Company Tells Employees: Work ‘Voluntary’ Overtime or Go to Jail
vice.com
vice.com
If I understand that right:
- the company can request overtime from its workers, first by asking for volunteers
- the workers collectively decided not to volunteer, as is their right
- the company can force workers, according to their skills and other factors, to work overtime. There doesn't seem to be any difference in pay between voluntarily accepting overtime and being forced to work overtime (at least none that I could find in the memo or bargaining agreement, I didn't read the law on that matter)
- the problem, then, seems to be that workers refuse to work overtime at all.
A much more reasonable headline, if I understood the story correctly, would be, "workers refuse to work mandatory overtime, and courts ruled that to be a strike, which is forbidden by their collective bargaining agreement".
That makes a lot more sense: workers don't want to work overtime because the conditions are bad and didn't think it would constitute a strike, but the courts disagreed, which seems like a reasonable ruling (IMO, it could have gone both ways before the ruling).
"Courts ruled that to be a strike"? BORING.
Gotta spice that story up. "Company forces employees to work overtime or get fired".
Yeah, that's more like it. That'll pull in the ad revenue we need.
- Legal action against striking employees for all damages caused by the illegal strike (by grievance or lawsuit). You could be personally liable for added production costs, penalties owing to Owner or, even the loss of the contract with our client.
- Contempt of court proceedings for violation of the order entered by the court (the possibility of fines and even potentially jail)
- We also expect that the Owner will be very upset with striking employees. It is possible that the Owner would consider a site ban for those involved.
If you entered a contract with someone and they violated it, would you go after damages? Would you be upset if the court found them in contempt if they ignored the court order?
I'm all for unions entering collective agreements. But you agree, then you agree. You don't get to agree, then back out later on because you changed your mind. Well, you can, but you'll face consequences.
What the union wants is "to eat their cake and have it too".
If their employer decided to ignore some part of their collective agreement, then ignore a court order, would you side with the employer? Of course not, they violated the agreement.
That aside, I understand your position now. In response to the question of whether the company's three bullets were reasonable, you argued that "a deal is a deal."
In line with the bullets, here's what you think is true if you hold onto that argument. May I ask if you agree with the following characterizations? I did not embellish them compared to the memo, but maybe you'll break them down:
- An employee who fails to turn up for work should compensate the employer for liabilities such as production costs, penalties, and the employer's loss of contracts with clients.
- An employee who fails to turn up for work should be subject to fines and jailing, enforced by the government.
- The employer should be upset. I agree with you here.
I do not believe any of the above should be enforced by the government, contract or not. Further, it is common that contracts are _not_ enforceable when they contradict the law or are simply unconscionable. That is to say that it is not the case that "a deal is a deal" in all matters, and in this matter, I would side with the employee.
The board is saying "employees should stop their illegal strike, employees should stop any action encouraging others to strike illegally, the union should post this decision, and if employees and "Once filed, the Directives will be enforceable as an Order of the Court. Violation of a court order can result in civil or criminal penalties including contempt of court."
So yes, this decision is legally binding as a court order and if the employees decide to ignore a court order (just as if an employer did the same), the court has the ability to institute civil and criminal penalties.
I mean, it's no different than if you and I write up a contract to buy a car. If I decide to break the contract, you take me to court and I ignore the court when they say "give the money back", yeah, I could go to jail or face fines, etc.
None of this should be a surprise. If unions (and their members) want to be able to legally enforce contracts against their employer, well, those same contracts are legally enforceable against them, up to, and including, civil and criminal penalties.
...which seems reasonable, except I don't agree there's such a thing as an illegal strike. In a free country, any worker is entitled to withdraw their labour. They may face the consequence that their employer withdraws compensation. If they're in a strong union, and the union has endorsed withdrawal of labour, then they have some protection from the employer withdrawing compensation.
> I mean, it's no different than if you and I write up a contract to buy a car.
That's a bit like saying that because my union signed a contract to buy a car, then I'm personally bound by the terms of the contract. It ain't so.
You're confusing the unions collective-bargaining agreement with the employer, with the employee's employment contract. In most free countries, you cannot be ordered by a court to return to work if you withdraw your labour. The worker has not contracted that he will work overtime against his will, simply because that's in the union's agreement with the employer.
I'm not familiar with the terms of the employment contracts, but that doesn't seem to be what this pivots on.
You may not believe in an illegal strike, but the courts do.
Your response reads as confusion about my characterization in the first sentence, and then it spends four paragraphs in complete agreement with it. I don’t believe we’re stating different things, although we differ on the belief that the employee action should result in jail time. Further, I think that the threat of jail time for such action, promulgated by your employer and backed by a court, is absolutely newsworthy.
I believe the courts have the right to jail people held in contempt. You don't?
We’re stuck on this point because you’re afraid to state it as such. There’s nothing else you can offer this conversation.
The union agreed to some bargain with the employer. That's not a contract with individual employees. No third-party can bind me to a contract without my explicit consent.
Unions employ lawyers; most scaffolding erectors don't have lawyers.
> What the union wants is "to eat their cake and have it too".
