Submission from Wayne Hanley to the HUMA Committee regarding Bill C-257, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers)
The use of replacement workers during a strike or lockout is an inherently violent act meant to destroy the basic human right to bargain collectively in good faith.
Allowing replacement workers creates an imbalance in bargaining power that explicitly encourages some employers to impose trauma upon workers, their families and the surrounding community in order to achieve a unilateral settlement.
As UFCW Canada's National President, as well as president of UFCW Canada Local 175, the largest private sector local union in North America with over 50,000 members, I have personally witnessed on too many occasions the harm, injury, strife and anguish caused to our members by the use of replacement workers during a strike or lockout.
Employers will tell you their choice to use replacement workers is just another negotiating tool but the reality is that employers who resort to strike breaking are not interested in negotiating.
In fact the plan to use replacement workers typically begins months before collective bargaining begins. It is a winner-take-all strategy that corrupts the bargaining process from the very beginning. Employers can surface bargain for months while at the same time they prepare to use replacement workers to force their employees to accept a unilateral settlement.
Sadly, our union and others have seen this destructive strategy used many times.
The scenario is almost always the same: from the onset of negotiations the employer signals in subtle and not so subtle ways that it is quite prepared, and preparing, to use replacement workers if it doesn’t get the terms of settlement it has set out to achieve.
What I think has to be added into the equation is the human cost: the humiliation, fear and injuries, and sometimes even deaths caused by the use of the replacement worker strategy.
That was certainly the case in Brooks, Alberta in the fall of 2005. The place was Lakeside Packers owned by the American company Tyson Foods.
During the strike which was essentially forced by the employer, two men were killed, a number of other workers were injured, the president of the UFCW Local 401 was almost killed when his car was run off the road by management personnel, and the anger and humiliation caused by the use of replacement workers created a bitterness in the community that in some ways still exists today.
None of this had to happen and wouldn’t have happened if the use of replacement workers was banned.
But all this did happen because the employer knew that if it didn’t get the contract it demanded, it could legally humiliate and intimidate its employees by pushing them aside to let others take their work away.
Tyson had used this tactic many times before in the Unites States. It was well experienced at planning and executing a divide and conquer strategy against its own employees who at Lakeside had struggled for ten years to create a union and were now finally bargaining a first contract.
After negotiating for almost a year, the company delivered a final offer that recognized the union but offered its members no pay increases over the life of the contract’s five-year term., no seniority provisions and a hollow grievance procedure.
It was not really an offer but an ultimatum.
Meanwhile, over that same year Tyson was advertising heavily across Alberta, Canada and abroad for potential applicants. Also, a union decertification petition had begun to circulate in the plant with the knowledge of the company.
Many Lakeside employees were war refugees from sub-Sahara Africa who had been scarred by violence and had fled to Canada to escape it. Tyson knew the potential for confrontation caused by strike breaking could seriously traumatize those workers. It was betting that such a fear would convince its workers to accept its offer and say “No” to going on strike.
They bet wrong. More than 70% of the workers voted to strike but on the day the strike was set to begin, the province of Alberta banned it under an arcane Act, and sent the issue to a conciliator who could only make recommendations that were non-binding.
Two months later when his compromise settlement came out, the union accepted the recommendations. The company did not. The strike began a week later on October 12, 2005.
The company was convinced it could break the strike and the union by using strike breakers. Replacement workers were bused in from across Alberta. Employees willing to cross the picket line were offered a full shift’s pay even though the plant was operating at only half-capacity. Tyson began constructing twelve new roads to enter the plant to thwart the picketers and thin out their ranks.
But the picket lines held, choking production to the plant. After 24 days the company finally relented to return to the bargaining table to work out a contract that was ratified.
The workers had a contract but the toll on them and the Brooks community had been enormous.
Some replacement workers crossed the picket line made up of their own neighbors and the bitterness from that remains to this day.
Divisions along racial lines began to appear. Many of the strikers and their families left town and never returned.
Currently Lakeside is operating with a smaller workforce than before the strike because its reputation as an oppressive employer was spread far and wide by media reports during the strike.
But none of this had to happen. If replacement workers were banned as part of the arsenal, Tyson would have likely negotiated the same contract a year before the strike took place.
The bottom line is the option of replacement workers causes bad faith bargaining. Unions will go to every length to avoid strikes because of the hardship a strike causes to its own members and the limited financial resources the union has compared to the employer.
For unions a strike is an absolute last resort but for some employers who have the replacement worker option available, a strike or lockout is exactly what they want and will pursue.
There is no doubt that the use of replacement workers during a strike or lockout is an inherently violent act meant to destroy the basic human right to bargain collectively in good faith and as such should be banned.
