Myths, Misconceptions & Downright Lies about Bill C-377
• It is about openness, transparency and disclosure in public institutions – Unions!
The buzz words about openness transparency and disclosure are a smoke screen. Unions are the only organizations in the country that are being asked to do this sort of disclosure. Canadian charities, in order to maintain their charitable status, and due to the fact that they are soliciting money from the public at large have a higher reporting requirement than any other Not-For- Profit body but they don’t have to do anything nearly as onerous as what it is going to be required of Unions. Other Not-For-Profits including the “Union haters” and groups like the MERIT Contractors Association, The Canadian Federation of Independent Business and host of others engage in lobbying, advocacy, labour relations, government relations and trade improvement. Professional Associations and every other Not-For-Profit have to file a very simple return with Revenue Canada to maintain their Not-For-Profit status. Why should Unions be any different? The answer to that is that Unions are perceived as the “political enemies” by some politicians
This Bill isn’t about openness transparency and disclosure; it is about a variety of things, but openness is not one of the goals. Those goals include;
• The cost to the Union will be stupendous, so Unions will have to use up much more of their time and money doing “bookkeeping” and much less actually doing their business. It also is intended to dissuade political attack ad campaigns against various governments. This is achieved by the threat of disclosure of what these campaigns cost to members who didn’t actually show up at the meeting to authorize the ’spend.’
• There is a growth industry in the United States that plumbs the filings of Unions there under the US Labour Market Reporting Act. They do this for employers who think that there is a chance of them being unionized. They get the information to either point out to the people who work in a workplace that the Union is too weak and too broke to do anything for them or if it’s a stronger Union to show how the Union wastes all their money on a host of causes and especially profligate salaries for the “Union bosses”. Don’t think that happens here? Have a look at the press release that was filed by MERIT Canada on December 5th, 2012 in the National Post. Union Bosses, Big Labour, mandatory dues, Big Unions, all feature prominently.
• And if the Union (or its accountant) fails to file at a timely way it costs them $1,000.00 a day. Who else pays these kinds of fine, not Canadian Charities and not someone like MERIT Canada, if they fail to file their return? Did we mention that MERIT Canada’s return is kept confidential?
• The Bill just makes the Union bosses acknowledge what they get paid!
In Ontario under Mike Harris Union leaders were required to disclose their salaries if they made above one hundred thousand dollars. And, admittedly, civil servants, hospital employees, university administrators, health care providers over a threshold of earnings …the list goes on and MP’S have their salaries disclosed. This Bill isn’t just about disclosing the salaries of the “Union bosses”. Everyone who works for the Union will have their salary disclosed publicly. Anyone on a pension plan that gets a transfer value paid will be disclosed. Anyone who is in receipt of disability benefits or getting payments for drugs or some sort of hospitalization over $5,000.00 in a month will have that publicly disclosed. Take some time and look at the Bill. Look at what is required to be disclosed. If you don’t think what is to be passed is onerous take it to an accountant and ask them for their opinion!
This misconception is a sub set of the first myth, but it is worth pointing out that if you belong to a Union it is a guarantee that the Bylaws and the Constitution of that Union, which are available to any and all of its members and, in any event, are on file with the Labour Relations Board in your province, will tell you what someone gets paid. In 7 of the 10 provinces Unions must file some sort of financial disclosure with the provincial regulator. As well you have the right to go to the Union meeting and ask for information. Just as it isn’t any of our business what the President of MERIT Canada makes why would it be any of their business as to what the Business Manager, of Plumbers Local 324 in Victoria British Columbia gets paid?
• It is just because Fat Cat Union Bosses don’t want their exorbitant salaries disclosed!
Rubbish, our members hire their representatives; they set the salaries and terms of employment for those people. The meetings where these decisions get paid are not Stalinist rah-rah sessions. Anyone who ever tried to get a dues increase through a membership or get another couple of bucks for a rep can attest to that! When the CFIB, the various MERIT Contractors Groups, the Ontario Electrical League and a few others of that ilk make public disclosure, so will we!!
