate a labour-positive presence in Asian communities, raise the profile of Asian Canadian labour issues, and reach out to Asian communities in different languages. To this end, ACLA members have organized monthly events, joined support pickets for Asian-Canadian trade unionists on strike, intervened in the stereotyping of Chinese owners, written letters of support for individuals who have been arbitrarily detained for alleged terrorist connections, and organized around provincial elections.5 In the course of doing this research, I have become aware that although self-organizing of this type is highly effective in making a positive impact on the largely white-dominated labour movement, it can also be controversial and highly problematic in that it can be perceived as being divisive. On the other hand, it is notable that there are some members of ACLA who are also CBTU members, and they remain optimistic that autonomous organizing will make the labour movement stronger: ‘Now the danger is that some will say, “You’re just another splinter group. Why are you sub-dividing any further?” Well, if you take sub-division to its logical conclusion – one cell sub-dividing and the next

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cell doing the same – you end up with a very intelligent human being: a complex organism that works very well together. I think that’s what we’re in the process of developing (Frank Saptel, cited in Kishi and Ahn 2002:25). Despite the fact that most unionists see CBTU and ACLA as positive reinforcement for the labour movement, there are some, both white and non-white, who have apprehensions that this kind of autonomous organizing divides workers. Others view autonomous organizations as community organizations since they, unlike labour caucuses, are not accountable structurally to the labour movement. Policy Development and Education of Members Areas in which the labour movement has had a good degree of success are policy development and the implementation of educational activities around anti-racism, human rights, and equity. Moreover, unions have been in the forefront of anti-racism advocacy in society at large, both nationally and internationally. There are numerous examples of union leaders making public statements against racism. Any labour conference or convention features a display of a wide range of such letters and statements issued by leaders of various unions. Most large unions have antiracism and anti-harassment policies, procedures for handling incidents of harassment, personnel for coordinating or directing anti-racism/human rights/equity work, and caucuses and committees for organizing members of colour to advocate for the continuation of this type of work. While CBTU and ACLA are pan-union bodies, the process of organizing members of colour within specific unions has been facilitated by conferences and workshops specifically geared to these members. For instance, some unions now have periodic workers-of-colour conferences, which are extremely well attended. These offer opportunities for networking, self-organizing, and education. For instance, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) has national Aboriginal, workers-ofcolour, and human rights conferences every second year. In alternate years, there are regional versions of all three conferences. CAW human rights director Raj Dhaliwal told me in an interview about an educational program held twice a year for workers of colour, which helps develop leadership potential. The program helps participants gain confidence and teaches them how the union functions. Participation in such programs is supported by CAW’s ‘paid education leave funds.’ In addition, CAW organizes a variety of human rights training, ranging from day sessions to week-long programs.

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The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has developed courses on ‘Combating Workplace Racism’ and has trained rank-and-file members from diverse backgrounds to teach them. Harminder Magon of CUPE reports that the union has been revising its courses to remove the cross-cultural training component and revamp the material on antiracism. There is a recognition that union courses also need to incorporate an Aboriginal and human rights perspective. CUPE’s week-long and weekend schools receive input from its Equality Branch and the Rainbow Committee, the latter also known as the National Working Committee on Racism, Discrimination and Employment Equity. Although harassment at national CUPE events has gone down due to the appointment of ombudspersons during these events and a ‘zero tolerance’ policy, Magon feels that CUPE staff need to participate more fully in anti-racism education, so that it can better serve members of colour. The United Steel Workers union (USW), the Canadian arm of the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), has developed and negotiated the delivery of anti-harassment workplace training programs on paid work-time to 35,000 of its members in conjunction with employers. These sessions allow USW to advocate for anti-racism policies with employers and to establish committees to deal with workplace harassment. Trained facilitators also deliver anti-harassment training and provide support for human rights-based conflicts in the workplace and in the union (United Steelworkers 2002). According to Mohamed Baksh, staff representative of USW, many employers support these sessions because they bring harmony to the workforce. They are also motivated by the desire to prevent complaints concerning harassment, which would necessitate detailed investigation of human rights in the workplace. The union has been able to convince employers that ‘it is the law’ and ‘it is to safeguard them [the employers].’6 From a union perspective, these educational sessions have made workplaces ’more tolerable.’ Workplaces have been more open, even in the post-9/11 era, to accommodate Muslim workers, who need time and designated areas for prayer. Co-member harassment policies in USW have resulted in a change in union culture, according to Baksh. There is ‘less yelling and aggressive behaviour in events.’ Human rights committee meetings are now well attended, particularly by white members. Bev Johnson, currently of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, told me about a leadership training program called Network for Better Contracts (NBC), which has been developed within an equity framework. The purpose of the program is to ensure that

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leadership training within OPSEU is taking place in the context of equity education. This approach is in keeping with the CLC’s (2003) Anti-Racism Integration Guide, which resulted from the 1997 AntiRacism Taskforce report’s recommendations dealing with education. The underlying assumption of the guide is that anti-racism/ human rights skills and knowledge are essential attributes of an effective labour activist and leader, just as essential as skills in stewardship, public speaking, and collective bargaining. Representation in Leadership The representation of workers of colour in leadership positions within the labour movement has been one of the primary concerns of unionists of colour. At the 1996 CLC National Convention, a summary on ‘representation’ was provided to members. It said that ‘Aboriginal Peoples and People of Colour have organized for representation on the national executive boards but have not organized to run members from the two communities for national and regional top leadership positions’ (CLC 1997:98). No people of colour or Aboriginal persons were reported as occupying the positions of national president or national secretarytreasurer; however, there were a number who were heads of local unions. In CAW, a constitutional change enabled there to be one person of colour on its national council and executive board and another on the Quebec Council. By 1995 there were people of colour and Aboriginal persons on the provincial federations in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia. Caucuses were felt to have been instrumental in making these changes possible. In June 2002 an update was prepared on ‘representation’ for the CLC convention held in Vancouver (CLC 2002b). It reported that CUPE had made a constitutional change to include one person of colour and one Aboriginal member on its national executive board as a result of rank-and-file members and the National Rainbow Committee organizing for it. In addition, constitutional changes had been made to diversify racial representation on the Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan executive boards. CUPE had also organized to nominate and elect its members to the CLC executive council, and progress was noted in diversifying field staff and clerical staff, both regionally and nationally. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) reported that a woman of colour had been elected to the National Women’s Committee

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and other members of colour to regional committees. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) noted that there are equity representatives on its regional councils. On some councils one member represents all equity groups; on others there are several members, each representing one group. The update also noted that PSAC has an internal employment equity plan which addresses recruitment and hiring practices within the union. The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) reported that an Aboriginal woman and a man of colour, both NUPGE members, had filled executive council positions on the CLC. In 1995, the union had made constitutional changes to allow for people of colour and Aboriginal people to be represented on its national executive board. In addition, there were nine people of colour and five Aboriginal persons on provincial executives, and sixty-two people of colour and six Aboriginal persons on staff. The CAW had a worker of colour and an Aboriginal member on its national executive board. There were eight workers of colour and one Aboriginal worker serving as national representatives. There were three workers of colour and one Aboriginal worker who were full-time coordinators. At the local level, numerous elected local leaders and staff members were Aboriginal people and people of colour. The United Steel workers of America (USWA) provided a long list of Aboriginal workers and workers of colour who held elected positions or staff positions within the union. The executive board of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has a worker of colour position, which was created in 1998. Its National Women’s Committee has a position designated for a woman of colour, and its Ontario Region Women’s Committee has an equity position which was held by an Aboriginal woman. However, only four national representatives out of 128 are members of colour. Finally, members of colour constitute 35 per cent of the Ontario Council of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). While the information presented above indicates that workers of colour are much better represented today than they were twenty years ago, concerns still remain. Johnson of OPSEU observes that while ‘workers of colour are local presidents and stewards, no -one is headed for the president of OPSEU.’ Similarly, USWA has people of colour in staff positions in Canada, but none in elected positions. Mohamed Baksh, a staff representative, told me that ‘there are a lot of local leaders, but they need to move up to higher leadership positions.’7

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Representation of workers of colour in leadership roles will create a more effective and responsive labour movement. According to June Veecock of OFL, ‘Those in leadership need to understand that their unions need to reflect the membership … Unions will do a better job if stewards were doing a better job. They [white stewards] don’t understand how systemic racism works. They say there is no racism. They don’t recognize racial segregation.’8 Veecock finds that workers of colour contact her with problems because they feel more comfortable with her than with their own white shop stewards. Johnson of OPSEU takes a stronger position: ‘Either pay attention or die … How are you going to organize workers who are predominantly people of colour when you don’t have any organizers who are people of colour? How are you going to service members when members don’t see themselves reflected?’9 Although activists of colour are aware that a lot of work needs to be done within their own communities in order to increase their participation in union activities, there are still systemic barriers resulting from union structures and practices. When it comes to representation and staffing issues, unions reflect the wider society. Harminder Magon of CUPE says: ‘Even now, very few workers of colour or Aboriginal workers get to the national level. They get to the local level but not to the national level. One has to get to the divisional level before they get to the national level. If you’re not supported by the local, then you can’t get to the divisional level and can’t get elected or participate at that level. The way our structure is set up, it poses barriers to the participation of our members of colour and Aboriginal members.’10 The CUPE national executive board has two designated seats for ‘diversity,’ and those seats have been filled by workers of colour and Aboriginal members through past practice, but they are not specifically mandated for those groups. Equity-seeking groups other than people of colour have challenged the practice, but the chairperson has overruled opposition every time. Magon is concerned that those two seats may be lost if CUPE’s past practice is not entrenched in the constitution. If brought forward as a resolution, such a reform may not be possible to win because a two-thirds majority is required to effect change. The circumstances which led to the establishment of the two diversity seats is as follows. At its 1997 convention in Toronto, CUPE’s Rainbow Committee brought forward a resolution to have two seats designated, for a worker of colour and for an Aboriginal worker. The resolution was presented just before adjournment and as a result very

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few people were present to debate it. Quebec did not support it, neither did the Acadian members from New Brunswick, and ultimately the resolution was defeated. In a subsequent convention, Quebec and New Brunswick supported the two ‘diversity’ seats, and that is what exists at present. Regarding staffing, Magon and CUPE’s Rainbow Committee are behind the practice of creating a pool of qualified people of colour who can be recruited into staff positions. There is a mentoring process (mostly for the mainstream), whereby promising unionists are identified, interviewed, trained, allowed to ‘shadow’ unionists in staff positions, and recruited into temporary positions and then into full-time positions when the opportunity arises. However, my information suggests there have not been any permanent positions filled by black workers since 1998.11 Barriers to Leadership Positions Hassan Yussuff was one of the first people elected to the newly designated spots for people of colour at the CLC convention in Vancouver in 1992. When I asked him about barriers to leadership positions for people of colour, he said there is a false expectation that a person ‘has to be around’ to gain experience in the labour movement. He argues: ‘Being around doesn’t mean that you have the experience … There is an informal network in the labour movement. If you’re not in it, you’re at a disadvantage … Your organization needs to bring strength … ’12 It helped Yussuff that he had been the human rights coordinator of CAW prior to his election to the CLC executive. It allowed him the opportunity to travel and thus make contacts across the country. It also helped that CAW is a large and powerful union. His mobility in his CAW position allowed him to form a broad national coalition which supported him when he decided to run for secretary-treasurer of the CLC in 2002. He was up against a white unionist in that election. He reflected: ‘There was a maturity in the movement … [People} supported a person of colour with progressive politics … People had to decide what kind of labour movement they wanted … Problems still remain for people of colour, but there was a sense of maturity.’13 He further noted that this was after 9/11. He is Muslim, yet he was elected. Barriers to leadership still exist for a unionist who is not part of a powerful, nationally-based union, and who has not had the opportunity to make national connections, does not belong to informal networks of

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local leaders, and lacks the support of her/his own organization. Yussuff’s comments imply that one has to be part of the ‘old white boy’s network’ in order to get into a leadership position within the CLC. Veecock of OFL (Leah 1993) has reiterated that being elected by members of a large union does not necessarily ensure that one is supported by equity-seeking caucuses. It does not guarantee the support of rank-and-file members. Tokenism and Lack of Support Elsewhere (Das Gupta 1998), I reported the problem of co-optation faced by people of colour who attain leadership positions in unions. They frequently experience isolation, exclusion, and alienation from white members, and their effectiveness is often compromised by lack of resources. These problems point to the potential ineffectiveness of affirmative action programs. They also indicate that affirmative action may be a tokenistic gesture if unionists of colour in elected positions are made ineffective by lack of support. Tokenism is also illustrated in the experience of Winnie Ng’s (1995), who was once told that she had not been hired in a coordinator’s position because she was not ‘senior’ enough. Had it been an equity position, she would have been hired. The struggle for anti-racism can be hijacked by institutionalizing it in a glossy policy document and yet not giving it ‘any teeth.’ An anonymous informant had this to say about anti-racism in her union: ‘I presented an anti-racism document which contained in the title ‘Unlearning Racism’ … They were offended by the title. [Recently] it was passed, but only the policy part, not the procedure … and no accountability, no education, no mechanism.’14 This person was told that ‘she had no business being involved’ when she tried to address racism reported within the union. She felt that the equity committee was ‘totally undermined’ by the union leadership. The union had had one position on the executive committee for a worker of colour who was elected by the workers-of-colour caucus. A resolution was brought forward to make that designated seat into an ‘equity seat’ and allow candidates to be nominated by the caucus but elected by the entire convention floor. When the equity committee made a recommendation against the resolution, the executive ignored it and took the resolution to the convention as a whole. The first part of the resolution, to change it to an equity seat, was defeated, but the second part, to have the seat nominated in the equity caucus then voted on by the entire convention

