Standing Up For Working Families?
This past week the B.C. Federation of Labour held it's 46th Annual Convention in Vancouver. Its theme was "Standing up for working families". It was last Thursday that a small and very brief event was to mushroom into a full-blown wag-the-dog comedy. A group of OFG/Loman members had gone down to the Convention to share information about their dispute and I was one of them.
After hours on the leafleting line, talking to those attending the convention was a joy. These people all wanted to know about our story. The legal and social issues themselves make the dispute important. The facts sell themselves and ours is not altogether a sad story. There have been some huge victories. Most people we talked to had no idea what was going on either with the dispute or the larger issues surrounding it. We handed out hundreds of leaflets and got our Don't Shop Save-On message out to people who will take the information home to their membership. Sorry Brooke, someone had to do it.
We wore some placards with varying messages. One of them placed into question the character of the Retail Wholesale Union. (Part of the OFG/Loman Warehouse dispute is criticisms of a RWU Collective Agreement that covers the EV Logistics warehouse in Aldergrove which now does the Loman work.) Objections by their leadership were made. Some comments from the RWU members were, "UFCW are the scabs for bringing in that 777 agreement." "Hey asshole, why are you calling us scabs?" Although they refused to discuss the issues or educate us as to their view, the placard was nevertheless removed and never used again. Tom had it on for maybe 5 minutes. Nor was the placard easy to see. Tom had it on his back as he was wearing a different placard on the front. His back was up against a large cement pillar. It was over very quickly, there were no raised voices, there was no "scene" created. We were not there to run down the RWU. We were there to get our story out and 95% of our time was spent doing just that. We thought that Tom removing the placard would be the end of it. Then the political machine took over.
There has been a great deal of animosity felt by the OFG/Loman members towards UFCW 1518 leadership. This campaign has been no exception. This animosity and criticism has always been portrayed as a personal attack on the UFCW 1518 leadership when in fact it was their actions, not their person, that has been criticized. Dismissing valid criticism, as "personal attacks" has been consistently used by the UFCW 1518 leadership to avoid addressing their own actions or the facts.
Despite several months of operation, I want to know why almost all of the delegates I talked to knew nothing of the dispute. But that is a personal attack on the leadership and they need not answer it on that basis. See how this works?
The fact is that the vast majority of members at the OFG/Loman warehouse feel very strongly that the UFCW 1518 leadership has been the biggest obstacle to the campaign's effectiveness. We have been fighting our own local as much as we have been fighting Jim Pattison. If you were at the last General Membership Meeting you will know that Brooke continued with the "personal attack" method as a way to avoid having to comment on his actions or the facts. You will also know that he implied, quite callously and illogically, that he wished to end the campaign. We've known that for some time now. Here was a way to finish off the campaign altogether or at least weaken it.
There is good reason for the UFCW to try and keep this topic as low-key as possible. The simple fact is that they are far more guilty here than RWU. It's true that the RWU Collective Agreement at EV Logistics should be discussed and it may be a new low in some respects. But it affects only one plant, at least for now. The UFCW 777 deal changed the whole industry and has hurt workers and their families in a much more profound way than the RWU deal. Any mention of this fact is seen as "personal attacks by union radicals bent on ousting the leadership".
One might think that the RWU should like to keep the issue quiet as well. It's hard to argue with the facts. Some diplomacy and dialogue would have been sufficient for this non-event to go away quietly. But neither union took that route.
It's hard to say what the story was by the time RWU spoke to UFCW 1518's Ivan Limpright. Suffice it to say that the RWU version of the events was taken as truth and given a whole new life. Although Ivan Limpright questioned Tom about 10 minutes after the non-event, he either could not or would not take Tom's word into account. Although I was standing a short distance away, nobody bothered to ask me about it.
Phone calls were made. The "official" version sent on down the line wildly exaggerated the short disagreement over the placard and neglected to mention the good that was accomplished that day. Shortly thereafter there came a call from the Assistant Chief Shop Steward, whose description of the events was not to be changed regardless of the facts. The political machine had decided on the "official" version and it would not be put off by any eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
Then it was Tony Evangelista's turn. He met Tom with shaking head and said, "That's fucking disgusting." As they discussed the issue outside on the walkway, Ivan sat on the other side of the glass taking in the performance from inside. Tony played the part of the angry and disappointed leader looking appropriately pissed by the whole affair. Both Tom and Mike had no idea that there was an event at EV planned for the next morning. Tom was told to be at the Loman warehouse and that was all. Mike knew nothing of it. Despite the facts, no amount of discussion could deter Tony from the "official" version. Tony had his orders too.
