Labour needs a better image

When working people keep siding with bosses, something has to change.

by Ish Theilheimer

The Civic Holiday weekend, which most Canadians celebrate at the beginning of August, is the best holiday of all because it has no obligations other than to put down tools, relax and enjoy. Other holidays require gifts, parades, services, and so on, but the Civic Holiday is about not working, which is a great reason for a holiday.

That's why it seemed ironic to me over the weekend to be imbibing beachside with a group of neighbours and hear them start to trash-talk other workers. My companions (even some who work for the public themselves) dumped special ridicule Unionized workers who "make too much money," like teachers and nurses and public liquor store workers.

I felt like I was sharing brewskies with Don Cherry. 

 

All the myths came out about "overpaid" and "lazy" public service and unionized workers. No one talked about the fact that unions invented weekends, including this long August break. No one mentioned the pension plans, workplace safety and health care everyone wouldn't have had it not been for unions. No one brought up the corporate tax cuts that have led to tens of thousands of public service job and pay cuts or the depressed local business community and real estate market in the wake of these cuts.

I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't my beer. And, frankly, I was outnumbered.

Admittedly, this particular beach is located in solid Conservative country. But the chatter is probably not too different on your beach. Since the days of Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney, Conservatives have bashed working people and unions with near impunity.

The plan to outsource good, unionized jobs in North America and Europe to low-wage countries, mostly in Asia, worked brilliantly. Stripping nations like Canada and the USA of their best-paying manufacturing industries, turned the Canadian workforce into a buyer's market for labour and a catastrophe for organized labour. Millions of skilled workers lost jobs and had to compete for lower-paying work. But the people at the beach didn't mention this, even the ones whose kids have had to go to Asia themselves looking for work.

Strike-and-contract-breaking has become standard operating procedure for governments. The Harper government wins public approval for breaking strikes in the name of the economy. In Ontario, the McGuinty government is about to recall the Legislature to break a teachers' strike that isn't being threatened in order to win support in a crucial upcoming byelection.

Saskatchewan's massively popular Brad Wall government stokes its own popular support by attacking labour rights in the face of UN and international criticism. And the situation for unions in the USA is far worse, with Wisconsin being simply the most well-known of states to have broken public service contracts and privatized important public services.

Why don't working people get mad over beers about these attacks on working people — on themselves and their family members and friends? Why do they take the bosses' side in these bull sessions?

Part of the answer lies in the concerted attack waged against unions by conservatives since the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney days. While organized labour has tended to work on an issue-by-issue basis, the other side has worked in an organized way to embed key ideas into the minds and hearts of ordinary people.

The marketing strategy of the corporate Right is clear. "Unions," they tell the public in every possible way at every opportunity, "are a threat to you. They make everything more expensive and kill jobs, and they're not accountable."

Almost all unions have communications departments, but none has a marketing strategy aimed at the public. No unions, that we know of, have people whose sole responsibility is improving the image of their union and of unions in general. Perhaps they didn't need to worry about this sort of thing in the old days, when the benefits of belonging to a union were more obvious. But after thirty years of anti-union propaganda and thirty years of laws that cut the legs out from under organized labour, it has become crucial for labour unions to improve how people see them.

This is why Straight Goods News is sponsoring a workshop next month called Reviving Labour's Image. It features advertising guru Terry O'Reilly and six other experts in marketing, image work, polling, advertising, and psychology. Together with dozens of union leaders and staffers from every province, we'll be discussing the tools needed to change how workers see themselves and the unions who represent them?

What kind of changes do unions need to make to convince existing members, potential new members and the general public of their importance and relevance? How can the frame of the labour movement — that fairness and collective justice benefit everyone — replace the Stephen Harper/Don Cherry frame of greed and power?

Fortunately, these kinds of concerns are being looked at in the proposed merger of the two big private-sector unions CAW and CEP. The Canadian Labour Congress is also exploring these questions. These explorations, as well as Straight Goods News' workshop, however, need to lead to more than a self-serving conclusion that unions have to keep on doing what we're doing, but just do a better job of it. If that's the case, the writing is on the wall.

 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca