Expanding workers' compensation coverage

Unions representing workers across the country recent released a statement demanding that workers’ compensation coverage be expanded to include all workers in Canada. The Yukon recently expanded workers’ compensation to all workers.

Elsewhere, many workers are excluded (although the exclusions are idiosyncratic by province and territory) from coverage and thus have no (or limited) wage-loss, rehab and medical benefits when they are injured on the job. This transfers injury costs away from employers and onto workers, their families and the taxpayer.

In Alberta, the list of exclusions is wild and varied (see Schedule B here), including farmers, preachers, hookers and some teachers. 

Which kind of reminds me of the beginning of a Randy Travis song about an MVA.

Perhaps this song inspired Alberta's incoherent list of exclusions? That is as plausible as any other explanation I've heard.

-- Bob Barnetson

Social media as a strike tool

UFCW has been using social media for awhile in its labour disputes (e.g., posting pictures of scabs and customers crossing picket lines). With a strike looming at Superstore this weekend, UFCW has posted a video on Youtube highlighting the effect that reduced hours are having on Superstore cleanliness. It is well worth a watch.



This video does a nice job of linking worker interests with those of customers and is designed to increase the effectiveness of the UFCW picket line. Even if you hate unions, would you buy food from  a mouse-infested store?

While I'm no expert on social media (I don't even have a cell phone!), my sense is that this kind of public campaign is an inexpensive and easy tactic to enhance union bargaining power with an employer. They also give union members a way to directly contribute to union job actions--perhaps acting without the knowledge or outside of the control of the union.

-- Bob Barnetson

Edmonton posties' success with direct action against forced overtime

An interesting master’s thesis came through my inbox this morning. In Intensified Work, Intensified Struggle: Solidarity Unionism and the Edmonton Postal Workers’ Fight Against Forced Overtime, McMaster MA student Scott Thorn provides an accounting of the 2011 Canada Post labour disruption in Edmonton.

An interesting aspect of Thorn’s analysis is his focus on the workers’ direct-action campaign against work intensification (i.e., forced overtime). Rather than getting caught in the “work now, grieve later” dynamic of the formal labour relations framework, workers directly addressed concerns with their supervisors. Direct action has an immediacy effect: an issue is addressed before it becomes entrenched practice and front-line supervisors (who must carry out management edicts) are confronted with intense social pressure and workplace disruption in the form of browned off workers putting down their tools.

Chapter three details some of the effects of forced overtime on the posties. Chapter 4 (beginning at page 80) describes the frustrations of the workers with the traditional approach to grievances (including how their union dealt with their concerns). Chapter 5 sets out some of the shop-floor activities the workers engaged in to successfully limit forced overtime, including the effect of dual-card members using solidarity unionism as preached by the International Workers of the World (the Wobblies).

This kind of direct action has a lot of appeal to rank-and-file trade unionists frustrated by the formal grievance process. In my own unit, the threat of unpleasantness (via boycotts and perhaps more direct public actions) at an employee appreciation day (caused by the threat of yet another round of layoffs) led to the employer “postponing” the event. While hardly a victory for the ages, it does speak to discomfort managers face when confront with, well, confrontation. This, in turn, reflects the knowledge (however tacit) that groups can only be governed with their cooperation and pushing groups too far often ends at the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) guillotine.

-- Bob Barnetson

Wildcat strike article

The latest edition of AUPE's house magazine Direct Impact is out. Inside is a detailed chronology of the wild cat corrections worker strike from this spring (apologies of the lack of a direct link--click on the Fall 2013 issue). While obviously pro labour, the article presents a compelling and reasonably balanced account of the strike and its aftermath.

-- Bob Barnetson

Parkland fact sheet on injury rates and the union effect

The Parkland Institute has published a new fact sheet on workplace injuries in Alberta. This fact sheet presents research from a broader project about the union effect on workers, workplaces and society.

The gist is that (1) Alberta workplaces are exceptionally dangerous, something the government hides through selective reporting (see graphic above) and (2) workplaces with high levels of employee participation in workplace safety (usually unionized worksites) tend to be safer.

-- Bob Barnetson

Provinces reject federal Canada Jobs Grant program

The Edmonton Journal is reporting today that the provinces have declined to participate in the federal government’s Canada Jobs Grants initiative announced in the spring budget. This is the program that the feds advertised during the hockey playoffs that didn’t yet (and may never) exist. 

The basics of the CJG program are that the feds, the province and an employer would each contribute $5000 (for a total of $15,000) that an individual could then use to get training. This sounds good but first impressions are often deceiving.

First, there is no new money here. The federal portion (about $33m in Alberta) would come from existing money (about $50m--I can't find the exact number so am inferring this from national data) the feds gives the province. Alberta uses the existing money to do various things, including adult upgrading and training, running employment centres and whatnot. Losing this $33m to the CJG would radically curtail other job-training services unless the province could come up with $33m to replace it.

The catch is that Alberta would not only have to come up with $33m to replace the lost federal money, but also another $33m to match the federal contribution (so the price tag for Alberta is $66m).  In effect, going along with the CJG would significantly reduce job-training programming in Alberta (I'm unable to find a solid number on what the province spends currently). 

And, of course, employers would need to come up with (collectively) $33m for their portion. I’m not saying this won’t happen, but employers have been reluctant to fund training in the past (witness their unwillingness to hire apprentices but then bitch about the lack of skilled tradespeople).

The basic thinking behind the CJG is that there are employment-ready workers who just need a bit of (re)training to get back into the workforce. This may be true in Ontario where the decline in manufacturing has resulted in layoffs of employment-ready workers.

This is less true in Alberta where anyone not in the labour market likely faces several barriers to joining, such as difficulties with literacy/numeracy. As Dave Hancock notes in the Journal story, the CJG will pull funding from adult upgrading programs (programs that help the presently unemployable) and directing it towards job-specific training (in Alberta, basically helping the employed get better jobs).

It is hard to know what to make of the CJG. It looks like something cooked up over drinks in Ottawa at the last minute by people who have no idea how employment training works. Yet it allows the feds to either (1) direct provincial training efforts or, if the provinces refuse to knuckle under, (2) save $300m nationally and shift the blame for this de facto budget cut to the provinces.

Then there is the difficult issue that the skills gap the feds keep talking about to justify this change may not really exist… .  And, if Alberta and the feds can’t agree on the CJG, does this jeopardize the entire $50m Alberta has been getting from the feds under the Labour Market Agreement (which expires in March)?

-- Bob Barnetson

Alberta Oil Magazine and workplace safety

Alberta Oil Magazine recently published (to my surprise!) an op-ed I wrote re: health and safety stats.

In Alberta's injury statistics are inherently flawed: But it it willful blindness?, I argue:

Despite sunshine-and-lollipop press releases about injury trends, provincial government injury data is unreliable and often presented in a misleading manner. This poses a significant barrier to executives in the energy and oilfield services industries who want to make intelligent decisions about safety initiatives and risk reduction strategies.

So far reaction has been muted. Thoughts anyone?

-- Bob Barnetson