When Unions Collide
Telecom workers union imposes 'soft lockout' on its own professional staff.
'Sinking feeling': COPE's Elaine Jackson
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The Crushing Equation Telus Workers Faced
Why the labour dispute ended this way, now.
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How We Are Outsourcing BC
Telus employees aren't the only ones fighting a complex, sometimes brutal battle. Read all four articles in this important series by Charles Campbell.
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BC's Broken Economy
A labour perspective on why B.C.'s economy became so vulnerable to battering by recession, the human damage done, and how to measure a truly healthy economy.
A long-simmering dispute between the Telecommunications Workers Union and the smaller union that represents TWU researchers and office workers, mainly in B.C., has broken down in early July into an unusual "soft lock out."
Electing to stay on the job after the lockout notice came into effect on July 10, TWU's 13 employees (represented by the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Local 15) are now facing a unilaterally-imposed situation that extends their work week by five hours paid at straight time and suspends normal grievance procedures until a final contract is negotiated.
TWU spokespeople say that the new tough line with their own employees has been forced on them by economic challenges created when Telus, a major employer of TWU members, began moving offshore work that formerly was done in Canada by union members.
Spokespeople for COPE 15 say that TWU is doing fine financially, with major growth in membership at non-Telus job sites. The office and professional workers are critical of their union employer for what they characterize as "a long list of major concession demands that frankly astounded their COPE 15 employees, amounting to a virtual gutting and re-writing of the collective agreement." Spokespeople for both unions told The Tyee in separate phone interviews that it was painful and awkward to be in a labour dispute with another union.
"We have a good working relationship with our staff," said TWU business agent and acting secretary treasurer Tamara Marshall. "It is unfortunate that it has come to this."
'A sinking feeling'
Elaine Jackson, COPE local 15 president, told The Tyee that she had "a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the thought of going on strike against TWU. After all, we are co-affiliates to the Fed and to the CLC. We sit near each other at labour conventions."
That said, the two sides in this family quarrel in the house of labour still seem far apart.
John Carpenter, TWU vice president, wrote in a letter addressed to the employees represented by COPE 15 and dated July 6 that: "The TWU is facing very tough financial times since the inception of our current collective agreement.
"Having used our savings to fund our labour dispute with TELUS, borrowing almost 10 million dollars from various unions, as well as our administration fund, it has been a difficult task for us to survive, but we have, and we must be fiscally responsible with our member's money," the letter continues.
"The harsh reality that we face is the steady decline in our membership over the last several years due to off shoring of work, and contracting out. TELUS has informed us they plan to have 25 to 30 per cent of their workforce off shore, with the remaining 70 to 75 per cent onshore; this is inclusive of a significant amount of contracting out to other companies that we do not collect dues from.
"We receive notice on a daily basis on jobs leaving the bargaining unit just on July 3rd we were told 400 jobs leaving in addition to previous job losses," Carpenter's letter said.
More Telus jobs going overseas
In an email to COPE 15 members on July 10, Carpenter itemized the terms of the lockout TWU was imposing, which included a work week unilaterally increased by five hours and a refusal to recognize the grievance procedure previously negotiated between the parties.
"We regret that we are forced into taking these measures and would have rather seen this resolved at the bargaining table," he said.
TWU business agent Tamara Marshall told The Tyee on July 15 that she and her colleagues at TWU were both trade unionists and employers. Like Carpenter, Marshall cited the pressures on TWU created by Telus decisions to take work done by the TWU members off-shore to cheaper non-union environments. She said that increased TWU memberships at other employers had created more work for TWU staff, and thus the need to extend the 32.5 hour work week that staff had enjoyed since the 1970s.
"Last week," she said, "we heard that more Telus work is going to Guatemala and the Philippines."
Marshall rejected suggestions The Tyee had heard from COPE local 15 members that TWU was acting like Telus in trying to make its employees bear the brunt of economic difficulties.
"We're not at all like Telus," she said. "We're not a for-profit company. We only have so many dollars. We are a good employer. I only wish COPE would come back to the table and negotiate. They're the ones who booked out of talks."
