Charles Demers wrote:

organizing his own workplace into the service sector local of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW).

At least it's a Canadian union and not one of the U.S.-headquartered unions that the NDP loves so much. This is of course the same CAW which is headed by Buzz Hargrove, whom the NDP ejected from their political party. Seems the NDP doesn't like to see Canadian unions influencing Canadian workplaces and they'd prefer to see American-headquartered unions in control of Canadian workplaces. Maybe Charles can ask his NDP friends to invite the CANADIAN Auto Workers back on board and distance themselves from all the U.S.-headquartered unions the NDP is currently in bed with.

Here are a couple of excellent links for your NDP friends showing what American-headquartered unions have been doing in Canadian workplaces for a long, long time:

U.S.-headquartered labour union crushes local democracy in Canadian local at Las Vegas convention:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061124/wfive_borderdrug_061124/20061126?hub=WFive

This has been going on for a long time. See Pat McGeer's comments about the NDP helping U.S.-based labour unions crush and destroy Canadian unions 33 years ago: http://www.leg.bc.ca/Hansard/30th2nd/30p_02s_730315z.htm#01376

NDP Labour Minister Bill King admitted that 77.7% of the [unionized?] work force in B.C. belonged to so-called "international" (U.S.-headquartered) unions: http://www.leg.bc.ca/Hansard/30th2nd/30p_02s_730315z.htm#01382

While you're talking to your NDP and union friends, you might want to ask them to stop directly or indirectly investing their trillion dollar union pension funds in American-headquartered corporations and start investing that money in Canada by making deposits in Canadian credit unions and financing Canadian employee-owned companies. This would give working people a huge amount of individual bargaining power by maintaining a very low unemployment rate. Also, well-financed, employee-owned companies tend to be very flexible and able to retain jobs by quickly adapting to changing market requirements.

When companies are placed in rigid straightjackets by dual bureacracies of management and labour locked-into long-term, complex contracts they're in a poor position to adapt to changing market conditions. Both bureaucracies are too busy fighting each other over profits to pay attention to rapidly changing market requirements. GM is a classic example of this. When workers own the company directly, they get the profits and they are motivated to increase profits through elimination of featherbedding and workplace flexibility. Workplace flexibility also makes the job much more interesting for workers who get to learn lots of new and useful skills on the job so they can handle a variety of tasks.

The funniest thing about this - 4 me - is the fact that I will not shop in Chapters anymore because of the censorship from Heather R - Harpers and Main Kampf (the former is the one I read).

**** chapters, sorry dudes, good luck but it's all for naught as truly progressives simply cannot abide restrictions to free speech that Chapter's represent.

Here's a further reason why unions and workers should deposit their pension funds and savings in credit unions instead of banks.

Canadian credit unions have an exemplary track record of strongly supporting REAL social justice at the local level. The NDP and their union friends are always talking about the growing wealth gap. For most Canadians, their home represents the majority of their wealth. Credit unions have always strived to make home ownership possible for low-income people. Banks have traditionally preferred to deny mortgages to working people and channel the savings of working people toward helping the rich buy rental properties which the rich then use to extract massive amounts of rent from the very same working people whose savings were used to finance the purchases of said rental properties.

When some Canadian banks were trying to merge recently, the NDP was against the merger, even though credit unions saw this as a great opportunity to increase their influence by purchasing bank branches in small towns that would be closed down as the result of such a bank merger. Whose side is the NDP on anyway?

Another area where NDP supporters and their labour union friends are driving the growing wealth gap is through extremely regressive, skyrocketing property taxes and development fees, both of which are making home ownership much more difficult for low income people while having little effect on rich people other than giving rich landlords a larger pool of renters to choose from. If the NDP and their union boss friends really cared about closing the wealth gap, they'd push for a progressive property tax system instead of always trying to make the property tax system even more regressive than it already is. Property taxes in Surrey are about to rise by 9%. If that sort of thing continues for a couple of decades, only rich, narcodollar-financed foreign landlords will be able to afford to own real estate in B.C. and working people will all be renters who own $0 worth of real estate wealth.

Considering the proportion of the average family's income that is consumed by rent or mortgages, making home-ownership possible for all Canadians is much more important than squeezing a few extra dollars per hour out of a hostile employer or temporarily stabilizing rents through rent controls that in the long term turn rental housing into rat-infested slums and reduce the amount of rental housing available. Also, the extra few dollars an hour unionized workers get in wages is usually consumed by union dues and increased transportation costs in time and money when unionized workers commute over long distances to retain union seniority instead of finding a new job closer to home and losing seniority. Rent controls also interfere with workers' inclination to give up their old rent-controlled apartment and find a new home closer to work.

It would actually be nice if cycling commuter - (I keep wanting to type 'recycling computer' because we've heard everything he has to say so many times before) - would actually deal with the interview Demers conducted with Sullivan rather than going off on another of his often irrelevant flights of fancy. There’s not much there, but it is a positive story upon which it might be possible to build. I don’t patronize Chapter’s either but, if all their stores were decent unionized places to work I might consider it.

Progress is usually measured in baby steps.

Seem the cycling whatever is a bit confused. The right to organize exists. and the right to organize with the union of choice. A few large Canadian Unions used to be International. CAW isn't the only one The old IWA comes to mind. We see a successful organizer getting a certification then get dire warnings about what Patr McGeer said years agoMcGeer was in a tightly managed group called univeristy professor who couodn't lost his job as he was tenured. And of course throw in the NDP as being supportive of only International unions is simply strange. But why corrupt a post with the real thing. My God, what does this fellow hate the most? unions or the NDP? I figure the answer would be both.

The above comment should have said:

When workers own a company directly, they get the profits and they are motivated to increase profits through elimination of featherbedding and INCREASED workplace flexibility.

I hope thetyee.ca's new technical workover allows editing of comments. Perhaps the original comments with changes highlighted could be retained and made available through a link from the edited comments, thereby eliminating the opportunity for headgames over who said what and when. This could be a revenue-generating opportunity for thetyee.ca. I'd be willing to pay a buck a time with paypal.com money for an opportunity to fix my errors. Probably others would too. It could add up. And it would motivate us to be a little more careful about proofreading our comments before posting.

Speaking of paypal.com, I bet there would be a lot more donations through http://thetyee.ca/About/Donate/ if paypal.com was offered as a payment option. Over 100 million people use the system because it's much more convenient and secure than using a credit card online directly, plus there's no setup fee or monthly fees. After a few bad experiences, I never use a credit card online directly any more. I've used paypal.com for hundreds of transactions over the past 5 years without any problems at all.

the reason why the internationals have been successful in canada is because they make sure the employers make a profit and maintain competitiveness. canadian unions have historically been sympathetic to communism, ie. Wobblies.

when unions demand too much the employer goes out of business, and this is what canadian unions haven't learned.

Credit Unions
People owned, people oriented. Pack of dirty commies, right?
Making it easy for everyone to own a home is not good capitalism.

Forget the NEW Books...go to the used book stores...one can get a near mint copy at times.

If that fails, wait till the Movie comes out...

PS Season's Greetings to all

DPL wrote:

"A few large Canadian Unions used to be International."

A few? According to former NDP Labour Minister Bill King, 77% of the B.C. work force belonged to so-called "international" (U.S.-headquartered) unions. See: http://www.leg.bc.ca/Hansard/30th2nd/30p_02s_730315z.htm#01382

Since when is 77% "a few." Can you give us some figures on the current rate of U.S. control of the unionized labour force in B.C. and Canada?

"right to organize exists."

That's fine as long as the right to NOT belong to a U.S.-headquartered, old-fashioned, class-warfare-promoting labour union also exists. I'm 100% in favour of vastly increasing workers' bargaining power. When skilled workers can quit one job and quickly find another in a low unemployment environment and they don't have to worry about bloated rent/mortgage/property-tax payments in the meantime, that gives them a huge amount of direct bargaining power.

The NDP and their union boss friends love to refer to themselves as "progressive," yet they want to cling to a failed 150 year old model of unionism that has recently played a large part in increasing the wealth gap instead of reducing it. How "progressive" is that? It's time to get truly progressive and evolve a system that actually works at reducing the wealth gap. When your enemy evolves but you don't then you're certain to be defeated.

"the right to organize with the union of choice."

American-headquartered unions are constantly taking away choice / voting rights from Canadian locals. See a recent example of this phenomenon here: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061124/wfive_borderdrug_061124/20061126?hub=WFive

Pay particular attention to the following part:

"while Local 183 had the biggest Canadian delegation, they weren't allowed to vote."

What kind of "choice" is that?

"what does this fellow hate the most? unions or the NDP?"

I don't hate either of them. I would like to see both organizations prosper by becoming truly progressive and evolving into something that's a lot more effective and relevant to modern times instead of clinging to crusty, failed 150-year-old ideologies.

industrialisation swept thru american first, canada second -that's why HQ is in the states. if you want canadians unions to break away and start something new with HQ in canada, they are free to do so -but rememember: the reason they are international to begin with was to combat communism. what is the case for national unions? would you like to shut the border down? cancel nafta?

Cycling Commuter:

Good link. Thanks.

However, don't sweat it....too many on the TYEE are into the corrupted version of " the devil you know " and the blind allegiance to it..

(i) Unions and (ii) NDP are rolled into one and combined as " the big societal saviour " in synonymous fashion.

Unions "cost effectiveness" and " profitability" was based on organizing workers in big corporations and crucial sectors, hence a gun to the head of the companies and at times Gov'ts as well . That "old-now -getting- ancient " model worked well while these sectors were equally large and had a literal captive consumer base.

