Good On Justin Trudeau

Credit where credit's due. Full marks to the Trudeau government for not legislating CN rail workers back to work. After eight days it seems the company and its workers have reached a tentative contract and the trains are rolling once again.

The right to strike is enshrined in article 23(4) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which provides, "Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

The right to strike has been established in international law for decades, in global and regional instruments, such as in the ILO Convention No. 87 (articles 3, 8 and 10), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (article 8), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 22), the European Convention on Human Rights (article 11), and the American Convention on Human Rights (article 16). The right is also enshrined in the constitutions of at least 90 countries. The right to strike has in effect become customary international law. 

The right to strike is also an intrinsic corollary of the fundamental right of freedom of association. It is crucial for millions of women and men around the world to assert collectively their rights in the workplace, including the right to just and favourable conditions of work, and to work in dignity and without fear of intimidation and persecution. Moreover, protest action in relation to government social and economic policy, and against negative corporate practices, forms part of the basic civil liberties whose respect is essential for the meaningful exercise of trade union rights. This right enables them to engage with companies and governments on a more equal footing, and Member States have a positive obligation to protect this right, and a negative obligation not to interfere with its exercise. 

Moreover, protecting the right to strike is not simply about States fulfilling their legal obligations. It is also about them creating democratic and equitable societies that are sustainable in the long run. The concentration of power in one sector – whether in the hands of government or business – inevitably leads to the erosion of democracy, and an increase in inequalities and marginalization with all their attendant consequences. The right to strike is a check on this concentration of power.

Harper considered this nonsense, often ordering workers back on the job almost immediately they moved to strike. That created a huge advantage to corporations over labour.

Theodore Roosevelt, drew on Abraham Lincoln's words, in his 1910 New Nationalism speech:

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said: 

"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. 

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

This does not mean that labour has an absolute right to strike indefinitely. If the strike power, once sufficiently exercised, is ineffective, government may need to intervene with binding arbitration or other remedies.

The inescapable fact, however, is that the Tories are anti-labour. Scheer's shrill demands that CN workers be forced back to work show that nothing has changed since Harper's day.