This has hardly anything to do with the union; the industrial action in this case is wildcat action, without the sanction of the union. The impression I've formed is that this action is by a bunch of workers that have lost confidence in their union reps.
But yes, I'm not a media reporter, I'd probably suck at it.
By the way, if someone have a link to the court decision, it should be interesting to read. It was not linked in the article.
It's "the union and business agreed to a labor plan that can require overtime in specific conditions written into the labor contract. Rogue employees are violating that contract rather than renegotiating it under the terms of their union agreement".
This is a nothing story. Workers violated their union employment contract, and a court said "yep, they're violating their union labor contract".
The memo is absurd all on its own. Outside of the threats to jail employees, the final bullet comes off as infantile and petty.
Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract? That seems to be the most wildly absurd component of the entire story.
Memo: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wzy0sn
Union agreement: https://sp.ltc.gov.on.ca/sites/mol/drs/ca/Real%20Estate%20an...
Nonsense. While the current agreement is in force, it's perfectly legitimate to start negotiating a new agreement. It's quite possible for that to happen without first staging a strike. Industrial action is for when negotiation has failed; you give due notice to terminate the existing agreement, on the grounds that it has failed, and hold a vote on action.
> Does Canadian law permit jail time for breaking a labor contract?
The threat in the letter is that jail time might be a possibility if workers violate court orders (contempt of court is mentioned). It's not simply for breaking a contract. If you break an employment contract, the contract is arguably void, and you are no longer employed, that's all.
The court order in the memo is this: “The Board ruled that refusing to work ‘voluntary’ overtime is an unlawful strike and in violation of the Labour Relations Code.”
The “voluntary” overtime is a clause in the union’s agreement, which is a contract (and which I linked). The court’s order is dependent upon the inclusion of the clause in the contract. I think that’s pretty clear, but could you explain why that isn’t agreeable to you?
I do think that the threat of industrial action and withdrawal of labour is an essential tool for workers; nobody should be forced to work against their will, if they are prepared to forgo pay.
That extends to unions, in the sense that workers can band together, negotiate collectively, and withdraw their labour en-masse.
> a clause in the union’s agreement, which is a contract
I believe that agreement is between the union and the employer; it doesn't bind individual workers (although they might face being kicked out of the union). I don't agree that a collective-bargaining agreement amounts to a contract, neither between the union and the employer, nor between individual workers and the employer. Courts might well disagree with me on that, but I say that nobody can make a contract on my behalf, unless they have my power of attorney.
So the existence of a collective bargaining agreement doesn't put me in violation of any contract if I participate in wildcat industrial action, other than my contract of employment; but there are several ways in which I could be held criminally liable, if I don't have the backing of the union, such as violating court orders, and maybe conspiracy.
I agree with you on this statement. I don’t think we agree about something a little more representational regarding the union as an agent of the individual worker.
The reason I pointed to the union agreement clause was to point out the dependency in the logic that the court published. The court is requiring action on the part of the individual because the court perceives the individual workers to be operating as a collective, which the court recognizes as “the Union.” The Union is contracted with “the Employer” such that the individual actions, as a collective, are in violation of that contract.
The court order includes threat of contempt of court, but the order is to stop individual action which is only in violation of the union contract. I don’t understand how you’re walking around that aspect.
The article didn't link to any court publication, so I haven't read any court announcement.
> which the court recognizes as “the Union.”
That doesn't sound right at all. There is already a union, with which the employer has a collective bargaining agreement. The court can deem the workers taking action to be "a union", but it's clearly not the union with which the employer has an agreement.
What do you mean? This is the agreement: https://sp.ltc.gov.on.ca/sites/mol/drs/ca/Real%20Estate%20an...
I’ve already linked to it. There is, in fact, a union. That union is, in fact, “the Union” referred to in the Labour Relations Board decision. But, you’re right, there is actually no court order yet. The Board filed their decision with the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta.
I think what’s happening here is that the company probably wants the strike to be considered an official union action (requiring a vote to strike) so that the company can then take action (for example, labor law in Alberta might permit them to permanently terminate all striking workers without paying unemployment).
I mean, you yourself said that the court has deemed the troublesome workers to be a union. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
But they are already members of a union; it's just that the real union they belong to hasn't endorsed the action. The real union has an agreement with the employer; the union the court has synthesized, and has declared to be behind the action, doesn't have an agreement with anyone, because it's not a union.
- more than two workers refusing to work (hence, an illegal strike) - the board did find the strike action to be illegal and recommended the same to the court - the court can issue an order to the striking workers
The employer/board also found an anonymous letter, given the findings section the their decision [1]. Anyway, I don’t think we disagree at all at this point – you were just rejecting the idea that the board could prove it was the contracted union operating the strike. While I would agree that they cannot prove it, I think that the court decision will affirm the board’s finding.
[1] http://www.alrb.gov.ab.ca/decisions/GE_08829.pdf
> An anonymous letter was circulated to the Employees suggesting that Employees collectively refuse to work overtime shifts for the purpose of compelling incentives from the Employer, including improvements in compensation or working conditions, starting on Monday, August 22, 2022.
