A few weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed for The Ottawa Citizen arguing in favour of right-to-work legislation. I am late to note this, but Ken Georgetti, the President of the Canadian Labour Congress, replied. The Citizen doesn’t keep their links alive indefinitely, so I’m going to reproduce the entire letter:
In his opinion piece, Jonathan McLeod says bringing Southern U.S. state labour laws to Ontario will bring prosperity to the province.
He claims that U.S. states which have eliminated or reduced the ability of workers to join unions have better rates of economic growth than others. He cites a study by Thomas Holmes to support his claim, but fails to mention that Holmes himself makes no such claim. Holmes has said right-to-work states historically pursue a number of other “smokestack-chasing policies such as low taxes, aggressive subsidies and even, in some cases, lax environment-al regulations. Thus my results do not say that it is right-to-work laws that matter, but rather that the ‘pro-business package’ offered by right-to-work states seems to matter.”
Those “pro-business” packages have resulted in the average full-time worker in a right-to-work state earning $1,500 less a year than a similar worker in a non right-to-work state. Is that the kind of economy Ontario’s Conservatives aspire to for this province?
With small businesses already complaining that low demand for their products and services is their biggest concern, making working Ontarians poorer is the wrong path to recovery.
I thank Mr. Georgetti for taking the time to respond. And there are a few clarifications I would like to make.
First, he’s right about the Thomas Holmes study. In my defense, I wrote, “[n]ot all growth can be attributed to such protections, but such trends cannot be ignored.” I was too dismissive of all the complicating factors, and I should have left this argument out. I don’t think it detracts from my greater argue, but Mr. Georgetti is right. (My main argument was based on civil liberty. I think that the biggest argument in favour of right-to-work laws is just giving people the freedom to join associations or not, just as is protected in the Charter.)
To the rest of Mr. Georgetti’s argument, I completely agree! I understand why he would guess that I am in the “pro-business” camp, but I am not. I have written in defense of unions multiple times. I have argued that capitalism will eat itself. And, as I wrote in our democracy symposium, I think the desire of governments to place profit and GDP growth over the lives of individuals is pretty abhorrent.
I am going to take a guess that Mr. Georgetti and I probably have a number of policy disagreements, but I think we are a lot closer on this matter than he realizes.
Mr. Georgetti does not seem cognizant of the fact that south of the border, there are often very significant regional differences in the prevailing cost of living. The up-to-$125 a month pay differential he cites, if accepted as true on its face, is mitigated to a substantial degree by the fact that the states on the lower end of that dichotomy have lower costs of housing, food, and other necessities of life as compared with the more expensive states — which coincidentally tend to be the states that have denser union presences.
That’s interesting, Burt. I certainly didn’t know that.
Gas prices in the U.S. (which drastically affect the price of basics, due to our method of getting goods from point A to point B) vary wildly.
When it was $4.28 a gallon here in Pasadena when I left for our trip to Montana, it was $3.85 in Barstow (also in CA), $3.65 in Utah, and $3.50 in Idaho. When we got to Montana, it was $3.28, and then jacked up to $3.55 because of a tourist influx in the town in question.
I’ll not bother to mention the fact that a half million dollars buys you 1200 square feet on a tiny lot here in Pasadena (in a decent neighborhood)… and 2000 square feet on 5 acres in Montana.
Plus power is about 55% per kW/hr there than it is here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZxNUEpRHN0
Real estate’s not nearly that expensive in Montana, is it? My parents have a 2,000 square-foot house on a three-acre lot in Southern California, and I think it’s only valued around $500k. I can’t imagine that valuations in Montana are anywhere near what they are in Southern California.
Around the lake it is.
In Ronan, no, it’s not. You can get a huge plot with a house and a barn for a half-mil.
Are you saying “coincidentally” ironically? Because it seems to me that there’s a pretty obvious causal link between unionization and higher cost of living.
I took it to mean that Burt was implying a connection (without, perhaps, claiming the degree of that connection).
I’m interested in your argument. How do you see that causation?
Well, suppose we take the unionists’ most optimistic claims at face value—that unions effect a pure transfer from owners to workers. This would raise cost of living by bidding up the price of local real estate.
And that, again, is assuming that the higher wages aren’t passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, and that union work rules don’t negatively effect productivity. This would apply more to unionization of the non-tradable sector, of course.
