Thread by @ProfSmithSask

Let's examine the absurdity of this action by the Liberals in more detail. #canlab #cdnpoli

Ottawa tables legislation to send striking Port of Montreal workers back on the job | CBC News cbc.ca/news/canada/mo…

The Liberals have now shown us enough of who they are to know that they are, at their core, fundamentally anti-union. Any pretext to the Labour Minister saying she would rather not do this, or that they respect collective bargaining is a straight-up fiction.

How do we know this? Well, this is now the second time the Liberals have done this. First in 2018 when @cupw was on rotating (ROTATING!) strike prior to the Christmas season. The Liberals really really didn't want to legislate these workers back to work...BUT

because of the serious danger to the Christmas retail season...or so the Liberals and business claimed (without any evidence), workers rights to bargain and to strike was expendable.

But, more than just recognizing the basic affront to workers Charter and statutory rights, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau have picked up the now tired playbook written by Louis St. Laurent, Pierre Trudeau, Mulroney, and Stephen Harper (to say nothing about the provinces)

Which claims to respect collective bargaining or the right to strike but because of a claimed "emergency" really does not respect the right to strike or to bargain.

Don't believe me? Quiz. Who said this: "We respect the principle of collective bargaining” [and
the legal] “institutions which have proved their value to the national economy of Canada,” [but we have] "no choice but to deal with what amounts to a national emergency"

Or who said this? I'll "be darned if we will now sit by and let the airline shut itself down. Under these circumstances at the present time, this is not what the economy needs and it is certainly not what the travelling public needs at this time of year."

"As much as there's a side of me that doesn't like to do this, I think these actions are essential to keep the airline flying and to make sure the two parties find some way through mediation-arbitration of resolving these disputes without having impacts on the Canadian public."

The answer to the first quote? Louis St. Laurent (1950). To the second quote? Stephen Harper (2012). Notice a pattern? It sounds exactly like the current labour minister's quote here:

Tassi called the legislation the gov's “least favoured option,” and that Ottawa believes in collective bargaining. However, the government must act when all other efforts” have failed, she wrote, saying the labour dispute has caused “significant economic harm to Canadians.”

And we could pull similar quotes from every single incident of back-to-work legislation since 1950. Gov. claims allegiance to the current system of industrial legality, but in reality, gov will intervene when the business demands it.

The action by the federal Liberals is an affront to free and fair collective bargaining. It is time we dropped the fiction that "they really don't want to do this." They always do this. And it is always at the behest of business. It rarely has to do with the 'public'

As Tassi claimed. It has EVERYTHING to do with the profit margins of shipping companies and the companies using the port. I would at least respect the Minister for admitting that. As it stands, our industrial relations system is broken because government routinely does this.

I agree with the workers and their unions on this: the action my the Labour Minister gives all the cards to employers. Just like Harper, Trudeau, Mulroney, Trudeau and St. Laurent. It is time we called it for what it is: straight up anti-worker; anti-union legislation.

Let's end this rant (SORRY) with a quote from Tommy Douglas, who as Premier of #skpoli, had this to say about the St. Laurent Liberals' usage of back-to-work legislation in 1950.

"The introduction of the principle of compulsory arbitration shows how far we have drifted from democratic procedures in Canada. Collective bargaining is now to be replaced by binding 150,000 workers to the decision of one individual from whose ruling there is no appeal."

"This may make the Employers’ Association and the Manufactures’ Association happy but it will cause great concern to those who believe in the democratic right of workers to bargain collectively"

It is our great collective failure that Douglas' words are as relevant a criticism of a Liberal government's actions in 2021 as they were in 1950. #canlab #cdnpoli #BackToWorkLegislation