For the record we aren’t opposed to filing like any other Not-For-Profit. We opposed to be the only entity in the Income Tax Act that gets ‘special’ treatment!
4. Unions aren’t transparent and don’t disclose the “untold millions of dollars they get in extorted Union dues”!
Where is the push coming from to create this sort of “openness and disclosure”? Have you heard of the Union member who has laid awake nights worrying what his Union has done with his Union dues? If they have a question they are entitled to go to the Union meeting to get an answer. A number of Unions post their financial statements and financial disbursements on their members’ only websites. In every Local Union in the country there is an audit annually and the expenses right down to the last rubber band are approved by the members. This information isn’t currently found in audits or normal business records, it must be created and captured over the year and that will cost a lot!
As to the untold millions the average local Union in Canada only has a couple of hundred members in it. Do the math – it is hardly rolling in dough! The members get to set the rate of dues at a democratic meeting. The Union dues aren’t imposed on them. Union members determine the level of service they want to get of their Union and they pay for it.
5. It is no big deal; it’s just filing a little report
This one is an enormous whopper! If you go on the website of the bright spark who introduced this Bill he says that the cost of reporting is negligible. That is pure unadulterated manure! We have taken what is required in the Bill to a number of accountants, actuaries, pension plan administrators and other professionals who gave us their opinion. Depending on the size of a Union, the total administration costs will increase somewhere between five and twenty percent. The cost of dealing just with getting the filing prepared is in the same magnitude as the current accounting budget. Then there are the costs of new systems to capture the new requirements and many, many, many more entries with the recompilations and auditing requirement to make sense of it all. This is a lot of money. If you have a look at what is sought from large pension plans it is clear that they will have to report numerous transactions every business day. Who exactly is going to pay for this? Well that is simple. It won’t be the mover of the Bill and it won’t be the Government of Canada it will be the members of Unions who will either have to pay more in Union dues or, accept lesser services. It will be the members of pension plans who will not get as much on their pension cheques and it will be members of health plans who don’t get as much help with the dentist, drugs or major medical. One of the professionals we spoke to indicated to us that most small Unions will definitely have to engage external professional assistance to do what is required. Other ‘Labour Trusts’ and ‘Labour Organizations’ as are defined by the Bill will have to hire more staff. He also opined that the legislation would be “debilitating” and pointed out the existing “extreme reporting requirements” that pension, and health plans already have to with CRA and with Provincial regulators. He concluded his report by saying “… no other reporting entity under the Income Tax Act is required to supply the amount of detail being requested under section three (of Bill C-377). Some of the Union's trust funds would have to file reports the size of a major city’s telephone directory.”
6. This does not concern any Union member
-Of course this concerns the Union member. Some Union members will have their salaries disclosed, others the state of their health, others the cost of legal services that a Union provided in respect to their grievance or Labour Board hearing. What other Canadians have their privacy dealt with such a cavalier manner? Using another meaning of “concern” I would ask again how many Union members are sitting awake at night, worrying how the Union spends its money! The answer to that is pretty simple. It is none or next to none. Is there some proven need for this legislation? The answer is no.
7. Disclosure is good for the public.
We would agree that disclosure is good for the public. But disclosure needs to be weighed against such things as the privacy of individuals, the ability of Unions to actually do their jobs, and the potential for abuse. Policy makers need to concern themselves with an appraisal of how the public good being served. Is allowing anyone, who owns a computer and who can get on the internet, access to every single solitary financial transaction that a Union has entered in the public interest? Similarly, is it in the public interest that every Labour Trust Fund report expenditures on hospital stays and whether or not Mrs. Smith gets the Birmingham hip or some other hip replacement? If it is in the public interest for the Unions to have to report why not the people who are opposed to Unions, and who get the same tax treatment as Not-For-Profit Associations as Unions get. A non-union contractor gets a hundred cents on the dollar tax write off on the dues and contributions that he makes to MERIT Canada. It is the same for the Medical, Dental, Legal and all other Professional Associations. A number of Professional Associations deal with Government, to establish fee schedules, advocate for public policy on health, law, standards and other things that they see as effecting them and society at large. Why don’t they have to make these filings? Most every Professional Association has some degree of labour relations purpose. But at section 1 in the proposed Bill the only people that are caught are Unions which engage directly in collective bargaining. In fact, the doctors ‘collectively bargain’ with the provincial governments, but they aren’t required to file, is that because their opposition would be too strong?? Disclose to our members, sure, disclose to CRA who must treats us like any other taxpayer sure. Disclose of Mr. Oakey of the MERIT Shop hmm….. ?
