Collective Bargaining under Pressure: A Canada‐US Comparison
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000001025 |
| Pages | 33-39 |
| Date | 01 February 1990 |
| Published date | 01 February 1990 |
| Author | Roy J. Adams |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING UNDER PRESSURE: A CANADA-US COMPARISON 33
W
hy do Canadian and US industrial
relations systems differ?
Collective
Bargaining
under
Pressure: A
Canada-US
Comparison
Roy J. Adams
Introduction
To the foreign observer the labour relations systems in
Canada and the United States often look very much alike.
American-based companies and trade unions operate in
both countries; the two economies have close links and
share a similar labour policy framework known as the
Wagner model. Since the United States economy is ten
times larger than Canada's, it dominates economic
relations between the two countries. Hence one might
be inclined to believe that recent American events may
be safely generalised to include Canada. That would,
however, yield erroneous results.
Similarities and Differences
During and just after the Second World
War
trade unions,
employers and governments
in
both Canada and the United
States reached certain implicit understandings about their
roles in the industrial relations system. Taken as a whole
these understandings, which had very similar
characteristics in the two countries, have been referred
to as the "Labour Accord" which had the following
essential features: unions would accept the right of
management to manage within the bounds set by law and
collective agreements; management would accept the right
of unions to exist and to negotiate agreements providing
their members with security, dignity and economic
benefits consistent with the market position of the firm,
but reserved the right peacefully and legally to resist
unionisation where collective bargaining had not yet been
established[1]. The State undertook to ensure that
individual employees could choose collective bargaining
free from threats or coercion and also to guarantee that
unions and companies would negotiate in good faith with
a view to signing collective agreements covering wages
and conditions of employment.
These understandings continue to be fundamental pillars
of Canadian industrial relations. In the United States,
however, they
all
appear
to
be
crumbling.
Instead of dealing
in good faith with the unions, many partially unionised
companies have adopted an explicit policy of de-
unionisation. To escape from their commitment to
collective bargaining they are closing old unionised plants
and opening new, non-union ones[2].
It is clear that such an employer strategy is contrary to
the spirit (and no doubt in some respects to the letter)
of United States labour policy, which continues to aim in
principle at encouraging collective bargaining.
Nevertheless, in recent years more employers have come
out vigorously and publicly in favour of strategies of this
kind than at any time since before the Great Depression
of
the
1930s. In Canada no such pattern can be detected.
In both Canada and the United States the difficult
environment of the 1980s has resulted in the introduction
of significant changes in collective agreements. Both
countries have seen the advent of two-tier
wage
systems,
lump-sum payments
in
lieu of regular
wage
increases, the
roll-back of benefits (e.g. reduced entitlement to vacations
and
holidays),
wage freezes, profit- (or
gain-)
sharing, the
restructuring of jobs and the relaxation of work rules to
allow management more flexibility in the deployment of
the workforce. These "concessions"
by
unions,
however
seem to have been more widespread in the United
States[3,4,5].
Led
by
the Canadian Labour Congress, many
Canadian unions have successfully adopted a position of
"no concessions".
For example, during contract negotiations with the major
automobile firms in the 1980s the United Auto Workers
The author is grateful
to Joe
Rose, Harish
Jain,
Noah Meltz,
Isik Zeytinoglu, John Godard, Seymour Martin Lipset, Mark
Thompson and Tony Giles for useful comments on an earlier
draft of this article. This is a revised version of
a
manuscript
published under the title of "North American Industrial
Relations: Divergent
Trends in Canada and
the United States",
International Labour
Review,
Vol. 128 No. 1, 1989.
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