Teamsters were once good at this tactic...but corruption ultimately ensued. Now many unions are into moving outside their historical niche' representation and poaching others...is the client served well..or simply one big union -due cash grab?.

Simply think about any private sector union these days and see if it had the power and influence it had even 10 years ago. ie IWA . The joker in the societal deck is certain Public Sector unions...ie BCTF...which will seriously skew the political -societal terrain...unless the Gov'ts have them in their sights next.

Time's have changed and hence the rule book and the rules . Private Companies and their fiscal resources are very fluid and can move in a heartbeat. Reisman perhaps creates " Books R Us on- line" out of Mexico ?

Chapters= Unionized?...well that is the right of the workers to pursue, which we have to respect, but it is not unheard of that the plug can also be pulled overnite by the employer, the doors are locked and chained...it has happened before and will likely happen again.

Time to move the Canadian Union movement to Drumheller with the other ancient artifacts if this is the best they got.

Mybrian reaises the same point i wanted to make. I as well no longer shop at Chapters since the decision to cnsor my shpping choics was imoosed by the Chapters store owndrs. Not that I want a copy of Mein Kompf ( I read it years ago) however I becme very nervous when choices are made as to what i can purchase or not.

G West wrote:

"actually deal with the interview Demers conducted"

This interview is mostly about pushing a 150-year-old version of labour unionism. That's what I responded to. There are a few encouraging points made in the article such as:

"Some workers want part-time hours because of commitments such as another job or school..."

It's nice to hear a union organizer admit to this for once. Many union bosses don't seem to understand that reality. What they need to focus on now is obtaining full dental benefits and other benefits for part-time workers whether they're unionized or not.

G West wrote:

"I keep wanting to type 'recycling computer'

That would be fine. I strongly believe in recycling useful things. I will continue to hammer-away at NDP/Union weaknesses until they're fixed. One of the NDP/union's biggest weaknesses is their attempts to hand over control of our workplaces and our economy to American-headquartered unions. Another weakness is the unions' inclination to invest their trillion dollar pension funds in American-headquartered corporations instead of investing in local credit unions and local employee-owned companies. A further weakness is the fact that the wealth gap in B.C. continues to grow despite the fact that B.C. has been one of the most militantly unionized jurisdictions in North America for many decades and the B.C. NDP recently held almost 10 years of power. Please let us know if you think this is a problem at all, or whether you think it's all A-OK just as long as American-headquartered unions continue to provide the NDP with direct and indirect campaign funding plus other types of support.

I don't recall seeing any notices stating that you have taken over from David Beers as editor of thetyee.ca. If you only want to hear from people extolling the virtues of the failed, 150-year-old NDP/union way of doing things, then you are free to start a website of your own and censor comments as you wish. The domain name ndp-circle-jerk.us is available for your use. ndp-circle-jerk.ca is also available, but considering that the NDP's union friends/financiers are mostly headquartered in the U.S., the .us version is probably more appropriate than the .ca version.

I'm still not sure why you oppose HQ in the usa. Would you like to cancel free trade?

as for full dental benefits for part-time employees, don't hold your breath.

Cycling commuter

I don't recall seeing anywhere that folks want to see exactly the same sort of thing from you on every possible opportunity either. You make the odd valid point but the constant repetition and the unmistakable impression that you. personally, have the keys of the kingdom is getting a little stale.

This interview in the 'books' section was about a small victory for one small group of people doing their best to live their lives and make a decent living in the ordinary course of events.

That, in itself was, in my view, enough to celebrate without turning this into another of your soap-box extravaganzas.

You have the odd good idea cycling - if one can drill through the overlay of self-aggrandizement and effusive personal back-slapping. Sometimes its difficult to determine whether you’re being sincere or just weirdly and pridefully ‘authentic’.

It's nice to see how reflexively you revert to the usual name-calling. Making, in a quite graphic way, exactly the point I was driving at.

Thanks.

again, regarding HQ being in the usa, we see this all the time. Isn't the NHL hq in New York?

what about weyerhauser -portland, oregon.

orca bay sports -seattle, wa.

molson brewery -colorado.

to address union's hq being in the usa, you may as well address the whole issue of american hegemony, and the power of money.

Sadly, since Mulroney, the push has been towards a north american union, a kind of soup sandwich including mexico. all un or semi-skilled labor outsourced to mexico -or insourced mexicans to do low-wage labor here.

far-fetched, any takers?

You're a little out of date drifty.

Didn't get the announcement about the sale of the Canucks and Orca Bay?

one last thing:

cycling,

you could achieve the goals you want, provided:

the NDP, passionately -and I mean hunger strike passion -convince canadians to cancel NAFTA and free trade with the usa. not tinker -I mean outright cancel.

then you could nationalise anything you wanted, protect anything with a tariff barrier -make employing canadians your first priority. non-citizens get second dibs, after citizens.

I'm only pushing your argument to its logical conclusion.