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floor, passed. These events illustrate how a union executive can ‘tokenize’ and marginalize the staff and elected members who are in place supposedly to fight racism. It illustrates how apparently democratic structures can be used to silence anti-racist activists. This same union had a woman of colour who was an outspoken member of the executive. According to my anonymous informant, this woman was ‘treated with contempt.’ A campaign was mounted ‘to get rid of her,’ and she was defeated by a male candidate who the executive felt more comfortable with, yet who clearly was not the choice of the workers-of-colour caucus. His election became inevitable when the vote was taken out of the caucus and brought to the entire convention floor. This incident highlights another problem which came up in my interviews: women of colour who are outspoken on issues of racism and exclusion are harassed when they are in or seeking leadership positions. Harassment of Women of Colour Women of colour have pointed out that the barriers for them are particularly severe. At a recent workers-of-colour workshop,15 one participant said that when she decided to run for an executive position, her union colleagues ‘started harassing me.’ They told her: ‘You don’t communicate well – you’re anti-social.’ Inevitably she lost the election. Leah (1993) reported similar experiences involving black women unionists who happened to have ‘an accent.’ Moreover, these women pointed out a lack of support from many of their white female colleagues. One member I interviewed anonymously had this to say about her white union colleagues: ‘I don’t get the respect I deserve. They [the older members] feel threatened by change. They look to control rather than see why unions should change … the president believes he is the CEO of the organization.’16 This same person informed me that if she goes beyond her assigned duties, the president ‘gets furious.’ Nobody wants to challenge him because of fear. Employment Equity In an earlier piece (Das Gupta 1998), I wrote about the labour movement’s continuing commitment to employment equity in workplaces even though in the province of Ontario, the Conservative government of Mike Harris dismantled the employment equity law and allied infrastructure when it came to power in 1995. At that time, a number of

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union activists I interviewed were steadfast in wanting to negotiate employment equity principles into their collective agreements. Johnson of OPSEU told me how the union has been instrumental in pushing for anti-harassment education as part of the process of grievance resolution. Following a grievance at the Public Health and Social Services Department in Hamilton, the union worked jointly with the employer to develop anti-discrimination policies. The entire process took about five years and involved equity training delivered to the entire agency. In the end, the original griever became the local president and a more diverse body of stewards was elected. Similarly, Johnson has been involved in a number of joint projects in a variety of workplaces where there are OPSEU members, both in the Ontario Public Service and the broader public sector. These initiatives have resulted in systemic changes in the way business is conducted. On 15 November 2000 CUPE signed a contract with the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO) and the Department of Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs to improve employment opportunities for Aboriginal peoples in the health-care sector, and to ensure a ‘representative workforce’ (CUPE 2001). A separate agreement was signed with the provincial government to address the public sector. These contracts were designed to address the inequities faced by Aboriginal people, who represent about 12 per cent of the population of Saskatchewan but constitute only 2 per cent of the workforce. The federal Employment Equity Program had not ameliorated this situation. Furthermore, as Don Moran (2002), a national CUPE representative, has pointed out, in Saskatchewan one of every four new labour entrants will be aboriginal. The provincial government has provided funding to CUPE to hire an Aboriginal education coordinator to develop training for 12,000 health-care workers and to implement a representative workforce. The latter program will examine provisions in collective agreements and identify workplace barriers that may be limiting to Aboriginal workers. It will provide education for employers to dispel myths about Aboriginal peoples, and enhance orientation sessions, literacy training, and career-path counselling for new Aboriginal employees. It will also make possible the involvement of elders to counsel Aboriginal members and to accommodate their spiritual and cultural observances. The difference between employment equity programs and the ‘representational workforce’ approach is that the latter is not specific to any particular workplace or area, and the hiring of target groups is not limited by set employment equity goals.

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Issues Particular to Organizing Aboriginal Workers Moran (2002) of CUPE discusses most succinctly the specificities and particular challenges of organizing Aboriginal workers in Saskatchewan. He points out that many are employed by Aboriginal employers, including band councils and friendship centres. In organizing these workers, unions have had to confront Aboriginal leaders, many of whom may be anti-union, and others who view unions as part of non-Aboriginal colonizing structures. CUPE’s strategy in Saskatchewan has been to maintain a presence in Aboriginal public functions, to distribute union materials, and to work towards dispelling myths about unions in Aboriginal communities. At the same time, CUPE staff have been sensitized to and educated about Aboriginal issues. Many Aboriginal leaders feel that unions do not have jurisdiction on reserves or in Aboriginal institutions, and they invoke this stance to thwart unions. While it is important for unions to support Aboriginal self-government and aspirations for independent labour codes, it is also necessary to lobby Aboriginal leaders to make sure those laws are beneficial for workers. Unions must continue to organize Aboriginal workers to assert their rights against unfair labour practices. In Saskatchewan, CUPE has had to demonstrate that it is flexible enough to address specific organizing requirements of Aboriginal communities. It has done so by incorporating elders into the work situation, recruiting Aboriginal organizers and advocating for the improvement of living conditions in Aboriginal communities, thus moving beyond issues relating strictly to the employer-employee relationship. Conclusion The labour movement has come a long way from the blatant exclusionism of the late nineteenth century and the neo-racism of the postwar period. Today, it is a strong and vibrant force for anti-racism. As this chapter illustrates, the movement has been pushed by its own anti-racism activists, and assisted and often sparked by anti-racism efforts outside labour structures – for instance, community organizing around various manifestations of racism within society. Antiracism has been impacted by feminism and the politics around Aboriginal self-government, disability, and sexual orientation. It has also been influenced by international solidarity work, such as the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa.

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While demand for inclusion within the house of labour was the main focus of earlier efforts, the period starting in the 1950s has been marked by the institutionalization of human rights and other equity laws and programs. Today, anti-racism has coalesced around achieving systemic equality and equal representation in labour structures, so that Aboriginal members and members of colour are serviced adequately, protected from harassment, and given access to full participation in their unions. This last is a prerequisite for people of colour to move from the margins of the labour movement to integration into all mainstream labour activities, such as leadership, staffing, servicing, bargaining, collective agreements, education, and organizing.17 As this chapter has noted, the greatest success has been achieved in the areas of policy development, education, and advocacy in society at large, while challenges remain to ensure fair representation in leadership and staff positions, and full participation in the setting of organizing priorities.

NOTES 1 Jackson notes that this category does not include Aboriginal workers and those workers who reportedly ‘didn’t know’ when asked about visible minority status. 2 CLC Women’s Organizing Symposium, Toronto, 20–22 October 2002; Labour Council of Toronto and York Region, ‘Building Power: Aboriginal/ Workers of Colour Conference,’ Toronto, 14 June 2003. 3 Beverly Johnson (Ontario Public Service Employees Union), interview with author, 17 June 2003. 4 June Veacock (Ontario Federation of Labour), interview with author, 17 June 2003. At the time of the interview, Veacock was employed by the OFL. She has since retired. 5 Jenny Ahn (Canadian Auto Workers), interview with author, 24 June 2003. 6 Mohammed Baksh (United Steelworkers of America), interview with author, 16 June 2003. 7 Ibid. 8 Veacock (OFL), 17 June 2003. 9 Beverley Johnson (OPSEU), 17 June 2003. 10 Harminder Magon (Canadian Union of Public Employees) telephone interview, 29 May 2003.

Racism and the Labour Movement 207 11 Marie Clarke Walker (Canadian Labour Congress) telephone interview, 19 September 2003. 12 Hassan Yussuff (Canadian Labour Congress), telephone interview, 19 June 2003. 13 Hassan (CLC), 19 June 2003. 14 Anonymous. 15 Building Power: Aboriginal/Workers of Colour Conference, Toronto, 14 June 2003. 16 Anonymous. 17 Approaches to organizing the unorganized and its systemic impact on Aboriginal workers and workers of colour is the topic of a chapter written by Das Gupta in a 2005 book edited by Leah Vosko, entitled Precarious Employment: Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada.

9 Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour: A Comparative Perspective1 DAVID RAYSIDE

In this chapter, I argue that the Canadian labour movement has moved as far as any of its counterparts in other countries – and perhaps further – in recognizing diversity. This does not mean that such recognition is uniform, or equally substantial across such axes of difference as race, gender, Aboriginal status, sexual orientation, and dis/ability. But in overall terms, unions in Canada are among the international leaders is shifting from their roots in white, male, heterosexual workplace constituencies. As in all areas of political and organizational life, uneven implementation of policy commitments makes any comparative assessment of labour movements an uncertain challenge. As I will be highlighting here, a wide range of national unions have developed inclusive formal policies and have called for greater equity in public policy. Many, too, have developed mechanisms to ensure that diversity is reflected in formal decision-making processes. But how much does that really say about commitment? We can see in the contributions to this volume that traditional union operations are changed only with great difficulty, and usually only after long-term pressure. Recently Kumar and Schenk (2006) pointed to the still-pressing need for union transformation, and the formidable challenge still lying ahead. Writers such as Linda Briskin (2002) and Fiona Colgan and Sue Ledwith (2002a) suggest that real change requires inclusive representational structures, room for distinct group organizing, broadened bargaining agendas, alliances with relevant social movements, and a genuine reconfiguration of internal cultures and practices. This, as Richard Hyman (1994b) aptly reminds us, is radical change. In the opening chapter of this volume, Gerald Hunt points to how slow organizational change is, and how often it requires enduring

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commitment at the top as well as effective mobilization at the base. One current in the wave of social movement literature that has emerged in the past three decades came close to writing off labour as an ‘old’ movement, categorically distinct from the energetic ‘new’ movements of the protest wave that began in the 1960s (Melucci 1980; Offe 1990) Neither Hunt nor I hold to that view, though we acknowledge the difficulty in effecting transformation in a large and heavily institutionalized movement. We also know that observers using different analytical lenses derive quite divergent conclusions about how thoroughgoing change has been. There is now considerable analysis of these questions, across a range of countries, but not much of it goes deeply into questions of application or implementation beyond formal policy and representation. How much of that work is concertedly comparative? Hardly any. How much of that is comparative across issues areas? Very little. The writing on labour movements that focuses on recognition of diversity points to encouraging signs in several countries. In Europe, those most often mentioned are Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden (as the best exemplar of the Scandinavian model). Beyond Europe, unions in the United States and Australia come up most frequently. There is no question that the Canadian labour movement belongs in such a league, though it is rarely included in comparative assessments. To the extent that we are able to establish a favourable record for Canadian labour within this comparative set, what explains that lead? A Survey of International ‘Leaders’ among Labour Movements Here I provide a brief overview of the Canadian labour movement’s embrace of diversity, and survey the records of unions in other settings where there is thought to have been serious engagement with such dimensions of difference as gender, race, sexuality, and disability. This is a complex task, and comparative conclusions are difficult to derive. As contributors to this volume point out, engagement with any one equity issue varies significantly across unions and employment sectors. Unions based largely in cities, in the public sector, and with large numbers of women and white-collar workers, are more likely to have moved towards recognition of diversity than others. As we will see, though, there are variations across systems. Adapting the comparative insights of Richard Hyman (1994a, 2001) and of

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the authors of a 2003 special issue of the European Journal of Industrial Relations introduced by Carola Frege and John Kelly, I suggest a number of factors helping explain such variation: the extent of demographic change in the workplace; the capacity for building activist presence around ‘new’ equity issues; the support of existing union leadership; the seriousness of union decline; structural characteristics of the labour movement; the embeddedness of a distinct labour culture; and various features of the political context. Demographic questions include the following: when did women became a major component of the labour market and union membership? When did ethnic diversity became prominent in both the workforce and the labour movement? How visible have sexual minorities and people with disabilities been within unions, and for how long? Change within labour depended on activist networks forming among those traditionally on the margins of unions, and developing resources to press for recognition. This depended in part on union activist links to movements outside the labour movement. In many cases, change has also been boosted by the support of existing union leaders, a point made by Gerald Hunt earlier in this volume. Unions facing serious loss of membership over the past three decades might well have strong motives to change but will often be driven to defensiveness and to a decline in the kinds of resources needed to engage diversity. Among the structural characteristics that may help or hinder transformation is decentralization in unions and in the collective bargaining system, and the extent of ‘corporatist’ linkage to state institutions – in other words, institutionalized mechanisms by which peak labour organizations are included in state policy institutions. Labour movement ‘culture’ is important, since an established union ‘identity’ shaped by conception of a working class firmly grounded in the experience of straight, white, male, industrial workers will slow engagement with other dimensions of equity and treat them as corrosive. This identity will profoundly influence whether high levels of immigration and increases in the number of women at work can be framed as an opportunity rather than a threat. Political context is also a significant contributor to union approaches to revitalization. If large political parties, courts, and other state institutions have seriously taken up or advanced the official recognition of diversity, unions will often have been forced to engage. On the other hand, if right-wing parties have been vehicles for xenophobic or anti-equity popular voices, progressive labour

