More to the railway story than lockout costs

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/09/2024 (394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THERE was a disappointing letter to the editor in a recent edition of the Free Press, regarding the labour dispute between railway executives and their unionized employees.

The letter writer (“Social conscience on strike,” Letters, Aug. 30) framed the work stoppage as the result of greedy unions inflicting economic hardship on all Canadians. This, despite the fact it was actually the railways who locked out their workers.

The writer then went on to cite the rail workers’ admittedly reasonable-sounding salaries, and then bafflingly went on to suggest that by asking for an increase the union could be blamed for “widening the wage gap.” In fact, the opposite is true. Any discussion of the wage gap only makes sense when we are comparing the working class against the owners of capital. We disparage the disparity between the vast profits accrued by the ownership class and the paltry wages that they offer their employees.

But higher wages for railway workers sets the precedent of a higher premium on labour. This, in turn, raises the standard for the entire labour pool.

Owners of capital like to trot out the old aphorism “a rising tide raises all boats” to falsely contend that increases in their profits benefit their workers as well, in a nod to the long-debunked theory of trickle-down economics, ignoring that their profits are rising exponentially faster than the wages they offer. But in the case of the rail workers receiving a wage increase, due to their proximity to other wage workers in the economic strata, the tidal analogy actually holds water.

But perhaps it should be no surprise that this letter-writer has trotted out such faulty arguments, given that the source he cites is the National Post. After perusing seven or eight of the most recent Post articles pertaining to the strike, one finds it has been engaging in the same tired anti-union tropes that have plagued media for as long as unions have existed.

The Post had plenty of article space to spill on the economic impacts of a work stoppage. It listed business after business that would see losses if rail service was delayed. It cited many fiduciary impacts that would leave all Canadian industry with a “bruised reputation.”

These numbers and language made it clear that the Canadian economy was under an assault that it could not survive even for a little while.

And who was to blame? Well, I think it is clear from the Free Press letter writer’s attitude where the Post was leading people.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Post spilled little ink on the specifics of the union’s demands. A few of the articles I came across offered brief quotes from union leaders and a couple of nods to improved wages and safety. But that was about it.

Indeed, the only time the Post seems to have gotten specific about the rail workers themselves was in citing their wages in a clear attempt to suggest that the workers are already duly compensated.

Actually, that isn’t entirely true. One Post article did offer an in-depth profile of rail workers from more than 50 years ago, telling the tale of strikers who went on an “alcohol-fuelled rampage” through Parliament Hill.

Perhaps one could be convinced that this was simply a colourful romp through history, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the most attention the Post paid to workers at all.

But the union demands deserve more than a throwaway mention of “safety concerns.”

In reality, railways are seeking to extract more and more from their workers, at the cost of not only worker safety, but civilian safety as well. We can see from increasing cases of serious derailments south of the border how things go when workers are forced to work into increasing levels of fatigue, on trains that are growing longer and longer.

We cannot allow our rail workers to be forced into similar conditions.

And completely absent from the Post’s coverage is perhaps the main concern that one encounters when reading the union’s own literature on its demands: namely, that the railway is trying to install a program of mandatory relocation, which could see workers being forced to move across the country, a move that could force families into making very painful decisions.

Yet our government has been quick to mandate the union into arbitration. This shameful tactic demonstrates our leaders have no concern for the working class. Because labour action is the one real tactic the working class has for insisting on its fair compensation from the ownership class. If you remove it, you render our capacity for civic action toothless. And that such action would impact the economy is not an argument against it.

That impact is entirely the point. That is our only leverage.

Because if labour is so vital to the running of our society, perhaps those performing that labour ought to be worth due consideration.

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author.