False balance: How the Furey Liberals are minimizing workers’ rights

On VOCM Open Line Friday, FFAW-Unifor President Dwan Street lambasted provincial Fisheries Minister Gerry Byrne over his handling of the commercial cod fishery expansion, namely the five per cent quota allocation to Europe via the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).

Street accused Byrne of “Gerry-picking” communications from the FFAW and effectively misrepresenting the union’s position on NAFO.

After Street was elected in July as the first woman to lead the FFAW, she said, the union “had a really, really great conversation with the premier […] about the importance of getting back to a clean slate,” she told VOCM host Paddy Daly.

But Byrne has set that effort back, she said, by prioritizing the NAFO issue when the province and FFAW have bigger fish to fry. “[If] this is the issue he’s putting his time and energy into when we have real issues that exist, then this minister needs to pack up his filing cabinet and just go.”

Street said the controversy around Byrne’s handling of the situation “could have been completely avoided” if he had communicated better with the union. Instead, she said, she received a single email from him that was “patronizing” and “very condescending.”

“I’ve requested an urgent meeting with Premier Furey to discuss some of this, and it is my suggestion that […] he needs to put the bridle back on his minister, and he needs to turn him around in the correct direction, because right now Gerry Byrne is in left field.”

Symptom of a bigger issue

While the FFAW is dealing with its own sour relationship with the Liberals, the spat is just one of the latest examples of how the province is deprioritizing organized labour and workers in almost every sector.

On Nov. 6 the province’s minister responsible for labour, Lisa Dempster, announced the Liberals were bringing forward amendments to the Labour Standards Act to extend unpaid sick leave to workers for up to 27 weeks.

In light of the dozens of legislative and policy changes unions in the province have been advocating for in recent months and years, it wasn’t quite the announcement they were hoping for.

What’s most significant about the Liberals’ labour standards amendments is what’s missing from them, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour (NLFL) President Jessica McCormick told me in a recent phone interview.

Paid sick leave, misclassification of workers in the gig economy, anti-scab legislation, reinstating card-check legislation, and Labour Relations Board reforms are just a few of the pressing issues facing workers, McCormick said.

“The lack of action on any of those key pieces that we’ve been recommending is very frustrating,” she said. “And we weren’t provided with a window of opportunity to give our own recommendations, knowing that there is potential to open up the Labour Standards Act.”

McCormick said the NLFL has had “regular discussions” with the previous labour minister, Bernard Davis, and that she met with Dempster about two months ago. 

“It was in that meeting that I was made aware of these other amendments to labour standards,” McCormick recalled. “And so of course my first reaction was one of pretty significant frustration that, you know, at the end of the meeting I found out about two changes to the legislation, without any opportunity for discussion about other potential amendments.”

(False) balance

In recent weeks the NDP and Federation of Labour have called the Liberals out over their waning respect for workers and workers’ rights. 

Beyond the Liberals’ labour standards amendments, this fall Dempster has repeatedly used a talking point that is quite revealing of their priorities when it comes to workers and the business community.

“[W]e try and strike that balance between employers and employees,” she said Nov. 6 in the House of Assembly, using the same “balance” argument six times that same day.

She repeated the talking point several times since then, and on Nov. 18 was called out by Labrador West MHA Jordan Brown.

“Unions listened to the minister’s response last week and are frustrated by the government’s continued word of ‘balance.’ That is not balanced; this is not how unions feel,” he said in the legislature. “I ask the minister: Why does government continue to put their hand on the scale and tip it in favour of employers and leaving out unions?”

Politicians have long used false balance to create the appearance of objective or reasonable approaches to policy-making. But anyone who has worked a minimum or low-wage job knows that in real life the interests of workers and employers are anything but equal or “balanced”.

Many workers’ rights in Newfoundland and Labrador have been scaled back by both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments over the decades.

In 2014, then NLFL President Mary Shortall said “unions were shocked and blind-sided” by the PC government’s surprise repeal of card-check certification legislation it had introduced just two years prior.

“It has been many years since labour was not consulted…about changes to labour legislation,” Shortall said, explaining the PCs’ aloofness when it came to workers and unions.

The trend, it appears, continues a decade later under the current Liberal government, a fact that hasn’t escaped NDP Leader Jim Dinn.

“All you have to do is to listen to government’s response to our questions and petitions about these issues and you will know the Furey Liberals do not care about workers,” Dinn told delegates at the NLFL’s midterm convention last week in St. John’s.

“I don’t think the current Liberal government quite understands the connection between fair collective bargaining, and compensation, and a functioning public health care system, or any public system for that matter,” he said.

Dinn added that, when he served as president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association, he “dealt with both the Liberals and PCs in my four years,” and that “there is no difference between them except for the colour. That’s it.”

McCormick said she feels “like a bit of a broken record” because she is “bringing the same list of issues to government time after time.”

She said that “in all of those discussions, the needs of workers are secondary to what is politically expedient, and unfortunately what’s popular with employers.”

While the government’s new labour standards amendments will benefit some workers, McCormick said what unions are looking for is “paid leave to help protect people and support their livelihood.”

Back at the NLFL convention in St. John’s, Dinn spoke to the NDP and labour movement’s goal of creating actual balance between workers and employers.

“Ultimately,” he said, “the labour movement is about equality and the belief that society is not truly free until all members are free and have access to the rights they need to have fulfilling lives.”

There are a lot of workers in our province who are working full-time jobs (and even multiple jobs), yet can’t afford necessities like food and shelter, let alone earn the pay, working conditions and benefits that would allow them fulfillment. 

If Newfoundland and Labrador’s current labour standards represent “balance,” then the Liberals may as well follow Gerry Byrne’s lead and sound off without a thought in the world to the consequences.

At least then they’d be speaking honestly.

Note: This editorial was first published Nov. 24 in The Independent’s weekly Indygestion newsletter. Sign up free and be the first to read select Indy articles, plus get an inside look at what we’re working on.