The previous contract between TWU and COPE 15 expired at the end of 2007. Collective bargaining has been underway since mid April of this year, and recently broke down. As the stymied negotiations moved into mediation, COPE members took a strike vote, which was passed by what COPE documents call an overwhelming majority. The mediator booked out on July 3, and on July 7 TWU served 72 hour notice of their intention to lock out the office and professional staff.
'Soft lockout' defined
TWU described their move as a "soft lockout," which seems to mean that no one expects the "locked out" workers to leave the office -- just to work under the new terms defined by the employer.
COPE 15 has posted a July 10 response to John Carpenter's statements on its web site. In that document, COPE 15 business representative Barry Hodson says that "when the TWU came to the table they had rewritten the complete Collective Agreement and as part of that had made significant changes to benefits and working conditions that currently our members enjoy." He cited five hours added to the work week, a dropped vacation bonus amounting to a two per cent wage cut, and "a reduction of vacation benefits accrued to new employees," creating "a two tier agreement".
Hodson goes on to say that TWU suggestions that COPE either agree to the demanded changes or get no agreement is "a significant departure from the normal approach in Collective Bargaining."
"What TWU is demanding of its employees would be outrageous in any labour dispute," Mark Leier told The Tyee. Leier, director of Simon Fraser University's Centre for Labour Studies and a long time observer of the Canadian labour movement, said, "The fact this is happening between unions, within the house of labour, makes the situation even more tragic." ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
ME2
20-07-2009
Query
Is the TWU seeking to deny to its COPE employees wages and benefits similar to what its own members enjoy?
If it is, the considerable respect I've held for its membership, which, BTW, is well paid, disappears.
telus employee
21-07-2009
TWU is copying Telus tactics
I can't help but be ashamed of the TWU. In recent years the union has become more like Telus than a trade union. The tactics TWU is using against COPE 15 are the same ones that Telus used in its ongoing union busting of the TWU. I had never heard of a 'soft lockout' until Telus enacted that on us in 2005.
Professor Mark Leier is right , what the TWU is doing is outrageous, and I would add hypocritical. Time for us to elect more progressive leaders or merge with a real union.
Vancouver Liz
21-07-2009
What a mess!
Reminds me of the time the small independent union representing employees of the B.C. teachers Federation went on strike. Ugly stuff! The so-called house of labour is, I believe, a myth -- when a union's bull is gored by another union, it's no longer "solidarity for ever," but "might is right."
Booker
21-07-2009
Responsibilities
The TWU has abandoned its responsibilities to the Telus workers that remain. Telus will be a non-union sweatshop after the current agreement expires. This situation was achieved largely through the duplicity of the federal and provincial Liberal parties, and the anti-labour Alberta employees. This latest fiasco is no surprise. Darren Entwistle must be having a good laugh.
coyoteman
21-07-2009
The Decline of Labour I...
"The harsh reality that we face is the steady decline in our membership over the last several years due to off shoring of work, and contracting out."
The trade union movement's demise, and it is my argument that a serious demise of Official Labour is already well advanced, begins with the weariness of "class struggle" that affected working class folks who had grown up through the last Great Depression and who had similarly experienced WW2. And that general weariness set in during the post war period, oddly enough, precisely at that time when their earlier class struggles were bearing final fruit within capitalism. And it was enouraged much, likewise, by the growing prosperity of that postwar period. The generation that had survived the Greatest Depression and the War Against Fascism wanted to get down to making and tending to their babies of the coming economic and "Baby Boom". The prosperity fruit of their class struggle, especially in those areas like North America that had actually prospered on the War and were still prospering on the postwar rebuilding of Europe, further encourage them to surrender to the siren songs of capitalism reinvigorated and the case for "class collaboration" with the ruling class.
Though it does have to be mentioned, that there was at the same time, the steel fist of anti-communism serving as the threat to the period as well, with the rise of McCarthyism here as in the US, and a whole series of pogroms carried out in the "official labour movement" to root out class militants and the radical left leadership that had in large part created and led the trade union movement from at least the time of the Great Depression.