8. The Bill covers all labor management parties
This is another major whopper! Section 1 of the Bill amends section 149 of the Income Tax Act. Any fair reading of it indicates that the only people who are caught are Unions. If you do not think that to be the case take it to a lawyer who you respect and ask him to parse the definitions. He will tell you that the canons of construction are such that like things are considered in a like way and all of the examples in the definitions refer to different descriptions of “Unions”. There is nary a mention of Employers’ Associations. If you are going to do this to Unions, do it to the Union haters and the Professional Associations and the legitimate Employers' Organizations. They are the other side of the equation from Unions and the truth is that they advocate for public policy change, bargain, lobby, interact with political parties and engage in the political process. They ought not to be exempt.
10. Charities do it!
Yes, charities have to file certain things but their requirements are not anywhere as onerous as those requirements inflicted on Unions. The truth is Unions have an enormous of self-regulation, that has been said before. Charities need to file to instill confidence in the public that their charitable gifts are going to a good cause, that it really isn’t a for profit business in disguise. Unions deal on behalf of their members; they are not soliciting gifts from the world at large. In their democratic structures the members of the Union set the amount of money they‘re prepared to pay to their Union. They make the ‘Union Boss’ accountable to them, or they elect someone else! The member pays the Union for the services. It is that simple.
If an interested person wants to find out something about the Union he can go on their website. Virtually all of them have it. If he is interested in joining he can phone and talk to someone. He can go on the website of the National or International Union and he can go to a million blogs and other websites both pro and con Union.
If I want to find out about the company that I want to do business with I can do some research on-line. Does that give me the right to access to a Government of Canada website and get the salaries of the people who work for that company, the amount of money that they spend on rubber bands or anything else? The answer to that should be no. Unions should not be treated any differently in this regard.
11. It allows any interested person to find out all about a Union!
This is code for using Union disclosure against the Union in certification/de-certification drivers and giving an employer or Employer’s Organizations a very substantial peek into what is essentially this opposition. It is a case of you having to show me yours, but I don’t have to show you mine!!
12. The Federal Government has to act!
First thing’s first, since 1925 in Canada after a decision called Snider v Toronto Electric, labour relations has been held to be a Provincial responsibility. The regulation of Trade Unions similarly is a Provincial responsibility. Roughly 9% of the workforce in Canada is regulated by the Federal Government. The Federal Government regulates Trade Unions in that Federal Sector. For the other 91% of the Unions the Government of Canada, under the Canadian Constitution, cannot regulate their affairs. There is no pressing need in any event and the Federal Government has no power. It is like an MP putting forward a Private Member’s Bill requiring people in Saskatoon to shovel their walk. Maybe the MP could do that for Parliament Hill (which is under Federal Control) but the City of Saskatoon has the right to determine when and if you shovel your walk!
There is no hue and cry from workers chaffing in Union chains to set them free by passing Bill C- 377. The only people who seem really keen for this are people like MERIT Canada who see a whole number of wonderful plums falling in their lap in their campaign to keep some Canada’s construction companies non-Union. The mover of the Bill was obviously fully cognescient of the fact that the Federal Government does not have the power to regulate what amounts to the 91% of Unions that are Provincial Unions. That’s why he is using Income Tax Act, which is a existing federal statute rather than proposing a separate Bill.
13. Union members support this!
This is also rubbish. Anyone who has ever done any surveying of groups of people know and will tell you that opinion polls are shaped by how you ask the questions, by the series in which the questions are asked and the conclusions that the questions sometimes tend to lead to. We have done some polling as well and most Union Members don’t think that Unions should be singled out for “extra special” tax treatment and when asked specific questions about where you can go and get information about the finances of your Union, most all of them know where to go and would do so if they required the information.