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activists might well be given an incentive to mobilize within a union. Also important is the extent to which traditionally marginalized populations have been politically mobilized, and in ways that provide potential links to the labour movement. What we will see in this survey is that the kinds of shifts explored in this volume are part of a shift in labour movements across much of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Unions have responded to changing demographics in the workforce and the need to rethink traditional forms of ‘collectivism’ (Hyman 1994a). They have all experienced the pressures of social movement activism on diversity, as well as the threats to established union power, exacerbated by neoliberal free trade regimes, fiscal pressures on the welfare state, and a political strengthening of employer voices. The labour movements most frequently cited as having responded to these challenges by seriously taking up questions of diversity beyond political rhetoric are those in the United States, Britain, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany. The three European examples included here have corporatist features, with relatively centralized unions engaged in highly institutionalized tripartite arrangements designed to set the frameworks for cross-country collective bargaining and to discuss socio-economic public policy. All three have faced decentralization pressures and a reduction in policy influence, though they retain many of their traditional features and operate in contexts that retain important elements of the continental northern European post-war settlement. They are also different from one another in ways that are important for our purposes. The Swedish welfare state model has long provided unusually equitable provisions for women in the workplace, potentially reducing the challenge for feminists seeking change through the labour movement. Dutch politics have long been shaped by distinctive forms of recognition for religious and political minorities, and more recently for sexual minorities – forms that to some extent were replicated within the labour movement. The horrors of the Second World War have provided strong incentives for progressive German activists to be particularly attentive to the dangers of racist or xenophobic sentiments. In each, then, there are grounds for optimism about engagement with one or another form of diversity. The British, American, and Canadian labour movements or industrial relations systems may all be categorized by the phrase ‘pluralistic fragmentation’ – more decentralized and less tied into corporatist arrangements (Hyman 1994a). But there are major contrasts in the

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political and numerical strength of unions in each country, in the damage inflicted on them over the last three decades, and in the play of questions of difference within the political systems in which they operate. These issues create different opportunities and constraints for advocates of change. Australia is different again, much influenced by the British model but with a more centralist period during the past quarter of the twentieth century, facing somewhat different pressures for change on questions of race and immigration, and major threats to their leverage in the late 1990s. Canada Canadian unions were confronted by questions of difference at an early stage. Quebec nationalists propelled by the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s challenged the class and linguistic privileges of Quebec anglophones, asserted the province’s distinct status in the Canadian federation, and claimed greater autonomy within the country’s labour movement. Official and de facto recognition of the legitimacy of such claims were not always matched by shifts in membership sentiment, but they constituted a formal acknowledgement that difference and inequity were not simply products of social class. Women mobilized the next serious challenge to unionism, aimed at the very heart of union culture (Briskin and McDermott 1993; Briskin and Eliason 1999; White, this volume). Their leverage was enhanced by the extraordinary increase in Canadian women’s participation in the labour force in the 1970s and by the high rates of unionization in the public sector. From the beginning, socialist feminism was a prominent current of second-wave feminism in Canada, helping to generate and legitimize activism inside the labour movement (Briskin, 1983; Adamson, Briskin, and McPhail 1988; Fonow 2003). This activism bore fruit in the 1980s, with tangible gains made in the representation of women in union leadership, and the prominence of gender-related issues in collective bargaining (White 1993, 1997; Briskin and McDermott 1993; Kumar 1993a). Some analyses properly point to the long-term tenacity of male-centred patterns in the labour movement’s culture and practice (Forrest and Haiven, this volume). Others (Briskin 1999, 2002; Bentham and White, this volume) believe that real change has occurred in a widening range of unions and beyond formal policy pronouncements. The majority of Canadian union

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members are now women, and this fact gives increasing prominence to their working conditions and choices (Briskin 2002). The struggle for recognition of differences along the lines of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity has clearly benefited from openings created by feminists (Hunt and Eaton, this volume). Even more clearly than for gender issues, Canadian labour has taken a leadership role internationally in recognizing sexual diversity. The substantial wave of activism that arose within the labour movement during the late 1980s was strengthened when same-sex-relationship issues moved forward on the political agenda at the end of that decade. This activism highlighted the inability of most employees in same-sex relationships to access ‘family’ benefits tied to employment, an issue ideally suited to union bargaining. Legal victories in the early 1990s provided new opportunities for lesbian/gay and to some extent transgender advocates within the labour movement. The CLC’s Solidarity and Pride Conference in 1997 was the world’s first gay-affirming conference sponsored by a major national labour organization. Recent labour conferences have included strong equity commitments for transgender people. Canadian labour’s record on other diversity issues is not as good. Few if any observers perceive the labour movement as moving far towards an embrace of cross-racial inclusiveness until recent years, if then (Das Gupta, this volume). Activist mobilizing among people of colour has not been as widespread as among women. No single group has played the vanguard role that African Americans have in the United States; ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity has hampered the formation of an activist block representing a critical mass of workers; many immigrants and members of visible minorities have been in highly vulnerable jobs. A few individual unions and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), as Das Gupta points out in this volume, tentatively engaged issues of racism in the early 1980s, and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) took them up more seriously in the early 1990s. After agreeing to the inclusion of two people of colour on its national executive, the CLC appointed a task force on racism, reporting in 1997, and in the same year began supporting national labour conferences for people of colour (Clarke Walker 2006). If Canadian unions have only begun to respond to racial diversity, they have continued to lag on Aboriginal issues. First Nations people

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are among the most economically disadvantaged in Canada and are little represented in the unionized labour force. As well, Aboriginal activism has not focused on the labour movement, so there has not been a critical mass of Aboriginal activists prepared to mobilize for change inside unions. Native Circles have developed in some unions, according to the principle of ‘self-organizing’ established by women’s groups (Briskin 2002). The Statement on Fighting Racism approved by the CLC’s 1999 convention included a commitment to work with Aboriginal groups to remedy their historical marginalization (CLC 1997a). But these are modest steps. Canadian labour has only now begun to address the broad agenda articulated by disability activists, as Valentine and I point out earlier in this volume. Union activists pressing for change do have the benefit of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ explicit inclusion of disability in its anti-discrimination language, but do not have as much leverage as their U.S. counterparts in the backing of comprehensive legislation requiring workplace accommodation. Nonetheless, there are signs of very recent change, including union federation adoption of activist frameworks on disability. Overall, labour has done least where inequalities derive from job segregation or outright exclusion from the workforce. However, several of the country’s largest unions and federations have taken organizational steps to formally recognize all these questions of difference, and have moved substantially beyond that. I shall be returning to the Canadian case after surveying developments in other systems, to help illuminate the impetus for change. The United States The American case is particularly complex, with enormous internal contrasts in its response to diversity. We find within this labour movement a long history of challenge on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, a function, in part, of the unusually fertile soil in that country for the emergence of ‘identity-based’ social movements. But these movements have confronted an overall union system that is slow to change, that has been much weakened over the past three decades, and that operates in political and social contexts that vary hugely from one region to another. There are strong similarities to Canada in the structure of unions and the decentralizing impulses of the industrial relations system, but there

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are also important differences. The American labour movement has long been a more cautious and conservative force than the Canadian (Fonow 2003; Murray 2002). This reality reflects the impact of the Cold War on all American institutions, especially during the McCarthy period, and the labour movement’s desire to appear fully loyal. Since then, U.S. unions have retained a higher proportion of religiously conservative members than unions in virtually any other Western country, including Canada. Such conservatives account for 25 to 40 per cent of the American population, and there is no reason to believe they are less amply represented among union members. Patriotism that is closely associated with the religious right is a powerful force in American society. Such currents reinforce the drive to respectability and caution within the labour movement. The United States has seen concerted governmental attempts to undercut union strength (Kettler, Struthers, and Huxley 1990). This has been strikingly evident in the enactment of ‘right to work’ legislation and is also reflected in explicit policies of ‘de-unionization’ by many companies across the country (Roy Adams 1989). The combination of governmental and corporate action has been very damaging to union strength in both the private and public sectors, overall density dropping to the low teens – less than half the Canadian density. As a consequence, American labour has been put on the defensive, moving even closer to what some would call business unionism (Kettler, Struthers, and Huxley 1990). On the other hand, no labour movement in the Western world has had a longer history of being forced to confront race issues. There was of course a long history of union exclusion of blacks (along with other racial minorities) and collusion in workplace segregation (Foner 1974; Counts Blakey 1998). The 1930s saw some breaks in the pattern of marginalization, but few analysts note a systematic shift to greater inclusiveness before the late 1960s and 1970s, a period of radical activist challenge. Even in the wake of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, when litigation became more common and the consequences of discrimination more expensive, unions seem to have responded with excruciating slowness. There were encouraging developments in organizing African Americans and challenging workplace segregation in isolated locales as early as the 1930s, but only in the 1980s do we hear talk of breakthrough within the labour movement. The Justice for Janitors organizing campaigns spearheaded by the Service Employees’ International Union

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(SEIU) and changes enacted by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) are seen as encouraging signs of a shift in approach to racial difference (Wadlinger et al. 1998). There are still deeply embedded patterns of residential and workplace segregation that may be difficult for even the best-intentioned unions to confront. The response of American labour to gender inequality parallels to some extent its record on race. Feminist activism revived in the 1960s as powerfully in the United States as anywhere and produced a skilful and heavily resourced set of movement organizations. Radical and reformist currents were present inside unions from very early on, giving rise, for example, to the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) – formed in 1974 at a gathering of over 3,000 women from fifty-eight different unions (Cobble and Bielski 2002). But such developments were not as well linked to the broader women’s movement in the United States as they were in Canada (Milkman 1985). This was partly a result of socialist feminism being less influential in the American women’s movement than in the Canadian and most European movements. In addition, the versions of liberal and radical feminism that emerged in the United States were not as attuned to working-class issues as were their counterparts in Canada and elsewhere (Clawson 2003). The frailty of linkages between activism in the labour movement and the women’s movement was not counteracted by links through the political party system. Labour did have an historical presence inside the Democratic Party, but it was not the sort of organic link found between labour unions and social democratic parties in much of Europe and to some extent in Canada. The uneven record of public sector unionization resulted in a much less dramatic shift in the gender demographics of union membership than in Canada, creating less pressure for fundamental change. As recently as 1985, the union membership rate among American women in the labour force was only 13 per cent, compared to 22 per cent for men. In Canada, the two density rates were less far apart proportionately, at 30 per cent and 39 per cent (Lipset and Meltz 2004:53). Not surprisingly, women’s committees and caucuses were formed inside mainstream unions and federations considerably later than in Canada, and gained official support correspondingly later. As Fonow (2003) points out, the CLC recognized a women’s committee in 1974, while the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) took the equivalent step only in 1995 (see also Eaton 1992).

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The American labour movement’s response to sexual diversity has had some parallels to its reaction to gender activism (Hunt 1999). As in Canada, lesbian/gay challenges arose to some extent on the coat-tails of feminist challenges. Union response was more widespread in the public sector (e.g. in the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees [AFSCME], the National Education Association [NEA], and the American Federation of Teachers [AFT], in white-collar sectors with large numbers of women unionists (e.g., in the Service Employees’ International Union [SEIU] and the Communications Workers of America [CWA]), and to some extent in industrial unions with social unionist backgrounds (e.g., the United Auto Workers [UAW]). By early in the current decade, such unions had recognized caucuses for sexual minority members, had included ‘domestic partnership’ provisions for their own staff and in their collective bargaining agendas, and had engaged in progay political lobbying (Bielski 2004). But in ways similar to the gender pattern, American unions were slower and more relunctant to take up sexual orientation issues than were Canadian unions. The American labour movement may have moved further on disability issues than its Canadian counterpart, mainly because the law required it. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is far from perfect, but it is a more comprehensive policy instrument, with more bite, than any measures in Canada. It not only forces change in the workplace, but leaves unions and employers vulnerable to very expensive litigation. Substantial activism on disability has also been more sustained in the United States than in Canada, and has helped keep the issue prominently in the public domain. In the mid-1990s, a team led by John Sweeney won the leadership of the AFL-CIO, and imported the new organizing models developed in such unions as the SEIU. These built on elements of social unionism in the American system, embodied to some extent in the UAW, and in such large public sector unions as the AFSCME, the AFT, and the NEA. Hurd, Milkman, and Turner (2003) see a combination of renewed leadership and grass-roots mobilizing based on new approaches to organizing as effecting real change within the American labour movement. The decentralization and fragmentation built into the U.S. movement, in fact, forced it to take new approaches to organizing (Frege and Kelly 2003). This inevitably reinforced the strength of voices calling for greater recognition of diversity in the workforce and challenging traditional forms of labour identity. This dovetailed with undoubted shifts in the seriousness of U.S. union engagement with gender issues, reflected in

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the representation of women in leadership positions, the readiness to bargain for ‘family friendly’ policies that are especially vital for women, participation in coalitional activism on gender-related issues, and the development of new organizing models. It also strengthened the leverage of advocates for change on other dimensions of difference. These recent changes indicate that a number of factors conducive to labour movement engagement with diversity have been present in the American case. Visible changes in workplace demographics have a relatively long history in the United States, and decentralization in the labour relations framework and union structures have allowed for innovation. Even if union activists on gender have worked in some isolation from the rest of the women’s movement, the very prominence of that movement from the 1960s on helped establish a feminist agenda inside labour. The same is true around race issues, which were placed on union agendas as early as in any labour movement. Other factors, however, were not as conducive to change. Serious loss of union membership moved much of labour to a defensive posture and to even greater concern with labour’s positioning of itself as a respectable player in the American body politic. Dislodging union culture from the experience of the white male industrial worker was to some extent eased by the frail hold of class-based conceptions, but was made more difficult by the culture of respectability. Relatively early legislative change on issues such as gender and racial equality, and on accommodation to people with disability, may well have forced some changes in union practice, but the contentiousness over recognizing difference within the political system meant that the political environment contained mixed messages for unions. In assessing the depth and spread of recent changes in American labour, Hurd et al. (2003) acknowledge that the recruitment of significant numbers of new members has derived from the work of only a few unions. New directions have also led to internal ruptures within the labour movement. The loss of union members may well have been staunched, but there has not yet been a revival of union fortunes. Policy change and shifts in formal representation are also unevenly spread across unions and regions, and unevenly implemented even within the most progressive unions. The very threats to union leverage that excited demands for union revitalization and forged alliances with other progressive movements also reinforced resistance to it, and discouraged activists in other equity movements from seeing labour as an essential ally.

