What this means in practice: Federal employees are being compelled to pay union dues to an organization that is using their money to support politicians who want to break up the country. It doesn’t seem very fair to the employees. And it doesn’t seem very smart on the part of the country.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre seems to be thinking along similar lines. He is now calling for legislation that would permit workers who are covered by federal labour rules to make their own choice. They could opt not to pay dues if they did not want to be part of the union.
“We have the freedom to associate, not the obligation to associate,” Mr. Poilievre said in an interview. He’s right that this is they way it should be. Canadians ought to be able to decide for themselves which groups they would like to join, and giving up this liberty should not be a condition of employment for the federal government.
In fact, it is worth considering whether giving up this liberty should be a condition of employment at all. In the United States, the 22 states that have adopted so-called “right-to-work” laws — statutes that make it illegal for employers to refuse to hire a person for the sole reason that he does not belong to a union — have generally fared better in measures of economic growth than their 28 non-“right-to-work” counterparts.
Right-to-work states have slightly lower rates of unemployment and tend to have a greater growth in average income over time — which means individuals and families there end up with a better quality of life. Investment in capital grows more quickly there too.
In all likelihood, this is why there has been such significant migration from the 28 non-“right-to-work” states into the 22 states that offer employees the freedom to choose for themselves whether or not they would like to join a union. According to research by Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University, between 2000 and 2009, approximately five million Americans made the move toward employment liberation.
At present, Canadians have no such option. But if Mr. Poilievre’s proposal were to become a reality, the country would at least be taking a step in the direction of ending the ongoing coercion of employees and job-seekers into joining organization of which they have no desire to be a part. It’s true, as Mr. Poilievre points out, that changing the federal unionization rules would have little effect on the country’s overall labour climate. Most unionized workers in Canada fall under the jurisdiction of provincial regulations.
However, someone’s got to make the first move. The momentum necessary for more monumental change could very well be generated by setting federal workers free first — thereby proving by example that, other than furious union brass, people are generally quite happy once they’ve been unshackled from a regime of forced association.
In a struggling economy, job growth and increased productivity are especially important, and allowing workers to opt out of unions is a proven method of achieving both those goals. In practical terms, then, now is an ideal time to adopt right-to-work legislation.
Although such laws do tend to correlate with lower rates of unionization, it’s important to remember they don’t mean workers can’t, or won’t, choose to join a union. Rather, the laws put that powerful choice back where it belongs — with individual workers. The result is that union leaders have to work harder, and appeal to a wider group of employees, to earn their support.
If Mr. Poilievre’s imagined law passed, for example, PSAC would probably have to start thinking twice before doing things like endorsing political parties that want to secede from the rest of the country. It’s hard to see how that would be anything but a change for the better.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Marni Soupcoff
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