Causality can run the other way, too. The more expensive a place is, the more workers need to be paid. Things like that may make RTW more attractive. Or rather, the absence of such may dampen a desire for unionization. A lot of the history of RTW is states that weren’t unionized making an effort to stay such because they were perceived as a complicating factor in the Great Wide Open.
“(My main argument was based on civil liberty. I think that the biggest argument in favour of right-to-work laws is just giving people the freedom to join associations or not, just as is protected in the Charter.)”
Out of curiosity: what is the post-Lavigne case history like on s. 2(d)? I haven’t focused on labour law (yet), so I only remember the bare fragments from first-year law.
You know, I’m not too familiar with any post-lavigne, at least that deal specifically with Lavigne’s argument. I know that there have been other rulings that have upheld a lot of union activities, but I don’t know if there’s anything specific to Section 2 (and it’s interesting that one/some of the judges thought that, if anythin, Lavigne’s case was a Section 1 issue… though I’m not sure how that applied).
I am really not an expert on constitutional law, and I avoided discussing specifics of Supreme Court cases. I understand how the Supreme Court has ruled, but it’s my lay opinion that the rulings have basically gutted any actual meaning from the terms “freedom of expression” and “freedom of association”.
Of course, I’m a cynical bastard.
“but I don’t know if there’s anything specific to Section 2 (and it’s interesting that one/some of the judges thought that, if anythin, Lavigne’s case was a Section 1 issue… though I’m not sure how that applied”
As I personally prefer a large and liberal interpretation, my inclination has always been to focus on the s. 1 stage. While I recognize that overapplication of s. 1 is ever a clear and present danger in Canadian constitutional law, it is (in my opinion) a more easily revisable sin to make. There is too great of a potential for endless mutation otherwise.
I am a bit skeptical of RTW as such, though my views on labor do follow the “pro-business” side insofar as I don’t believe in forcing a company to recognize a union. Burt’s comment is rather important. If the statistic he throws out there doesn’t take into account cost of living, it’s pretty useless. The lower cost of living, and the lower wages of some regions over others, is essential to these regions’ economic competitiveness. It’s what they have to sell. Forcing those states into the same sorts of arrangements as those with “better” labor markets might be better for the latter, but at the expense of the former.
Now, this is all independent of what Ontario (one of the big dogs of the Canadian economy, from what I understand) ought to do. If I were in a state that had tighter union regs and were doing well, I might be reticent to change them.
Yeah, Burt’s point definitely challenges Mr. Georgetti’s argument. Though, I think, in the end what it does is make such facts useful for either side of the debate without a lot of unpacking of other factors, so I still think Mr. Georgetti was right to call me out on it.
One thing I like about the Tory’s position is that it is just a provincial thing. Ontario kind of is and kind of isn’t the economic engine of Canada (Alberta can probably claim that right now, but Ontario should be). It’d be interesting and useful to try to see the effects of such a policy, without just making it a national thing. That whole “laboratories of democracy” thing.
One other thing I should re-iterate, the Tory proposal isn’t a full-blown libertarian-wet-dream right-to-work proposal. It’s a first step in that direction. I’m generally ok with incremental changes in law, and, again, that might be a good way to start evaluating if we want to go further*.
(*Ok, clearly I want to go further, but I know legislation will never quite reflect my preferences.)
This could be a teachable moment! When I think of the big dogs in Canada, I think of (west to east) BC, Alberta, and Ontario. Yet, when I think about it, I don’t fully understand why. Well, Alberta due to mineral wealth and Calgary. BC because of Vancouver and because our coastal states tend to be economically strong (yet this doesn’t convince me to think that the maritime provinces are particularly robust). Ontario because of Toronto and Ottawa. So this is totally spitballing. Maybe you could do an “A Guide To The Provinces For Ignorant Americans” series?
I am a fan of federalism for the US, so I am naturally sympathetic to such arguments for Canada.
I could try, though I doubt I could do as well as you do with Mountain West states.
Quickly about Ontario: yes, it’s a lot about population (not just Toronto, but Ottawa and Hamilton are big cities, and there are a number of small big cities). It’s also about history; Ontario/Upper Canada has much older industry and, more than Alberta, diversified away from resources a long time ago (and that’s not to ignore the vast resource sector in the Ontario economy). And, as compared to Quebec/Lower Canada, it, historically, had government/colonial policy that was much more conducive to development.
I like how Georgetti plays the confounder card in pointing out that right-to-work laws are not the sole reason for the recent economic growth in Southern states, and then promptly goes on to attribute lower average wages solely to pro-growth policies, ignoring confounders like the fact that they were starting from a lower base.
