u/investouch400

I was born into a family that was primarily small business owners and managers within larger organizations, so when I was hired to my first real job I did not understand the true value of a union. I had always been told, you show up, work hard you will do ok.
I soon found out that was not the case, I had several jobs between the age 19 and 22, all making promises but when it came to deliver, the answer was not right now. So after 4 years, noticing friends in the union were doing a lot better, buying cars and houses I decided I needed to go to the union.

How time flies, I became a union member in 1995, and 30 years latter I am looking at retirement and knowing the only reason I am able to, is because I joined the union.

My 30 years with the union was not perfect, but the best peace of advice I was given early on in my membership was from an older gentlemen that took it upon himself to mentor the younger members. When people were talking negative, he would say, go to the meetings, get involved and learn about the union and take time to get to know your executive.

This was the best advice, I have found that a majority of the complaints are coming from those that don't understand, and just find it easier to complain, hence my new mission, get the conversation started on what different unions are in Ontario.

At a high level a union is a union and and many union members do not know there are several variations depending on the industry they serve. Along with these variations come different representation styles.

We can start with some definitions, Federal and Provincial regulated unions, typically Federal regulated unions are unions that represent workers covered by federal regulations and commonly are within the finance, defense, transport, and federal workers. It is not clear cut or fixed as you will also find these industries represented at the provincial level making it confusing. An example of this could be, maintenance at a army base could fall under either federal or provincial depending on who the employer is or the risk level or if they are in the territories or provinces.
In Canada, most provinces have their own labour laws and a majority of bargaining rights are obtained under the provincial regulations.
Next we can look at the definition of Private sector and Public sector unions, Public sector are people that are employed by the government, such as school teachers, city workers, government workers by unions like OPSEU, AMEPCEO, CUPE, OTF, ETFO and PSAC and would be represent the largest amount of workers.
Private sector unions represent all those working for private industry, with too many to list here and ultimately can be divided into main groups construction, service and industrial.

In Ontario there are designated Construction Unions, each having accredited collective agreements for the specific trades they represent and the work that is covered by their collective agreements is the installation, altering repair and demolition. Having accredited collective agreements means once a company is certified they are required to follow the applicable collective agreement.

Service, and Industrial more or less get lumped into the same basket, largely because once a company is certified the union and company are required to negotiate a collective agreement, and many times it is for a specific address or location. this can be problematic in that the employer can move, cease do do business in the sector or frustrate the bargaining process.

At this high level, it may already be apparent that some unions enjoy an advantage over others, in particular the construction unions with accredited collective agreements, or public sector unions that enjoy the fact that their employer cannot move the business and is captive to an area and sometimes has strict regulations on who can perform the work.

As a Union member an articles like this are disheartening, the rank and file work hard for their money and while we are told to accept and pay our dues and assessments those in the top positions use the Union funds as their own.
Take a look back through history you will see many Internationals are guilty and if you take the time to follow the money you will find it rampant, and they are getting smarter at hiding it.

How do they hide it?

Recently I made a post about how the Canada Building Trades Union CBTU will be holding a Convention and the delegates will be voting on increasing the current assessment which is 1 cent an hour for affiliated Unions, and will increase to 3 cents an hour. All the Internationals are directing the Local Unions to support this increase and talk about all the good deeds the CBTU are doing. They are not telling the delegates the expected increase in revenue, which will be in the millions. They are also not telling you what the funds will be used for and how much will be filter back to the International Union Reps through "per-diems" and meeting expenses, this will be buried deep in financial statements never to see the light of day.

The reason I point this out, is the tradition union dues we used to see are going the way of the doe doe bird, and being replaced with what seem to be insignificant amounts, a penny here a penny there through assessments. Along with these assessment, many times they are being put into funds that do not report directly to the rank and file members that pay them, therefore little to no accountability.

Do the math, CBTU claims they represent 600,000 members, if this in fact is true, and these members on average worked a 1000 hours ,at year at 3 cents an hour, this would be $18,000,000. All this not being subject to a vote by the rank and file and not one vote by the rank and file on how the money will be spent and not one report to the rank and file on where the money has gone.

Some will hate this post, downvote it and accuse me of union busting, when in fact I am a proud union member tired of seeing articles like the one I posted, where our so called leaders are fueling the reasons why people don't trust unions.

The week of April 5 as with any week at the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) was a busy week, and for those that really do not understand the process of what the Labour Board is in Ontario, hopefully as time goes we can clear that up.

For this quick post, I would like to bring the attention to what is common, week after week and that is roughly 10% of the applications filed at the OLRB are what are known as "Duty of Fair Representation". This is when a member of the Union believes that the Union has failed it's obligation to properly represent them and the only resolution left is to apply to the OLRB and if they are succesfull the Union could be on the hook for the cost or damages to the member.

Unfortunately, the process is very time consuming, money consuming and it is very rare that these applications are succesful. The Unions know this, the lawyers know this and the only party that doesn't, is the member until they have in many cases have been ostracized from the Union, lost work opportunities and taken on debt to fund the fight.

To add further insult to injury, if you watch the applications and track the Duty of Fair Representation applications, there are a few Unions that tend to have the most applications against them. This is not coincidence, it is in large part due to the lack of Uion Representive Training and then a close second is some Unions are very close to the management within the employers.

Ontario is fortunite, we have a healthy union environment, and we need to start looking at ways to reduce the Duty of Fair Representations, they do nothing for the unions and the memberships should be representing, it is a destructive force that uses resources both from the union and the OLRB and erodes society's support of unions.