Rolling back union rights means rolling back everyone's rights

If unions like the United Nurses of Alberta were no longer there to fight to protect and enhance labour laws, safety laws and our Canadian public health care system, all the protections working people have come to count on over the years would be in big trouble!

Albertans hear a lot of propaganda these days from certain conservative politicians, powerful corporations and right-wing “think tanks” suggesting middle class people would be better off without unions, or that the ability of unions to effectively represent their members should be restricted.

So Labour Day is a good time to think about why we have unions and the many things we take for granted that have been brought to us by the hard work, dedication and courage of the working men and women who are their backbone of the labour movement.

For example, not just this long weekend but every weekend! To that we can add work laws that protect children, Employment Insurance, decent pensions, workplace health and safety laws, public health insurance and a host of other things that make our society a better, fairer place for everyone.

But this year on Labour Day, we also need to be thinking about how we will keep the rights our unions have won for us at a time when throughout North America and the world powerful groups and people want to roll back the rights of working people.

Consider our Canadian public health care system, just for one example. Canadians understand that there are many self-interested people and companies who would like to dismantle our fair and efficient system so that they could make bigger profits.

That’s one of the real reasons behind the campaigns by corporate-financed right-wing “think tanks” like the Fraser Institute and organized groups of anti-union employers who argue unions should have no role doing anything except negotiating collective agreements and filing grievances for their own members.

They understand that unions like UNA are effective advocates for public health care, and they want to make it harder for us to do that.

Early this year, UNA organized a conference on health care in Alberta called “Beyond Acute Care” at which the renowned American consumer advocate Ralph Nader spoke. Nader explained to us how the “perverse incentives” in private, for-profit health care typical in his country would make things far worse for virtually all Canadians – except a tiny percentage of our wealthiest citizens.

In the United States, Nader said, “health care costs about twice that of Canada on a per capita basis with worse outcomes and with one in six Americans without any health insurance coverage.” An average of 800 U.S. citizens die every week, he said, because they have no health insurance to pay for diagnosis and treatment.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s health insurance plan has improved things a little south of the border – and any Canadian who listens to the news understands how hard private, for-profit medical corporations in the United States are fighting to reverse even that modest reform.

No wonder the same people would like to make it difficult for Canadian health care unions like UNA to advocate for public health care!

If we let them push our health care system toward a U.S. model, Nader told our conference, Canadians can expect to be told to pay up or die, to face much higher costs for taxpayers and patients, to expect to lose access to the data that helps us determine best practices in medicine and to see the creation of a powerful political propaganda force to resist positive changes.

So his message to Canadians was clear: Don’t go there!

Canadian corporations and right-wing politicians that want to make Canada’s unions shut up are trying to ensure Canadians never find out about what Nader called “the grotesque waste, hyper-costs, callous denials of care and resistance to change in the U.S.”

The same companies, groups and people also want to ensure that cost efficient national public solutions such as Pharmacare, home care and long-term care programs never get put in place. It should not surprise us that a few of our fellow Albertans push for private health care or for changes to labour laws that would serve their interests while depriving working people of their fundamental right to bargain collectively. We have a free society, and democracy requires discussion of many ideas – even if some of them are pretty bad ones.

But it’s important on Labour Day – and every other day of the year – to keep in mind that unions are the most effective advocates of the rights of working people, as well as fair and efficient public services like the public health care system Canadians deserve and expect.

That’s why, in 2012, we need our unions more than ever.