Lately, there has been a lot of moaning about the so-called Harper Agenda from the Canadian Labour Congress. Last weekend, the CLC held a political action conference to discuss their concerns about the present political climate on organized labour.

Some of these concerns are legitimate, including the erosion of workers’ rights. However, CLC President Ken Georgetti’s approach of partisan political action and protests is not going to get us anywhere. He is essentially calling for more of the same, which is only going to strengthen his opponents. As the old saying goes, “You can’t expect a different results if you keep doing the same thing.”

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” Otis Redding’s famous song brings out a significant truth about life, including our work life. Lack of respect is one of the main reasons that workers join a union—even more so than wages.

What does a frustrated and angry employee cost in terms of lost productivity, poor service, or indifference to patient care? What bright ideas lie buried because nobody bothered to even ask?

I find that the best part of being a union representative is that I can tell truth to power without fear of being fired by the employer.

Bloated, bureaucratic, broke—all words that are used to describe Ontario’s workers’ compensation board (WSIB). A number of voices are calling for a private insurance option for employers who are rightly concerned about ever rising premiums and the growing unfunded liability of WSIB. They feel the system is broken and that competition is the only solution.

I agree that WSIB is bureaucratic and in desperate need of reform. One only has to be involved in worker appeals and the unending delays to see that.

But is private insurance the answer? Here are five reasons why private insurance is not the way to go.

I am often frustrated by economic arguments on both sides of the political spectrum.

The right argues that we need to create jobs at any cost and that job creation alone will lift the poor out of poverty in a trickledown fashion. All we have to do is destroy unions and leave employers to create jobs and all will be well.

The problem is that the jobs being created are low-skilled and low-paid McJobs that cannot sustain a family and that will not lead to a prosperous society for all Canadians.

We can look to the US for results of the right’s arguments. There, we see incomes falling and a growing gap between rich and working poor.

The left argues that we need more support programs to help the poor live a sustainable life.

But pouring more money into social programs that keep folks where they are, year after year, only increases the debts of the province, and doesn’t help the poor move into a higher income bracket.

Once upon a time, two carpenters were assembling a plastic garden shed for the Region of Waterloo. They said to one another, “This looks like ICI construction work to us. Let us go forth and organize ourselves with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, since we too are joining things together.” And so it was that on that Saturday, when no one else was working, the two carpenters decided to apply to the Ontario Labour Relations Board for certification of the Region of Waterloo, for all construction work both now and forevermore.

This sounds like a fable, but it isn’t.

In Ontario, if fifty-five percent of construction workers on a job site on a given day sign up with a union, the union can apply to become the bargaining agent for the company—no vote from the other workers is required.

Once the union comes in, the company automatically falls under the union’s collective agreement.

Even though a region or municipality isn’t really a construction company, the Carpenters’ Union is attempting to certify the Region of Waterloo as they would a company.