The thing missing from this story is why the workers went on strike in the first place. Was there prolonged “voluntary overtime” and workers became tired? Why won’t the company hire more workers to resolve the issue?
That depends on the nature of the way you break it. If breaking the contract willfully, even after receiving warnings causes considerable harm to the company, you can expect to be held accountable for the consequences.
Also, if you break a contract in a way that causes a company to break the law, I suppose it could lead to criminal prosecution as well. Let's say you're an airplane inspector, and you sign off on a checklist without actually checking the plane, you could be in trouble if the plane crashes, especially of your team cover up for each other when doing so.
Similarly, if you work on an oil rig installation, and something bad (like and oil spill) is the result, it may be more than just losing your job.
Now in the case of this article, the topic is not just about individuals breaking their contracts, but indeed there seems to be someone organizing it. Organizing some activity with the explicit intent to cause harm to the company may very well be subject to prosecution, just like organizing a hacker group to attack the computer systems would.
Indeed, in the early days of the labour movement, ring leaders frequently went to jail. Eventually those conflicts were solved in a way that gave strikes a special status, explicitly allowing them. However, that came with some restrictions, such as the strike having to be organized by a union, and also some limits on how much damage the strike could cause (especially to third parties). Finally, unions would have the right to temporary forego the right to strike for a given duration, in exchange for some compensation up front.
Actually, this last part can benefit the Union in that it provides a very valuable bargaining chip, especially if they work in a high-cost industry (such as oil&gas). By offering that chip, it may cause the employer to provide better conditions and pay than it otherwise would, in exchange for security. An employer not having the luxery of knowing that workers will not strike have higher risk, and will have a harder time finding investers. In turn, that means less growth, less ability to take on critical projects and generally a smaller pie to share between the workers and the owners.
Strikes always have been of grey legality, because the law has always been much more responsive to the concerns of business owners and investors than to those of the workers. There are many examples of historical strikes that ended in workers being gunned down by the army.
The bargaining table is always going to be tilted away from the workers, which is how you end up with collective bargaining agreements like this: with clauses that allow workers to be forced to work involuntary overtime and that make workers using their power to renegotiate the agreement illegal.
But that doesn't mean we should accept that fact or call it "reasonable". It's not. It never has been. It never will be.
This is why I don't believe unions are the solution to issues of inequity and abuse in the workplace. They are a bandaid and a poor one at that. The solution is for the people who are doing the work to also be the ones governing the business. And for the people who provided the capital to merely be given a reasonable return, and nothing more.
I just tried to figure out the actual situation in a way that would actually make sense, assuming everyone involved was reasonable and tried to abid by the law.
How can it even be legal to give up the right to strike in a collective agreement? How can it be legal to work overtime without extra pay?
I’m once again shocked by the sorry state of working laws in the USA.
However just to confirm for you, the first words of the article are:
> Last week, AlumaSafway, a Canadian scaffolding company,
The idea is to give both sides some assurance that what has been agreed is stable and not up to the whim of either the employer or the union.
- overtime should be optional, you don't know what's going on in people's lives. They should have the right to refuse to work overtime without justification. - the business should compensate workers for working overtime. - if nobody wants to work overtime, that's the company's problem, they could change shifts to accommodate different hours. - since I believe overtime is optional, then firing a worker for it should be an offense that warrants the union to be involved, and the union may use its collective bargaining power to make a change.
But of course, the policy the workers/union agreed to is important to consider. That being said, companies take advantage of unpaid overtime to overwork their employees, and it becomes a habit and easy money-saver solution.
"This union agrees with <employer X> that, while negotiations are ongoing, the union will not sanction industrial action by its members". It seems pretty reasonable to me that nobody should have to negotiate with a gun to their head.
I don't think there should be a right to strike while your union is negotiating. If you think your union negotiators are crap, you can join a different union, and urge your fellow workers to join you. The collective agreement is between the employer and the old union; it wouldn't bind members of the new union.
Wildcat industrial action, without the backing of a union, is dangerous.
This story takes place in Alberta, Canada.
In this particular case, the overtime is paid: 1.5x the normal rates for nights an 2x for weekends and holidays. It also takes place in Canada, which has a distinct set of labor laws as compared to the USA.
Except that, as the article mentions, this is happening in Canada. But you know, let's keep the outrage machine going Facts don't matter.
This is a garbage ruling because obviously there was consensus among the workers otherwise it would never have been a problem and gone to court. And the point of the vote is to demonstrate consensus.
The very idea that overtime exists for "essential" services, is insane.
In a union shop? There's a good chance there's a legal minimum multiplier for any overtime pay, and a union contract might have that higher.
I'm sure there must be a rational explanation, but from the outside it looks incredibly short-sighted. Is this common? Why would unions agree to that sort of concession?
Next step: A communist party forms and a disenfranchised generation joins it.
It's a bad sign for anyone who might consider joining as well- all the benefits you think you get by joining a union or any sort of collective go out the window the moment it becomes inconvenient for the collective to back you.