I was recently informed by a friend that the Labatt's brewery in New West is gone...demolished, and Labatt's web -site indicates it is closed...and no replacement brewery is noted.

It was my understanding in the past that for a brewer to sell beer in a given province it had to have a brewery located in the same given province. This implies regulation and protectionism. This further implies that the Crown, on behalf of the Public had decided to manipulate the free market, and in essence we the Public subsidize high paying Union jobs that wouldn't other wise exist with this aforementioned "brewery criteria". The closure may indicate times have changed and will continue to.

Some TYEE posters seem to dance around this issue, as per usual...and not want to come out and more bluntly state " WE NEED PROTECTIONISM and TRADE BARRIERS " !!!

Well, to that I say GO AHEAD....but the trade door ain't one way,...Canada will be retaliated against by other countries, but the Lefties win again on principle, which they can then take to the bank or credit union....right ?

Advice: Put your old NDP /Union manifestos on E Bay.

The Chapters employees, according to this story have the CAW Union now representing them...say bye bye to due$ due$ now having a big Union be their quasi- Big Brother ally.....LOL ..they'll learn a valuable lesson soon. That could ultimately become more one way than the protectionism/trade barriers the Leftie Union suppporters also want.

acadian driftwood wrote:

"...internationals have been successful in canada is because they make sure the employers make a profit and maintain competitiveness. canadian unions have historically been sympathetic to communism"

Are you kidding? Two of my brothers were Canadian members of a huge, American-headquartered ("international") union for many years. I used to read their union newsletter and it was sort of a mishmash of Marxism and Mafia extortion. My brothers laughed as they explained that during night shift, workers with the lowest amount of "snority" (their expression, meaning "Zzzzz") kept an eye out for management while the rest of the workers slept. The worker with the highest amount of union "snority" got to sleep on the comfy cot in the First Aid room. Workers with an intermediate amount of "snority" slept on mattresses in the backs of their vans or canopied pickup trucks parked in the company loading bay.

As with most unions, promotion was strictly by seniority, not by competence. During nightshift hours, the most coveted jobs were of course the mattress-testing positions rather than the lookout positions. During dayshift, the most interesting and coveted job was "Line Maintainer." This involved adjusting complex automated production line equipment to keep it running smoothly. At one point a guy named Harry was promoted to a Line Maintainer position based on seniority despite the fact that he had absolutely no mechanical aptitude whatsoever. Whenever Harry was on shift, the production line he was in charge of was constantly jamming-up, destroying tens of thousands of dollars worth of raw materials and leaving other workers assigned to that line standing around doing nothing. Meanwhile, both of my brothers had very strong mechanical skills. Our dad was a heavy duty mechanic and vehicle safety inspector who was eventually promoted to department head in his company. We all learned a lot from him. But because of union seniority rules, neither of my lower-seniority brothers were allowed to do any line maintenance work. They did eventually get enough "snority" to advance from lookout to mattress-testing positions during night shifts.

This particular company was related to the seasonal food industry. Lower seniority workers only worked about 3 months per year and received a union contract mandated "Supplementary Unemployment Benefit" (S.U.B.) that boosted their total pay including UIC benefits to 80% of their working earnings for the rest of the year. They were paid about $25 per hour (including benefits) for sweeping floors when they were on the nightshift cleanup crew. In today's dollars, that would be the equivalent of about $45 per hour. In reality, they only had to do about an hour's cleanup work each night even though they got 8 hours' pay. So that's $45/hour * 8/1 = $360 per hour for each hour spent sweeping floors. But when you consider they were getting 80% pay for 9 months of the year for doing absolutely nothing, that works out to about $1,224 for each hour actually worked sweeping floors.

All this American-headquartered union featherbedding caused the company to eventually close-down the Canadian factory and move production to an American factory where the American-headquartered union DID allow workers to be more productive. Can anyone else see a conflict-of-interest in the American-headquartered union's machinations?

maestro wrote:

There is no such thing as a "free market". It's a utopian fantasy of foolish ideologues who buy into capitalist propaganda with the zealousness of religious fervor. The ultra rich don't believe in "free markets" they wouldn't have been able to amass or retain their wealth within a free market.

As for retaliatory measures from other countries, what are they going to do? Are they going to cut off our oil? Are they going to cut off the marijuana trade? Are they going to stop buying up all the real estate?

"...we the Public subsidize high paying Union jobs" sez maestro - apropos of beer purchases.

Someone's forcing you to drink BLUE?

That has to be the lamest excuse for an anti-union diatribe I've ever heard dude.

Welcome to the race to the bottom. Nice to see where your sympathies lie. Some people actually care about their fellow men, and co-workers, like the Jason Sullivan of Demers' intreview above.

Fortunately, CRD residents have some first class locally-owned bookstores with staff who know what they are selling, who can take telephone orders for out of stock books, wanted titles, and who make shopping a pleasure. I visited Chapters only once, to see what it was like, and found that it was probably staffed by people let go by MacDonalds.