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There are also huge variations across American regions. The sharp differences between Arkansas and Massachusetts or between Alabama and Oregon have no parallel in Canada or in any other industrialized liberal democracy. There are states in the American Northeast and Northwest with density rates close to the Canadian average, and in about six states they exceed 20 per cent. But densities fall below 10 per cent in nineteen states. In many jurisdictions, then, unions are of little political consequence, with agendas that attest to their embattled status. There are also important variations in workplace composition across states, in patterns of religious belief and in experience with various dimensions of diversity. Britain The British labour movement has experienced decades of pressure from activists seeking recognition of women and racial minorities. More recently, it has seen similar mobilization by members of sexual minorities, and to some extent by people with disabilities. In the face of strong resistance, activists started, in the 1980s, to win the right to ‘selforganizing’ within their unions, create formally recognized sections or committees, and win the right to formal representation in decisionmaking bodies. In a labour movement much shaped by class-based notions of solidarity, these were significant accomplishments. The substantial literature chronicling the emergence of feminist activism within British unions points to the successes in securing designated representation and the right to organize women’s sections (Colgan and Ledwith 2000; Healy and Kirton 2000; Humphrey 2002; Kirton and Greene 2002; Munro 2001; Parker 2003). A good deal of attention has been paid to UNISON, the country’s largest public sector union, which imported some of the equity advances pioneered by the National and Local Government Officers’ Association (NALGO) at the point of merger (in 1993), and which since then has been an international leader in taking up a wide range of diversity issues (Colgan 1999; Humphrey 2002; McBride 2001; UNISON 2001). Even with UNISON, however, we know a good deal more about processes and formal policies than we do about implementation. An increase in the numbers of women in union groups and leadership positions does not automatically translate into equitable participation, or into a gendered analysis of the workplace (McBride, 2001). The record of British labour beyond UNISON is more uneven, with mixed

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evidence about changes on the ground among those that have enacted changes in process. Parker (2003, 2005) and Colgan and Ledwith (2000) are guarded about the impact of women’s groups. In the end we are left without a strong sense that the implantation of mechanisms for women’s participation in British unions has led to gender-related shifts in the workplace, or even in the operations of unions themselves. Debate over racial equity also has a long history inside the British labour movement, probably more sustained than anywhere else in Europe. Significant union steps towards racial equity, however, are less developed than those on gender, and have been faced by more resistance (Kirton and Greene 2002). The legacy of explicit racism within major currents of British unions survived well into the 1970s (Humphrey 2002), as did union acquiescence to or support of government moves to stem commonwealth immigration from non-white countries, and resistance to the idea of developing special policies to ensure racial inclusiveness (Wrench 1996, 2000). The 1980s saw major shifts in policy towards inclusive positions, facilitated by relatively high rates of unionization among visible minority workers (rare in Europe), and by the appearance of extremist anti-immigrant political activism across Britain. Educational materials on equity were prepared by Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), and affiliates were urged to develop policy on racism. The TUC became the first union confederation in Europe to reserve executive seats for minorities defined by race, and one of the few to develop comprehensive mechanisms for engaging issues related to race and immigration (European Trade Union Confederation n.d.). But years later, visible minorities remain significantly under-represented in union leadership ranks, committees charged with dealing with race issues are unevenly spread, and designated seats to secure such representation are rare (Wrench 2000). British union engagement with sexual diversity issues is significant, though here too UNISON seems far in the lead (Humphrey 2002; Colgan 1999). Because visibility is such an important step in developing workplace and union inclusiveness on the sexuality front, the focus on self-organizing and representation over a significant period has obvious importance. UNISON has also supported legal challenges to discrimination, and has become a leading player in creating international exchanges between sexual minority union activists. A survey by Phil Greasley published in 1999 indicates that formal commitments to equality spread rapidly during the 1990s, beyond the core of public

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sector union innovators; though, as with gender, we know less about how far beyond policy such commitments went. Organizing around questions of disability were pioneered, as on other equity fronts, within NALGO in the late 1980s, and continued with UNISON (Humphrey 1998). People with disabilities, as in North America, were broadening the activist agenda and calling for selforganizing. In the 1990s, the TUC began holding annual conferences for disabled workers, and encouraging affiliates to develop national committees for disabled members. UNISON developed framework agreements for local government employees calling for positive action to achieve a ‘representative’ workforce. As in Canada, however, the direct impact of such steps, in the absence of assertive legislation, is elusive. There has seemed little drive in the labour movement as a whole to go beyond the existing tepid legislative requirements. British unions, overall, have moved substantially in the direction of recognizing diversity, especially on gender, but to an important degree on sexual orientation. Prominent among the objectives of activists seeking British union recognition of diversity has been the development of autonomous organizational forms, and guarantees of group representation in executive bodies. In this, notable successes have been secured around gender, race, disability, and sexual diversity. This also bears some similarity to the Canadian pattern, and it could well be that overall movement is comparable, and in the case of UNISON that it matches the best practices in the Canadian labour movement. Such change has been facilitated by the decentralization of the British system, the strength of grass-roots activism within unions across a range of diversity issues, and its links to social movement activism outside labour (Heery, Kelly, and Waddington, 2003). The visibility of racist language in British political life during the 1980s no doubt strengthened union interest in combating prejudice within labour ranks. Some legislative change in the direction of recognizing discrimination issues helped increase the leverage of equity-seeking activists in labour, though some elements of the political context were not particularly conducive to change. Public policy barriers to the immigration of noncaucasian immigrants from Commonwealth countries fed union concerns about immigration, and the much-delayed recognition of sexual diversity also failed to provide a progressive lead to the labour movement. In addition, the starting point in Britain were union and workplace cultures that were probably more thoroughly riven with prejudice and inequality than in the Canadian case. My own work on the roots of

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homophobia in Britain (Rayside 1998:1) points to a long-embedded working-class culture rejecting deviations from traditional nineteethcentury gendered norms. (see also Hobsbawm 1984; Thompson 1968). The shift in union culture and worker identity being called for by advocates of change was enormous, especially outside the public sector. The embrace of equity is uneven in all countries, but it is hard to avoid the impression that unevenness of take-up is particularly characteristic of Britain. Union response to inequities based on race and disability, as is true in the rest of Europe, typically followed major legislative advances, and remained more forcible in the calls for political action than in sustained attempts to broaden work opportunities and confront worker prejudice (Colclough 2004). Australia The Australian labour movement bears some resemblance to the British, with a mixture of craft and industrial unions, and a long-standing cultural foundation in white, male-dominated industrial work. The pattern of male solidarity referred to as ‘mateship’ reinforced the traditionalism of the country’s working-class culture, and the masculinization of class discourse (Ostenfeld 1999). Feminist organizing did secure some autonomous political space within the labour movement at a relatively early stage. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) formed a women’s committee following its adoption of a Working Women’s Charter in 1977, and the practice soon spread to a number of union affiliates. Such organizing has been an important transmission belt for views that the specificity of women’s workplace experience needed articulation. Change even in formal representation was slow to come, though, and by the mid1990s, women were drastically under-represented in local leadership positions and not very successful in gaining senior national and regional positions beyond those designated for them (Curtin 1999). At about that time, Barbara Pocock and other contributors to her edited volume (1997) portrayed the Australian labour movement as largely unresponsive to feminist pressure. More concerted action to increase the representational presence of women was taken at the end of the decade and the early years of the new one, with the ACTU setting a parity target. Women also began making inroads on such issues as equal pay and parental leave, partly through government policy, partly through the state-regulated

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arbitration systems, and partly through union policies. However, decentralization in bargaining from the 1990s on has threatened to undermine some of the changes made by privileging those unions and employees who were already most advantaged. Shane Ostenfeld (1999) has argued that the Australian labour movement has made positive changes in response to lesbian and gay activism. Franzway (2002) sees some real union engagement with race and Aboriginal issues early in the late 1990s and the early years of the new decade. This partly reflects significant increases in non-white immigration over the previous quarter-century, and corresponding changes in the demographics of the workforce. It was also a product of highly visible activist organizing around issues of gender, race, sexuality, and Aboriginal status, both inside and outside the labour movement. Overall, though, Franzway is more pessimistic on all these fronts, characterizing union culture as still dominated by white heterosexual masculinity. Union strength has been considerably threatened by changes in the industrial relations system, and there seems less widespread discussion of new strategies for renewal than in Canada, and even in the United States. The cultural foundations of the labour movement were also much influenced by British traditions, and had very far to travel in order to fully engage such questions of diversity. Political recognition of sexual and racial diversity has also been very uneven, and the ruling coalition at the federal level has recurrently won political favour by playing on prejudice directed at sexual minorities and immigrants. The Netherlands The Dutch labour movement is worth examination because of the widespread view that diversity is well accommodated in the Netherlands, and because of the unusual degree to which several labour organizations have taken up issues of sexual diversity in particular (Rayside and Hunt 2000). Two major union federations – the National Federation of Unions (FNV), along with its public sector affiliate AbvaKabo, and the National Federation of Christian Trade Unions (CNV) – have been active in policy development on sexual diversity for over two decades. Room for public and eventually union recognition of all forms of difference was opened up by the depth of political recognition accorded to distinct religious and political groupings over a long period of Dutch history. Schools, media outlets, unions, sports organizations, and social

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services were all segmented into Protestant, Roman Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal ‘pillars.’ In part, this reflected a popular toleration of difference; in part, a pragmatic recognition that no single group constituted a majority that could prevail over the others. The recent weakening of this ‘pillarization’ has not diminished popular support for the recognition of some forms of difference, and there is widespread acknowledgement within the population and the political system of the right to organize separately to represent distinct constituencies. The space for public policy and union practice to accommodate some forms of difference has been expanded by the relative weakness of conservative opinion in Dutch society. Although this point can be overstated, social conservatism has been weak over much of the last three centuries, and a form of pragmatic tolerance correspondingly strong. Rapid decline in religiosity has reinforced these tendencies, shifting the Netherlands from a country with relatively high levels of religious practice and belief in the 1960s to comparatively low levels by the 1990s. However, some forms of gender traditionalism remain widespread in contemporary Dutch society, even if there is no strong need to have such traditionalism given voice in public policy. This is reflected in surprisingly low rates of women’s participation in the labour force and correspondingly lower levels in union membership than are typical for northern Europe and North America – women constituting 29 per cent of FNV membership in 2002, compared to 40 per cent of the TUC’s in Britain, and 46 per cent of LO’s in Sweden (Leijenaar and Niemöller 1994; ETUC 2003:41). This is not a result of the failings of Dutch feminism, for socialist analysis and workplace concerns were prominent in the Netherlands from the early years of second-wave feminism (Kaplan 1992). From the mid-1980s, feminist organizing established the legitimacy of separate organizing within the labour movement. Equal treatment of women and men was the subject of a 1980 statute, providing a lead for employers and unions to take gender inequality seriously. But it took a while for such ideas to penetrate the world of paid labour. In a 2004 report on gender equality plans at the workplaces across Europe, references to assertive or innovative plans in the Netherlands are strikingly scarce (Colclough 2004). On questions of racial diversity and immigration from non-European countries, neither public policy nor public opinion displays the kind of distinctive progressivism that is widely associated with the Netherlands. The labour movement is no more or less cautious about such issues than labour movements in other European countries, and has

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not stood out in challenging prejudice and labour force segregation. After the Second World War, immigrant labour was treated as temporarily available to ‘guest workers’ – which was also true in West Germany and Austria. In the 1980s, unions began to take public stands against racism, and the FNV developed educational materials on fighting prejudice within the labour movement. It sought equal treatment for foreign-born workers already in the country in the face of public policy proposals to the contrary. However, unions remained ready to support restrictions on immigration. And, in the 1990s, when they seemed prepared to take action in response to high levels of unemployment among immigrants, they did so only after legislation on the subject was enacted (Roosblad 2000). As well, evidence from the 1990s suggests lukewarm commitment among union officials. A program developed along with employers to increase employment levels among ethnic minorities was met by relative indifference among many local union officials. A more promising law on promoting minority employment was passed in 1994, but the labour movement had not applied pressure on its behalf (Wrench 1996). On sexual diversity, the progressive image of Dutch society is warranted. The large public sector federation AbvaKabo has been among the international leaders in developing a proactive profile on inclusiveness. Police unions have also stood out in their development of programs to ensure equitable workplaces. But there is little indication that unions were at the forefront of those changes. Lesbian/gay activists have been more focused on the state policy making system, to which they were able to secure access from a relatively early stage (mid1970s). The expansiveness of the welfare state has meant that social benefits for same-sex couples have not become part of collective bargaining. Openings within the labour movement are genuine and significant, but they have not constituted a major lever for change in Dutch politics and society. A drastic reduction in union membership that began in the 1970s and a shift towards more decentralized bargaining helped establish recognition of workplace diversity as vital to union survival (Pasture 1996). But the crisis of declining membership and weakening political influence also led to retrenchment. Dutch unions are heavily bureaucratized, and resistance to abandoning traditional notions of class solidarity is still widespread (Valkenburg 1996). The elaborate bipartisan and tripartite corporatist arrangements in the Netherlands have also created relatively impermeable policy networks with agendas resistant