Next step: you're still disenfranchised, but you've traded the farmer for the pigs.
Once the agreement expires and it’s time to hammer out a new one, the whole range of labor and management bargaining tactics are in play again, including strikes and lock-outs.
If the contract is time-limited, then you retain the leverage at the time of negotiating the next contract (though not between: that's the trade-off).
I understand they're also quite normal in some, more consensual, Northern European situations when the relationship between union and employer is sufficiently consensual that the union can be confident a strike is unlikely to be needed in order to address grievances.
This kind of system implies that people are members of the group more than they are individuals, as least for some purposes. The union is allowed to make agreements on their behalf, the same way as a state may make laws on behalf of citizens. Often, this provides strength in numbers, but it may also limit bargaining power (and other freedoms) for individuals.
Now, if some group other than the offial union representatives start organizing workers independently of the union, that threatens the entire model. Not only does this cause and upredictable situation for the employer, but it undermines the power of the Union itself (and in particular the bosses).
This means that it's in the Union's interest if the agreements they have with the employer is legaly binding. A Union may even end up on the employers side in a conflict like this, to help identify ring leaders, bring forth secret messages that was passed to the users, etc.
Now for you Americans (US version), that lean left, but still don't get this: There are primarily two types of economic systems that have been introduced by "the left" as alternatives to capitalism.
One is the one described above, which is a sort of corporatism. This is the moderate version, where there is some room for individual freedom, but where some freedom is given up to unions, employers and the government (in exchange for security). This is the system that was introduced by Social Democrats in the mid 20th century, and you still find remains of it in traditional heavy industries, government employees, etc in Europe, though not to the same extent as in 1970.
The last one is full socialism, where the government generally takes over ALL control.
Yes, it is quite common. In any contract, both sides give something of value to the other. When a union contracts with an employer, the employer makes concessions like improved working conditions and increased wages. What does the union provide to the employer?
Typically, the answer is that the union provides agreement not to strike as long as the employer upholds their end of the contract.
Contracts have terms, saying “we wont strike for 3 years if you do x” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and has been part of contract negotiations forever. AND based on the phrasing it sounds like they still could strike, they just need to vote first.
Without legal protection, "you don't strike for 50 years if we hire you" will be standard legalese in any employment contract. It's the nature of a competitive market place vs a labor market where workers have no individual bargaining power: companies that abuse their workers will be most competitive, and pretty soon they are the only employers left in the market.
This is of course not true for very creative long tail employees, software etc., but it could be argued that such professionals are not representative of the deep labor market; they have such high human capital that are acting as mini-capitalists, during contract negotiation they can force the employer's hand to a degree that no scaffolder or birklayer could ever hope to, so they have no practical need for the power to strike.
Those involved might have thought that not volunteering to work overtime isn't a strike, and so wouldn't realize that one was required. Clearly this company believes this to be incorrect but [there] must have been some room for misunderstanding.
I do wonder what the overtime take up rate must have been before this. If it was less than 100%, then was it made apparent that this was illegal, or were employees left thinking that it wasn't mandatory and were on strike without realizing it.
Perhaps, it was deemed acceptable for not all employees to take the overtime available. In which case, who decides which employee must work and who need not? If just one takes up the overtime, would it still be a strike?
Thats the definition of employment you sacrifice your freedom for money so you can buy food and a roof over your head.
In the UK if a contract infringes on your rights then the contract as a whole is void but most employers will still write up illegal contracts to pressure their employees. Most employees don't know what their rights are and if they do they don't know that legally they can't sign away their rights so the contract doesn't matter, but even if the employee knew all their rights its cheaper and easier to get a new job than fight it in court.
In other countries like the US you can sign away your rights apparently Canada is the same, this is metal to me that some one could legal sign them selves into slavery in the USA and Canada and no one has a problem with that?
\m/
Well placed typo! :D
I agree with you though. That a society would allow a private contract to take precedence over law is something I can't fathom.
If striking looks like an effective path it means you are part of a system that is keeping you poor. The correct response is not to sit there fighting the system. We've seen how this game plays out, there are centuries of incidents to look back on. The system will win, and great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs while economic realities remain the reality.
Instead of playing a game they will lose, workers should adopt better strategies. Eg, grouping together and investing in capital, like what the winners of the game do. Trading away their ability to strike might be an accidental win on their part if it forces them to adopt economic strategies that work.
Possibly in a world where the only difference between the US and EU was whether people went on strike that would be a workable position, but there are other differences. Quite a lot of them.
The argument is in any case very simple. In countries where unions were historically powerful, especially in the post-war period, workers have collectively extracted several concessions, such as higher pay, better working hours and paid leave.
In the United States itself, it is a demonstrable fact that unionized workers earn, on average, much better than nonunion ones, among other benefits [1].
[0] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/ma.20.3585... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-wor...
There are people on HN who can easily work 0 hours a week and thrash the earnings of the Europeans and Americans combined because they own capital. You're looking for these people to find a marginal tactical advantage by throwing away efforts to secure a meaningful strategic one. That is foolish.
