YET AGAIN, Minister Steven MacKinnon stabs labour unions in the back.
SHOCKINGLY, this former corporate consultant hates the labour movement!
Minister of Labour Steven MacKinnon has announced that Canada Post will be allowed to legally force the union back from their strike, after locking them out and refusing to negotiate with the workers.
Yet again, Minister MacKinnon denies workers their legal right to strike, because that right was too inconvenient for the corporate masters that pull his puppet strings. Yet again, everything from Postmedia to the CBC laundered anti-labour talking points about strikes being too “disruptive”.
Too disruptive? The entire fucking point of a strike is to disrupt the status quo! Any successful strike must demonstrate that the status quo is so intolerable, that the workers will not allow it to continue under any circumstance.
At the beginning of the labour movement, every strike was illegal, and the crackdowns on those strikes were violent, involving both public police forces and private “detectives” such as the Pinkertons, both committing brutal assaults against striking workers in the service of capital.
During the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the working people of Winnipeg joined together as one, demanding the right to collectively bargain with their employers, a right that Canadians did not yet have.
In response, the business leaders of Winnipeg pushed propaganda in the newspapers, calling the workers “alien scum” and delegitimizing the concept of labour rights. Quickly, they would collaborate with the Federal government to crush the strike.
The Government of Canada quickly took action, changing laws to allow for the deportation of immigrants that supported the strike, and politically directing the arrest and imprisonment of the strike leaders.
As the workers peacefully protested for the release of those strike leaders, the North-West Mounted Police, known today as the RCMP, charged the workers with their billy clubs, and fired live ammunition at them with their rifles.
In the resulting massacre, known as Bloody Sunday, dozens of workers were beaten by the NWMP officers, and several workers were killed. None of the NWMP officers were ever punished, because they did exactly what they were told to do.
After this massacre of the workers, the Federal government successfully compelled the strike to end through the threat of further violence. The government then convicted the strike leaders on false charges of treason, sending each of them to prison.
And now, in the year 2024, history repeats itself. Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon gleefully breaks the back of unions, forcefully ending every single strike that has even an ounce of leverage against their employer.
Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code states that the Minister may do what he deems “expedient” to “serve industrial peace”. What this means, in reality, is that Section 107 is a tool to unilaterally end strikes, and relieve the pressure on corporations.
How the fuck would it help a union to end their right to strike? Strikes only benefit workers; the entire purpose of a strike is so that workers can collectively assert their rights!
And why would any employer ever negotiate, when they know that MacKinnon is their loyal lapdog who will break the striking workers the moment they command him to do so? Every corporation will lock out their union, and wait for Section 107 to be invoked.
Steven MacKinnon is not an idiot, or a fool; he knows damn well that the repeated use of back-to-work laws will only hurt workers, and benefit capital. Considering his prior employment history, this isn’t hard to understand.
After all, Mr. MacKinnon was a Senior Vice-President at Hill & Knowlton Strategies, an extremely large consulting firm where, in his own words, he provided advice to big business on “corporate strategy, mergers & acquisitions, and consulting in the C-suite.”
Can any of us genuinely say we’re shocked that a corporate consultant, who boasts about providing advice to CEOs and reducing competition in the economy, doesn’t like labour rights?
I’m not going to do the whole debate over whether Steven MacKinnon is acting in good faith; he is clearly operating with malicious intent against labour unions. And I’m not going to entertain the debate over whether these are “his” decisions, or “Cabinet” decisions.
All I know is that Steven MacKinnon is the Minister of Labour, and Justin Trudeau is the Prime Minister he answers to. As far as I’m concerned? Labour unions can blame everyone at the Cabinet table for repeatedly violating their rights.
Section 107, quite frankly, makes the entire Canada Labour Code a joke. And at the same time, Section 107 is itself a joke; it can only be interpreted legally in Charter compliant ways.
So if Section 107 can’t legally be interpreted as voiding the Charter right for workers to strike…then the postal workers represented by CUPW shouldn’t end their strike.
Remember, once upon a time, every strike was illegal…and then people went on strike anyway, despite the threats they faced, because they knew that letting bullies rule their lives was worse.
I throw my full support behind the postal workers, however they choose to defend themselves from MacKinnon’s assault on their rights. And even more importantly?
I hope Mr. MacKinnon finds out what it feels like to be locked out by his employer.