Since the defection of Reisman/Schwartz to the Tories in support of Harper's incredible approach to the Lebanon fiasco, I expect never to visit Chapters -- or Smiths -- or Borders.

Thank goodness for a "free market" which permits many flowers to bloom. But thanks also for those customers seeking more than the illusory savings and glitz provided by the mass marketers.

who's willing to bet that the unionized chapters will be the first to shut down b/c they won't be able to afford to pay the inflated wages that the unions demand? no matter, free enterprise will always prevail.

You know elliot, you really are a hopeless misanthrope. How do you manage to stand your own face in the mirror each morning?

The trouble with free enterprise is that it isn't.
Free that is.

acadian driftwood wrote:

"I'm still not sure why you oppose [union] HQ in the usa."

It's a conflict of interest. See my previous comment for details here:

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/12/26/Chapters/#post98151

"Would you like to cancel free trade?"

I'm in favour of a modified version of free trade. It's a question of applying wisdom to maintain balance and produce good results instead of relying on simplistic, cartoon-like ideologies of the extreme left or extreme right.

I don't like the typical NDP/union approach of forcing us to buy overpriced, poorly-designed, energy and water wasting Ontario manufactured cars and appliances by erecting high trade barriers against superior european and asian products. When you completely close the doors to foreign imports on the basis of corporate welfare protectionism, that just makes Canadian companies and their workers fat, lazy and greedy.

There's also the matter of economy-of-scale and specialization. For small but complex manufactured goods such as electronics products, it's not feasible to produce them all locally due to large design and production line setup costs. Transportation costs for small electronic items are trivial even if transportation fuel costs are increased to cover the full true cost including all pollution / healthcare effects.

We should always maintain local production capability for strategically important products, including basic foods and energy. By local, I mean at the neighborhood level in many cases. Potatoes from Prince Edward Island are not local to Vancouver. On the other hand, it's not good to depend on Alberta oil to propel cars on Prince Edward Island. It's better for Vancouverites to eat locally-grown spuds while PEI folks drive around in plug-in hybrid vehicles that are mostly recharged by electricity generated locally by wind turbines.

Land in Canada should only be owned by Canadian citizens but it would be OK to lease Canadian land to foreign companies for up to 99 years in many cases. It's important to allow foreign companies such as Toyota to set up here to bring us newer technologies plus better worker-management relationship structures.

A limitation on foreign control of Canadian land limits the degree to which Canada's currency can be propped-up by permanently selling off our assets to other countries. At the moment, we're artificially propping-up our currency by selling-off our land and minerals to foreigners. With a limitation on foreign ownership of land, low productivity is reflected in a lower Canadian dollar, meaning we'd attract more industrial investment dollars that will improve our productivity, thereby driving our dollar back up again.

Foreign investment is good provided it's used to finance productivity enhancement in factories that make useful, high-quality products and provided it's balanced by reciprocal Canadian investments elsewhere. Once Canadians have worked for a while in foreign owned factories, they acquire the necessary skills to go into direct competition with their former employers if necessary. This sort of thing has been going on for 50 years in the electronics industry. The most successful new electronics companies are often started by founders who used to work for older companies that they now compete against. Contrary to NDP/union jobs-for-life theories, it's good when old, bureaucratic, inefficient companies lose market share and employees to vigourous, new, better-managed companies. It's part of a healthy evolutionary process.

Foreign investment in residential real estate is bad when it drives-up the price of Canadian housing to the point where all Canadians become tenants in foreign-owned homes, paying out the majority of their earnings in rent to foreign landlords. This is just a modern form of colonialism/feudalism/slavery. Once foreigners own all our land, it's impossible to compete against them. We can't create more land. If most of our earnings are going to pay rent and interest to foreigners, we will never have any money left to buy our land back again.

The NDP and the union movement is 150 years old?
The NDP doesn't support Canadian unions?
The NDP didn't oppose NAFTA?
The NDP hasn't been a huge and long-standing supporter of the credit union movement?

What are you smoking cycling computer?

cycling,

actually, no -I don't see a conflict of interest in the american headquartered union's machinations. please explain. the larger (international) unions that I know of in the building trades, ie. carpernters, plumbers, etc. -are making a killing now. times are good, and the dollars are rolling in.

I would suggest that a small, local Canadian union is in a position of weakness. Remember the HEU? How about the BCGEU? CUPE? I wouldn't go near these unions because they are public sector unions -too politically charged.

james burns,

never heard of retaliatory measures?

SOFTWOOD LUMBER.

Softwood lumber? What were the Americans retaliating against? Grow up, that wasn't a retaliatory measure, that was an example where that great so-called free market promoter to the south decided the market was a little too free and didn't like the competition, and so lumber producers down south applied political pressure to control the market. And what happens? Our government caves. How many times did the WTO and NAFTA decide in Canada's favor? Over the years of the softwood lumber dispute, how much of Canadian business was bought up by Americans? What percentage of our lumber industry during that period now belongs to Americans? In whose interest is our economy being run?

Sorry but the only markets are controlled ones. The only difference is in who's interest the control is being exerted. In this day and age, the control is exercised overwhelmingly in favor of the wealthy. Markets and even more importantly the financial systems that support them these days are designed to concentrate wealth into the hands of an ever wealthier elite. 1% of the world's population controls 40% of its wealth. The poorest 50% control less than 1%. There is something very wrong with that. Very wrong. Hiding behind idiotic free market rhetoric and the scaremongering of long dead communism are tired old outmoded arguments. The lie of the free market has given us the environmental degradation and the economic erosion of the wealth of most of the world's population. It is a model that has failed. It's time to get beyond the religious zealotry and find a system that provides for everyone.

James,

very well said.

But what do you suggest we do?

Proportional representation?
Vote Green?
carbon tax?

It is very heartening to hear that Chapters employees have chosen union representation. I'm inclined to think that higher wages and better working conditions ultimately create and stabilize a more skilled workforce. (See for example: Baron & Medoff "What do Unions Do" for an analysis of the efficiency effections of employee representation). Employers who work with their employee representatives are capable of recouping most of the "union premium" through efficiencies. I'm saying this because I love bookstores, but I have to shake my head at Chaters and Indigo. Just for my own amusement, I regularly go into a Chapers or Indigo and ask the clerks if they can help me find the New York Review of Books. I've done this six times in the last two years. Notwithstanding that the New York Review of Books in the premier literary journal in the English language, I have yet to encounter a clerk who even recognizes the name. Low wages beget high turnover and low commitment to, or knowledge of the business.

I guess I don't know what a "union boss" is (a phrase that keeps recurring in Cyclingcommuter's posts). Employees choose their own union. They generate their own bargaining mandate. Nobody makes them go on strike (it's a serious decision). A trade union is like a consulting firm that represents employees in negotiating and administering their terms of employment. The real union is the employees, assisted in achieving their goals through professional representation. When companies use agents: lawyers, accountants etc., nobody engages in silly namecalling.

Speaking of the New York Review, percy, did you read jeff sach's letter in the Dec 21 number? The one about workable and effective aid.

I like the New York Review a lot, but I'm not sure top billing wouldn't have to share the limelight with the Times Literary Supplement.

Great article. I worked at a Chindigo several years ago for over two years. I hope your contract includes great mental health benefits, because working in a bookstore brings you into the orbits of some of craziest bedbugs around. Like those who hang around libraries and bookstores all day reading but can't grasp the basic classifiication system of a bookstore. Or those who'd walk in and ask "Where's the non-fiction section?" and best of all, those who'd rush down after hearing a CBC interview about some book, only they had no idea of what the title or author was. Don't you know? they'd ask. Uh no, I'd say, I was here working.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't come down too hard on Chindigo employees for not knowing everything about the book or magazine you want. They receive precious little product knowledge training, and obviously, they can't sit down and read books at work. Most of the people I worked with were avid readers, but it's just not possible to memorize the contents of an entire bookstore. The reason small bookstore employees may be more knowledgeable is that they they visits from publisher sales reps throughout the year, and they get all the publishers' catalogs, which the big bookstore average employee doesn't because most, if not all the buying is done back East.

I hope the unionization is successful and promotes greater longevity and knowledge for all those hard-working Chindigoians. They get precious little help from Queen Heather.

Nice thoughts, maikopunk

We drink to small victories...such as they are!

Ah yes G West ,......monkey primate patrol in full gear...

No one forced me to drink Labatt's Blue , G West, and never did like that stuff.

Also....No one said I did, time to fire that monkey.

Point is once an industry is artificially buttressed by Gov't, what a coincidence that its almost exclusively Unionized ...gee what a coincidence .....gee... go figure......what are the odds??? ...holy featherbedding Batman....gadzooks.

Sorry dude, I wish the Chapters employees well , but qualify with a " certification beware" , and that they may wake up one day with doors chained while they have bills to pay.

As to the other comments...all the Leftie arguments , as usual , deftly avoid solutions, but de -facto implies protectionism and Gov't intervention. It was a full circle argument about Gov'ts , unions and protectionism , and went over most Lefties head if not them avoiding the blunt reality.

Suggestion: Go start a unionized microbrewery that sells books or vice versa .

.....deftly avoid solutions......sez maestro.

This article is about one man's effort to successfully organize a union at his workplace.

It describes an 'active' effort to find a 'real' solution.

As usual, you play from another score...and conduct an orchestra playing sounds only you can hear.

I don't think you even rise to the level of a neocon.

G. West:

I submitted the historical lesson...careful what you ask for, it may ACTUALLY happen, then pink slips a plenty may occur.

Seen this story too many times.

BTW : Thanks for the compliment/s,.... as per usual.