I'm telling you, I've read a lot of literature on the subject. There is no way I'm going to go on strike, it is ineffective and I'll end up worse off. Almost literally none of the people who are going to out-earn me are doing it by striking, and if anyone manages it that is one crazy fluke! It is a strategy for people who are already losing economically and may as well flail on the way down in case it helps. If people have time to organise they should organise to achieve good & sustainable results. Everyone could be a winner here.
We could try helping them by pointing out effective strategies and encouraging the ineffective to adopt them?
You can't help someone who is adopting a failing strategy. If you push them ahead, their strategy will pull them behind. Someone who adopts an effective strategy in todays world is basically guaranteed to do well economically. Someone who adopts striking as a strategy is probably flipping a coin as to if they can even hold their wages steady. They've been trying for centuries, it doesn't work. If it worked there'd be evidence of it by now. Saving money and investing, angling to control capital works. The gap between the two strategies is overwhelming.
Anyone who encourages striking as a strategy is undermining the welfare of the poor. It is a destructive strategy that wastes time with huge opportunity costs.
The salaries of Stevedores in the US range from $18,280 to $80,389
The salaries of Stevedores in Australia range from AU$110k to AU$129k
Interestingly the Maritime Union of Australia has a reputation for being quite militant and left wing
But regardless, that isn't an argument for anything. There is more at play in a salary than whether workers can strike - and you'll find strikes are largely a tool of people who are already losing at the get-well-paid game. Because it is a desperate and largely failing strategy. People in a good position don't strike because it isn't actually effective.
If I thought striking worked, I'd go on strike. I don't. Note that I make a lot more money than the sort of people who go on strike. Not a coincidence. I'm not about to pass up on free money either.
australian economy very much depends on its ports. if these workers go on strike guess what happens to the rest of the economy. unions in this situation are then in a good position to argue for good rewards for their workers via collective bargaining. i dont think they would get anywhere near as much if salaries were negotiated on an individual basis
That isn't raising alarm bells for you that you've made an error in your reasoning? If strikes resulted in a 5x salary bump we'd see a lot of smart high-achievers striking.
It is more likely you are comparing different categories that happen to be labelled the same here. 5x earning bumps for manual labour is more than hardball negotiating can achieve.
> if strikes resulted in a 5x salary bump we'd see a lot of smart high-achievers striking
it depends doesn't it? as with everything in life you can always overplay your hand. people might be too scared to strike for various reasons. in some scenarios it might not even be wise to strike. in some scenarios you can even bring down a whole government (see WorkChoices)
I've seen sites where the employee truck drivers were allegedly all paid $150k plus. The stat was misleading because there was also a large number of contractors paid in the $50-100k range who weren't official employees. The Australian figure is probably picking up some effect like that.
But they didn't do it by work less and fighting more, they did it by working very hard and maintaining peace at outrageous cost. People who've used industrial action as a tactic haven't managed anywhere near the same gains.
While I tend to agree that for individual optimization, fighting the system tends to be suboptimal, leaving and finding another system tends to be more optimal. The issue is that if everyone does this, over time, all systems will erode against labor rights and there will ultimately be no system to flee to. At some point people have to eat the cost and stand their ground to fight a given system, otherwise you will lose in the long run. We need people who stand up and fight.
"Not playing the game" sounds a lot like a strike to me. Isn't "Grouping together and investing their capital" exactly what unions do?
A lot of folk going on strike don't have the option to go elsewhere or find another job (which is probably the exact reason that a corporation feels they can underpay them).
I agree that well paid workers don't strike, so i guess this corp should pony up some more money?
This is kind of the theme I'm getting at today. If they're organising and then spending all their efforts fighting their employer while the winning strategy is control of the legislature then... one might observe they've really screwed up their strategy?
If there is one thing poor people have, it is lots of votes. The reason they don't get much value for them is they keep employing silly strategies (like striking). This is literally why these strategies get so much airplay despite it being obvious they don't get things done, they're divide-and-conqueror distractions because otherwise the effort might end up going in to meaningful politics or something.
The organising part of the story is good, but after organising the next step needs to be going for useful outcomes that make people better off. Striking just does damage to everyone.
No, of course not. People usually strike for better pay or conditions. If you're well paid then you already have better pay, and are probably in demand enough that you will get good conditions or are in a position to negotiate. It doesn't really make sense for e.g. software engineers in the current economy to consider strike action.
Workers don't want to strike in general. It's stressful and costly. It's not usually their preferred negotiating strategy; it has to be less worse than the alternative.
> great efforts by the strikers will get, at best, a few crumbs
It's easy to sneer at "a few crumbs" if you're in a state of privileged wealth. Sometimes small differences in pay can mean going from not being able to pay rent to having some disposable income. And, often, it's not "a few crumbs".
> Eg, grouping together and investing in capital
What did you have in mind? How does investing in capital help you with not being paid well enough to invest?
I'm not following. What is your argument for why this is an effective strategy but employees only use it when they feel bad?