As I was researching the op-ed, I found a lot of articles hanging their defence of right-to-work laws completely on that Holmes op-ed. I’m guessing that Mr. Georgetti was probably re-acting as much to those articles as he was to mine (which, I think is understandable, there’s not always a lot of nuance in op-ed pages). I agree with you and Burt that his critiques weren’t totally on-point, but I think if you view his response as an argument against the business-will-solve-all-our-problems type of argument, it holds up well.
So, yeah, I agree with you, but I still think Mr. Georgetti had some good points.
Hmm…interesting your mea culpa on the Thomas Holmes study but then others chirping in with the “lower cost of living” argument in states that have right to work laws. Seemingly in justification of its okay to pay people less argument.
Keep in mind that in the US, workers have to pay for private health care insurance and the “lower cost of living” argument is even less persuasive. In right to work states, employer provided health care insurance is lower than in non-right-to-work states. In right to work states, employer sponsored pension plans are also lower than in non-right-to-work states. So from the get go, workers in right-to-work states lose out, not just in pay.
What I understand from those who support right to work is a fundamental confusion between paying union dues and union membership. In most workplaces in Canada, a worker is not forced to join the union. But because they benefit from the pay and benefits negotiated by the union, and will receive representation from the union if they have a grievance, then they quite rightly ought to pay union dues. That’s the quintessential Canadian compromise that industrial relations in Canada is based on. The idea that you can get the benefits of a collective agreement, the right to union representation if your boss treats you unfairly or violates the collective agreement and not have to pay the costs associated with those benefits is pretty narcissistic and patently unfair.
Imagine if we had the option of paying our taxes or not. Tell me how long our roads, schools, health care, national defence, policing, firefighting and infrastructure (to name a few) would last in that scenario?
Exactly. “Right-to-Work” is just astroturfing for “Kill the Unions.”
A decent compromise would be something like non-union members have to kick in some fraction of the normal dues to reflect the benefits they receive, but not the full amount. And then they also shouldn’t receive the full benefits either, such as strike pay. And while you likely can’t do much about non-union members getting the same pay, I see no reason why the union should represent them in a dispute. Not a member? You’re on your own. That was your choice after all.
That would be more fair than the situation Ontario currently has.
Union protections aren’t a public good. They’re very easily excludable. If for some reason unions choose to offer benefits to non-members, that’s certainly within their rights, but it doesn’t give them the right to demand that those members pay dues.
Er…to demand that those non-members pay dues.
There’s no reason it has to work that way though. New Zealand is right to work, but if you don’t join the union you negotiate with your employer separately (you have an individual employment contract rather than joining the collective contract between your union and your employer) and unions don’t represent non-members in the event of a grievance. There’s no necessary basis for a collective action problem here.
“The right to organize” sounds so innocuous until you realize that it’s the transitive form. It’s not that they want workers to have the right to organize, it’s that they want union bosses to have the right to organize workers—whether they want to be organized or not.
I’m with James K on this. That’s the sort of system I would like to see Ontario moving towards (I’m okay with incremental changes, if that’s the way it goes).
Further, I question whether your “quintessential Canadian compromise” really holds much water. Is it what current industrial relations is based on? Sure, maybe, I don’t know, but this nod towards socialism is not historically Canadian. This reminds of people talking about how universal health care is so quintessentially Canadian, but I don’t remember reading about discussions of single-payer in Charlottetown. In fact, it took decades after confederation, to make such a policy decision. That tells me that Canadians can learn from status quo and make seemingly radical changes for the better.
” That’s the quintessential Canadian compromise that industrial relations in Canada is based on. ”
How is that a compromise? If the Rand formula or an analogous form of agreement is applied, then what compromise exactly is the union making?
Toronto and Ottawa being economic drivers in Ontario? I’d leave Ottawa out and put it as anything South and West of Oshawa. A friend of mine who worked in manufacturing for 38 years told me YEARS ago, that the high dollar and the price of fuel would kill manufacturing in Ontario. Guess what, he was more right than he could of imagined, and guess what, it had little or nothing to do with union wages.
Did you read the actual comment I made? I spoke of population and said noted that it wasn’t only Toronto; I’m not sure what fact you’re trying to wish away.
So we’re talking about what killed manufacturing in Ontario now? And how it wasn’t union wages? And that has something to do with Ottawa not being a significant economy within Ontario? That paragraph is all over the place, dude.