Closing
14. The unspoken message is that Unions can’t be trusted, are unsavory, unaccountable conspiracies that are using exhorted union dues to derail the system
We think that you can love Unions or hate them. We think that people should be able to work in a unionized environment and participate in a Trade Union of their choice and engage in the lawful activities in that Trade Union as a result. We think employers have a right to participate in Employers’ Organization and participate in its lawful activities. We think an employer should have the right to voluntarily recognize a group of his employees, and should it certified by a Labour Relations Board deal in good faith with its unionized employees. All of those things make sense. An employer may find being unionized is a pleasure or may think it’s the worse experience of their life. Be mindful that there is a Labour Relations maxim “the employer gets the Union it deserves!”
The Truth is that Unions set a bench mark in the workplace, work to provide dignity in retirement, provide benefits and better salaries to people. The truth is that Canadian Unions are as patriotic as the next guy, involved in what they think the public good is or ought to be and try to make sure that the public good wins out. This is the same spirit that motivates other similar organization of professionals or employers. Once you strip away the image of the “Union Boss” you get the unionized worker who is the coach of your kid’s hockey team, a volunteer blood donor, person who serves in the army reserve, your best friend, and some of your relatives. You know that these people are not evil. Maybe it’s time for some people to grow up!
Sometimes, people say “I hate Unions because they get involved in politics, and that is not their business”. Federally, both Unions and corporations not enter into the electoral process it is forbidden by law. A number of other provinces have legislated that as well. In other provinces both Unions and employers are free to engage in the political process, and from what we can see both sides do exactly that where it is permitted. If a province wants to regulate the extent of the sphere of interplay in electoral politcs they can. It should not be left to a back bench MP to decide that he doesn’t like the way some provinces do business and then try to fix it through the back door).
Resources
Text of Bill C – 377
Websites
For More Information Call/E-mail
Myths, Misconceptions & Downright Lies about Bill C-377
• It is about openness, transparency and disclosure in public institutions – Unions!
The buzz words about openness transparency and disclosure are a smoke screen. Unions are the only organizations in the country that are being asked to do this sort of disclosure. Canadian charities, in order to maintain their charitable status, and due to the fact that they are soliciting money from the public at large have a higher reporting requirement than any other Not-For- Profit body but they don’t have to do anything nearly as onerous as what it is going to be required of Unions. Other Not-For-Profits including the “Union haters” and groups like the MERIT Contractors Association, The Canadian Federation of Independent Business and host of others engage in lobbying, advocacy, labour relations, government relations and trade improvement. Professional Associations and every other Not-For-Profit have to file a very simple return with Revenue Canada to maintain their Not-For-Profit status. Why should Unions be any different? The answer to that is that Unions are perceived as the “political enemies” by some politicians
This Bill isn’t about openness transparency and disclosure; it is about a variety of things, but openness is not one of the goals. Those goals include;
• The cost to the Union will be stupendous, so Unions will have to use up much more of their time and money doing “bookkeeping” and much less actually doing their business. It also is intended to dissuade political attack ad campaigns against various governments. This is achieved by the threat of disclosure of what these campaigns cost to members who didn’t actually show up at the meeting to authorize the ’spend.’
• There is a growth industry in the United States that plumbs the filings of Unions there under the US Labour Market Reporting Act. They do this for employers who think that there is a chance of them being unionized. They get the information to either point out to the people who work in a workplace that the Union is too weak and too broke to do anything for them or if it’s a stronger Union to show how the Union wastes all their money on a host of causes and especially profligate salaries for the “Union bosses”. Don’t think that happens here? Have a look at the press release that was filed by MERIT Canada on December 5th, 2012 in the National Post. Union Bosses, Big Labour, mandatory dues, Big Unions, all feature prominently.