It is more likely people always use the most effective strategies they have available to them. I want better pay and conditions right now, I don't care how good they are when I'm negotiating. I'm not trying to spare my employers feelings here, I quite like money. If striking works as a bargaining tool, we'd see it working for people who are economically effective too. My peers are more than capable of organising to strike if we thought that might get us an edge. I'm pretty cynical, I could make it happen.
> It's easy to sneer at "a few crumbs" if you're in a state of privileged wealth. Sometimes small differences in pay can mean going from not being able to pay rent to having some disposable income. And, often, it's not "a few crumbs".
I'm just saying, I'm not avoiding their tactics because I'm snobby. I'm avoiding them because I like money and the strategy may well lock in generational not-having-much-money. The proof is in the pudding for this one, people who plan on striking aren't the people who do well economically.
> What did you have in mind? How does investing in capital help you with not being paid well enough to invest?
If there are enough people for a strike that doesn't get laughed at, there are enough people to start investing in a better future rather than fighting and getting nowhere. Especially if they put their minds to making the future better rather than how to make life difficult for the employers.
Because striking comes with significant downsides. Cost, risk, and stress.
It's costly because you lose days of pay. It's risky because there's no guarantee you'll get a good outcome and there are often reprisals from the employer. It's stressful because of the uncertainty, and because most people don't like conflict.
Public perception is also important. People who are inconvenienced by a strike are more likely to blame an employer who has not been fair with workers. Well-paid employees would get much less sympathy.
> people who plan on striking aren't the people who do well economically
You have the causation backwards. People who don't do well economically are the ones for which the idea of striking becomes more attractive (or less unattractive).
> there are enough people to start investing in a better future
I was asking for specifics. How do they do this?
> Especially if they put their minds to making the future better rather than how to make life difficult for the employers.
You seem to have an idealist view here that's at odds with your statement of "I'm not trying to spare my employers feelings here" and "I'm pretty cynical".
They could form their own company. doing whatever it is they are striking from doing. They have exactly the skills and roughly enough people. If the industry that they're in requires real up-front investment then they could jump industries.
Or if that is too hard for them, they could all work the day instead of striking and start pooling their resources looking for some economies of scale, find some excess cash and start investing that.
Or they could put their energy into political activism rather than fighting the only person on the planet who is currently willing to give them money.
I've got a friend who is a railway engineer. His company is slashing their workers' pay and making redundancies that he says will compromise safety. Meanwhile, executive bonuses have increased massively and they have increased dividend payments.
What would your suggestion be? Start their own railway company? How much capital would that take? You say "jump industries" but not everyone can jump industries. It's really not that easy. He's highly skilled. If you just "jump industries", how do you avoid starting again as a junior? What if you are providing for a family?
> start pooling their resources looking for some economies of scale
What are you thinking of? Could you give some examples? I might be interested in investing. I don't know of any investment opportunities that benefit from economies of scale. If there were some, wouldn't they be dominated by the bigger investors already?
> find some excess cash and start investing that.
You need cash first to invest it. What do you if your company is reducing your pay?
> Or they could put their energy into political activism rather than fighting the only person on the planet who is currently willing to give them money.
I'm all for political activism. But that's very long term, and doesn't necessarily benefit you directly. If you need to pay your mortgage now and put food on your table and buy Christmas presents it's not a helpful suggestion. Assuming you don't mean union activism, which can be immediately beneficial.
There is an easy strategy for success. Invest in capital. Invest in education. That works. It isn't fast, but it should be Plan A. breaking stuff or doing nothing but eating reduces the available resources and makes the community poorer. It should be Plan ZZZZ. I suspect we will find it is unlikely to even secure tactical victories in hard times and companies will fold. I don't need a personalised plan for every unlucky person in the world to point out this relatively obvious fact.
I don't believe most people who end up on strike have actually tested all the options that they could have tried with a coordinated group of people before they try striking. No shame on them really, but most groups just aren't that thorough. But letting them believe maybe they're doing something clever is a disservice; it is a plan to fail.
Going back to the thread root, it makes a huge amount of sense to negotiate away the right to strike if someone is willing to give you money to do that. I too would enjoy being paid to not shoot myself in the foot.
> I've got a friend who is a railway engineer.
I've got nowhere near enough information about the gentleman to speculate. But I can say with confidence that if his best plan is to work less and dedicate his energies to fighting his employer then his future is bleak regardless of the outcome. It isn't a strategy that can make him better off long term. It is going to make him and his company poorer the longer that is his best option for bettering his income.
I am neutral about being the bearer of bad news, but I note that it is not my fault that the news is bad.
> I don't know of any investment opportunities that benefit from economies of scale.
A group of striking workers couldn't get enough capital to benefit if there are. You talk of a fellow trying to support his family, and I note that families have quite different spending profiles depending on the number and age of the children involved. There is going to be some slack in the system if a group of families are willing to work together and try to pool their resources and that is what I'm thinking of.
I'm not giving you hypotheticals. I've given you a concrete example of someone who is striking, and I believe it is in his best interests to do so. He does not have "literally no alternatives", but they all seem worse in some way.
