Human Resources Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[Josée Bégin]

As I said in my opening statement today, most of the statistics that were cited were coming from the labour force survey and not from the census.

I would also like to state that information from the long-form census was collected again in 2016 and 2021. It is one of the sources of information we use to provide information about labour market indicators at a very fine level of geography. Most of the data that we publish on a regular basis are coming from the labour force survey, which is our flagship survey around employment.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

According to the 2022 Statistics Canada article drawing on data from the survey of work history and the labour force survey, the rate of union membership, as you mentioned earlier, has diminished over the last four decades.

What factors have contributed to this decline in union membership, and how has the decline in union membership correlated with the trends of earnings and compensation? To what extent can a causal relationship be determined?

[Isabelle Marchand]

Thank you for your question.

To take into account all the external factors that may explain the decline in unionization rates or the impact on earnings, we would need to conduct an in-depth analysis. We've presented you with some high-level statistics, which can be disaggregated into certain categories, but it's important to bear in mind that what this will highlight is the relationships between different factors. There is no causal effect between one particular factor and another. Statistics need to be put into context.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Would you be able to provide that information to the committee?

[Isabelle Marchand]

We will verify this information before providing a response to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you. That is your three minutes, Mr. Van Bynen.

With that, thank you, witnesses, for attending. That concludes the first hour of this particular study.

We'll suspend for five minutes to give time to bring in our next witnesses, who are all appearing virtually.

Again, witnesses, thank you for coming. There was quite a bit of information requested by the committee, and we'll follow up on that.

With that, committee members, we will suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Committee members, the clerk has advised me that the sound for the two witnesses appearing virtually has been tested and approved.

With that, we will commence the second hour of this study with Pierre-Antoine Harvey, an economist with Centrale des syndicats du Québec, as well as Courtney Glode, director of Public Affairs, Fish, Food and Allied Workers-Unifor.

Mr. Harvey, you have five minutes for an opening statement, and you will be followed by Ms. Glode.

Mr. Harvey, please go ahead.

[Pierre-Antoine Harvey, Economist, Centrale des syndicats du Québec]

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

I thank the members of the committee very much for inviting me to testify. I have provided a lengthy presentation in hard copy, which should subsequently be translated into English and forwarded to committee members.

Following Ms. Bégin's and Ms. Marchand's presentations, I'm going to dispense with re-demonstrating the union movement's impact on improved wages and greater access to various benefits, and instead address the issue of the declining union advantage in wages, which Ms. Marchand and Ms. Bégin have demonstrated. I will briefly explain the reasons for this decline.

Next, I'll look at whether the union advantage comes at the expense of other workers. In fact, I'll show that it's quite the opposite.

Simply put, union presence in Canada has declined from 38% in 1981 to less than 29% in 2022. This may explain some of the decline in the union advantage, and therefore all of what you call “wage disparity”. However, it's more the changing composition of the union membership that may explain this phenomenon.

In fact, when you look at the statistics, since 1997, the biggest drop in unionized jobs has been among men with lower levels of education, so those in jobs that require a high school diploma or post-secondary education. When we really look at the union presence rate, it's among men, private sector jobs and workers with fewer diplomas that the decline in unionization has been greatest. Yet union impact is stronger among this type of workforce. And when you look at the wage differential, it's really in these jobs that unionization makes the biggest difference. By having a lower proportion of members in these sectors, the influence of unionization has been weaker. Examples include construction, manufacturing, natural resources, transportation and utilities.

In parallel to this, we have also seen the arrival of a large number of jobs in sectors which, historically or by their structure, are less inclined to unionization. Take, for example, the finance, software and IT sectors, which offer high salaries and very little union representation.

The other question I want to address is: Does union advantage come at the expense of other employees? The reality is more complex than what we are taught in Economics 101. The impact of unions is not a zero-sum game. In developed countries, union advantage does not come at the expense of non-unionized workers. On the contrary, union action leads to a reduction in social and income inequalities throughout society.

The first reason is highly intuitive. The mere threat of unionization will drive employers to improve the working conditions of their non-unionized employees, in order to discourage them from organizing collectively. The best example of this was recently seen in the USA, when GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) signed an agreement leading to wage increases of 33%. In the weeks that followed, non-unionized U.S. automakers unilaterally decreed wage increases ranging from 10% to 25% to avoid the UAW coming after their employees.

In studies, we find that the stronger the threat of unionization, the more non-union members see their working conditions approaching those of union members. The stronger the unions, the less the union advantage is statistically visible.

The other way unions improve working conditions for all workers, whether unionized or not, is of course through participation in democratic activities. They can take part in debates, which will put policies in place and bring about greater social justice, as well as a reduction in inequalities. They can also work in coalition with grassroots and feminist groups, or exert pressure politically, including by proposing policies such as higher minimum wages, pay equity laws, better social protection measures or fairer taxation, to name but a few.

The good thing is that studies worldwide also show that this increase in equality and the rise in income for all workers does not come at the expense of economic growth.

