Paul Moist talks about austerity pushback

CUPE members strategize to preserve Canadians' public services.

by Ish Theilheimer, video by Samantha Bayard, transcribed by Ruth Cooper

Paul Moist:
This is our first ever National Bargaining Conference.  It resulted from a recommendation to our 2011 Convention in Vancouver: In the Aftermath of the 2008 Global Recession.  With some of what we see going on around the world, we anticipated a much tougher climate for bargaining across the board and that we should get together.  

This turnout is by far the largest CUPE Conference ever held in our 50 years.  I think people are really interested in learning from one another about bargaining.  We think we can do well in bargaining but we need to recognise what's happening around us, in the United States and the European Union, and what's happening to us in Canada and how we can become stronger out of this.  

We have a lot of new staff and new members.  We have a demographic that's heading into retirement.  We think it's value-added for our Union to take three days and focus on nothing but bargaining and bring in guests from the Unites States, Canada, and Europe.  The response seems to be terrific.

Straight Goods News:
Tell me more about the bargaining process. People outside of the labour movement would think of bargaining as an esoteric, dry kind of a subject.  Why do 1,000 people want to come to Ottawa to talk about it?  What's at the crux of this?

Paul Moist:
Number one, we accept that collective bargaining, which is not a perfect science, is the best way for workers to sit down, collectively, to attach value to their labour and their working conditions.  

Number two, we know that there's incredible downward pressure on bargaining with things like two-tier wages and the argument that country can no longer afford pension plans. We know that to resist that downward pressure we need to act together at bargaining tables.  

Number three, we need to prepare for issues that maybe we haven't had to talk about for a while. There hasn't been the same kind of pressure in the past to eliminate pension plans, as we've seen in the private sector.  As the unionization rate in the private sector drops, there's more of a light shone on the public sector.  

So, one of our messages at the Conference is, "We're here to talk about CUPE bargaining, but we need to support private sector workers and their bargaining and we need to support the 70 percent of Canadians that don't have a union to bargain on their behalf"– for example, our Canada Pension Plan campaign to expand pensions, and our efforts in support of making unionization more available to all the workers in Canada who probably need a union badly given the state of wage increases in Canada.

CUPE Nation President Paul Moist talks about bargaining in austerity times.

Straight Goods News:
There are politicians openly campaigning to take that away.

Paul Moist:
There's no question that there's an aggressiveness on the Right, if you will.  It's ironic to me that the global recession was caused by unregulated financiers.  They've been able to socialize their losses in the United States and kind of privatize their profits as they recover.
 
States that were formerly the birthplace of the American labour movement — Michigan, where there were sit-down strikes in the '30s with the Big Three auto makers – they bring in right-to-work legislation, which is really about defunding the union and, ultimately, eliminating unions.  I think in 2013, in Canada, more Canadians than ever need unions.  

This union, CUPE, the largest in Canada, wants to do a good job on behalf of our members on three fronts: One, at their bargaining tables. Two, we want to defend the public services that we provide everyday — Canadians want more health care, not less. And three, we want to take our rightful place to support other workers in their struggles, including non-unionized workers and increasing the unionization rate of the private sector.  

So, all three of those functions: bargaining, defending public services, and having solidarity with other workers, are hallmarks of our union over the last 50 years.  I am astounded that over a thousand of our members responded and that their locals have paid to send them here. The turnout tells me that the decision made by our National Convention in 2011 was correct.  We are in choppy waters but we are not putting our heads down; we are putting our heads up to take our union forward.

Straight Goods News:
Most of your members work municipally and provincially.  They are facing fiscal situations that are presented to them as faits accomplis  — "There is no more money. We must invoke austerity."  How does a municipal worker, a cop, a librarian, deal with something that's passed down from a much higher level of government than he or she can deal with?

Paul Moist:
At a local community, provincially and nationally, we confront those who say, "The race to the bottom is the only way to go."  In a province like New Brunswick, [for example], there is a problem when you slash corporate taxes to the lowest rates in Canada, much lower than the United States or the European Union, you slash personal income tax rates, and then you plead poverty. 

The only thing worse than pleading poverty, as is the case for the province of New Brunswick, is to tell the citizens, "We can't afford health care."  I know of no Canadians who accept that proposition.  Our parents established a universal, fully accessible health care system and we can't afford not to have it.  

It's not in vogue these days to talk about taxation; much of the world's labour movement is talking about a tax on speculators, a transactions tax on all of the speculative nature of the stock market economy.  We haven't made progress on that in Canada but we want to talk to Canadians about services. We meet no Canadians who want less access to their library, less access to public schools, and less access to public health care.  People want to see those things expanded.  

The race to the bottom — refusals, in a recession, to talk about revenue – this is the first recession in our modern history where Canadians are being confronted with chopping spending.  It didn't work in the '1930s.  Austerity didn't work and a new Keynesian approach came from Mr. Mackenzie King and Mr. Roosevelt. 

Austerity is not working today.  Even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are saying that the global economy is sluggish.  Cutting, and cutting, and cutting, isn't stimulating.  It's, in fact, counter productive.  

We don't think that people want to be taxed off the planet, if you will, but in a recession, one must be able to talk about revenues available to government and as the economy grows, you pay down that debt in an orderly fashion; you use a scalpel, you don't use an axe to cut services.  We will stand up in Canada and defend the integrity of our health care system that needs investment and our cities and towns that need investment and infrastructure if we are to attract business.  

There's absolutely no way that we're going to get into a race to the bottom and say, "You can shrink yourself to greatness."  No jurisdiction in Canada, no government in Canada, can shrink itself to greatness.  So, we can't just confine ourselves to our bargaining tables; we're here talking about bargaining.  We need to also be a social union that enters public debates and we need to support other workers – union and non-union.  And we will.

Straight Goods News:
One last question: Young workers seem to be most marginalized at this point.  They graduate with degrees and there's no future for them in Canada.  Many of them have to leave.  What's the message in this Conference for them?

Paul Moist:
The message to the new and young workers coming into CUPE is, "The doors are open, come on in and get active."  And the new and young workers in Canada, without the benefit of a union, they must come to view the Canadian trade union movement as a viable option for them, as service sector workers or other workers.  

The image of the labour movement, to be self-critical for a minute… we don't have the luxury of focusing only on our own bargaining tables, as important as that is.  We must be relevant to the worker out there who has three jobs trying to pay off their university degree. 

Historically, we have been a relevant option for new and young workers.  While there is a lot of downward pressure on the trade union movement today, the last thing any union, including CUPE, should be is isolationist.  

So a lot of our efforts and time go into our CUPE members and our bargaining, but we need to make time for the Canadians who don't have a union and be relevant to them as well and, ultimately, to Canadians who value the services we provide.  

Our library workers tell me Canadians want more access to the internet and libraries. Our health care workers speak to Canadians every day who are frustrated with the health care system.  Our university workers, over 60 thousand people — CUPE members — work in universities. They see students with crippling debtloads who want more, not less, access to post-secondary education.  

At a time when there's a demographic heading to retirement, it should be a strong time for labour to extract decent wages and benefits for workers, but that's not happening.  CUPE is quite prepared to take our rightful place in the debates of the day in Canada and in the trade union movement in Canada and reach out to those young workers who don't yet have the benefit of a decent job or a union.
 

© Copyright 2013 Ish Theilheimer and Samantha Bayard, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca