At regular intervals, taxpayers in Saskatchewan see the often bitter conflicts referred to as collective bargaining. The employees groups, by whatever name they call themselves, are unions. When the employer is the government, taxpayers expect the cost of essential services to go up or the range of services to go down. This is about all non-union people know about unions.
It is a very long time since I last saw any textbooks used in Saskatchewan schools. I don't know whether an accurate history of unions is part of the curriculum. I assume students never learn about why and how trade unions were born. They probably know nothing of the almost unimaginable level of exploitation generated by the industrial revolution. They haven't heard about the slave wages, long hours and criminally unsafe working conditions in factories and sweatshops.
The ugliness and injustice was not limited to Europe. It was in North America too. The cruellest example was in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, where the mine owners' Coal and Iron Police were free to terrorize underpaid employees working in unsafe mines, living in company houses and paying inflated prices at company stores. This vicious pattern was repeated in Canada in isolated mining and logging camps and wherever else it could be applied. The brutal way in which the authorities dealt with the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is only one bloody chapter in the struggle for justice for the workers. So are the violent confrontations during the sit-down strikes of the 1930s that brought about the unionization of the American automobile industry.
As union movements gained power both here and abroad they influenced the performance of national economies. At the height of union power after the Second World War, union work rules and wage demands almost strangled the economy of the United Kingdom.
In more recent years, many people in the United States and Canada have decided the unions' struggle is no longer for justice, but for more and more money and benefits. I was a union member once and I objected to the excessive demands the union was making. An organizer asked me why I didn't think I was worth more money. I told him I was indeed worth more money, but my job wasn't. This is the crucial point. How much is the job worth to society as a whole?
Justice has been achieved for two formerly downtrodden professions - teachers and clergyman. How much more justice can society afford to give them? The Apostles were told to go into all the world and preach the gospel; not to go forth to establish a seminary and a salary schedule. Many small rural churches face closure because the dwindling congregations can't afford to pay for a minister. Not many people in organized religion are taking vows of poverty now. Will there also be a time when society can't afford teachers and health care workers?
Unless balance can be restored between what we need and our ability to pay for it, our most important institutions remain under threat. We still need unions, but we also need fairness and affordability.