After publishing an inventory of all the studies on the subject, the World Bank made a finding that I find disappointing, because neither I—a staunch advocate of unionization—nor the denunciators of unionism can rely on this work to argue for or against unionism.

The results of these studies show that the impact of union presence on economic growth, investment levels, inflation, unemployment and productivity levels is often negligible.

This last element is surprising, because it has been demonstrated that unions contribute to increasing the cost of labour. This increase is offset by other union actions within the company. For example, union presence often promotes efficiency within the company. Indeed, job security for workers facilitates the adoption and adaptation of new technologies. A stable workforce encourages investment in training and development. The presence of unions enables openness in what are now called quality groups—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

[Pierre-Antoine Harvey]

It's my pleasure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We have one more witness.

Madame Glode, you have five minutes.

[Courtney Glode, Director, Public Affairs, Fish, Food and Allied Workers - Unifor]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address the committee today.

I'm here on behalf of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union, which represents community-based fishery workers throughout our province, encompassing over 13,000 owner-operators, crew members and seafood processing plant workers. As the largest private sector trade union in our province, our membership also includes Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in marine transportation, metal fabrication, brewing, hospitality and more. The FFAW is also an affiliate of Unifor, Canada's largest private sector trade union, representing over 300,000 Canadians in every major sector of the economy.

Unifor and all unions fight for a more secure future for our members, being a strong voice for equity, safety and social justice. The motion put forth by MP Long calls for a comprehensive study on the disparities between unionized and non-unionized workers. This study is not just timely; it's crucial for understanding how we can bridge the gap and ensure fair compensation and continued job security for Canadians.

The FFAW is celebrating our 53rd anniversary this year, and the imprint our union has had on the historical fabric of our province cannot be overstated. The work our members have done to drive and protect and develop community-based fisheries is renowned and respected by fishing industry representatives around the world. This is because we continue to be successful in collectively uniting these 13,000 owner-operator harvesters, crew members and processing plant workers, all under one resilient and robust trade union banner. It's a unique model, and it's one that no other province was able to achieve before corporate concentration and control in those fisheries became too entrenched to reverse.

As your study will likely uncover, unions that represent a critical mass of workers in a particular sector, industry, or occupation or geographic area can often influence market wages for all workers, and this has been the case in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1971.

Honourable members, most fisheries around Canada and the globe have faced dramatic and devastating corporatization whereby community-based fisheries are steadily eroded by corporate entities receiving increased access and allocation of wild fisheries. Such corporate concentration, particularly by foreign-owned multinational companies, serves to maximize value for shareholders and not the communities that rely on the adjacent fisheries.

Without the important work of the FFAW over these decades, the hundreds of rural coastal communities around our province would look much different today, so for our members, the benefits of unionization go far beyond the disparities in compensation.

Fish processing companies like Royal Greenland and OCI do not operate with the best interests of workers in mind; they operate with the best interests of their profits in mind. Their primary objective is to eliminate small boat harvesters and use only factory draggers, effectively eliminating the need to ever land a pound of product in our province. These companies are well known for their use of illegal controlling agreements, whereby they unlawfully assume financial control of inshore licences, and they are known to suppress local employment in favour of the often-abused temporary foreign worker program.

Previous DFO ministers have done significant work to put protections into the federal Fisheries Act to support the preservation of the owner-operator fishery and to recognize the importance the small boat fishery has to the economic and cultural sustainability of coastal Canada. Unfortunately, the current minister has made decisions contrary to supporting Canadian community-based fisheries. Minister Lebouthillier, and Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal MPs in the current sitting government, have weakened and destabilized unionized workers we represent and have failed to act according to the mandate set forth by the federal Fisheries Act and relevant policies.

Even though the current federal government purports to back Canadian unionized workers, resource management decisions reflect a very different agenda. This year, Minister Lebouthillier publicly declared a significant distribution of redfish to the corporate fleets, sabotaging years of collective work on economic diversification and sustainability by the Gulf of St. Lawrence fleet. The decision is so momentous that enterprises based in Newfoundland, Quebec and New Brunswick are now expected to go bankrupt in the coming months and years.

Minister Lebouthillier's reopening of the commercial cod fishery solely for the benefit of domestic and international corporate draggers indicates an agenda to further undermine the sustainability of unionized fishery workers and Canadian community-based fisheries.

Moving on to a more general perspective, unionized workers in Canada enjoy significant advantages over their non-unionized counterparts. According to the available data, unionized workers earn more per hour than non-union workers. For women and young workers, this is even more pronounced, and these differences are not just in numbers: They represent real improvements in quality of life, financial stability and future security. Unionized workers are more likely to have additional health benefits, pension plans, life and disability insurances and other protections that contribute to long-term well-being.

One thing we ask your study to reflect upon is the differences between public and private sector unions. Union density remains high within the public sector, increasing between 2019 and 2023, which helps explain the maintenance of strong public sector wages and benefits, despite examples of legislated wage restraint. Private sector union density, on the other hand, has dropped over the same time period. Continuing decline highlights the need for policies to support private sector unionization, such as single-step card-check certification, anti-scab legislation, contract flipping legislation and, particularly relevant for our members, resource management decisions that support working people.

