Unions were good in their day but they are no longer relevant in our modern economy."
Please, Andy. Can't we give our battered middle class a brief break from such hogwash on Labour Day weekend?
For 40 years we've been bombarded with old chestnuts like these. So many of us have swallowed such well-financed whoppers that union membership in Canada is at an all-time low, down from 33% to only 16% in the last 25 years.
In the U.S., where anti-union propaganda is even better financed, they've managed to whittle union membership down to 7%.
Without collective leverage to improve their lot, our middle class is eroding before our very eyes, being inexorably reduced to a minimum wage, burger-flipping underclass.
Profits soar and wages stagnate, the 1% gets richer and unreasonable union demands are blamed for the woes of an anemic economy.
I suppose that expecting a reasonable share of profits for the middle class is one of those old-fashioned union ideas that were good in their day but are now obsolete.
In fact, a century of hard-fought union struggle is what produced the middle class. Unions wrestled for, and in some cases bled for, workplace improvements not attainable if left to corporate conscience.
Unions won us medicare, the five-day week, the 40-hour week, statutory holidays, child labour laws, minimum wages and employment standards legislation.
And each of these labour landmarks was loudly derided in its day.
"This union demand will ruin the economy," we heard, and, of course, "Unions were good in their day but they've gone too far."
We've heard it all before and it's a crock.
Unions in Canada are not only not obsolete, they are more necessary than ever. Collective action in the workplace is the only way to reverse the last 30 years of the economic strangling of the middle class.
Just like the struggle for human rights isn't irrelevant because LGBT rights are improved or women's rights enhanced, the union movement isn't obsolete because it has won a few historical victories.
The struggle just refocuses.
So, clench your fist, hold it above your head and, on this Labour Day, join your union brothers and sisters in a chorus of "Solidarity Forever."