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to change, difficult for outsiders to penetrate. The Netherlands saw major activist movements emerge to address marginality along several dimensions, but much of what activists sought could be obtained through relatively permeable public policy discussions. As unions were declining in their membership, and in their standing for public policy debate, activists were less likely to see the labour movement as a priority for activist intervention. Germany As much as anywhere, the post-war German welfare state had significant corporatist elements, drawing labour into tripartite consultative processes. As in the Netherlands and Sweden, a significant portion of what unions saw themselves as contributing to equity was to act as a source of political pressure. The expansiveness of the welfare state also meant that more of what would shape the opportunities and choices for members of traditionally marginalized groups could be envisaged as a function of state policy change, rather than changes secured at the bargaining table. German unions, and the federation linking them (the German Confederation of Trade Unions, DGB) were long dominated by male industrial workers. And, as recently as 1990, only 22 per cent of women in the workforce were unionized – compared to 45 per cent of men (KochBaumgarten 2002). Even at the end of the 1990s, women made up only 30 per cent of union membership. Women’s work was highly segregated, and little represented in union hierarchies. Survey evidence suggests that little priority was being given to equity initiatives within the male-dominated unions belonging to the DGB (140–1). The German welfare state was expansive, but did not include the kind of generous support for child care and gender equity that characterized the Swedish model (Lemke 1994). Federal legislation passed in 1994 and 2001 raises expectations for the development of gender equity plans in the public sector (including the use of quotas), though private sector equity initiatives remain voluntary. By the end of the 1990s, women were 43 per cent of the labour force, even more in the states of East German. Unification, the decline of manufacturing employment, and decentralization were also creating openings for the recognition of diversity and the establishment of informal working groups pressing for change. They were calling for the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender and moving away from policies that

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treated women as special. Securing equal representation for women at all levels of union decision-making has been another activist objective. Women did in fact increase their presence in some settings in the late 1990s, but change was very slow overall. Angelika Koch (2003) cites several studies in the years following to suggest that firm-based works councils ‘strongly reject’ equality employment measures, union representatives resting content with the defense of full-time workers using gender-biased job evaluation criteria (449; see also Colclough 2004). In a 2002 article on union response to gender, Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten (2002) described Germany as ‘still a remarkably conservative and “old-fashioned” country’ (148). On questions of sexual diversity, it is the large Union of Public Services and Transport (ÖTV) that has taken the lead, and adopted a profile that places it among the most progressive federations internationally. Lesbian and gay union members had been forming groups within the ÖTV and the German (GEW) since the late 1970s, and a decade later they were being officially recognized (Holzhacker 1999). They have succeeded in marshalling support for political change; for example, the elimination of Germany’s statutory criminalization of homosexuality. However, they have been less successful in securing action at the bargaining table, and in Ron Holzhacker’s view, the decline in union membership and political leverage has created a defensive narrowing of the union agenda (249–50). German law provides some protections for people with disabilities, 1986 and 2000 statutes providing for employment quotas and substantial state subsidies (Labropoulou and Soumeli 2001). There have been some sectoral and company-specific agreements arrived at by union and management, and the German Metal workers’ Union, IG Metall, has been playing a leading role at the European level in establishing European Union (EU) standards for the workplace integration of people with disabilities. Whether union action in sectoral or company bargaining will make a real difference in access to employment is not yet clear. By comparative standards, union response to ethnic issues has been more assertive. This is in part a result of the lessons taken by German progressives from the Second World War, and brought home by the overtly racist political mobilization that surfaced in West Germany during the 1980s and across the united Germany in the 1990s. The openings created in the 1990s for new forms of mobilizing by women also provided room for migrant workers to raise questions about racist discrimination within unions. Writing in the late 1990s, however, Peter

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Kühne (2000) flagged a continuing caution in labour’s response to questions related to foreign workers, immigration, and asylum. But since then, IG Metall has been among the leading unions in Europe to respond to the marginalization of foreign workers (ETUC 2003), developing programs to increase unionization among foreign members, and increase their representation in decision-making structures. Where workplace agreements related to ethnicity have been secured, they cover a wide range of issues that recognize the distinctive needs of minorities (ETUC n.d.:105-9). The DGB is also among those European confederations producing the most elaborate material on migrant and ethnic minority issues. The German labour movement’s engagement with equity issues in general has been less thoroughgoing than would be apparent from its political work. It took some time for diversity issues to fully register, in comparison to a number of British, Canadian, and American unions. This is in part a reflection of the size and traditional centralization of German unions. The spread of change up and down the union hierarchies was often dramatically uneven, and its impact on collective bargaining often hard to detect. The threat to unions posed by changes in employment, and by international competitiveness, created a defensiveness that made the prioritization of diversity a hard sell. Behrens, Fichter, and Frege (2003) argue that the pressures on unions over recent decades ‘have not led to a refocusing of union identity, vision and selfunderstanding’ (27). They argue that the very corporatist or social partnership institutions that historically provided unions with policy access are now hindering the nurturance of new ideas. Sweden The context in which Swedish activists have pressed for recognition is as different from the Canadian, the American, the British, and the Australian as can be imagined. The welfare state remains significantly more expansive than in Canada, and especially the United States, and the long-term political influence of the labour movement is as great as in any country. As in Germany and the Netherlands, the labour movement has traditionally been much more centralized than is the norm in Britain or North America, even if compromised in the last three decades. More has been done in Sweden than in any other country to reduce the economic marginalization of women (Briskin and Eliasson 1999). Women’s wages and incomes are as close to

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men’s as anywhere, and women have access to social insurance and other benefits specifically relevant to them that narrow the gender gap in material existence: child care, parental leave, and pensions (Mahon 2002). Likewise, the wages and benefits of members of visible minorities and fully employed people with disabilities are also close to the national average. Union membership is high among women, and density rates among immigrants exceed the average, since they are concentrated in the more highly organized blue-collar sectors (Labropoulou and Soumeli 2001; ETUC n.d.; Penninx and Roosblad 2000). This degree of equity is largely the result of two developments. The first is the buildup of a generous and comprehensive welfare state, which has been only moderately curtailed by the neo-liberalism of the last three decades. The second is the labour movement’s success in applying the principle of solidaristic bargaining, reducing significantly the gap between low and high paid employees. Although compromised somewhat by decentralizing pressures, the differentials between workers remain significantly less than in other systems. Little of the Swedish model arose from the pressure of feminists or activists representing other historically marginalized groups (Briskin and Eliasson 1999). Much of the improvement in the workplace status of women is owed either to gender-neutral bargaining strategies, or to legislation like the 1991 Equal Opportunities Act. In fact, there is widespread commitment to the principle of treating all employees similarly. There was for that reason a long-standing resistance to the forms of autonomous organizing represented by women’s committees and sexual minority caucuses, resistance on the part of equity-seeking activists and union leaders alike. There is also little precedent for women and minority members within unions forging coalitional ties with groups outside the labour movement. The avoidance of questions of difference meant only limited response to patterns of prejudice in the workplace and to continued segregation in work. There was also continued under-representation of marginalized groups in labour movement leadership, which remained overwhelmingly male and white well into the 1990s (Curtin 1999; Mahon 2002). Some change has been effected since then. The erosion that has occurred in the principle of solidaristic wages has invigorated calls for pay equity in some unions, and increased monitoring to ensure compliance with equal opportunity laws (Mahon 2002). More women entered the leadership ranks of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation,

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Landsorganisationen i Sverge (LO) (ETUC 2003). Nevertheless, the representation of women in corporatist consultative bodies and Sweden’s representation in the European Trade Union Confederation has changed much more slowly (Bergqvist 2004). The recognition of cultural and ethnic difference was similarly delayed, though eventually some gains have been registered. Even if union densities among immigrant workers was relatively high, unemployment among them had long been higher than among the nativeborn. When the gap widened in the 1990s, especially among those from non-Western countries, unions undertook a range of initiatives to increase unionization rates. At the end of the decade, union concern about racial discrimination increased, partly a result of the passage of anti-discrimination legislation in 1994, and partly in response to the rise of xenophobic activism within the political arena. In 1995, LO appointed a senior official responsible for ethnic diversity issues. In 1997, a Network for Immigrant Union Activists was formed with union support. And, in 1998, a representative committee appointed by LO issued a report acknowledging that the labour movement itself needed to change. It encouraged recognition of cultural differences, rather than assimilation, as the route to inclusiveness. Mid-1990s assessments of Swedish labour’s response to foreign workers was uncertain how extensive the commitment to equity was; a 2003 ETUC report pointed to LO as one of only two federations across Europe that had bothered to gather substantive information about immigrant workers among their own members (Wrench 1996; Knocke 2000; ETUC 2003:30). The federation declared the integration of immigrants into employment and union structures a priority for the 2000-2004 period, its campaign on the issue premised on the acknowledgement of discrimination in the workplace and society at large. Elaborate educational materials were developed, training expanded, guidelines issued for raising immigrant issues at the bargaining table, and commitments made to increase representation in union decision-making. Similar patterns are evident in union engagement with other questions of difference. Unions have recently cooperated with state-sponsored initiatives to promote employment of people with disabilities, though legislation enacted in 1999 seemed to have provided a significant impetus to change (Labropoulou and Soumeli 2001). Swedish unions have developed inclusive policies around sexual diversity, among the striking examples being unions representing police and military personnel (Styrsky 2005).

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Significant shifts have occurred in the Swedish labour movement. Unions have been embracing questions of difference on most dimensions, however, only quite recently, and as often as not as part of an overall shift in public policy. And, as with other labour movements traditionally embedded in corporatist arrangements, there is less capacity at the local level to ensure compliance. It is still too soon to know whether shifts in policy and overall approach to questions of difference will extend much beyond the central policy-making arenas of a labour movement that remains relatively centralized, and how much it will be open to a critical examination of the norms and prejudices of union members themselves. Overall Comparative Assessment These brief discussions of change in selected settings display significant shifts over the last 30 years. A number of individual unions, especially in northern Europe, are among the leading advocates of change internationally on one or another equity front. Their most sustained attention has been to gender inequity, and it is often there that the most concerted action has been taken beyond formal policy. The fact that women now constitute 30 per cent, 40 per cent or more of the workforce, and a growing proportion of union membership, makes gender increasingly inescapable. But if we compare the uptake of gender issues in these settings with the Canadian case, it seems to me that we find somewhat later starts and slower progress beyond formal policy declarations (with Britain’s UNISON an important exception). In northern continental Europe, the large size and relative centralization of labour movements was an impediment to thoroughgoing cultural and organizational change, particularly at the base. Their embeddedness in corporatist arrangements also contributed to their prioritization of policy change and not of revitalization of their own operations. In some cases (for example, the Dutch, and to some extent the German), membership decline in recent decades has created a defensiveness of traditional union priorities. In Australia and the United States, quite different forms of union or social traditionalism has created barriers to prioritizing gender issues, though in the American case, revitalization moves have led to new forms of organizing of relevance to women. Steps to combat marginalization based on race have not fared as well in Canadian unions as gender, but there is no reason to point to any other labour movement as better. American labour probably has as long a history as its counterparts in any other country in having to take up

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race issues seriously. Continental European and Australian labour union responses to racial issues are inextricably tied to questions of immigration, and their memberships are seriously divided on both. Still, in recent decades, many unions have spoken out on discrimination based on ethnicity and pressed for change in public policy. The excellent collection edited by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad (2000) points to real change across a range of European systems on questions of ethnicity and immigration, and particularly those under examination here. But there is no evidence that any labour movement as a whole has moved further or more thoroughly than the Canadian towards genuinely inclusive change. Much the same could be said of disability. Labour movements in most of the countries examined here have witnessed new forms of rights activism, and have expanded policy responses beyond a preoccupation with union members disabled by work itself. There is no evidence, however, of any one labour movement standing out from the pack. Public sector labour organizations such as Britain’s UNISON, the Dutch AbvaKabo, and the German ÖTV have developed excellent records in acknowledging sexual diversity. But change seems more widespread in Canada, and to have moved furthest beyond formal steps (Hunt and Eaton, this volume). This indeed seems a broader pattern. A wider range of unions in Canada than elsewhere can be cited as relatively progressive. Drawing on arguments made by Frege and Kelly (2003), I hazard the claim that change has reached further towards the base. I say that while acknowledging fully the cautionary notes struck by several chapters in this volume, since I would strike even stronger cautionary notes in other settings. Explaining Canadian Progress What explains the relative success of Canadian union advocates for change, particularly on gender and sexuality? Most of the explanatory factors discussed above have positioned Canadian equity activists in a favourable position. Some that might well have had a mixed result appear to have worked in a largely favourable direction, though not as clearly on questions of race, disability, and Aboriginal status. Demographic Change Women entered the Canadian workforce for sustained periods in large numbers during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, more so than in most of

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western Europe. Although many clustered in vulnerable job sectors, there were enough of them in unionized environments – especially in the public sector – that they represented a large union constituency. They now constitute a majority of union members in Canada – more than in any of the other labour movements examined here. Since first colonization, Canada has been largely populated by immigrants, and now has as high a rate of immigration as any of the countries included here. Workplaces with high proportions of immigrants, and (in the last few decades) with high proportions of visible minority employees, are very widespread. Immigrant marginalization is still extensive, but large-scale immigration from non-European countries has a sufficiently long history that visible minorities are highly visible across a variety of workplaces. As with women, then, many are already in unions. Advocacy around racial difference is weakened to some extent by the absence of a single large group with historical grievances – such as African Americans – but openings to change are created by the very heterogeneity of visible minorities. The rising urgency of Aboriginal claims for justice also help move questions of racial difference to the fore. Sexual diversity has become a highly visible feature of Canada’s urban landscape. The same could be said of London, Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam, Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. But it can be said of all three of Canada’s largest cities – Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver – and this provides support for sexual minority union members across the country. People with disabilities have been much more often denied access to the workplace than not, so that advocates for change have not benefited as much from visible changes in labour force demographics on this dimension as they have on other. Overall, though, there has been a relatively long history of very obvious changes in the labour force, and in union membership. Resources Available to Feminist and Other Diversity Activists In Canada, feminist activism arose relatively early within the labour movement, and was strengthened by links to the larger women’s movement. Feminists were the first to challenge the labour movement to engage issues of difference, and other equity seeking groups benefited from the precedents they set. Women’s caucuses were also important sources of pressure on other equity issues. This, as we