• And if the Union (or its accountant) fails to file at a timely way it costs them $1,000.00 a day. Who else pays these kinds of fine, not Canadian Charities and not someone like MERIT Canada, if they fail to file their return? Did we mention that MERIT Canada’s return is kept confidential?
• The Bill just makes the Union bosses acknowledge what they get paid!
In Ontario under Mike Harris Union leaders were required to disclose their salaries if they made above one hundred thousand dollars. And, admittedly, civil servants, hospital employees, university administrators, health care providers over a threshold of earnings …the list goes on and MP’S have their salaries disclosed. This Bill isn’t just about disclosing the salaries of the “Union bosses”. Everyone who works for the Union will have their salary disclosed publicly. Anyone on a pension plan that gets a transfer value paid will be disclosed. Anyone who is in receipt of disability benefits or getting payments for drugs or some sort of hospitalization over $5,000.00 in a month will have that publicly disclosed. Take some time and look at the Bill. Look at what is required to be disclosed. If you don’t think what is to be passed is onerous take it to an accountant and ask them for their opinion!
This misconception is a sub set of the first myth, but it is worth pointing out that if you belong to a Union it is a guarantee that the Bylaws and the Constitution of that Union, which are available to any and all of its members and, in any event, are on file with the Labour Relations Board in your province, will tell you what someone gets paid. In 7 of the 10 provinces Unions must file some sort of financial disclosure with the provincial regulator. As well you have the right to go to the Union meeting and ask for information. Just as it isn’t any of our business what the President of MERIT Canada makes why would it be any of their business as to what the Business Manager, of Plumbers Local 324 in Victoria British Columbia gets paid?
• It is just because Fat Cat Union Bosses don’t want their exorbitant salaries disclosed!
Rubbish, our members hire their representatives; they set the salaries and terms of employment for those people. The meetings where these decisions get paid are not Stalinist rah-rah sessions. Anyone who ever tried to get a dues increase through a membership or get another couple of bucks for a rep can attest to that! When the CFIB, the various MERIT Contractors Groups, the Ontario Electrical League and a few others of that ilk make public disclosure, so will we!!
For the record we aren’t opposed to filing like any other Not-For-Profit. We opposed to be the only entity in the Income Tax Act that gets ‘special’ treatment!
4. Unions aren’t transparent and don’t disclose the “untold millions of dollars they get in extorted Union dues”!
Where is the push coming from to create this sort of “openness and disclosure”? Have you heard of the Union member who has laid awake nights worrying what his Union has done with his Union dues? If they have a question they are entitled to go to the Union meeting to get an answer. A number of Unions post their financial statements and financial disbursements on their members’ only websites. In every Local Union in the country there is an audit annually and the expenses right down to the last rubber band are approved by the members. This information isn’t currently found in audits or normal business records, it must be created and captured over the year and that will cost a lot!
As to the untold millions the average local Union in Canada only has a couple of hundred members in it. Do the math – it is hardly rolling in dough! The members get to set the rate of dues at a democratic meeting. The Union dues aren’t imposed on them. Union members determine the level of service they want to get of their Union and they pay for it.
5. It is no big deal; it’s just filing a little report
This one is an enormous whopper! If you go on the website of the bright spark who introduced this Bill he says that the cost of reporting is negligible. That is pure unadulterated manure! We have taken what is required in the Bill to a number of accountants, actuaries, pension plan administrators and other professionals who gave us their opinion. Depending on the size of a Union, the total administration costs will increase somewhere between five and twenty percent. The cost of dealing just with getting the filing prepared is in the same magnitude as the current accounting budget. Then there are the costs of new systems to capture the new requirements and many, many, many more entries with the recompilations and auditing requirement to make sense of it all. This is a lot of money. If you have a look at what is sought from large pension plans it is clear that they will have to report numerous transactions every business day. Who exactly is going to pay for this? Well that is simple. It won’t be the mover of the Bill and it won’t be the Government of Canada it will be the members of Unions who will either have to pay more in Union dues or, accept lesser services. It will be the members of pension plans who will not get as much on their pension cheques and it will be members of health plans who don’t get as much help with the dentist, drugs or major medical. One of the professionals we spoke to indicated to us that most small Unions will definitely have to engage external professional assistance to do what is required. Other ‘Labour Trusts’ and ‘Labour Organizations’ as are defined by the Bill will have to hire more staff. He also opined that the legislation would be “debilitating” and pointed out the existing “extreme reporting requirements” that pension, and health plans already have to with CRA and with Provincial regulators. He concluded his report by saying “… no other reporting entity under the Income Tax Act is required to supply the amount of detail being requested under section three (of Bill C-377). Some of the Union's trust funds would have to file reports the size of a major city’s telephone directory.”