PS Make sure the monkeys don't watch "Planet of the Apes" or the sequels, as they may get ideas.

I''ll defer to you as the expert on monkeys. I avoid them at all costs.

G West wrote:

"The NDP and the union movement is 150 years old?"

The organizations are newer, but their rigid, simplistic class warfare ideologies are 150 years old. 150 years ago, Canadian workers didn't have a trillion dollar pool of pension capital that could be used to directly own the factories, so they had no choice but to fight for a bigger share of profits. Now that union pension funds contain anough money to buy factories outright, why be satisfied with just a share of profits when you can receive 100% of profits by directly owning the factories?

"The NDP doesn't support Canadian unions?"

The NDP ejected CANADIAN Auto Workers head Buzz Hargrove while warmly embracing executives from the U.S.-headquartered United Steelworkers of AMERICA (U.S.A.) and many other U.S.-headquartered unions.

"The NDP didn't oppose NAFTA?"

I'm in favour of many aspects of international trade. Foreign ownership of Canadian land is an exception. I would like to see Canada adopt a system that has recently been adopted in the U.S. U.S. importers of raw materials from poor countries are required to make public the exact amounts of money paid to these countries so that opposition groups in these countries can figure out how much of the revenue stream is going to benefit the local populace and how much is being diverted to Swiss bank accounts. I would also like to see international trade rules evolve so that in a case where we buy raw materials from poor countries with no local pension system and no local education system for girls, we impose an import tax on the raw materials and use it to fund basic pension and education systems for citizens in those countries. To do otherwise amounts to a very ugly form of theft from the poorest of the poor.

"The NDP hasn't been a huge and long-standing supporter of the credit union movement?"

When several large Canadian banks wanted to merge recently, the NDP was against it even though the credit unions promised to buy-up and keep open any small town bank branches that would be closed as a result of the merger. Since the NDP held the balance of power at the time, they torpedoed a great opportunity for credit unions to expand their influence to small towns. Also, the NDP's American-headquartered union friends tend to invest union pension funds in banks and American corporations, not in Canadian credit unions.

Percy wrote:

"Employees choose their own union. They generate their own bargaining mandate. Nobody makes them go on strike (it's a serious decision)."

See: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061124/wfive_borderdrug_061124/20061126?hub=WFive

Read the following part:

"while Local 183 had the biggest Canadian delegation, they weren't allowed to vote."

So much for choice.

The choice in unions theory would be a lot more credible if decisions were always made by independently supervised secret ballots where EVERYBODY gets to vote, not just the union bosses' friends. With open votes, a lot of physical intimidation goes on among those who are allowed to vote. Union bosses routinely associate with organized crime figures who have been convicted of multiple counts of arson and murder conspiracy (see above link), and they routinely threaten physical violence against those who disagree with them. How can a non-secret ballot have any meaning in such an environment of intimidation? Union democracy under the cloud of physical intimidation is about as meaningful as Zimbabwe democracy.

"A trade union is like a consulting firm that represents employees in negotiating and administering their terms of employment."

The difference is that in a non-union company, if 51% of employees choose to be represented by lawyer/negotiator A and the other 49% choose to be represented by lawyer/negotiator B, they both get their way. The 51% majority doesn't force their preferences onto the 49% minority.

The Union movement in North America got its start after the effects of the gilded age proved it was necessary. Have you not read any history?

Buzz Hargrove was drummed out of the Ontario NDP for his cozy-up to Liberal Paul Martin and his promotion of ad hoc strategic voting - more dead fish. Had nothing to do with the fact the CAW was a Canadian Union.

The NDP did oppose and in certain ways still does oppose the NAFTA . Can you be anything but disingenuous?

Opposition to further hegemony by the Canadian banking industry doesn't presuppose that the NDP is not supportive of Credit unions - more non sequitur.

Not everyone agrees with your Paleolithic views about things CC. In addition, many people’s memories and knowledge exceeds your narrow and simplistic views.

If you're not familiar with the small town situation now - and the extensive local credit union network there already - that's hardly my fault.

Welcome to democracy and the evils of not-proportional representation. When our governments start to care about the way our elected representatives are chosen for the Legislature and the Parliament, I'll join your campaign for more democracy in unions.

Local boards, who run small community based credit unions - don't need to have the banks shut down for them to establish successful bases in small town Canada. Have you never travelled through the prairies or rural Quebec? You don’t understand the nature and history and bottom up growth of the credit union movement do you?

Fact is cc, you’re just not a very cooperative guy. You think you and you alone have all the answers and everything you post confirms it. Lots of your stuff is interesting – and lots of it is just plain wrong.

As to ties between unions and the NDP - I think they should be completely severed - union people are the most fickle folks I've ever known when it comes to supporting the NDP anyway. Most working stiffs still believe that garbage about upward mobility that corporate ad men pump into them while they'r watching sports on TV.

