The Times They Are A-Changin’ (perhaps)

And union jobs are taking the hit

by Gordon Sova (gordon.sova@thomsonreuters.com)

Every once in a while, something happens that gives you a little chill, that makes you think that maybe a momentous event has just taken place. And it doesn’t have to be Columbus sighting Hispaniola in the distance. It can be like Joseph P. Kennedy realizing that the market is in trouble because he has just gotten a stock tip from the shoe-shine boy.

I got that feeling when I read in the Globe and Mail the other day that former executives of Vale Inco in Sudbury admitted that the new ownership of the mine and smelter wanted to “hit the reset button on the entire labour relations situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past.”

I am used to a labour relations climate where relative strength has drifted around an equilibrium for the past decades. Sometimes one side had the upper hand; sometimes the other did. But two things always seemed inevitable: 1, that the standard of living of workers would continue to improve due to increasing productivity and general economic growth, and 2, that things that were lost in one round of negotiations (by either side) could be made up in the next.

I wonder whether that era has ended.

At one time, I would have chalked up “reset” talk to a tough bargaining position. This time, I wonder if it might happen.

It may be that the tide against which the labour union movement in Canada has to swim has become overwhelming. Globalization. Competition from low-labour-cost regions. A persistently high Canadian dollar. High energy costs. Low commodity demand. Structural changes in the labour market.  Contracting out and outsourcing.

Unlike some, I don’t look forward to what this change may bring. Our standard of living is historically tied strongly to consumer demand and no other sector seems poised to replace it. Not the public sector and not private business. The existence of well-paid, working-class jobs, union jobs prominent among them, has floated many, many boats.

Paying lower taxes and paying less for bolts at the store and getting news free on the internet rather than buying a paper are all great, provided your income stays the same. But, perhaps, one day a tipping point arrives and it no longer does. Mercantilism on an individual scale in the 21^st century will be no more successful than it was on a national scale in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Optimists will tell me that I am naïve and that a new and better economy based on knowledge will replace the old one based on manual labour. (Supposedly with the concomitant shift in “dumb” jobs to the developing world, leaving us on top again.) It would do me a lot of good to see that evolution begin to take place before all the old economy jobs are either gone or reduced to a shadow of their former selves.