Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Unions Make All Sorts of Promises During Organizing Campaigns to Secure Your Vote

What workers must understand is that the majority of change is all subject to collective agreement negotiations

By Gord O’Coin, Regional Director, Sudbury Member Centre

In a previous blog, I talked about how CLAC is a real union.

Across Canada, there are many unions that workers can select to represent them in their workplaces. Some unions in the construction industry are craft-based while others, including CLAC, have the unique ability to represent all trades.

In the industrial sector, which covers all nonconstruction employees, various unions represent employees in their workplace. Employees can choose from a variety of available unions, and each one approaches labour relations in their own unique way.

Workers in a nonunion workplace are able to choose a union at any point in time, while those who are currently unionized have specific windows to make an alternate choice. Some provinces allow employees to make this choice every year, and others only allow for the opportunity to change unions in the last few months of the collective agreement.

The purpose of these restrictions is to balance labour stability with providing employees with an opportunity to hold their union accountable and to choose a different union if they are unhappy with their current union. This period of time to make a choice in a unionized workplace is generally referred to as the open period.

Over the past few months, we have experienced numerous workplaces making this choice. In Ontario, the craft-based construction unions are currently in their open period, which happens every three years. We have had workers from many workplaces connect with our representatives to determine if CLAC would be the right choice for them.

These open periods often create a lot of dissension in the workplace, which is not much different than discussing politics at a family gathering.

During these organizing campaigns, which is a campaign to have a group of workers select their union, many unions will provide anything but the truth to entice workers to choose them. They will guarantee everything from wage rates to promising specific collective agreements that don’t even apply to the employees’ workplace.

What workers must understand is that the majority of change is all subject to collective agreement negotiations.

Other unions will go as far as to get paid union officials employed in an unsuspecting workplace with the sole purpose of unionizing the workplace. Right after they are successful, these paid organizers quit and move onto their next victim, leaving the remaining employees to deal with the fallout.

CLAC operates very differently in organizing situations. One reason is our core values, and a close second is that our representatives handle both the organizing of workplaces and the servicing, or representation work, of any new members who choose to join CLAC.

We work daily with the workplaces we represent, and if we aren’t able to deliver on our promises, we only have ourselves to blame. So, we don’t make promises we can’t keep.

We strive to achieve respect, dignity, and fairness for members in every workplace, and we are constantly working toward creating a workplace that each employee can enjoy. We stand behind our core values, and we strive to be what being a real union is all about.

Unions Make All Sorts of Promises During Organizing Campaigns to Secure Your Vote

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