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Constitution aside (since the inclusion of that clause guaranteed its eventual abuse, and no one should be surprised by the current situation), if asked privately, nearly every parent would be in favour of preventing a strike. So it’s really the parents tyrannizing the workers, using the province as their attack dog. The trouble is, though, that in order to pay the CUPE workers more, the population has to be taxed, and taxation involves the threat, however distant, of death. So CUPE would be tyrannizing the people of Ontario, with the province as their attack dog. And since shutting down schools does not hurt the government they way shutting down the kitchen hurts McDonald’s, CUPE is threatening kids’ and parents’ time (the least renewable non-renewable resource) in order to hurt the government’s money (they make more of it every day), which is a form of hostage-taking, and must also count as tyrannizing the people of Ontario. So in this exact public-sector union dilemma I count CUPE as aspiring to be twice as tyrannical as the government of Ontario, and therefore, bizarrely, prefer that the government win this one.
I can’t see a way to defend abolishing public sector unions, but they at least have to be honest about the fact that, in the end, they’re not extorting money from greedy capitalists, but time from ordinary citizens (and permanent residents).
It's the law of supply and demand that is the engine here. The value of goods and services is determined conclusively by the intersection of supply and demand, and that is as true of labor as it is of anything else. No one is tyrannized by earning only what their labor is worth. The tyranny inheres in permitting collusive behavior in the labor market (unions, organized strikes) to inflate the cost of labor above what it is worth. Preventing the strike averts the union's attempted tyranny over school children, parents and taxpayers.
If janitors aren't being paid enough for our sensibilities, then by all means supplement their income with the welfare state, but apply it evenly to everyone who isn't being paid enough, not just for those lucky enough to be able to hold schoolchildren hostage to their demands.
Hopefully my comment provides such a defense.
Isn't a limiting factor of unions' ability to bargain the employer's cost of firing everyone, and then hiring and training new employees? If the unions were to argue (without caving) for a crazy amount, like one million dollars per year per member, then it would be more cost-effective to replace the entire work force. It doesn't seem like it is possible for union members to inflate the cost of their labor far above what it is worth (cost of training could make paying an inflated salary preferred in the short-term). Unless there are laws about companies firing their entire workforce/an entire union, which there could be (maybe in France, I've heard they have strong laws supporting unions) but I am ignorant about laws surrounding unions.
I agree that there are limits to what a union can extort above the clearing wage in a free labor market, but limited extortion is still extortion.
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It seems strange to use the word "tyrannizing" in the context of the government voiding constitutional rights, but having it apply to the ones whose rights are being violated
Is it actually a constitutional right at all if the constitution provides a "notwithstanding clause" that explicitly permits the government to violate it? I would argue that it isn't. At most it's a violation of norms.
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Because this specific right isn't a real one, its a privilege. A right is something you can do as a human being as a result of existing. There is no right to be a government schoolteacher who is paid, because that requires dozens of prerequisites that cannot be assumed.
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The government always could have passed back-to-work legislation and send this to arbitration. But instead they chose to unilaterally impose a contract on the union.
Politicians have gotten handsome raises throughout the pandemic. Does that not count as extorting the public?
I don't think back-to-work legislation would be constitutional anymore. In 2015, Canada's Supreme Court ruled that striking is a constitutional right, a component of collective bargaining which is protected in the charter under the freedom to associate. And Ontario courts struck down the 2012 back-to-work legislation as infringing on the collective bargaining rights of school employees.
So using the notwithstanding clause seems like the only way to actually do this, since I doubt the courts will see janitors as essential as police or w/e (and I never read the full Supreme Court case, so who knows, maybe police and doctors are allowed to strike?).
Since then there have been numerous instances of governments using back-to-work laws. Off the top of my heads the feds used it for Canada Post in 2018 and CP Rail in 2019
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Sure, it counts. But we’re not talking about who is evil and who is righteous; we’re talking degrees of bad in badly conceived system.
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