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have seen, was in part a product of the rapid increase in female union membership, and in part the strength of socialist feminism within the Canadian women’s movement. Feminism was prominent in both the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Parti Québécois (PQ), and through these and other links union activists had a language and framework which resonated with the more progressive side of the labour movement. The coalitional structure of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), the most prominent women’s group throughout the 1970s and 1980s, empowered union women activists, and ensured a place within the broader women’s movement for workplace and union issues. The kinds of linkages formed in and through NAC also led to a degree of race-consciousness and a willingness to recognize sexual diversity among feminists. Union activists focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity also had links to the broader movement that was seeking public recognition of sexual diversity. Gay and lesbian unionists took up relationship issues as they moved to the fore in the broader movement – recognizing their relevance for the workplace – and helped convince unions to take cases of discrimination to courts and labour tribunals. Later on, activists concerned with transgender issues took up issues (including support for transitioning and the establishment of basic non-discrimination rights) that were in synch with the broader movement. The early capacity to establish networks and caucuses within the labour movement, and to benefit from links to broader movements, provided activist groups with crucial visibility and frameworks for pressing their causes. This also helped activists seeking recognition of visible minorities, people with disabilities, and Aboriginals, though their own resources were not as substantial and their linkage to outside movement activism not as secured. The availability of allies among existing labour leaders in Canada also helped equity-seeking activists. As Hunt’s introduction to this volume and his work on sexual diversity suggest, particular unions were sometimes able to forge ahead on such fronts because their presidents or crucial executive members recognized the validity of their claims and added influential voices to their advocacy. Union Decline? The capacity of the Canadian labour movement to respond to new issues has been enhanced by its retention of members over the last

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quarter-century. Unions have certainly been weakened politically by the rise of neo-liberalism, the integration of Canada into liberalized trade arrangements, and the numerical decline of manufacturing. But they have kept up their numbers, in part because of high rates of unionization in the public sector, and in part because of the retention of core elements of the labour relations framework created after the Second World War. Most important among these features is the ‘Rand’ formula, by which all members of a workforce are obliged to pay dues to a union that has secured the official right to represent them. (This is in stark contrast to developments in a number of American states.) Part of their success is owed to their organizing in new constituencies, a response to the realization that a weakening of their numbers would exacerbate their political marginality (a point made by Hunt in the introduction to this volume). The retention of members, in turn, provides fuel for the development of new programs and strategies that unions more thoroughly on the defensive would lack. Openness to change in Canada also resulted from union expansion into the public sector in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when women were entering the workforce in large numbers and social movement activism on diversity was surging – particularly feminist activism. This not only meant a shift of union members towards white-collar work, but also a rising prominence of workplaces where questions of diversity would have the greatest profile. The Structure of Unions and Collective Bargaining Frege and Kelly (2003) place much emphasis on the incentives for revitalization provided in decentralized labour movements. Canada’s industrial relations system made centralized bargaining unusual, and corporatist arrangements were never widespread. Labour’s strength, then, was utterly dependent on union presence and strength at the base. Threats to union membership numbers that emerged in the 1970s, and made that much more ominous by intensified anti-labour rhetoric in business and government, forced change. Recognizing the changes in workplace composition almost inevitably became part of any strategy for renewal. The capacity of equity activists to effect change within the labour movement depends in part on the complexity and permeability of union structures themselves. A collective bargaining system that is generally enterprise-based tends to weaken labour’s power, but it also creates more room for innovation than highly centralized systems. The

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centralized corporatist arrangements that prevailed in much of northern Europe until recently encouraged unions to develop broad policy agendas, but in very few did diversity issues get onto the table in a significant way. The spread of concern for diversity to unions outside the public sector has been facilitated by the growth and diversification of several of Canada’s largest unions, requiring them to develop policies and practices appealing to women and other traditionally marginalized groups. The Canadian Automobile Workers (CAW) have a long history of social unionism, but their expansion into job sectors far beyond their manufacturing core (for example into the airline industry) has diversified their own membership in ways that give even more prominence to equity. The same is true more recently with the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), who have been organizing in white-collar areas (organizing administrative staff, for example, at the University of Toronto) where questions of diversity and equity are prominent. The embrace of difference beyond formal policy was given an extra push by the limitations in Canada’s welfare state. Although more expansive than the American, Canada’s social policy network is not nearly as comprehensive as those in northern Europe. Considerable scope is therefore left for workplace benefit packages to include supplements to state pensions, health benefits, and leave programs. The local bargaining agenda, then, will have provisions operating very obviously in exclusionary or inclusionary ways. Provisions for child care, for spousal support, for the recognition of same-sex partners, that in parts of Europe would be covered only by public policy, are to some extent covered by local bargaining in Canada. This provides an incentive for activism at all levels, and an opening for unions wanting to avoid the appearance of discrimination. European activists often tried to obtain support from their labour movements in applying pressure on governments, but the relevance of workplace bargaining in Canada provided incentives for equity activists to mobilize at all levels of the labour movement. The development of progressive equity policies has been further assisted by the increasing separation of the Canadian labour movement from the American. Since the 1940s, and particularly since the mid-1960s, Canadian unions have had a stronger commitment to broad social and political change than their American counterparts (Adams 1989, 1995; Robinson 1994; Lipset and Meltz 2004). Even before the separation of the CAW from the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in the mid-1980s, there were discernable differences in the

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orientations of the two wings. As Canadian union membership is increasingly lodged in autonomous national unions and less in international unions, its divergence from American labour becomes more pronounced. At one time, over 70 per cent of Canadian union members belonged to international unions, but by the late 1990s, that percentage had declined to less than 30 (Lipset and Meltz 2004:53). The links between most Canadian unions and social democratic parties have strengthened social unionism and created room for discussion of diversity. Most unions and labour federations have formal links to the New Democratic Party, which has never been dominated by orthodox forms of socialism or traditional notions of working-class solidarity. From its early 1960s origins it was a coalition of forces, with a significant openness to the social movement activism that was building momentum at the time. The labour organizations that were linked to the NDP may not have been instantly open to the claims made by such movements, but they found opportunities for contact with new ideas in the common meeting ground the party provided. In Quebec, many trade unionists also had links to the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, another social democratic party. The ties were not as structural as to the NDP, but personal contact and policy discussions within the PQ undoubtedly exposed union leaders to the policy priorities of equityseeking activists, particularly those pushing gender issues and later sexual orientation. Union Culture The fact that the Canadian labour movement was not definitively shaped by the very particular working-class culture that was so influential in Europe, and to some extent Australia, left room at a relatively early stage for the recognition of non-class differences. While the heritage of British unionism was strong in the formative stages of this country’s labour movement, American influences and the social realities of an immigrant society inevitably shifted it from European notions of class (Heron 1996). Gerald Hunt (this volume) cites Yates (1998) in suggesting that labour’s traditional collective identity still acts as an impediment to change, but both of us agree that this is less formidable a barrier than it is in much of Europe. This may have weakened labour in some respects, but in the latter decades of the twentieth century made it possible to find room for discussing differences other than those that were class-based.

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The importance of social unionism in Canada was another factor promoting openness to change. Although most comparative analyses portray Canadian labour as close to American in formal and political terms, Canada has long had stronger currents of social democracy than its neighbours, even when joined together in international unions. There has also been more widespread union concern with a broad range of public policy issues. This has facilitated labour support of equity causes advocated by social movements representing women, sexual minorities, visible minorities, Aboriginals, and people with disabilities. Relations between unions and these other movements have not always been intimate, but there is a long history of labour support for the recognition of diversity. Canadian labour’s retention of membership levels over the last few decades, at a time when the diversity of the workforce was becoming more visible, reduced the likelihood that union recognition of such diversity would be perceived as a threat. In many countries, equity advocates have argued that union structures, bargaining patterns, and organizing strategies had to recognize difference in order to rejuvenate. But in countries where union membership has been in steep decline, that argument has often been a hard sell. The embrace of this argument in Canada is far from universal, but the retreat to traditional agendas has not been as widespread. Comparative high levels of economic growth and low levels of unemployment over the last decade have also facilitated the support of revitalizing agendas. Political and Legal Recognition of Diversity Allegiance to the idea of diversity is much touted in Western societies, but there are few countries in which diversity is regularly treated as a core element of national identity. Canadian ‘multicultural’ policies are vulnerable to criticism for being incomplete and tokenistic, but they provide a rhetorical standard, unique to this country, by which state and private institutions can be judged (Ignatieff 2000). The early 1980s incorporation of the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms into Canada’s constitutional fabric increased the profile of equity issues, particularly when the courts began to rule on questions of sexual orientation, Aboriginal status, and gender. Although policies and court judgements recognizing difference were not always greeted with universal public approval, the Charter itself remained

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very popular, and changes in equity standards supported by the Supreme Court of Canada raised the bar, especially for organizations that saw themselves as progressive. Political recognition of difference has deep roots in Canadian politics, however often contested. The federal regime itself contains provisions recognizing the distinctiveness of the francophone population and related linguistic protections. Roman Catholic religious rights are also protected, as part of a system that avoided both official Church establishment and official secularism. These are precedents for more recent policies on multiculturalism, and may have helped to ensure a degree of legitimacy for them. Support for a ‘mosaic’ image of the country has become a component of Canadian nationalism, often juxtaposed to the American ‘melting pot’ (Lipset 1970). Both these images are exaggerated and simplified, but the perception of divergence in national cultures helps to legitimize the politics of difference. The Canadian labour movement has certainly been influenced by nationalist ideas, contributing to the breakaway of the CAW from the UAW, and to the autonomy of Canadian sections of international unions. Pan-Canadian and to some extent Québécois nationalism can embrace the imagery of the mosaic more easily than other nationalisms, because Canada was never an imperial or military power. This has created room for a less masculinist form of patriotism, not so preoccupied by fears of contamination or weakness of fibre as, for example, in its American, British, German, Russian, and Japanese counterparts. Canada’s rights regime and public policies recognizing diversity combine elements of individual and collective approaches. The courts are often most comfortable with conceptions of rights based on formal or narrow equality, and equity-focused commentators have been quick to point out the limitations of litigation as a political strategy (for example, Fudge 1991; Herman 1994; Hirschl 2004; Iyer 1997). However, Canadian rulings often embrace a more expansive form of liberalism, and at times acknowledge that genuine equality sometimes requires recognizing differences between groups (Pierceson 2005; Richards 2005). The Charter also explicitly leaves room for affirmative action policies, contributing to a shift of discourse away from purely individualist and formal notions of equality. This has lessened the challenge of introducing the language of rights into the labour movement. Court interpretations that effectively included sexual orientation in the Charter’s equality protections framework were particularly important in

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providing an impetus to union activists. Early 1990s rulings by the Supreme Court also provided a vehicle for unions to press for inclusive employment benefits (Petersen 1999). This helped to ensure that principled labour commitments to diversity included sexuality, even if a number of public policy references to equity targeted only gender, race, aboriginal status, and disability. This line of argument does not suggest that Canadians are uniformly more accepting of equity principles than citizens of other countries. A comparison with the United States is inconclusive, although some observers claim that Canadian values have always had stronger currents of progressivism than American (Lipset 1970; Lipset and Meltz 2004). Other analyses say there is a growing divergence in attitudes (Adams 2003). On issues related to gender, race, and especially sexual orientation, such claims have merit. The reason may well be linked to the growth of institutional recognition of difference within the broader state system, and to the relative weakness of strongly right wing media such as the British tabloid press and American Christian broadcasting and talk radio. Recognition of diversity in the labour movement and the general public was assisted by the fragmentation of Canada’s political right during the 1990s and into the next decade. To be sure, the party system’s centre of gravity shifted to the right over this period, in part because of the governing Liberals’ embrace of many neo-liberal policies. However, there were two parties explicitly identifying themselves as right wing – the federal Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (later the Alliance), now united as the Conservative Party of Canada. These parties disagreed on a variety of diversity issues, including gay/lesbian rights, abortion, and immigration. Even within the Reform/Alliance Party, the tensions between socially and economically right-wing policies were never far below the surface. When the two parties united in 2004, these tensions did not melt away. In fact, the electoral risks of attacking pro-diversity policies and court rulings were as clear as ever, and the leader of the ‘new’ Conservative Party regularly distanced himself from the socially conservative outbursts of parliamentary candidates in the 2004 national election. Even when the party won in 2006, it did so with only a minority of seats in Parliament, and its campaign muzzled those who sought a socially conservative agenda on most of the issues that mattered to them. This is in significant contrast to the United States, several European countries, and Australia, where strong right-wing parties are able to score points by disdaining or hedging the recognition of difference.

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Religious conservatism is not a negligible force in Canada, but it is much less potent than in the United States. There is some evidence that the values of Canadian religious conservatives are less intolerant and less linked to patriotism than is true south of the border (Reimer 2003). Religious right preachers and groups can mobilize followers enough to frighten politicians at both federal and provincial levels. But they have only modest resources compared to their American counterparts, and are more likely to be dismissed as extreme by major media outlets and politicians. Religious conservatives have managed to build a critical mass in only a few regions of Canada, weakening their national voice. There is a long history of progressive religious intervention in social policy in this country. The largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, has adopted inclusive positions on a number of equity fronts: gender, Aboriginal status, sexual diversity, and race. Some Anglican dioceses also have distinctly progressive orientations. In western Canada, evangelical Christianity has taken progressive as often as conservative turns on social issues. The relative weakness of moral conservatism has created room for unions to take up questions of difference. Opposition in principle within their own memberships has been lower than in countries with strong currents of such conservatism, and the embrace of diversity has been less subject to media and political attack than in countries with a stronger and united right eager to take up such issues. Canadian unions face less threat to their legitimacy for taking assertively proequity positions, and more threat to it for failing to do so. Conclusion Any assessment of labour’s commitment to the recognition of diversity is hampered by the difficulty of knowing how genuine and thoroughgoing such a commitment is, even within a single union. The assessments of both union officials and equity-seeking activists come from interested parties, and differing evaluations frequently result from adopting contrasting indicators of change. Judgments are often unduly shaped by formal policy statements and by institutions of representation, rather than by change in social behaviour and cultural norms on the ground. In addition, some developments may have significance in one union or in one country and not in others. The creation of a vicepresidential slot for people with disabilities, for example, may be a powerful signalling device in one setting, and much less so in another.

