The Fire and the Ashes: Rekindling Democratic Socialism by Andrew Jackson

Author:Andrew Jackson [Jackson, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canadian, Labor & Industrial Relations, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, World, Political
ISBN: 9781771135382
Google: f48azgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 58245148
Publisher: Between the Lines
Published: 2021-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

CORPORATISM IN CANADA

Since about the early 1980s, labour has generally been engaged in a protracted fight against what came to be known as the corporate agenda. Of course, in the private sector, unions might have been on the defensive, but they could and had to still reach accommodations with employers. Unions in tough times necessarily bargain wages and other issues with a keen eye to implications for the continued employment of members. Some unions, notably the Steelworkers, sought to work with employers more strategically to encourage them to pursue a “high road” competitive strategy based upon high levels of investment in advanced machinery and equipment, research and innovation, and workers’ skills to boost productivity, as opposed to a “low road” strategy based on lower wages and worsened working conditions. Sometimes, the call for partnerships extended to the sectoral level, as in the successful joint employer–labour council established in the steel industry to deliver training programs to laid-off workers and to jointly press governments to support the industry. Other unions, notably the CAW, opposed a competitiveness strategy in principle, but in practice also tried to push employers to invest and to train, and lobbied governments to subsidize new investments.

Except when they’ve been compelled to do so by labour-friendly governments, employers have shown little interest in sustained co-operation with labour. It is often forgotten that corporatism in Europe—centralized wage bargaining and the close involvement of the “social partners” in economic and social policy making—was based on labour strength rather than weakness. Here in Canada, most employer lobby groups have been hostile to the labour agenda since at least the 1970s and have been open to tripartite consultations—involving employers, labour, and government—only on rather narrow issues such as workplace training and labour adjustment policies. The CLC briefly championed a tripartite model for Canada as an alternative to the wage and price controls in place from 1975 to 1978, but centralized bargaining and wage concessions were rejected by the major unions. It has been increasingly difficult for organized labour to claim to speak for all workers, and consultative mechanisms now often include representatives of equity-seeking groups.

There were some attempts to build quasi-corporatist/tripartite institutions in Canada in the wake of wage and price controls in the early 1980s. The Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre, run by business and labour and established in 1984 with government funding, had an awkward dual mandate to investigate and make recommendations on labour market planning, as pushed for by labour, and on productivity enhancement, as pushed for by employers. Differences were so great that the first year or two of operations were spent fighting over whether or not to purchase union-made furniture. The centre was staffed on a tripartite basis; I joined the small labour branch in 1987. At that time, there were a handful of sector task forces, and the labour branch prepared several research papers on the changing job market.

Into the 1990s, labour and employers had some direct impact into active labour market programs through an Advisory

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