So as the working class itself was weary of the class struggle concept these folks espoused, and was being encouraged to enjoy the new fruits of the New Capitalist Prosperity Period, much of that "militant left" leadership indeed came to be driven from "the house of labour". In their place, increasingly, a new concept "Business Trade Unionism" leadership was installed to lead the trade union movement into a kind of negotiatioted "contract" peace with capitalism. And throughout the postwar Prosperity Period until the capitalist worm again began to turn in the late 70s to early 80s, this model of trade unionism worked "more or less" well, for both Labour and Capital.
continued...
coyoteman
21-07-2009
The Decline of Labour 2...
Now, however, self-evidently, we are again in a new unstable and declining prosperity period of capitalism. The "Business Trade Unionism" model itself is falling into a time of crises and declining influence, in turn leading to the kinds of pressures that result in labour eating its own young, as manifested in this story here, by Tom Sandborn.
And it may turn out, in the end, that the Old Labour with its roots entrenched in the "business trade unionism " ideology and model of organization will not survive the new period; that a whole new working class form and model of organization may need to arise either "out" of its demise, or even, in whole or in part, separate from it. But what is clear is that the presumptions of class peace and co-operation that still underpin this model of working class organization are inadequate to the new period.
It is likely about to turn out to be proven again, in fact, that the "endless class war" ideology and organizational assumptions of the "founding left" to the labour movement were more right-, at least for so long as capitalism exists. Certainly "the class peace", only ever really "relative" in any case, even during the best of times, of the still clinging to power "business trade unionism" leadership, is demoralizing , undermining and eroding what has to here passed for working class influence and trade union organization.
The time is fast approaching ripe for new, challenging forces to this model of working class ideas and structure to emerge and challenge both capitalism and its class/political/economic assumptions, but also the "more business friendly" trade union leadership and model that had made a kind of peace and collaboration with it.
End
KWD
22-07-2009
complacency is hard at work
Unionism is travelling and unravelling along the same path as feminism: the great gains made in the past, by those seeking to live in a more a egalitarian society, have generated complacency and an acceptance of the status quo to the point where there is now a reluctance to step up to the “front lines” and fight against those who would take away what has been gained.
The attack on unions is hard to miss … downsizing and off shore workers are undermining union power. In feminism’s case this complacency was also made more than obvious, in BC, when the Bountiful situation hit the news. Those with a feminist bent were extremely silent.
Are the majority of today’s women/union folk too comfortable? Has globalization made it impossible to change the mindset of corporations, like TELUS, by neutering the competitive forces that would make TELUS listen to it’s customers and employees?
offended
22-07-2009
Telus imposed a "soft lockout"
on its TWU members in 2005 and that is one of the reasons why TWU members, both working and retired, who hear of this action by their union, are so appalled. I cannot believe that the TWU would so blatantly violate the tenets of trade unionism; dignity and respect for all. Their action is totally disrepectful. And I am a retired TWU member, and I am ashamed of this unilateral action of a union I was once proud to be a member of. I would note that the employer in this situation, the TWU, is not cutting back their pay; in fact, some of their business agents have been going on very expensive junkets on their members' dime. Time to withdraw your soft lockout, TWU, and get back to the bargaining table. Shame on them. They are acting no better than the employer did in 2005.
Curt
22-07-2009
trade unionists?
Unfortunately, a lot of unions treat their staff this way. The trade unionism in them as "employer" goes out the window and they become the same as the employer that staff are up against continuously. CUPE had huge problems not long ago (staff on strike) as well as BCGEU and BCNU, as well as HSA I believe and BCTF support staff. It is reprehensible the way these "trade unionists"? treat union staff members. This has got to stop and it has to start at the top. Do they not remember where they came from, or do they care?
Wallace
23-07-2009
going forward
It seems to be self-evident that the TWU and their ilk cannot ever go to the bargaining table again without the employer throwing this crap in their face. Labour should be less concerned about employer attacks and worry more that fundamental principles have been abandoned. As far as unions treating their staff poorly, it the structure of unions that creates the expectation that the volunteerism expected and given by union workplace representatives will be embraced by union staff. Although, obviously, few of the union volunteers in the workplace would be happy to subsidize their own employers with personal time or substandard wages and conditions.