Baristas of the world, unite!

By Kimball Cariou

Baristas are starting to organize in Nova Scotia, and fast food workers have become increasingly militant in the United States. These two developments are linked to the efforts by big corporations to squeeze out maximum profits, at the expense of the huge service industry workforce in North America.

The recent Nova Scotia case has drawn considerable media attention, after Halifax employees at the Just Us! coffee cooperative chain joined Local 2 of the Service Employees International Union. The chain says that any new shops that open will be unionized.

This is not the same as organizing a big transnational food company. Just Us! Co‑op set out in 1995 "to become Canada's first Fair Trade coffee roaster... a small, but bold experiment to show that the coffee business, and all businesses, could be done differently, putting `People and the Planet before Profits' locally and globally."

Even so, it took a sharp struggle to make this breakthrough. Last April, two Just Us! employees who went to the Labour Board claiming that they were fired for their union activities. Putting "people before profits" apparently did not immediately extend to front line employees, as sometimes happens in cooperatives.

On a larger scale, workers at two Second Cup cafes, a large cross-Canada chain, voted recently on whether to unionize. The results of that vote have not yet been released.

How large is this sector? In the United States, 11 million people are employed in the food service industry, with about 1.1 million here in Canada - or about 6% of the total workforce.

But working conditions and incomes in this sector lag far behind the average, largely because few food service workers are organized. There are important exceptions, of course, such as many employees at arenas in the major cities. However, these unionized workers are often employed only irregularly; at Rogers Arena, where the Vancouver Canucks play, hundreds of part-time workers operate concession stands, but only for five or six hours during each of 40-50 home games per year, plus the occasional concert event.

Statistics Canada reports that employees in the accommodations and food services sector are paid an average of about $16 per hour (compared to $24 for the entire workforce), with weekly incomes of about $370. In other words, a typical working week is between 20 and 25 hours. Take-home pay works out to less than $19,000 per year, forcing most to find other low-paid jobs to make ends meet.

The trend is similar in the United States, or perhaps even worse. U.S. food service workers average about $10.20 per hour, with total annual earnings of $20,000 for those employed full time. In both countries, about three-quarters of this workforce are women, and disproportionately come from racialised communities.

As the costs of housing, food, transportation and other necessities soar, workers in these jobs find it harder and harder to survive. And as the capitalist economic crisis continues, other employment options have become even less available.

This is certainly true for coffee shop workers. Traditionally - or at least since this sector boomed in the 1980s - many baristas have been students, pouring espressos and lattes part-time to help pay for tuition and living expenses. Starbucks and other chains and independent outlets were happy to hire students, relying on a relatively cheap workforce that turns over regularly.

That pattern began to change in the 1990s, when baristas started to organize for better pay and hours. One of the outstanding examples was in Vancouver, where 150 employees at twelve Starbucks franchises joined the Canadian Auto Workers. The CAW won some improvements in job language and shift scheduling thanks to an organizing drive in 1996.

But the company resisted changes in wages or benefits at the unionized stores. Starbucks employed classic employer techniques, stalling negotiations while cutting down the hours of pro-union workers, or finding excuses to replace them with new employees. The CAW fought back with an "un-strike" and other creative tactics, but by 2007 the union was decertified at its seven remaining outlets.

At the time, the CAW said Starbucks never had any interest in trying to work with the union. High staff turnover rates affected union strength, as many pro-union workers ended up leaving after a year or two. Even so, the union considered Starbucks a "pretty good employer" by the "abysmal" standards of the service sector. But "when you look at their profitability, they could actually pay their people a living wage and still make money but they don't do that," a CAW representative said.

Today, of the 80,000 workers employed directly by Starbucks worldwide, fewer than 130 are currently union members.

Will the Second Cup and Just Us! baristas launch a significant change in the food services industry? Time will tell, but clearly, their success could have a huge positive impact for twelve million workers and their families across the continent.

Support struggles that advance the rights of working people

Labour Day 2013 message, Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

We are living in the Canadian and global environment where the main corporate thrust is the destruction of the welfare state and the achievements of generations. First in the cross‑hairs are the trade unions, collective bargaining, social programs, equity and environmental protection.