Tom Smith said, "It's just like the Prince George trip. People said all this shit about how we were arrested, given 24 hour suspensions, that we were kicked out of the hotel room, that we were rude and drunk. None of that happened but nobody at UFCW cared what we had to say. They accepted the rumors."
Then we learn that the non-event was now the reason why the campaign needs to be "re-assessed", why an event planned for the next morning was cancelled, why every union in the province was against us now, why UFCW's Tom Fawkes was made to give an apology. The sky was falling and we were to blame. Didn't we hear much the same at the last General Membership Meeting from Brooke? Five minutes and some political spin can go a long way to furthering that message. Sure enough, the calls started coming in that afternoon from other warehouse members who were pissed off at Tom and they haven't stopped. Get the guys pissed off at Tom, get them fighting with each other, drag down the morale. I've seen this before, several times.
I have been fairly close to these issues for some time now. I could see that this non-event was going to be turned into something it wasn't and used to further a shabby political agenda. I have found in this bullshit battle with my union that the truth is the best weapon. It happened that I had a copy of a letter I wrote, to CLC President Ken Georgetti, in my brief case. That letter addressed what I saw as the true issue in "standing up for working families": quality collective agreements. The letter refers to some CLC literature that confirms this view and goes on to point to some examples that exhibit the undercutting that has unionism so divided. The RWU-EV Logistics Collective Agreement was examined in this letter and not favorably. If RWU and UFCW wanted to make a big deal of this then I thought some facts should be of interest to the delegates. I had the letter copied then proceeded to hand them out to the delegates. They were very interested. Not one was surprised to hear of my dissatisfaction with UFCW. One gentleman told me, "Yeah, I've heard quite a bit about them lately." Seems the Wal-Mart workers have too.
The Loman campaign may well go down as the textbook case of how to cripple a campaign while staying a couple of steps ahead of a failure to represent complaint. All this has been documented elsewhere and it is not the main issue here. However, this aspect, the abandonment of core unionism values in favor of the dues collection "biz" model, has created the brief episode mentioned above. Unions undercutting unions seems relevant given the RWU CA in place at the EV Logistics Aldergrove warehouse. If this race to the bottom mentality continues within unionism, what will be left for workers and their families? How much is there left to give away? It was these questions that prompted the brief and largely invisible display of the placard.
Did the RWU think such a collective agreement should be quietly left alone? The fact that the RWU had significantly undercut the OFG/Loman collective agreement specifically and workers in general should not bear criticism? Why should that be? But the RWU members did not want to talk about the issues. What can you say - the collective agreement is there in black and white. You don't have to be a genius to see what effect it will have on workers lives and those of their families. Given the Convention's theme of "Standing up for working families", Tom's brief statement regarding unions undercutting each other may have been the most important one made all week long.
At the end of the day I guess you can look at the Collective Agreement and judge for yourself. These things do not lie. Is a union agreement that precludes 65% of its work force from having full-time work or benefits something we should allow? What is the effect on families? That a third party is allowed to effectively end such a long-term agreement at any time is alarming. What kind of job security can there be under such terms? Just how pointed should we be with these questions?
At the BC Fed Convention the answer is mixed. According to the RWU and UFCW leadership, it seems criticism may be directed anywhere but at the union movement. But according to the delegates I talked to, there was both an agreement that the issue exists and a desire to end it. Will anyone act on this desire?
I should also say this because it is the truth: Although it was 1:25, and he was scheduled to give a speech at 1:30, Ken Georgetti graciously and politely took time out to speak with me for a few minutes. He didn't even try to brush me off. I showed him the letter mentioned above and pointed out that I was still awaiting an answer. He did not recall the letter but listened as I summarized it. He suggested that I send another copy and that an answer should be forthcoming, although probably not penned by himself. Fair enough.
My hat also goes off to the organizers and volunteers at the Convention. From our signs they could tell that we were there to deliver some information and it might not all be positive. At no time were they anything but polite. Our natural and legal right to disseminate information was clearly respected and I am proud to say so.
Recently I came across a suggestion that any union signing a collective agreement not providing 75% of the work as full time or not providing a wage of $15/hr., should not be allowed into the Fed or the CLC. What would that do for working families? If the BC Fed and the CLC established such a benchmark, being a Fed or CLC member might mean something.
It is a fabulous idea but it has one drawback: it would reduce dues revenue collection to where it was when working families were much better off. Somehow unions were able to gain big gains for working people without all this money, but the big unions can't get enough of it even as they give most of those gains away. This too was not a topic at the Convention.
Darryl Gehlen has been a member of the UFCW for 26 years.