By Tom Price

The Canadian province of British Columbia was once a pretty decent place for working people and their unions.  Now the government is so anti-worker that the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO) has condemned the province’s labor laws as among the worst in North America.  But that criticism didn’t stop B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell from taking away union rights for 150,000 public employees. 

On June 8th, Canada’s Supreme Court surprised workers and the government by declaring that Gordon Campbell’s “Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act” had violated Canada’s constitution. That act tore up public workers’ union contracts and forced many to re-apply for their own jobs at lower wages.

  The court had previously ruled that workers have the right to unionize, but not necessarily the right to bargain.  This new 6-to-1 Supreme Court decision overturned 20 years of more conservative labor rulings by affirming the right to bargain and the duty to respect union contracts.

Campbell’s Liberal Party had endured nine adverse decisions by the ILO that challenged other anti-worker policies.  The ILO was created by the League of Nations in 1919, and now operates under the UN to uphold workers’ human rights.  Canada and all 10 provinces have signed ILO conventions recognizing the right to unionize and bargain.   (note: the U.S. never approved these ILO conventions – and is one of the few industrial nations not to do so.)

Campbell’s government tried to ignore the challenges that were brought before the ILO, claiming the complaints were too “frivolous, vexatious, political and trivial” for the ILO to consider.  Workers throughout the province, including ILWU Canada members, demonstrated.

They finally took their case to the Supreme Court, which declared:  “The right to collective bargaining is a fundamental right endorsed by members of the ILO in joining the Organization, which they have an obligation to respect, to promote and to realize in good faith.” 

The court declared:  “Collective bargaining permits workers to achieve a form of workplace democracy and to ensure the rule of law in the workplace. Workers gain a voice to influence the establishment of rules that control a major aspect of their lives.”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve heard such encouraging words from the Supreme Court,” said ILWU Canada President Tom Dufresne.   “The court victory is sending our society a message that the government has become too extreme – and that unions, including the ILWU, are an important part of our democratic tradition in Canada.