The main features of labour relations in Canada today are intimidation, legislated agreements, lock‑outs and removal of the right to strike. Harper's conservatives have used back‑to‑work legislation five times in two years. A new feature is the legislated imposition of the terms of arbitrated "agreements". Unions are also being bludgeoned by onerous and undemocratic financial accounting requirements designed to fuel a media attack, to paint unions as expropriators of workers' wages for non‑worker campaigns. Cuts to public services, healthcare, immigrants' rights and Employment Insurance impact working people from coast to coast.            

The Ontario Federation of Labour has published important documents and program that seeks a COMMON FRONT with an inclusive fight back program. The CLC "Worker to Worker" campaign, while not as pro‑active as the OFL, still provides potential for those who wish to develop more. The Quebec students impressed the country and the world with their strength, and the 175,000 Quebec construction workers flexed muscle in their recent strike. Working people are not passive pawns, and their as yet un‑coordinated struggles are crying out for form and leadership.

This Labour Day weekend will witness an event that has been over a year in construction and that has the potential to significantly influence the course of Canadian Labour.

Of course this is the product of the CAW‑CEP merger negotiations, the founding convention of the "new union", UNIFOR.

This is not only the largest merger in at least several decades but could prove to be the most unique and significant. It has been certainly the most transparent, the most vertically inclusive and the most talked about outside the membership of the two parent unions. It is not assimilation or a shelter for a battered smaller union finding safety within a larger one. It is not a McCarthyite raid like the Steel‑Mine Mill of the past and neither is it an offshore spin‑off of relations or decisions made in U.S.‑based international headquarters.

Both parent unions, CAW and CEP, are Canadian unions born into diversity and struggle and shaped by these conditions. Both have been on the cutting edge of social unionism and militant struggle, both have experienced retreat and concessionary bargaining, usually concurrent with each other in the thrust and parry of class struggle. It is absolutely logical that these two private sector unions mirror every strength and weakness, every hope and challenge, every potential and every danger that faces Canadian workers in this period of neo‑liberal offensive, super exploitation, ecological disaster and imperialist war. Both of these unions have had to contend with the global mobility of capital, free trade agreements, de‑industrialization, and the general crisis of capitalism and the cyclical recessions of the last decade.

In the publications of the Communist Party over the years there have been both compliments and criticisms of labour as Canadian workers wrestle with the double-backed demons of compliance and concession, and as they also resist and struggle heroically. If social consciousness is a reflection of social being, why would not, in a collective sense, the realities of reformism and class struggle be bound together in the consciousness of our class and its institutions? After all is this not the proving ground?

The Preamble of the draft Unifor Constitution reflects determination and the anger of the oppressed. Some on the left may mourn the lack of a socialist agenda but the Preamble identifies the enemy, recognizes the global nature of the struggle and includes the struggle for peace and ecology. In this world where every foothold has to be fought for, the Communist Party recognizes the potential for militant struggle, the possibility for a new quality and an elevation of class consciousness. This is infinitely better than the "conversation" Ken Georgetti wants to have at the cocktail level with the Harper Tories.

The very security of unions and union membership is under attack as provincial and federal governments prepare to destroy the Rand Formula, dues check‑off and the closed shop. In the face of this onslaught, labour has not closed ranks. There have been too many defeats.

The tendency to bend under pressure, like CAW's recent acceptance of a permanent two‑tier wage agreement at GM Oshawa, must and can be checked and reversed. Ford and Chrysler will definitely want parity and they probably won't wait until the next round of negotiations. Of course the CAW is not alone and unfortunately concessionary bargaining has become common in the private sector since the late 1970s. Pattern bargaining is no use when the pattern is concessionary. The strength of labour is in unity not stratification, in universal rules not anarchy, in unity not competition.

Unifor, for the first time since the struggles of the Workers Unity League in the 1930s, seeks to find the way to organize the unemployed, the youth, precarious workers, indigenous people and immigrants. Skeptics may dismiss this as public relations or media hype for another self‑serving business union merger. Skepticism is not what is needed on Labour Day 2013.

Unions and social advances were not built by skeptics. They were built through resolute struggle, by determined optimists, hard headed perhaps, but optimists. Left activists, Communists and militants. Workers and farmers.

Our objective cannot be simply to regain what we've lost. The struggle now is for what we dreamt about but never achieved, for what the welfare state was supposed to introduce, the next step we didn't manage to take. The present corporate offensive is the result of not defending the socialist alternative hard enough. The value of Unifor is the fact that major labour forces have declared their unwillingness to fold up and take orders, to refuse the role of labour‑brokers.