We must do more to reverse this erosion of the middle class. Better understanding of the reasons behind compensation disparities will enable the federal government to formulate policies that promote fairness and equity, and, with more robust information, we can better support working Canadians and help more people realize the benefits of unionization.

Thank you, members, for your attention to this issue, and thank you for your time today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Glode.

We will now begin with Mr. Seeback for six minutes, please.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thanks very much for the testimony you've just given.

I want to drill down a little bit more into this. Some of the questions I asked Statistics Canada were about the decline in unionized workers in coal and forestry, where we've seen staggering declines as a result of government policy. Now it sounds like there's a risk of these declines coming to the fishing industry and the people you represent, again as a result of government decisions.

With this recent decision that you described, how many jobs do you think could end up being lost, good union-paying jobs?

[Courtney Glode]

In Newfoundland and Labrador alone, there are approximately 20,000 or so fisheries workers, and these jobs support more than just the fishery. Because of the geographic distribution of our province, our coastal rural communities depend on the fishery to support other industries as well.

We saw the effects of this after the 1992 cod moratorium without the protection of the owner-operators and ensuring that product has landed here. We have owner-operator enterprises that support good jobs. We're looking at the eradication of not only our community-based fisheries but also the schools, the health care centres and all of those spinoff jobs that come from the fishery.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

It sounds like this is a devastating decision.

You contrast that with trawlers, I think you said. I'm not an expert on fishing, and I apologize, but I how many good-paying union jobs would result from these foreign trawlers coming in and harvesting fish as a result of this decision?

[Courtney Glode]

From my understanding, there are probably a couple of hundred people who work on the trawlers, including maybe a few dozen from our province. That is compared to over 10,000 fish harvesters who work in the owner-operator fishery.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Then they're not really going to add any jobs, right? In fact, my understanding is that often the catch doesn't come to the processing facilities in Newfoundland, which is where your unionized members are. This would be done either on the ship or somewhere else. Is that correct?

[Courtney Glode]

Exactly. Most of these draggers are large factory freezer trawlers. They can fish for weeks at a time. They can harvest millions of pounds at once, and they don't have a need to land and process here in the province.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

One thing I talked about in the earlier hour was that there was supposed to be a so-called “just transition” for coal workers when coal was being phased out by the current government. What the Auditor General found is that very few people transitioned into good-paying jobs. Their pensions weren't bridged. There was no system set up to help people move into a comparable job where they'd make a comparable salary and benefits. In fact, the exact opposite was seen. You saw a cratering of incomes and other things.

When you're talking about the job losses that are going to come as a result of this Liberal government decision to your union members, what kinds of jobs will your members transition to? What will be the economic effect, beyond just losing their jobs?

[Courtney Glode]

That's one of the challenges we face here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

One thing I think that the just transition strategy was sorely lacking was consideration for our rural coastal communities and the fact that people can't just fall back on other jobs. Number one, we hardly even have cellphone and Internet service in most of our rural areas, so expecting these people to do a work-at-home job or something like that is just not feasible.

It's also about maintaining our connection to our culture and our history. Newfoundland and Labrador is known for the fishery. This is why we have such a vibrant tourist industry; people come here to see this way of life. The further erosion of it is going to mean a lot more losses than just the fishery; it's also, as I said, our culture, our way of life, our tourism and everything that we're known for.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You talked about corporate control that's going to take place as an effect of this. Is that what's going to happen? Is the owner-operator who's a member of your union going to potentially lose their livelihood, go bankrupt and be replaced by a corporation, and probably a foreign corporation, because it's being opened up to foreign trawlers? What does the effect of that decision look like in that light?

[Courtney Glode]

The inshore owner-operator fishery is complex, and there are a lot of policies and legislation in place to protect them, but it's well known through the federal government and through the industry that these companies will look for loopholes. They will look for other ways to work around these policies.

Illegal controlling agreements are one. They've already been eroding the share and ownership of community-based fisheries by trying to take more and more financial control of the licences. The erosion has already started to happen on this end.

By allocating future quotas to corporate fleets instead of community-based fisheries, we're preventing this seasonal industry from being able to sustain itself. The struggle in the fishery is always to make sure people are getting enough weeks of work and enough hours of work per week in a year, and by providing more quota allocations to community-based fisheries, we are providing more hours of work and more economic sustainability to these people. It also makes it more attractive for younger people to look at this industry and say, “I want to stay in my community, and if I'm going to work in the fishery, it needs to be able to support me and my family.”

These are things that are really important when we look at resource management decisions.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Government decisions matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

We went a little over the time.

Before I move to the next questioner, I will remind committee members again to make sure your devices and any alarms are on mute, because they are significantly amplified through the sound system. We are missing one of our interpreters, so just please be conscious of that.

We'll now move to Mr. Fragiskatos.