Unions can be a viable political source, just as businesses can – but not nearly as much, naturally, for lack of monies and influence. Unions back political parties, most notably the federal NDP, which largely contests the traditionally business-backed Liberals and now the dominant Conservatives. In Ontario, it gets a bit more complicated; unions still lend support to the provincial NDP, but there’s also particular unions that have helped Dalton McGuinty get elected the last few elections.
Mostly teachers unions and hospital unions, in reaction to the alternative, support the Dalton Liberals. The alternative is Progressive Conservative Tim Hudak, protégé and, indeed, successor of Mike Harris. Mike Harris, as I hope you know, brought a devastating agenda of neoconservatism to Ontario that led to billions of dollars in cuts and ten of thousands of lost – vital – public sector jobs. He cut welfare to some of the lowest levels in Canada, over 20 hospitals were closed down, over 6,000 nurses were fired, over 10,000 hospital beds were removed, he privatized and then further messed up our hydro-electric company, etc. In the Mike Harris Progressive Conservatives first few years in office, around $1.5 billion was eliminated from the education budget alone. This wasn’t just for secondary school, millions of dollars were removed from post-secondary subsidization – after all the defunding, Ontario had (and still has) the highest rate of tuition in Canada. If you want to read about more of the details of Mike Harris’s reign in Ontario, you can do so here.
All of this healthcare slashing was done with Tim Hudak in the Mike Harris PC government, and at points, Tim Hudak was actually the health minister and responsible for closing those hospitals down! And no, he wasn’t ignorant, he’s a real honest-to-goodness neocon. So much of one he was a speaker at a conference for the organization “Canadians for George Bush“, in support of you-know-who. Seriously. In addition to that insanity, he “used” to oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, and even human rights commissions and all those other symbols of the late 20th/early 21st century. He denies these things, but unfotrunately for him, they’re on record.
So, yes, the Liberals are better than the alternative. The Liberals restored the billions of dollars that the Progressive Conservatives removed from education, healthcare and even post-secondary. They restored Ontario, at least somewhat. I’m not saying they’re some sort of messiah-like party that saved Ontario, but they definitively picked it up from out of the gutter.
Tim Hudak’s current obsession is unions – he wants to dis-empower them even more than their already pitiable status (less than 30% of the population is unionised, and has been declining for a while). He has good reason, as teachers unions and others funded the Working Families Coalition which ran attack ads against Tim Hudak (rightfully and fairly) fearmongering over what a Hudak PC government would do with education funding and other related material.
This organization helped the Liberals retain their power in the 2011 election, albeit with limitation – minority government. Now that the Liberals remain in power, they’re continuing their fairly new policy of neoliberalism and austerity (when they were first elected in 2002, the Liberals were a lot more liberal*). It’s quite light when you compare it with the actions of the current federal government, the previous Mike Harris government in Ontario, or even the last Liberal government federally. Yes, they’re cutting jobs. Yes, they’re cutting funding. Yes, they are assaulting the public sector, but it’s far more reasonable than past actions. I do think the Liberal’s “solution” to the “deficit” is stupid, misguided and ultimately the wrong approach, but let me put it this way: Tim Hudak doesn’t think the Liberals are going far enough, he was so dissatisfied he unilaterally withdrew any support for the budget-slashing 2012 budget and measures. That must mean the Liberals are doing the wrong thing better than the alternative, Hudak.
For example, the Liberals want about 1,000 public sector jobs cut this year. That may seem like a lot, but compare it with the over 6,000 of just nurses that happened under Mike Harris, it’s more palatable.
Now that I’ve given you a background check, an a ton of information, let’s get to my point!
The current issue we’re facing involves two public teacher’s unions: they don’t want to accept the arbitrary “deal” being talked at the unions by the Liberals. The issue of contention is these two unions don’t want to freeze teachers who would otherwise be qualified for a pay raise for two years. Sam Hammond, the elementary teacher’s union leader has brought the rhetoric to a whole new lever with hyperbole. He alleged that “the current Liberal government’s rigid stand [is] the worst attack ever on teachers [in Ontario, presumably].” This is absolutely false, and you don’t need to look any farther than the previous provincial governments’ worse assault on teachers. The Liberals are responding to the non-compliance from the two unions with threats, and now actions, to pass a bill to force the teachers to accept the “deal”, as well as ban teachers protests. This certainly, eerily, matches the actions of the previous PC government – but it hasn’t got to the same level of disrespect and outright contempt that the Harris PCs showed (it got to the point, where Premier Harris ran commercials, on the public dime, to denounce the teachers’ protest).
These teachers unions are being stupid. Before you judge me as an anti-union scab, I actually have the unions’ best interest in mind – in the long term.
The Liberals support stymies the possibility of Hudak government, which, these teachers unions well know would be far more horrible and terrifying than another Liberal mandate. Yet, despite the Liberals decidedly right-wing shift, the right-wing media still constantly attacks him (Sun media, business think tanks, even our federal government attacks him!**) hoping to pave the way for a Hudak government. Now, it’s those on the left who are attacking McGuinty, too. Our, admittedly mediocre solution to a Hudak government is very precarious at the moment – and these disagreements only wain the tepid support for McGuinty even more. This could, from now to four years, end up with catastrophic results for the very unions that are fighting for their self-interest right now.
Indeed, they’re fighting for their self-interest right now – that’s what unions do; I can’t blame them for that. What I can blame them for, though, is venturing into a politically stupid move that not only puts themselves at far greater risk in the future – but also puts the rest of the province in a far greater risk. It wasn’t only the public sector who took abuse under Mike Harris.
The whole event rings a perfect bell – and indeed comparison – to Bob Rae and the NDP’s relationship with public-sector unions when he and his party were in governorship of Ontario. A similar history, except unions traditionally back the NDP due to its pro-government expansion and investment stance rather than just for political convenience at the time. Like the Liberals, unions funded and helped get the NDP elected, but when it came time for a tiny cut back – after excellent, progressive and smart government expansion and improved regulations – the unions flipped out and railed an assault at Bob Rea and the NDP. The Social Contract, it was called, and all it entailed was for the public sector unions for a little sacrifice, for a few days of unpaid vacation. That’s it, but the unions wouldn’t accept it, and instead opted for a protest of Bob. Now, since Bob Rae was NDP and psudo-socialist, the business community hated Bob Rae. A hate different than the hate to the Liberals (there was massive campaign to demonize Bob Rae, even precipitating to the point of a billboard comparing Bob Rae to Stalin). Regardless, this lead to absolutely no favourable coverage for the NDP, as its traditional base neglected even neglected them due to a small transgression.
And guess what? Mike Harris sweeped the election for two mandates in which, as I already explained, devastated Ontario’s government – and indeed – communities. Teachers knew what to fear after that, and it was the PCs and any Harris or Harris clones (Hudak). I’m not saying that if the unions stuck with Bob Rae everything would be better (it probably wouldn’t have), but the unions did themselves absolutely no favours in choosing to respond that way.
And still, they betrayed Bob Rae, and are now creating negative publicity for Dalton***. This is against their long-term self-interest. This situation does have some key differences, but the happenstance and mentality behind the unions is the same with Rae and the Social Contract.
If ours unions were more tact, perhaps our governments would be less hostile to the public sector, and then, ultimately the citizens****. But they’re taking amateur moves such as the one during Bob Rae and under Dalton McGuinty.
As the Ottawa Sun put it, the unions are “biting the hand that feeds them”. We seldom agree, but in this case, we do for completely different reasons.
*They still have sensible spurts, like their response to the 2008 recession – with moderate stimulus.
**Jim Flaherty, former Ontario PC Cabinet Minister, now federal Finance Minister, is still getting involved in Ontario politics. He’s insulted Dalton McGuinty well over 6 times as of recently.
***There’s an argument to make that Dalton’s tough stance is making him more popular, but that doesn’t really help the unions either, does it?
****What I mean by this is if unions joined forces, and plotted out a longer-term strategy for its own security and expansion, then perhaps we’d have a more progressive and sensible government. In the long-run.