Labour leader promises battle with 'biblical consequence'

Article content

Danny Légère, an old hand in New Brunswick’s labour movement, says the pandemic has changed everything when it comes to worker-employer relations.

The president of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour who’s waged a public battle with the Higgs Progressive Conservative government predicts a hard road ahead for employers that don’t want to give their workers a better pay, benefits and work-life balance.

The proof, he said, is the greater number of unionized workers pushing back in collective bargaining, voting down agreements recommended by their own union leadership. They want greater gains.

“Before the pandemic, many of us were in a hamster wheel, whether you were a worker in a nursing home or a cashier at a grocery store,” said Légère, who, before his latest role, was the long-serving president of the Canadian Union of Employees in New Brunswick.

“You’re on that hamster wheel and you’re running and running and just going around. What the pandemic did, it took us off the hamster wheel and set us outside the cage. And we took some time to look at that hamster wheel. And when things started to open back up, well guess what? A lot of people aren’t interested in getting back into the hamster wheel.”

He has figures on his side. According to the latest Statistics Canada data, the number of people across the country involved in work stoppages, either locked out or on strike, since the pandemic has been close to 1.3 million.

In the four years before the pandemic, only about 378,000 were off the job.

If you’re going to smash labour’s holy grail, you will get a reaction of biblical consequence.

Danny Légère

In New Brunswick, 654 have walked off the job or been locked out since 2020, a figure that doesn’t take into account the thousands of CUPE members who went on a short strike at the end of 2021, considered too short to be counted in Stat Can’s tally. Even so, in the four years before the pandemic, only 384 New Brunswickers workers went on strike or were locked out.

In New Brunswick, 654 have walked off the job or been locked out since 2020, a figure that doesn’t take into account the thousands of CUPE members who went on a short strike at the end of 2021, considered too short to be counted in Stat Can’s tally. Even so, in the four years before the pandemic, only 384 New Brunswickers workers went on strike or were locked out.

Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada Governor, cited more strikes as he doubled down on his fight against inflation, telling a Saint John business audience in November it reminded him of when “everyone seemed angry” in the early 1980s, another era of high costs and widespread work stoppages.

“Things have got to change,” Légère said, noting that workers were fed up with the higher costs of food, rent and mortgage payments. New Brunswick’s inflation rate for the last couple of years has been one of the highest in the country until the latest data showed it was among the lowest in November at 1.7 per cent.

“There’s got to be a better workplace-life balance and better compensated for the blood sweat and tears and personal family sacrifices.”

The labour leader has harsh words for the government of Premier Blaine Higgs, a marked turned since the cozy relationship in the last year of Brian Gallant’s Liberal government in 2018.

Besides CUPE’s strike that affected more than 20,000 public employees two years ago, the Tories have introduced two pieces of legislation union activists consider regressive. One allows for replacement workers at schools and hospitals when there’s a work stoppage – what Légère called “legalizing scabs.”

The other, which riled labour activists even more, was the decision of the Higgs government to force five groups, including school and nursing home workers, into shared-risk pension plans.

Légère, whose organization has 19 affiliated unions with 40,000 members, publicly denounced Arlene Dunn, the labour minister, for supporting the government’s pension bill, writing an open letter calling for her resignation.

If you’re going to smash labour’s holy grail, you will get a reaction of biblical consequence.

Danny Légère

“There are only two things written on labour’s holy grail. You don’t break signed collective agreements and you don’t mess with the free collective bargaining process. Higgs’s bill breaks both of those things on the holy grail. Well, if you’re going to smash labour’s holy grail, you will get a reaction of biblical consequence.”

Dunn declined an interview request, releasing as statement her department has widely circulated since she voted for the bill.

I am concerned about labour and the security of their pension plans.

Arlene Dunn

She said that in 2012, a new pension model was introduced that had been developed by the Task Force on Protecting Pensions, in collaboration with a number of union leaders. This model led to the reform of several government pension plans.

These shared-risk plans, she said, were performing incredibly well for their members, and this past September, the New Brunswick Public Service Pension Plan awarded its highest cost of living adjustment to date – 5.32 per cent to all of its more than 43,000 members.

This is a higher cost of living adjustment than in the defined-benefit plans.

“I am concerned about labour and the security of their pension plans,” Dunn said. “They need to know they have a pension they can rely on. That is the responsibility of government, as their employer. We are simply trying to move forward with transferring the remaining 16,000 employees from a defined benefit plan that is not sustainable.”

She added that she was not going to resign over “asking all civil servants to be treated equally.”

Undeterred, Légère, who calls the Higgs government the most regressive in his 43 years of union activism, says he’ll campaign against the Tories in the 2024 provincial election.

“I’m telling anyone who wants to listen not to vote PC. Higgs’s track record clearly shows he isn’t working in the interest of workers. And it’s not just Higgs. Everyone tends to point the finger at Higgs and put the focus on him. But he’s not the only one standing up and voting for all these regressive pieces of legislation.”