Pallister’s union trash-talking a brazen play

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This article was published 05/11/2018 (2670 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What is a provincial public servant to think?

At the Progressive Conservative annual general meeting in Brandon on the weekend, Premier Brian Pallister brashly encouraged public servants to vote Conservative in the 2020 election, if they know what’s good for them. Although he did not identify it by name, it was widely believed his message was directed mostly at the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, which has been vocal in its criticism of the Pallister government.

The premier’s rationale was two-fold.

First, he suggested civil servants have greater long-term job security with a government that has balanced the budget. Although the Tories have not done that yet, they are getting close thanks to concerted austerity.

Pallister also argued that public servants should reject invitations from their union leaders to vote against the Tories because they are busy wasting their dues on advertisements that attack the government for its austerity. Rather than eroding confidence in his government, when unions run attack ads, he claims “our popularity rises.”

These statements confirm two important qualities possessed by the premier. First, Pallister does not suffer from a shortage of bravado. And second, he rarely lets facts get in the way of a good one-liner.

Telling public servants to vote Tory to boost job security is a fascinating strategy. Despite the fact that civil service numbers had not risen in more than a decade, the Pallister government cut 1,200 positions, or about eight per cent of total provincial employment. Although some of the cuts were accomplished by eliminating vacancies, the number of people who lost jobs was still significant.

Pallister’s argument is pretty audacious. It’s like a shark who has just eaten someone arguing that you should jump in the water because, hey, how much can one shark eat?

It’s important to note that Pallister’s invitation to civil servants comes at the same time as a government-wide wage freeze. The Tories passed, but have not proclaimed, a law to enforce the wage freezes. While public-sector unions attempt to challenge that law in the courts, the Tories have affected the freeze through a refusal to bargain in a meaningful way.

There are reasonable fiscal arguments for both the job cuts and the wage freeze, although Pallister rarely embraces the argument of least resistance while making his case. The budget deficit is a real problem and sacrifices by those directly employed by the province are the most effective way of bringing down the deficit.

Instead, Pallister continues to argue that what he is doing is necessary to correct the wasteful employment strategies of the previous government, and that it has been relatively painless. Both are questionable assertions, but they play well to the Tory base.

But how do they play to civil servants who are outside that base that the premier was speaking to this past weekend?

Pallister argued that Manitobans are, on the whole, very receptive to what he is doing, and that every time a union runs an advertisement attacking him, the popularity of his government goes up. Again, there’s little evidence to support that.

The Tories are running comfortably ahead in midterm polls and, in theory, should face no significant threat in 2020. That having been said, Tory insiders are gravely worried about losing seats in Winnipeg, where the governing party continues to run neck-and-neck with a New Democratic Party that is still in rebuilding mode.

There could be a number of reasons why the race is so tight in the city, but it would not be a stretch to say that a combination of wage freezes, job cuts and — perhaps most importantly — the reorganization of hospital resources, which involves closing emergency rooms, have created a scenario that is too close for Tory comfort.

However, Pallister may be banking on the fact that, when push comes to shove on the 2020 campaign, public-sector union leaders will not be able to muster much of an electoral challenge. If that’s what was really behind his weekend speech, then there is some method to his madness.

Even with the hospital reorganization, the wage freezes and job cuts, it is still unclear that union leadership has the capacity to summon a wave of anti-government sentiment at election time.

This is partly due to the fact that public-sector unions have grown very large and diverse. The result is that there is less hard core, militant trade union sentiment coursing through the membership of organizations such as CUPE and the MGEU than 20 or 30 years ago.

You can see this in the unwillingness of these larger unions to take job action against an unco-operative government. Dozens of contracts across government are in limbo as the Tories essentially ignore collective bargaining to maintain a wage freeze. You would think that would make for a prime opportunity to have civil servants walk off the job.

The reality is the Pallister government has instilled just the right amount of fear among civil servants. The premier has shown himself to be a man who loves a bitter fight more than he loves a fair settlement. That is likely dampening some militancy on the union side of the equation.

On its face, Pallister’s invitation to civil servants to vote Tory had less to do with cultivating support among government employees, and more to do with reminding public-sector unions they are no match for him in an electoral showdown.

Pallister could have used a more balanced argument. He could have acknowledged the fear and uncertainty that grips the provincial civil service, and offered them the hope of a better future.

Instead, he used his speech to talk trash at the province’s most powerful public-sector unions in an attempt to show Manitobans that they aren’t that powerful at all.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca