Unions need to 'get back to their basics,' demands one worker

Unionized worker Laurel Taylor, on the phone from her home in Halifax, N.S., told Checkup host Duncan McCue during the show on organizing labour, that she welcomes the recent strides by the labour movement to increase wages. However, she says unions have strayed from their original goal and failed to connect with the working class.

"Our union is not putting in as many resources toward educating their own members," she says.

This is an opportunity for unions to return to their 'no worker left behind' mandate she explains.

Listen to the full conversation above, or read the transcript below.

Laurel Taylor: For me, the labour movement has always been the backbone of political change and progress. But I feel to a large extent that the unions have left the working class behind, so the question that I ask is: why have the unions not taken up the cause of low-wage and temp workers over the last 25 years?

Duncan McCue: What's your answer to that?

LT: Well, I think that their new agenda for survival is all about fighting for their own survival and finding a political voice. But it didn't include 'No Worker Left Behind.' And I think that a lot of apathy settled in, as well as the commitment to deal with the change and the decline in stable employment.

But I want to talk about the service workers campaign for $15 minimum wage. I think it's really important for us to understand what the origins were. It started in New York in 2012, and I think in Australia before that. But it was a response to being left behind. They did so through mobilizing.

There were two demands: raising the minimum wage and the right to form unions. But this was an independent grassroots movement. And I think that the SEIU [Service Employees International Union] came on board, and now, in Canada, the unions are coming onboard with this campaign.

And it's a good thing because for the longest time they've failed to build a bridge between the unionized workers and the non-unionized workers. This now is the bridge and an opportunity to connect with the working class.

DM: And so it's interesting that you raised that American example of the fast food strikes.

LT: Well that's where it all started. That's where the campaign started and it came north.

DM: The campaign started there, but some might suggest that the campaign still hasn't worked. There's still not a lot of unionization in the fast food industry, particularly in the United States.

LT: The fact that we're having a national conversation around worker struggles today ... something is working great.

So I do believe that the campaign is about raising the minimum wage, which is great, but it also has to be about unionizing. So our unions have to get back to their basics and work to educate and agitate and organize. And now is the time to do it, to get back to their mandate.

Because with Tim Hortons, we can see that you can get $14, $15 an hour. But if you have don't have guaranteed hours, it's not going to improve your standard of living, and you can do that with a union contract.

DM: So you raise the important point that it's time, in your view, for the labour movement to leave no workers behind. What do you think is the number one thing that the labour movement needs to do in terms of stepping up when it comes to lower wage?

LT: It's re-allocating their resources. You just had the president the Canadian Labour Congress on. I would question, in the labour movement, do we need that level of bureaucracy? Maybe we could use those resources to help in organizing campaigns.

But it really is allocating resources. It costs money to organize, it costs money to educate. I find over the past years even as a member of our union, our union is not putting in as many resources toward educating their own members, let alone non-union members.

But this is an opportunity now for our union movement to get back to their mandate and do what we want them to do —leave no worker behind.

All comments have been edited and condensed. This online segment was prepared by Samraweet Yohannes.