Harper government will back bill to force unions to throw open books

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government will try Wednesday to push through legislation requiring unions to throw open their books to tax authorities for public disclosure on the Canada Revenue Agency website.

The bill comes up for a vote a day after the Michigan legislature drew international attention by passing two laws weakening organized labour’s power in a U.S. state once seen as the bulwark of the labour movement.

NDP labour critic Alexandre Boulerice said the legislation before the Commons is an assault on the rights of workers similar to what’s being seen in the United States.

“What we see is an attack against the unions, but this is an attack against the middle class and we don’t want to see that in Canada,” Boulerice told reporters.

Bill C-377, which has been heatedly disputed by opposition parties and organized labour, is a private member’s bill put forward by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert. While few pieces of legislation proposed by parliamentary backbenchers become law, Harper is expected to use the Conservative majority in the Commons to win final approval of the B.C. MP’s bill.

Before that vote, Hiebert will ask MPs to approve amendments to C-377 meant to address an outpouring of complaints that the legislation was too far-reaching and could violate privacy and constitutional rights of union members and officials.

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For instance, the earlier version of the bill would require unions to inform the CRA — for public disclosure — of the salaries of all employees. But C-377 is being amended so that only union officials earning more than $100,000 a year will be required to report to CRA, according to an aide to Hiebert.

Also, the bill will no longer require that union members whose information is reported to CRA have their home addresses published on the CRA website. Police officials had complained that this would expose them to security risks.

Hiebert says the bill is an attempt to establish public transparency on the handling of union dues, which are tax-deductible and, according to him, cost Ottawa about $500 million in foregone revenues a year.

“Our government is going to support (the bill), with the amendments that have been brought in. It makes a lot of sense,” Labour Minister Lisa Raitt said. “Workers want to know how their union dues are being spent.”

Raitt said she has met with many union members concerned about the legislation. “I hope what we’ve crafted is, with the amendments, something that is going to be able to work,” she told the Star.

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said Bill C-377 “is an exercise in bureaucratic overkill that has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with simply trying to punish trade union organizations.”

Rae said the bill, if passed, could be part of “the pattern in the United States” of limiting union rights. The next step, he warned, could by an attempt by the Harper government to eliminate the so-called Rand formula, under which workers in a bargaining unit must pay mandatory union dues.

This formula has been scrapped in about half of U.S. states through the passage of so-called “right-to-work” legislation. Supporters of such legislation say it gives workers more freedom and boosts economic expansion; opponents say it is an attempt to impoverish and weaken labour organizations.

The latest state to move in this direction is Michigan, where Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed fiercely contested bills on union rights into law on Tuesday.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Les Whittington