The Communist Party salutes working people and their institutions, and pledges our support to any new working class formations that advance the rights of working people, and struggles against capitalist domination. We have no other reason to exist.

Corporate runaways can’t trump the greater good

Protesting: Workers at IQT Solutions were suddenly jobless and denied their final paycheques when the company abruptly closed its doors. More and more young workers are employed at call centers. Photo by the Toronto Star.

By Ken Lewenza

Reprinted from the Toronto Star

The abrupt closure of three IQT call-centre operations in Oshawa, Trois-Rivières and Laval has left 1,200 workers reeling, and government agencies scratching their heads. How can a company (in this case a multi-million dollar, multi-national telecommunications contractor) simply pack up and leave, literally overnight? How can they walk away from legal obligations, washing their hands of back pay and severance? Seriously, how?

Weeks have gone by but no one, as of yet, has any real answers to these questions.

Governments appear incapable of even tracking down basic information about the company, who’s in charge and whether or not they’re actually bankrupt.

There’s an assumption among Canadians that there must be rules and regulations holding corporations to account. But this latest fiasco is a rude awakening.

Indeed, we’ve seen this storyline many times before. In 2009, 2,400 non-union auto parts workers at Progressive Moulded Products (PMP) in Toronto faced a similar ordeal — returning from vacation only to learn that their employer had fled town, taking their separation payments with them. CAW members have seen it first-hand, too, at companies like Collins & Aikman in Scarborough, Aradco and Aramco in Windsor, and others.

Each case prompted a public outcry and a spontaneous fight back. Workers demanded what was legally owed to them. But after fighting long and hard, they inevitably end up with less than they are owed.

So IQT is not the first company to successfully exploit this effective loophole in the regulations that govern business. And it won’t be the last — unless we tighten up the rules.

In this era of deregulation, it seems private companies are enabled to padlock their doors, pack their bags and take their business elsewhere. The same week as the IQT closures in Canada, the company announced 900 new jobs in Nashville, Tennessee — taking advantage of millions in lucrative public incentives to relocate. Those plans were scrapped when municipal leaders in Nashville caught wind of the company’s disregard for workers and their communities. Yet Canadian officials seem toothless when it comes to tracking down the company and enforcing its legal obligations.

To its credit, Ontario’s labour ministry is in the midst of an investigation while providing retraining and job search assistance to workers through a newly-opened action centre. Quebec officials are urging displaced workers to lodge individual complaints with the labour board in the hopes of building a file on the company.

Meanwhile, Ottawa has been strangely silent about the case, telling workers only that they can file for EI. IQT workers don’t yet qualify for federal Wage Earner Protection Program funds since there’s not been an official bankruptcy filed. So far, no one in the Harper government cares to comment.

For years, governments have been watering down corporate regulations, all in the name of fighting “red tape.” Restrictions on corporations that would protect the greater good, we’ve been told, are job-killers. Establishing criteria to govern corporate behaviour is considered a barrier to investment.

But this whole approach puts reckless multinational corporations like IQT in the driver’s seat, and leaves vulnerable workers in the dust.

It’s time we stopped this trend, which is justified by an underlying faith that the private sector is always efficient. Governments need the tools to hold corporate deadbeats to account, to discourage imitators and adequately remedy situations like the tragedy at IQT. Efficient, effective regulatory tools wouldn’t disadvantage good corporate citizens, but would offer some protection for workers’ rights.

A public discussion on the need for better worker protection regulations is both necessary and overdue. We need an open and honest dialogue among stakeholders, to get some new ideas on the table.

Here are some proposals to throw into the mix:

 • Establish clear protocols for public notice and justification of lay-offs.

 • Enhance protections that prioritize monies owed to workers in cases of bankruptcy and bankruptcy protection proceedings.

 • Strong workplace closure legislation, with special provisions to account for non-industrial, non-capital intensive workplaces like call centres and retail shops (where there’s little capital equipment that can be seized and sold to pay outstanding debts).

 • Strengthen legal reprisals for executives (or other representatives) of runaway corporations.

 • Increase the funds covered by the wage protection system and extend its reach to closures that are not formal bankruptcies.

It is both immoral and economically counterproductive to allow deadbeat corporations like IQT to commit these wrongs with impunity. As a society, we must take a hard line with employers who think they’re beyond the greater good.

Ken Lewenza is president of CAW-Canada.