You would think that someone close to him would be able to whisper to Provincial Conservative Leader Tim Hudak when he is making himself look like a jerk. Heck, he should be able to guess from the smiles he sees on Premier Dalton McGuinty. Take Tiny Tim’s recent attack on Ontario’s labour unions. That was not only an attack on unions but it was an attack on every employed person in Ontario.
Tiny Tim wants more of us working. The only problem is he wants all of us working for about $3.00 per hour. This is not taking Ontario back to those salad-days of Hudak’s mentor, former Premier Mike Harris, but back to the union-busting days of the 1930s. We know that at some time in his life, Tiny Tim studied economics. It is too bad it did not seem to sink in.
Hudak thinks Ontario’s labour laws are outdated. He thinks the way to compete with American states with ‘right to work’ laws is to dismantle our unions. He particularly wants to do away with the Rand Formula—the automatic check-off of union dues for all employees who benefit from the union agreements that was devised in 1946. It was the introduction of the Rand Formula that helped create the most cooperative and greatest growth in industry in Canada’s history through the 1950s and 1960s.
And what Tiny Tim does not seem aware of is that industry usually gets the kind of union it deserves. In progressive industries in Ontario such as the petroleum industry, the high standards set by the companies are matched by the unions. It is a cooperative relationship and highly successful. It would be a shame to screw up that good relationship.
In industries where there is frequent union strife and a less cooperative relationship, it is more often the fault of management rather than the unions. Mr. Hudak should take a little time to ask why public sector unions can often be at loggerheads with the politicians who have no understanding of union relations.
In a province that has been bleeding industrial jobs, the need is for government to encourage innovation, foster entrepreneurialism, help small business and to develop a more cooperative relationship between employers and both unionized and non-unionized employees. What we do not need in this province is ideology wrapped in myopia that demands that we screw up years of learning how to treat employees fairly.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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