6. This does not concern any Union member
-Of course this concerns the Union member. Some Union members will have their salaries disclosed, others the state of their health, others the cost of legal services that a Union provided in respect to their grievance or Labour Board hearing. What other Canadians have their privacy dealt with such a cavalier manner? Using another meaning of “concern” I would ask again how many Union members are sitting awake at night, worrying how the Union spends its money! The answer to that is pretty simple. It is none or next to none. Is there some proven need for this legislation? The answer is no.
7. Disclosure is good for the public.
We would agree that disclosure is good for the public. But disclosure needs to be weighed against such things as the privacy of individuals, the ability of Unions to actually do their jobs, and the potential for abuse. Policy makers need to concern themselves with an appraisal of how the public good being served. Is allowing anyone, who owns a computer and who can get on the internet, access to every single solitary financial transaction that a Union has entered in the public interest? Similarly, is it in the public interest that every Labour Trust Fund report expenditures on hospital stays and whether or not Mrs. Smith gets the Birmingham hip or some other hip replacement? If it is in the public interest for the Unions to have to report why not the people who are opposed to Unions, and who get the same tax treatment as Not-For-Profit Associations as Unions get. A non-union contractor gets a hundred cents on the dollar tax write off on the dues and contributions that he makes to MERIT Canada. It is the same for the Medical, Dental, Legal and all other Professional Associations. A number of Professional Associations deal with Government, to establish fee schedules, advocate for public policy on health, law, standards and other things that they see as effecting them and society at large. Why don’t they have to make these filings? Most every Professional Association has some degree of labour relations purpose. But at section 1 in the proposed Bill the only people that are caught are Unions which engage directly in collective bargaining. In fact, the doctors ‘collectively bargain’ with the provincial governments, but they aren’t required to file, is that because their opposition would be too strong?? Disclose to our members, sure, disclose to CRA who must treats us like any other taxpayer sure. Disclose of Mr. Oakey of the MERIT Shop hmm….. ?
8. The Bill covers all labor management parties
This is another major whopper! Section 1 of the Bill amends section 149 of the Income Tax Act. Any fair reading of it indicates that the only people who are caught are Unions. If you do not think that to be the case take it to a lawyer who you respect and ask him to parse the definitions. He will tell you that the canons of construction are such that like things are considered in a like way and all of the examples in the definitions refer to different descriptions of “Unions”. There is nary a mention of Employers’ Associations. If you are going to do this to Unions, do it to the Union haters and the Professional Associations and the legitimate Employers' Organizations. They are the other side of the equation from Unions and the truth is that they advocate for public policy change, bargain, lobby, interact with political parties and engage in the political process. They ought not to be exempt.
10. Charities do it!
Yes, charities have to file certain things but their requirements are not anywhere as onerous as those requirements inflicted on Unions. The truth is Unions have an enormous of self-regulation, that has been said before. Charities need to file to instill confidence in the public that their charitable gifts are going to a good cause, that it really isn’t a for profit business in disguise. Unions deal on behalf of their members; they are not soliciting gifts from the world at large. In their democratic structures the members of the Union set the amount of money they‘re prepared to pay to their Union. They make the ‘Union Boss’ accountable to them, or they elect someone else! The member pays the Union for the services. It is that simple.
If an interested person wants to find out something about the Union he can go on their website. Virtually all of them have it. If he is interested in joining he can phone and talk to someone. He can go on the website of the National or International Union and he can go to a million blogs and other websites both pro and con Union.
