Canada: Good Law & Bad Weather

At Sydney, Nova Scotia, which comes closer to being Canada’s Pittsburgh than any other Dominion city, newsmen asked a unionist to explain Canada’s labor peace. George Regunnis McNeil, president of a 5,000-man steelworkers union, answered: “The whole thing in a nutshell is that American labor was organized on a national scale to a point where it could strike for what it wanted. … In Canada strikes pop up here & there, but there is no national cooperation.”

In Halifax, Bricklayer Arthur Dominic Anderson, 57, who earns $1.15 an hour for a 44-hour week, had a different explanation: “I am perfectly satisfied with my job. … I would rather argue . . . with the bosses than go on strike.”

In Vancouver, an industrialist said: “Prices and wages play a large part in industrial peace here. Wages haven’t risen much during the war, but neither has the cost of living.* So Canadian workers don’t have the incentive to strike that U.S. workers have.”

In Calgary, President James B. Cross of the Calgary Brewing & Malting Co. said: “The average Canadian business is still pretty small, and there is less feeling of remoteness between employe and employer than in the U.S. When the average Canadian worker has a grievance he just goes right in for a chat with the boss.”

In Hamilton, Ontario, a steelworker snorted: “Winter is no time for striking! Who wants to walk a picket line when it’s 20 below?”

Nipping the Bud. These were all reasonably accurate explanations for Canada’s labor calm. Big, balding, blustering Humphrey Mitchell, Canada’s Labor Minister, pointed to an even more important one. Said he: “Conciliation has . . . worked in Canada to keep disputes from becoming walkouts.”

Canada’s basic labor law—called the Wartime Labor Relations Regulations—is the counterpart of the U.S. Wagner Act, but goes farther and is much tougher. It requires employers to bargain collectively with their employes, forbids firing for union activity. But it also prohibits unions from forcing workers into joining, from promoting or engaging in slowdowns, from conducting union campaigns during working hours. And unlike the Wagner Act, it lays down a rigid procedure for handling all labor disputes.

In any disagreement, employers and employes must bargain in good faith for at least 30 days. Then, if no agreement has been reached, either side may ask Ottawa to send one of its 16 skilled conciliators around. The conciliator gets 14 more days, subject to extension if both sides agree, to seek a solution. If he fails, the dispute goes to a three-man conciliation board, which has 14 more days to try its hand at peacemaking. If the board also fails, both sides are bound to a 14-day think-it-over period.

During all these efforts to reach agreement, lasting a minimum of two months, work stoppages of any sort are prohibited by law. Penalties for violations are stiff: $20 for each day a striker is illegally absent from work, $200 a day for unions which call an illegal strike, $500 a day for employers who attempt an illegal lockout.

At year’s end the labor code had been in operation 21 months. Its provisions had been invoked in some 2,000 labor-management disputes. All but 278 of them were settled by management and labor without outside help. Conciliators settled 82 of the 278. Conciliation boards settled 64 more, and some disputes are still in the conciliation stage. Only 37 cases ended in failure, and in only eight did the workers actually walk out.

Labor Boss Humphrey Mitchell takes pride in the past but worries about the future. His labor law is strictly a wartime measure; control of labor will soon revert to the nine provinces. Then it will be up to the provincial governments to adopt labor codes as effective as the wartime law—else the Dominion will return to the prewar system of diverse, impotent labor legislation.

Last week Humph Mitchell said: “There can be quiet today and trouble tomorrow. You have to keep your fingers crossed.”

*Canadian prices have risen 19% since the war, compared to 31% in Great Britain, and 30% in the U.S. Actual cost of living in the U.S. is probably higher than the official figures say.