I am the person who wrote the anonymous letter to Quill & Quire referred to at the start of the above interview. I am glad that Chapters/Indigo employees are organizing. Hopefully the whole chain will organize. I worked for them a few years ago and it is a truly horrible and soul-sucking company run by a megalomaniac who has no respect for those "beneath" her.

The simple truth is that the entire retail sector of the book industry functions in essentially the same manner. I worked in book retail for over ten years. During that time, in addition to Chapters/Indigo, I worked for two other chains (neither of which is owned by Chapters) and a one-off independent. In all cases the owners of the companies treated their employees like so much disposable rubbish. Wages were oppressively low, the work grindingly dull, and the benefits nearly non-existent. (It is typical, for example, of booksellers to seriously ask their employees to look on the opportunity of making contacts in publishing as a rationalization for accepting low wages.) In addition, all of the owners of these companies (chain and independent alike) treated their employees with gross disrespect, cruelty, rudeness and disdain.

I wrote to Quill & Quire because I was sick of seeing them publish workplace survey results every year that did not acknowledge the contribution made by the industry's retail workers. I believe they do this because everyone knows that retail bookselling pays a rate so low that it would be both pointless and embarrassing to publish the figures. Pointless because retail wages will never go up and, to the industry, retail workers are expendable, thus they don't really exist. (Though publicists and editors will certainly suck up to you as soon as they need you to hand-sell that doorstop of a historical novel they foolishly paid six-figures for only to find out that their author doesn't have an audience.)

It would be embarrassing not only for the simple reason of indicating inequity, but also because this industry is particularly hypocritical. Many of the people who work in publishing are outright snobs engaged in what they believe to be a noble pursuit. They believe that the work they do is somehow of a higher calling because they are promoting great ideas, artistry and culture. Go wander around the M&S annual fall launch party, or listen in on a conversation at the hospitality suite at IFOA, or draw out a small-press editor on the subject of grants, or suffer through the speeches at the Griffin and Giller awards and you will soon understand...

(continued in next post...)

(...continued from above)

that the majority of these "culture producers" have their heads up their asses, and that from this vantage point they amazingly manage to look down on anyone who gets their hands dirty with real work that entails lifting objects or handling *shudder* money. Or better, go look at the words painted on the walls in any Indigo store, words like Integrity, Creativity, Inspiration and Passion. Nice packaging. But you don't have to go far to find staffers who will tell you of the degrading treatment they face at the hands of their master.

Wageslavery is when you earn only enough money to barely subside. Forgive the following analogy. I know it is appalling, but it hammers home the point (and it is only a metaphor). Slave masters are responsible for providing food and lodging for their slaves. In a system of wageslavery, the "masters" abdicate their responsibility to their charges. In wageslavery, there is the illusion of freedom, in that you can walk out the door at any moment and no one will hunt you down and drag you back or kill you or sell you. This is a literal freedom, but not a practical one. Wageslavery is a metaphor (I am by no means so stupid as to equate working in a bookstore with real slavery), but when you are in it, its effects are very real. Every penny you earn is spent only on the basics of rent, food, clothing and transportation. (Forget your teeth. Forget having a family.) You do not make enough money to bankroll any project that might help you escape your situation. You work 40+ hours a week, so you have very little time to do other jobs that might help you save money, or to go to school and improve your qualifications.

The ugly and embarrassing truth is that the noble Canadian publishing industry is supported by an army of such wageslaves in its retail sector.

I quit bookselling last year. I honestly gave years of passion and dedication to that industry and received nothing in return. Nothing? Oh, yes I made the publishing contacts and gained something of a reputation, but that was not why I was working as a bookseller. I was working as a bookseller because I love books and I thrive on having them around me and I didn't want to have to work for a publisher, where I'd have to champion every piece of crap they issued, just to be able to afford a mortgage. In the end, I managed to escape that trap, but at a great personal risk and cost.

Bookselling in Canada, I'm sorry to say, is a joke. I also worked in bookselling to make a living. What a fool. Aside from store owners and the occasional entrenched manager, absolutely every single person I've ever known working in the bookselling field was constantly looking for a way out. It is, apparently, simply too much for an adult working in that sector of the industry to expect a liveable wage. This is because store owners are greedy and profits flow uphill from there. If you are a bookseller, the best advice I can give you is do whatever it takes to get out of the wageslave cycle. Your best opportunity, your only opportunity, is the front door.

wageslave2005

Thanks for that. It puts a nice coda to the original article.

Good luck!

Wageslave2005:

Likewise, interesting insight...

Your comments , in my view, are quite objective , well written, and especially via yourself having personal experience in the industry.

It has been mentioned that if the chain ever folds/ collapses/goes bankrupt, who will fill the retail void....??? ,...given the little guy/gal was/is squeezed out. It will have a huge domino effect to the Canadian industry ie publishers, writers, etc. etc.

Perhaps this is part of the overall strategy..." IT can't go broke...or ELSE.....thus_____"

PS Good luck in the future.