The Ontario NDP party announced today they are reintroducing legislation to ban the use of replacement or ‘scab’ workers. It is the 16th time they have tabled such legislation.
Led by Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas and Sudbury MPP and Labour Critic, Jamie West, union representatives and workers spoke to the issues of replacement workers at a press conference on March 29.
“The reality is that scabs prolong strikes and they prolong lockouts,” said West, adding that scab workers give employers little incentive to reach a fair deal. He said “98 per cent of labor disputes are resolved at the bargaining table, 98 per cent of labor disputes are resolved without any work stoppage at all, and bringing in scab replacement workers artificially lengthens an even smaller portion of the two per cent of labor disputes that have used them.”
West also spoke of his time as a striking worker in 2009.
“I know what it's like to be on strike, I spent a year of my life on strike. And I know what it's like to have our labor dispute unnecessarily extended because of the use of scab replacement workers,” he said.
He added that while this strike was more than a decade ago, “my community still bears the scars from workers in Sudbury and Nickel Belt being pitted against each other for almost a year during that strike. And there is no doubt in my mind that if the company was prohibited from using replacement workers, our agreement would have been reached months sooner.”
The press conference also featured MPP’s Jennifer French (Oshawa), Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West) and Wayne Gates (Niagara Falls) who spoke to the ongoing issues in their ridings.
“Windsor Salt workers have been on strike for 40 days” said Gretzky of employees the Windsor/Essex area salt company. “They're fighting against the outsourcing of their jobs by a U.S.-based holding company. These workers are miners, skilled tradespeople, lift truck operators, general laborers, lab techs, shipping clerks, payroll clerk, and janitors” she said.
Gretzky said, “It is absolutely appalling that in Ontario, we still have a system that allows employers to lock out workers and use scab workers to take their jobs during that lockout, or during a strike.” She added that “scab labor undermines collective bargaining, prolongs labor disputes and removes the employer's incentive to negotiate in good faith.”
Another example of the use of scab workers Gretzky said was a recent strike at Highbury Canco in Leamington, a food and beverage manufacturer that used replacement workers during a labor dispute that lasted 23 days.
“Most of that time, the employer simply refused to bargain with the union in good faith,” said Gretzky. She said many of the workers didn’t speak English as a first language, or at all. “In fact, we suspect that many of those young workers that were being bussed in the scab workers were actually international students. They were going into a workplace with language barriers where they didn't feel they had any rights to speak up if they were in unsafe working conditions.”
She said replacement workers “prey on not only the workers that are on the picket lines that are locked out or on strike, but it really preys on those scab workers that these companies are bringing in.”
In Oshawa, said MPP French, a company unnecessarily prolonged a strike by bringing in scab labor.
“When I spoke to the cleaners on the lines,” said French, “They were very distressed because the replacement workers were being dropped off in unmarked vans, and were sprinting between residential buildings to get to the workplace.
She said the replacement workers had to use Google translate to communicate with the striking workers. The striking workers were attempting to explain that the replacement workers lacked the proper training and protective equipment.
“Those particular replacement workers were being sent into university level two laboratories that have very expensive equipment that requires special handling and have substances that require training,” she said. “However, their employer sent them in anyway with garbage bags and cheap gloves.”
In closing, Gélinas noted that the bill is lengthy, and includes specifics for emergency hiring during a labour dispute. She used the example of mines in Sudbury. “I come from a mining town, when there's a strike, everybody agrees that care maintenance still has to be done in those mines.”
“The time has come to close this loophole and ban the use of replacement workers like they did in Quebec and British Columbia decades ago,” said Gélinas. “This is the 16th time the NDP has introduced this bill and it’s time to make it the law.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com