> But I can say with confidence that if his best plan is to work less and dedicate his energies to fighting his employer then his future is bleak regardless of the outcome
It's not his preferred plan. He'd prefer not to have his pay slashed and would prefer to dedicate his energies to doing his best work.
I can say with some degree of confidence that the outcome of the strike will be that the employer will offer better terms and a compromise will be reached. That is how most strikes end.
Despite your early protestations, I think you're ideologically opposed to the idea of striking. However, most democracies have come to the conclusion that strikes are a useful tool that protects workers' rights and helps offset the asymmetric power balance between employer and employee. No one wants to strike; ideally just the potential for striking deters employers from cutting workers' salaries to the bone in the pursuit of profit.
> It's not his preferred plan. He'd prefer not to have his pay slashed and would prefer to dedicate his energies to doing his best work.
Those are 2 bad plans.
I suppose I'll ask anyway - how many alternatives has he seriously considered? Has he seriously considered any alternatives that might get him a good outcome? What were they? There have to at least be some that he considered before giving up and saying there is no alternative. This presents striking as Plan B.
> Despite your early protestations, I think you're ideologically opposed to the idea of striking.
Yeah. I'm saying that if the best decision is to strike then he's screwed up some decision in the past really badly, that is fundamentally an ideological take. Having a coherent ideology is an important tool for wealth creation. Most of the wealth creation from the industrial revolution onwards has been due to ideological innovations. Capitalism is an ideological position; it just happens to work a lot better than people who think striking is a practical way of securing a lifestyle.
If he is using striking as a tool, he's going to stay poor.
But I'm a bit baffled that not going to overtime is qualified as a strike, they are doing their normal hours, they are not locking the jobsite, and the management has the opportunity to hire more people or call a temp agency, which I guess a vote for a strike would prevent. I'm not very familiar with the anglo striking procedures, here it's an individual choice, it's the other side of being a constitutional right.
I'm not an expert in French law but that's definitely not how it works in common law. Free speech might be protected by the constitution, but you can still enter into contracts that limit that right (NDA or non-disparagement) and the courts will uphold it.
As to why this is considered a strike, the article is a bit hazy. The contract seems to say that overtime is mandatory unless there’s sufficient volunteers. The union seems to have asked the employees to not work overtime - and that could be considered a strike. They‘re not performing their work duties as contractually required, which is sort of the definition of a strike. Setting aside the question of whether such a requirement to perform overtime work is legal or not, I can imagine some similar ruling in germany. Overtime can be contractually required here (within boundaries), and collectively calling for rejecting overtime could be considered a collective action. Details obviously matter, so blanket statements here are impossible.
They did not give up the right to strike entirely at all. And agreements like this are not uncommon for what are deemed essential services.
What other option do they have, besides seeking employment elsewhere? (which may not even be an option, if enough companies across the industry have identical clauses in their contracts)
You can't just cross out a line from an employment contract these days. Everything seems to be served via services like DocuSign, which discourages negotiation by presenting the contract as a fait accompli.
There overtime seems to be voluntary (unless there are not enough volunteers, in which case it becomes a necessary part of employment) and by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Both are reasonable stipulations for utilities and civilisation life support.
There seems to have been a letter circulated which calls for workers to stop volunteering at one location, which is being interpreted as a call for a strike - which I think is a reasonable interpretation.
A better headline would be “Workers at essential service where strikes are not allowed attempt to find a loophole but company is not putting up with it”.
Also, the report says part of the employer's complaint is that there was no vote taken on the action. The implication is that had the action been official, i.e. called by the union following a vote, then the threatening letter would not have been sent.
It looks to me like the employer's letter was inadvisable, and perhaps should have been reviewed by the company's PR team before it went out.
And that could have been fine, but if I understand the article correctly, the problem is that there wasn't a vote on this action within the union. If it would have been voted on and formally taken as a union action, they would have been acting legally. But without the formal vote, it is an illegal strike according to the region's labor laws.
No, this is called "working to rule". You don't do anything more than your contract stipulates you must.
What I suspect is happening is that the company has to pay more, or it somehow is not in their interest, when it's mandatory rather than voluntary overtime, so they're threatening people for not volunteering.
It's not clear from this that the union is saying any such thing. Someone is saying not to volunteer but it's not clear who or why.
Edit: expanding a bit, laws around collective bargaining include elements around not having to deal with multiple entities - if a union is representing workers, it's THE entity representing workers. If workers have a problem with the union they need to handle that internally, but they don't get to say 'the second shift guys decided they want to negotiate separately, so now you have to go negotiate with them as well.'
Working to rule isn't an Ontario legal concept.
Collectively agreeing to restrict the output (i.e. working to rule) is a Strike.
[1]> “strike” includes a cessation of work, a refusal to work or to continue to work by employees in combination or in concert or in accordance with a common understanding, or a slow-down or other concerted activity on the part of employees designed to restrict or limit output; (“grève”)
Surely that can't be the intent of those words. They're about trying to prohibit slowdowns, which are a sort of soft strike.
https://archive.iww.org/about/solidarityunionism/directactio...
> Surely that can't be the intent of those words.
Then why is the labor board ruling the way they are?
The workers used to work OT and then none of them do. That certainly causes a reduction in output. I could see it not being concerted if this was over the corse of a month (or maybe a week) where they all independent arrived at the conclusion they didn't want to work OT but everybody on the same day (ignoring the alleged letter) is a forgone conclusion.
This would be like enforcing a dress code the day after people wear a pro-union shirt into the factory. Sure, the dress code doesn't explicitly say it's to stop unionization but the fact that it occurs the day after makes it a forgone conclusion.
> They're about trying to prohibit slowdowns, which are a sort of soft strike.
Interesting word (strike) to end the sentence with. However, it doesn't matter what the layman's term is, Strike has a legal definition and that's all that matters. Is there a concerted activity to reduce output? Yes, collectively none of the workers are willing to do OT anymore starting the same day.
It's pretty simple if you just read any of the linked documentation.
Are you on strike when you go home from work at the end of the day? Or are you just going home after completing your contractually required hours?
“Workers who don’t volunteer are being threatened with jail” is not the story, and is incomplete.
“workers are jeopardising voluntary work schedules in a coordinated action” is the story. The debate should be around whether that constitutes a strike.
So this is akin to a mugger saying "Give me your money voluntarily, or I will force you with his gun"
Sorry but "Voluntary or else" is not Voluntary
'Voluntary' in this case seems to be a way of allowing the affected workers to make the decision of who's going to be working rather than management choosing. Ideally this avoids having management assign Bob (whose daughter has a dance recital he'll miss) instead of George (who's saving for Stanley Cup tickets) so the staff who want overtime get to choose to have overtime. I think there's a word for that, it's right at the tip of my tongue.
> by choosing to form a union for an essential service they’ve contractually agreed not to strike.
Putting up scaffolding for an oil-drilling company isn't an "essential service".
The agreement not to strike is in the collective bargaining agreement their union negotiated for them. First you form a union; then you can sign up for collective bargaining.
I don't know how "strike" is defined in Canada; but declining to do overtime in the UK would be referred to as a work-to-rule.
I don't know the terms of the collective bargaining agreement; maybe it mentions witholding labour, rather than strikes. At any rate, it seems to be wildcat action, and I imagine it will undermine the union's negotiating position. If you take wildcat industrial action, you can't expect the union to stand up for you when the employer comes after you with lawyers.
Seems dystopian. Striking seems very justified, agreement or no.
Reading between the lines I am guessing that normally finding people to volunteer for overtime is easy; in some cases the workers are offered it by seniority first, as many blue collar workers see time and a half and holiday pay as very desirable. Hence the contractual concession. But in a heatwave it becomes a different story and workers are noping out because it isn't worth it. And neither side may have seen this as a a possibility when the contract was signed,as it may have never been an issue before.
> Overtime shall be voluntary except that where there are insufficient volunteers to perform the required work, then the Union and the employees agree that the Employer may require the employees, who have the skill, ability and qualifications to perform the work, to do so on the basis of reverse seniority by shift and classification.
According to this, the company has the right to require overtime work to be performed, but must first offer it to volunteers. If not enough volunteers are available, then the company can require specific employees to perform the overtime work.
Without any wider context or passing judgment on the wisdom of agreeing to this clause in the first place, everything the article describes points to the company following the agreement and the union not holding up their side of the deal.
Also of interest would be the conditions that led to the current situation despite a collectibe bargaining agreement being in play.
I certainly wonder whether the company had pushed the requests for overtime to the point where a perhaps relatively small workforce felt themselves to be overextended beyond compensation, but this is all speculation without more detail, ideally from viewpoints on either side of the disagreement.
While this is true, I wonder if the union is still representative of the workers.
If the union has negociated a deal without the workers' agreement and is, obviously, not able to make them respect it, that would cast a very different light on the issue.
In my experience, people negotiating the contract rarely have the best interest of the rank-and-file employees.
I have negotiated several union contracts, if we knew we would need to cut positions in the near future, all you had to do was promise a small jump in pay to the senior employees (usually the ones negotiating across the table from you) - and they then happily threw the new hires and junior people under the bus to pad their own paychecks.
Worked like magic every-time. Literally tell the person negotiating the contract that they could personally get a $5K bump in pay (i.e. by offering a longevity bonus in the contract) , and they would give the green light to cut as many people as we needed to make that happen.
This one wasn't an exception either.
The company didn't require the employees do anything, it only demanded it.
The managers demanded compliance virulently, but again, just people squirting words at each other.
There's some lingering logical issues having workers who are, in their own view, not workers.
So yes, people are being forced to work overtime, and the article conflating it with "voluntary" is misleading.
Of course, if requiring overtime is to such a point where they are threatening legal action, wouldn't it be easier to hire more people?
[1]> An anonymous letter was circulated to the Employees suggesting that Employees collectively refuse to work overtime shifts for the purpose of compelling incentives from the Employer, including improvements in compensation or working conditions, starting on Monday, August 22, 2022.
This _should_ be a basic requirement before releasing a story. No wonder institutional trust is so low.