Secret Document Exposes Tories’ Anti-Worker Agenda

November 25, 2013

Ontario Conservative Party Leader Tim Hudak’s antipathy toward unions is no secret, but a recently leaked internal campaign document reveals just how anti-labour a potential Tory government could be.

The campaign blueprint – obtained by the Toronto Star – was prepared in case of a possible election last spring in the event that the Liberal government’s budget was defeated.

As the newspaper reports, promoting a Canadian version of so-called right-to-work-for-less would be one of Hudak’s top goals.

As the Star reports:

One of the party’s many party policy papers calls for getting rid of the Rand Formula, which requires all employees in a closed union shop to pay dues whether they join or not … A similar message — Allow Choice in Union Membership — was on the agenda again just a few days later in Guelph and the Kitchener-Waterloo areas, which fuels fears that Hudak’s agenda is to turn Ontario into a right-to-work province, similar to several U.S. states.

Since its introduction in 1946, the Rand Formula has prevented the introduction of right-to-work laws in Canada’s provinces and has been widely accepted by all major political parties as the foundation for 0labour law.

But the Tories hard-right turn – in Ontario and federally – have put workers’ rights and the labour movement at risk.

“Hudak calls it ‘labour market flexibility’ but it’s really just right-to-work-for-less,” First District Political Action/Media Strategist Matt Wayland told the Electrical Worker in April. “And it’s a serious threat.”

A recent study finds that eliminating the Rand Formula would do to Canada what anti-union laws have done in parts of the United States: drive down wages and working standards.

The wage differential for Canadian unionized workers over non-unionized employees in comparable jobs is between 7 and 14 percent, reports the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights. By weakening organized labour, Hudak’s policy agenda would increase income inequality and give corporations more control over the political process according to the labour rights organization.

Click here to find out more about the Tories real agenda.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Ontario Chamber of Commerce.