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Thus, the claim I have made here – that Canadian labour has shifted as much or more towards recognition of diversity in the labour force and within its own ranks than its counterparts elsewhere – has to be made cautiously and tentatively. As is clear from the record, such an assertion must acknowledge the enormity of change still required in Canadian unions. This is obviously the case for issues of race, Aboriginal status, and disability, on which serious broadly based action has only recently begun, but it is also true of gender and sexual orientation. The recent past has shown that unions are often able to respond most effectively when equity claims point to transparent inequality: unequal pay for the same work, differential access to family benefits. They will also respond when equity claims point to the importance of bargaining additional benefits; for example, for same-sex partners. Unions will sometimes hesitate but eventually recognize that prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour exist within, requiring educational campaigns for members and special training for their representatives. As several contributors to this volume have pointed out, unions are usually least responsive when equity claims call for a questioning of core union practices, at the bargaining table and elsewhere. Such claims, for example, may collide with seniority, a principle that most unions are reluctant to rethink in relation to its impact on equity goals. As Hunt (this volume) notes, though, a couple of unions, including the postal workers and auto workers, have attempted when at the bargaining table to expand the concept of seniority in order to have it apply in ways that are complementary with their equity objectives. Another source of caution in this overview is the fragility of the coalitional links between the labour movement and equity-seeking activism outside labour. There have been many such linkages in the Canadian experience over the last three decades. But the work done by union activists is inevitably marked by some isolation from the work of those outside. This is in part a result of the complexities of operating inside any large rule-bound apparatus and in part due to differences in focus and framework. Activists outside labour are not uniformly supportive of unions. In some cases, this comes from systemic differences in perspective on crucial issues; for example, some aspects of disability (Valentine and Rayside, this volume). In others, it comes from those groups not recognizing that coalitional work entails two-way support. The willingness to forge meaningful links with outside groups varies dramatically from one period to another and from issue to issue. Still, on this front, too, Canadian unions seem to have fared better than

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most, and in so doing have taken up questions of difference in ways that reflect the priorities and frameworks of social movement activists beyond the labour movement. One indicator of Canadian leadership on questions of difference is the high standing Canada has within international labour. This is due to its policy record and to wide international interest in the recognition of cultural and other group differences in Canada’s political and rights frameworks. Canadian observers may well be justified in pointing to the limitations and frailties of such forms of recognition, but they have considerable respect internationally (Ignatieff 2000). The challenge facing this country’s labour movement is to deserve that respect.

NOTE This chapter benefited greatly from earlier collaborative work with Gerald Hunt, and from discussions with Morley Gunderson and the extraordinary staff of the library at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations. Valuable research assistance was provided by Kim Campbell and Cheryl Auger.

Afterword LINDA BRISKIN

Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour documents the significant shift in diversity politics in Canadian unions from a focus largely on women to attention to multiple equity-seeking groups. Despite continuing challenges to this equity project, when considered over time, progress has been dramatic. In bringing together discussions of union equity organizing around disability, racism, sexuality, and gender, this anthology makes a notable contribution to the industrial relations and labour studies literature. It challenges commonsense tendencies to understand unions as institutions focused on narrow economic agendas, and simultaneously contests the lack of serious engagement with the union equity project in industrial relations programs. This text also supports the equity struggle itself. Unions are frequently unable to devote scarce resources to documenting and analysing their efforts to make change, or archiving their publications and policies.1 Yet, creating historical narratives and evaluating these struggles not only increases their profile and legitimacy within unions and in the public consciousness, but also assists unions in their continuing efforts to mobilize their increasingly diverse membership and act effectively as social justice institutions. This book offers textured analyses, facilitates the cross-fertilization of equity strategies across unions, and provides support to equity researchers in unions and universities. By offering not only contemporary analyses of these struggles but also historical overviews, this text underscores the contextual nature of equity discourses, the changing profiles of what are deemed equity issues, and the shifting parameters of equity constituencies.2

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As this anthology demonstrates, unions increasingly face the task of representing the interests of diverse groups of workers, based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, ability, and First Nations status, whose claims to citizenship inside unions are consolidating and who are rapidly becoming a larger proportion of the unionized workforce. Organizing these multiple constituencies, many of whom have traditionally been marginalized, will be central to the long-term success of the Canadian labour movement. Undoubtedly the shift in union density and membership demographics are underlying factors contributing to the changes in union policies and practices. In contrast to sharp declines in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, union density in Canada has remained relatively stable. However, these numbers hide dramatic shifts in the gender, age, sector, and industry demographics in union membership reflective of changes in the labour market. In 2004, for the first time, the unionization rate for women was slightly higher than for men: 31 per cent for women and 30 per cent for men. In 1977, women’s unionization rate was less than one-quarter of the men’s rate. Between 1981 and 2004, compared with less than one point for women, the rate for men declined by almost 12 percentage points (Morissette, Schellenberg, and Johnson 2005:5). This decline can be traced to the shift of employment from the heavily unionized male-dominated, goodsproducing industries to the less-unionized, private service industries. These shifts have led to a changing sectoral and gender balance in union membership. By 2002, women were half of the more than four million Canadian union members. Significantly, public employees constitute 42 per cent of total union membership although they only account for 18 per cent of the paid workforce (Akyeampong 1997). The majority of unionized men are in the private sector and the majority of unionized women in the public sector. These demographic and density transformations help to explain the leadership role around equity issues played by the public sector unions, a fact noted by many of the authors in this book. Challenges Drawing on themes from this anthology and anticipating future directions, this discussion identifies six challenges for union equity organizing. The first three – intersectional bargaining, implementing equity policy at the local level, and coalition building inside unions among

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equity-seeking groups – speak to the next stages of equity organizing inside unions. The second three – linking equity and economic restructuring, building campaigns to address the wages and lack of representation of the lowest paid and most marginalized of workers, and challenging governments and employers to support the equity project – highlight equity initiatives necessary to improve employment conditions, and to advance equity through social and labour market policy. Intersectional Bargaining As Karen Bentham (this volume) points out, ‘collective bargaining remains the single most important vehicle’ for unions to advance an equity agenda. And undoubtedly, collective agreements have changed significantly as a result of equity organizing. The chapters on disability, racism, wage equity, sexualities, and gender document bargaining gains – in some instances quite modest (for example, around disability), and in other areas more substantial (for examples, around benefits for lesbian and gay workers). In addition to the identification of specific platforms of concerns which address the needs of each equityseeking group, there is increasing recognition of the importance of what could be called equity mainstreaming; that is, identifying racial, ethnic, Aboriginal, age, citizenship, sexual, and ability implications in traditional collective agreement provisions. Although mainstreaming is a considerable challenge, it is not the final one; the next stage of bargaining equity may depend upon deepening understandings of intersectionality to take account of the complexity of lived discrimination in the workplace.3 The language of intersectionality emerged from antiracist feminist theorizing (see, for example, Zinn and Dill 1996), and recognizes that ‘intersectional oppression arises out of the combination of various oppressions which, together, produce something unique and distinct from any one form of discrimination standing alone’ (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2001:4). Many authors highlight the importance of equity representation inside union structures, which in turn underscores the relationship between ‘equity bargaining’ and ‘bargaining equity’ (Briskin 2006). ‘Equity bargaining’ refers to bargaining strategy and includes issues such as the race and gender of negotiators. ‘Bargaining equity,’ on the other hand, refers to the issues on an equity agenda. Without a shift in who is negotiating, and how they negotiate, there may be little change in what is negotiated. Or, to put it more broadly, unions need to link

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the struggles around diversity, equity, and representation inside unions to the collective bargaining process and agenda, a point made directly and indirectly in many chapters in this anthology. Implementing Equity Policy at the Local Level This book documents the remarkable growth of union policies on racism, homophobia, and sexism, and more recently on transphobia and ableism. The passing of each policy involves widespread education and mobilization, particularly of union activists. As David Rayside and Fraser Valentine (this volume) point out, such policies are ‘educational tools for our membership,’ and ‘union members work with these documents to talk to each other, educate each other and debate these issues as a way of building solidarity in the workplace and communities where they live.’ However, despite passing progressive equity policies at national conventions, and despite their educational value, many Canadian unions have faced considerable difficulty integrating such policy into local practice, a problem not uncommon in other countries, and one highlighted throughout this text. The relationship between local, regional, and central union arenas – what Waddington (1999) calls ‘union articulation,’ is emerging as a critical issue in the current context, and has ramifications concerning how to think about initiatives around equity representation and implementation. The difficulties of operationalizing policy as practice, and the tendency for researchers to focus on policies for their assessments of union equity organizing, suggest the need for equity ethnographies of local unions. Judy Haiven’s detailed discussion of a Saskatoon CUPE local in this volume speaks to implementation issues and offers insight into the complexity of local union politics. Haiven documents the ‘resistance within union locals to serious equity programs, and the difficulty that unions have in facing down such resistance among their own members.’ To more fully understand the links between formal policy and local practice, in-depth detailed case studies of this sort will be necessary. The increase in enterprise bargaining as a result of economic restructuring also enhances the significance of the local context. A Canadian study (Pupo, Wells, and White 1998) highlights the gap between ‘an increasing commitment, albeit sometimes merely rhetorical, to social movement unionism and social democratic politics at the top ... and a resurgence of what appears to be a micro corporatist

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variety of business unionism at the bottom’(4) What the authors call ‘neo-feudalism’ emerging in response to workplace reorganization encourages ‘local leaders and members [to] strategically align themselves with their managements as their first line of defense within a precarious work arrangement’ (49). Not only is the local arena the key site for the implementation of union equity policies and for resistance to the encroachments of economic restructuring, it is also the context for bargaining equity-supportive collective agreements, organizing the organized, and involving new members, all of increasing importance given declining union density. Coalition Building Inside Unions among Equity Seeking Groups In many articles in this anthology, two related strategic themes emerge: the importance of equity representation on union executives and committees, and the continuing necessity of constituency (sometimes called separate or self) organizing. In fact, evidence suggests that constituency organizing, itself a form of leadership, may be more effective than representation as a vehicle for union transformation (Briskin 2006b). Over the past thirty years, constituency organizing has brought together members of equity-seeking groups to strengthen their voices, skills, selfconfidence, and political power. Such self-organizing highlights the significance of social identities, builds community, and supports collective action. It is expressed organizationally in formal committees and caucuses that are sometimes mandated by union constitutions. In the current context, the various separate committees and caucuses – representing women, people of colour, Aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons – need to invent new ways to work collectively and collaboratively. It is not only that separate organizing can be perceived as ‘divisive,’ an important point made by Tania Das Gupta (this volume), but that the strength of union constituency organizing now requires new organizational vehicles, not only to advance the union equity project but also to strengthen the union movement as a whole. Cross-constituency organizing – that is, a form of coalition building inside unions – is likely the next stage (Briskin 2006a). For example, in order to facilitate coalition building inside CUPE, in 2003 the Ontario Region of CUPE reconfigured its Human Rights Committee as an umbrella committee with representatives from the Pink Triangle Committee, the Women’s Committee, the People with Disabilities Committee, the Rainbow Committee, the Youth

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Committee, and the International Solidarity Committee. Developing new organizational vehicles such as this dual structure prevents the marginalization of any particular equity-seeking group, highlights the common core to equity concerns, and demonstrates that solidarity can be built on a foundation of diversity. Cross-constituency organizing is part of the project to democratize union structures, and may even offer a model of equity practice for other institutional environments. The strategic balancing between difference (which encourages separate organizing) and commonality (which encourages alliances) is constantly being unsettled. In this time of severe attacks on working people, and at the end of more than three decades of separate organizing, a noticeable ideological and strategic shift towards working together through alliances and coalitions can be identified. Perhaps more than any other single strategy, coalition building across unions, with social movements, and across borders will be critical to successful resistance to the corporate and neo-liberal agenda. Cross-constituency organizing – that is, coalition building inside unions – can make an important contribution to this end. Linking Equity and Economic Restructuring As a result of economic and political restructuring, globalization and regional integration through ‘free’ trade treaties, Canadian workers face deteriorating conditions of work, competitive wage bargaining across national boundaries, corporate and state attacks on worker and union rights, dismantling of social programs and downloading of caring work to families, decreases in the social wage, and a discursive shift to radical individualism. In particular, the restructuring of the labour market from the heavily unionized manufacturing sector towards private and difficult-to-organize private services, and the transformation of work from relatively secure full-time employment to part-time, casual, temporary, and often precarious employment has led to a relative decline in union density, a change in the demographics of union membership, and a focus of worker struggle on resisting privatization, contracting out, and employer demands for concessions, and on protecting job security. Globalization and restructuring raise new challenges for equity organizing in Canadian unions; in this context, the risk increases that equity concerns inside unions will be marginalized. However, gendered, racialized, aged, and citizenship competition is at the heart of restructuring and globalization. Indeed, the deepening

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exploitation of racial and gender differences by corporate capital, and the increasing silence of the state on equity issues, are positioning unions as the key vehicle of resistance. As a result, unions need to integrate equity into their responses to restructuring and globalization, and mainstream equity issues inside unions and workplaces. This shift will require repositioning equity from the margin to the centre, and reinventing solidarity to address its complexity in a global context. Wages and Representation of the Lowest Paid and Most Marginalized of Workers In her contribution to this anthology, Anne Forrest documents the historical struggle for wage fairness, and identifies three union fair pay principles: pay the job not the worker, equal pay for equal work, and fair comparisons. Despite gains for women in non-traditional work, and for professional and skilled workers especially in the public sector, she finds that less skilled women, especially those employed in traditional women’s work, and part-time workers have benefited the least from union initiatives. Her conclusions echo a comment by Judy Darcy, past president of CUPE, who identified the challenge of raising the wages of low paid workers as ‘the paramount equity issue facing … the trade union movement today’ (2006:59). Addressing the problem of the lowest paid and most marginal of workers, many of whom are women, workers of colour, and immigrants requires implementing fair pay principles. It also depends on increasing representation of the lowest paid in union structures, coalitional campaigns for those low-paid workers who are unionized, and union and community initiatives for unorganized workers. On the issue of representation, it is worth noting the strategy of the British UNISON, Europe’s largest public sector union, which was born in 1993 of an amalgamation of three unions. UNISON has about 1.3 million members, 75 per cent of whom are women. Proportionality and fair representation are central to UNISON’s constitution, and representation includes attention to black members, lesbian and gay members, and disabled members; in an important innovation, representative structures also provide seats for low-paid women (McBride 2001). In the concluding chapter of this book, David Rayside notes that ‘the fact that the Canadian labour movement was not definitively shaped by the very particular working-class culture that was so influential in Europe … left room at a relatively early stage for the recognition of non-class

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differences.’ That said, it may be that Canadian labour needs to recuperate a gendered and raced class consciousness which focuses on the legions of low-paid and heavily exploited workers. One such initiative is the ‘Million Reasons’ campaign launched in 2005 by the Toronto and York Region District Labour Council, which points to the more than a million workers in the Toronto region who earn less than a living wage. The campaign calls for good jobs, bargaining to raise standards, mass union organizing, and restoring the social wage.4 In 2006 the focus – ‘A Million Reasons to Support Hotel Workers’ – was linked to a continent-wide UNITEHERE campaign to raise the wages and health and safety standards of hotel workers.5 In July 2006 the collective agreements of hotel workers in nine North American cities, including Toronto, expired, and a broad-based campaign among unions and community groups supported contract negotiations and envisioned policy initiatives to support low-wage workers around incomes, child-care, training, equal opportunities, and housing. The collective organization and resistance among non-unionized and often marginalized workers, many of whom are women and workers of colour, is also growing. Among these workers, who are protected only by limited and often unenforced provincial Employment Standard Acts, militancy has taken a variety of innovative and extraunion forms (Vosko 2006). For example, community unionism focuses on the unemployed and precariously employed and includes efforts of unions to connect with non-labour community groups to unionize workers; attempts by community groups to organize workers in precarious employment; and organizations such as Workers’ Centres which build the power of non-unionized workers and the workingclass community (Cranford, Das Gupta, Ladd, and Vosko 2006). Such initiatives are of increasing importance in defending the rights of workers in the face of attacks by corporate capitalism, coercive state practices, and the difficulties organizing precarious workers into unions. Globalization and economic restructuring are making such new forms of organizing and resistance necessary. Challenging Governments and Employers to Support the Equity Project As Gerald Hunt points out in the introduction, ‘unions do not operate in a vacuum from employers and other factors. Lack of substantive evidence of change does not always mean a union has not attempted it. It may speak to particularly intransigent employers.’ In fact, in large

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measure, what Canadian unions have accomplished around the equity project has been without the support of employers or governments. To further the equity agenda, broadly framed to include equityseeking groups and low paid and marginalized workers, who are often one and the same, employers need to adopt what is called the ‘high road’ strategy, and governments need to provide a legal and policy environment which supports social and economic justice. The ‘high road’ model for economic development, which is gaining some credibility in the United States, offers an alternative to the commitment to precarious employment by Canadian employers, and their continued resistance to unionization (Bentham 2002). ‘There are two broad ways in which businesses may choose to compete. They may take the “high road” competing primarily on the basis of high productivity, high-quality products or services and innovation. Or they may take the “low road,” gaining competitive advantage mainly through low costs, including low wages, and paying little or no systematic attention to productivity or quality. The high road makes good jobs possible, while the low road makes them impossible’ (AFLCIO Working for America Institute 2002: 11).6 The high road strategy is central to the 2006 UNITEHERE campaign for hotel workers, and already important gains have been made: for example, the negotiation of a one-cent Equal Opportunity Training Fund with the Sheraton and Hilton hotels in Toronto. Not only do unions struggle with resistant and aggressive employers, but the legal environment provided by the state does not support unions, and thus makes struggles for equity inside unions and in workplaces more difficult. On the broadest scale, all workers need access to unions. Adams (2006) argues that the failure to protect and promote collective bargaining as a human right goes directly against international promises made by Canada.7 The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) have recently launched a campaign to defend free collective bargaining. They point out that since 1982 the federal and provincial governments have passed 170 pieces of legislation that have restricted, suspended, or denied collective bargaining rights. 8 The federal government should pass a long-overdue anti-scab bill for employees covered by the Canada Labour Code,9 and all provincial governments should follow the lead of Quebec and British Columbia, both of which already have such legislation. All jurisdictions should remove barriers to certification and support the recommendations of

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the 2006 Arthurs Commission: Fairness at Work: Federal Labour Standards for the 21st Century.10 In the interests of inclusivity and democracy, both provincial and federal governments need to set aside their parochial support of the business community and recognize the important role unions play in furthering workplace justice. Conclusion Based on his comparative research, David Rayside (this volume) finds ‘no evidence that any labour movement as a whole has moved further or more thoroughly than the Canadian towards genuinely inclusive change.’ Canadian labour has been, and continues to be, at the forefront of public policy debates and involved in coalitions to advance equity by influencing government policy and shifting public consciousness. More than any other social institution, unions have also taken equity initiatives to transform their own organizational practices and internal culture in order to ensure fairness and representation for equity-seeking members. Despite the continuing barriers that equityseeking groups face inside unions, and the ongoing struggle to ensure the mainstreaming of the equity project, unions remain the most responsive and democratic of institutional arenas in our society. Not only do they offer a vehicle to counter the ideological onslaught in favour of competition, the marketplace, and individualism which is weakening the recognition of systemic discrimination, they are also a model of equity practice for other institutional environments. Union militancy is on the increase. Inside Canadian unions, the growth in both social unionism, which contests the narrow focus of business unionism on wages, benefits, and job security; and socialmovement unionism, which builds alliances and coalitions across unions and with social movements, is both a result of equity organizing and a support for it. As Murray (2005) points out: ‘Both social and social-movement unionism embrace a much wider definition of solidarity, i.e., that unions should defend all workers and not just their members. Moreover, both seek to promote the interests of the worker as citizen as well as wage earner and, in so doing, emphasize the importance of unions’ political activity (108).’ My optimism and enthusiasm for the union equity project is fuelled not only by my own research on union women’s organizing and leadership, equity bargaining, and worker militancies in Canada, but also by my experience as a union activist over the last three decades.

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Despite the persistent attacks on union rights, and the continuing challenges faced by union equity organizing, many of which are documented in this volume, I have witnessed enormous changes since my experience in OPSEU in the 1970s when it took women activists three conventions to convince the delegates that sexual harassment was an appropriate issue for unions, and that OPSEU should include, in its constitution, protection against such harassment among and between union members. I am confident that the Canadian labour movement will continue its trajectory towards inclusive, democratic, and progressive unionism, and that this book will support the continuing struggle to ensure equity for all marginalized workers.

NOTES 1 The Union Module of the Gender and Work Database (GWD), www. genderwork.ca, includes a 100-page Bibliography of Union Equity Documents with references to research reports, conference documents, policy statements, newsletters, and educational material from Canadian unions since the 1970s. It also profiles equity initiatives of seven Canadian unions: CAW, CEP, CUPE, NUPGE, OPSEU, UFCW and USWA. http://www. genderwork.ca/cms/displaysection.php?sid=42. 2 For example, whether ‘youth’ can usefully be understood as an ‘equityseeking group’ continues to be a matter of discussion. Currently in CUPE Ontario, young workers have asked to be and are represented on the Human Rights Committee, but this is not the case in the equity structure at the national level in CUPE. 3 A recent Ontario Human Rights Commission [OHRC] discussion paper (2001) uses an intersectional framework to develop ‘a contextualized approach to analyzing discrimination in multiple grounds complaints.’ 4 For more information, see http://www.labourcouncil.ca/amillionreasons/. 5 For more information, see http://www.hotelworkersrising.org/ aboutcampaign.asp. 6 The conclusions of this report call for the following: protections for workers’ right to form and join unions; raising salaries for low-wage workers by supporting a higher minimum wage, living wage laws, and job quality standards attached to publicly financed projects; integrating education, training, workforce development, and career path development more fully into welfare reform; wage and benefit parity for full- and part-time workers; and funding for multi-employer union-management partnerships

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7

8 9

10

to raise job quality and create meaningful career ladders. http://www.workingforamerica.org/hotel/default.htm. Precedent exists for governments and employers taking the high road. Recent EU documents are also calling for social justice at work. See, for example ‘Commission promotes decent work in the world to fight poverty and promote fair globalisation.’ http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/ emplweb/news/news_en.cfm?id=158. See Fudge and Brewin (2005). For more information about the campaign, go to http://www.labourrights.ca. In June 2006 an anti-scab law (Bill C-257), designed to cover all employees governed by the Canada Labour Code, was introduced. The bill passed second reading in October 2006 but was defeated in March 2007 in a vote of 177 against and 122 in favour. The Canadian union movement had launched a major campaign in support of the bill. Information can be found at http://canadianlabour.ca/index.php/antiscab_legislation. Available at http://www.fls-ntf.gc.ca/en/index.asp.

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Contributors

Karen Bentham is the graduate coordinator at the Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto. She has also been a faculty member at the School of Industrial Relations, Queen’s University, and at the University of Regina, and has also taught at the Schulich School of Business, York University. In addition to her academic activities, Karen provides consulting services to both employers and unions and has extensive experience providing a wide range of industrial relations training. She holds a master of industrial relations degree from Queen’s University and a PhD from the University of Toronto. Linda Briskin is a professor in the Social Science Division and the School of Women’s Studies at York University. In addition to numerous articles, she has co-edited Women’s Organizing and Public Policy in Canada and Sweden (1999), Women Challenging Unions: Feminism, Democracy and Militancy (1993), and Union Sisters: Women in the Labour Movement (1983); and coauthored Feminist Organizing for Change: The Contemporary Women’s Movement in Canada (1988), and The Day the Fairies Went on Strike (for children) (1981). She is currently researching worker militancies, union leadership, and strategies for ensuring equity representation inside unions. She has been an union activist for many decades. Tania Das Gupta is associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, Atkinson Faculty, York University. She teaches in the areas of racism and anti-racism, women, work and family, and immigration policies. She has published in the areas of gender, class, racism, and anti-racism in the context of paid workplaces, family formations, multiculturalism, the labour movement, immigrant women, and South Asian communities in

284 Contributors

Canada. Her current research is in racial harassment in nursing and in association building among precarious workers in Toronto. Jonathan Eaton has a PhD from the Centre for Industrial Relations, University of Toronto. He obtained his BA (Economics) and LLB from Queen’s University, and his LLM from the University of Toronto. From 1994 to 2002, he worked with UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, as a research coordinator and as assistant to the Canadian director. His research interests include nonstandard work, equality in employment, and union renewal. Anne Forrest is an associate professor at the University of Windsor and director of Women’s Studies. She has published articles that critique industrial relations scholarship from a feminist perspective. Her research interests include collective bargaining and women and work. Judy Haiven is an associate professor in the Department of Management at Saint Mary’s University. She earned her PhD in Industrial and Business Studies from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. Much of her writing and research is in the area of human resource management and industrial relations. Lately, her research has focused on topics such as women and work, the right to strike for health-care workers, and tipping in the hospitality industry. Before becoming an academic, she had a variety of careers. She was a journalist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a writer, and a campaign officer for a British trade union. Gerald Hunt is professor and chair of the Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management Department in the School of Business Management at Ryerson University. He teaches in the areas of organizational change, industrial relations and human resources management. He has published several books and articles about organized labour’s response to equity issues, including Laboring for Rights: Unions and Sexual Diversity Across Nations (1999). His current research considers the response of international labour organizations to equity issues related to gender, race, and sexual orientation. David Rayside is professor of political science and director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. His research interests focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and

Contributors 285

transgender politics in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has published widely on this topic, including On the Fringe: Gays and Lesbians in Politics (1998). Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming) compares Canadian and American recognition of gay and lesbian relationships, parenting claims, and demands that schools recognize sexual diversity. He also has a long history of activism within Toronto. Fraser Valentine is a special advisor to the director-general of the Office for Disability Issues, Social Development Canada. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University, teaching courses on disability, citizenship, and social policy. Fraser has a long history of active involvement in disability research and publishing, disability policy development, and involvement in the disability community. Julie White works as a researcher for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). For many years she was an independent researcher focusing on women, unions, and labour relations. Along with numerous articles, she has written four books, including Mail and Female: Women and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (1990) and Sisters and Solidarity: Women and Unions in Canada (1993). More recently, she has worked on issues concerning technological change, shorter work-time, health care, and negotiated health benefits.