If I want to find out about the company that I want to do business with I can do some research on-line. Does that give me the right to access to a Government of Canada website and get the salaries of the people who work for that company, the amount of money that they spend on rubber bands or anything else? The answer to that should be no. Unions should not be treated any differently in this regard.
11. It allows any interested person to find out all about a Union!
This is code for using Union disclosure against the Union in certification/de-certification drivers and giving an employer or Employer’s Organizations a very substantial peek into what is essentially this opposition. It is a case of you having to show me yours, but I don’t have to show you mine!!
12. The Federal Government has to act!
First thing’s first, since 1925 in Canada after a decision called Snider v Toronto Electric, labour relations has been held to be a Provincial responsibility. The regulation of Trade Unions similarly is a Provincial responsibility. Roughly 9% of the workforce in Canada is regulated by the Federal Government. The Federal Government regulates Trade Unions in that Federal Sector. For the other 91% of the Unions the Government of Canada, under the Canadian Constitution, cannot regulate their affairs. There is no pressing need in any event and the Federal Government has no power. It is like an MP putting forward a Private Member’s Bill requiring people in Saskatoon to shovel their walk. Maybe the MP could do that for Parliament Hill (which is under Federal Control) but the City of Saskatoon has the right to determine when and if you shovel your walk!
There is no hue and cry from workers chaffing in Union chains to set them free by passing Bill C- 377. The only people who seem really keen for this are people like MERIT Canada who see a whole number of wonderful plums falling in their lap in their campaign to keep some Canada’s construction companies non-Union. The mover of the Bill was obviously fully cognescient of the fact that the Federal Government does not have the power to regulate what amounts to the 91% of Unions that are Provincial Unions. That’s why he is using Income Tax Act, which is a existing federal statute rather than proposing a separate Bill.
13. Union members support this!
This is also rubbish. Anyone who has ever done any surveying of groups of people know and will tell you that opinion polls are shaped by how you ask the questions, by the series in which the questions are asked and the conclusions that the questions sometimes tend to lead to. We have done some polling as well and most Union Members don’t think that Unions should be singled out for “extra special” tax treatment and when asked specific questions about where you can go and get information about the finances of your Union, most all of them know where to go and would do so if they required the information.
Closing
14. The unspoken message is that Unions can’t be trusted, are unsavory, unaccountable conspiracies that are using exhorted union dues to derail the system
We think that you can love Unions or hate them. We think that people should be able to work in a unionized environment and participate in a Trade Union of their choice and engage in the lawful activities in that Trade Union as a result. We think employers have a right to participate in Employers’ Organization and participate in its lawful activities. We think an employer should have the right to voluntarily recognize a group of his employees, and should it certified by a Labour Relations Board deal in good faith with its unionized employees. All of those things make sense. An employer may find being unionized is a pleasure or may think it’s the worse experience of their life. Be mindful that there is a Labour Relations maxim “the employer gets the Union it deserves!”
The Truth is that Unions set a bench mark in the workplace, work to provide dignity in retirement, provide benefits and better salaries to people. The truth is that Canadian Unions are as patriotic as the next guy, involved in what they think the public good is or ought to be and try to make sure that the public good wins out. This is the same spirit that motivates other similar organization of professionals or employers. Once you strip away the image of the “Union Boss” you get the unionized worker who is the coach of your kid’s hockey team, a volunteer blood donor, person who serves in the army reserve, your best friend, and some of your relatives. You know that these people are not evil. Maybe it’s time for some people to grow up!
Sometimes, people say “I hate Unions because they get involved in politics, and that is not their business”. Federally, both Unions and corporations not enter into the electoral process it is forbidden by law. A number of other provinces have legislated that as well. In other provinces both Unions and employers are free to engage in the political process, and from what we can see both sides do exactly that where it is permitted. If a province wants to regulate the extent of the sphere of interplay in electoral politcs they can. It should not be left to a back bench MP to decide that he doesn’t like the way some provinces do business and then try to fix it through the back door).
Resources
Text of Bill C – 377
Websites
For More Information Call/E-mail