The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
By Jonathon Naylor Hudbay unions' withdrawal of support for the NDP marks one of the most surprising political developments Flin Flon has seen. In a full-page ad in Monday's Reminder, all seven company unions, previously strong allies of Clarence Pettersen, announced they are no longer on board with the MLA and his party. They are upset that Pettersen declined to attend a rally last summer in support of the machinists' union, which at the time had not signed a new contract with the company. Now Pettersen, who held his election victory celebration at the unions' Steel Center headquarters, finds himself without the formal backing of a key constituency. It all raises some interesting questions. How far should an MLA go in embracing certain members of his base? When is it appropriate for an elected official who represents all of us to 'take sides' in employer-employee matters? Politically, Pettersen will no doubt survive should he stand for re-election in 2015. His support goes beyond both organized labour and Flin Flon / Snow Lake, where the Hudbay unions are based. In fact, although this is known as the Flin Flon Constituency, Flin Flon the community has less than half of the eligible voters in the riding. Even Flin Flon and Snow Lake together fail to constitute 50 per cent of the voting-age population. In the last election, Pettersen won all but three communities in the riding (one of those was a tie). He enjoyed strong support on First Nations even as he squared off against a respected aboriginal candidate who ran for the Tories. Unions like to think of the NDP as an unyielding partner in their cause. Unfortunately for them, the facts show otherwise. There was the NDP's two-year public employee wage freeze imposed in 2010, so maligned by the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union (MGEU) that it produced TV commercials attacking the move and, by extension, the NDP. In 2011, in what the National Post described as 'an unprecedented move,' the NDP ordered striking Brandon University professors to vote on their employer's final offer. Last year the NDP again drew the ire of the MGEU by unveiling a plan to slash some 600 (unionized) government positions in the coming years. And the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concluded last year that the NDP 'has been reluctant to clear away the obstacles to trade union certification and to alter the terrain of industrial relations by curbing the advantages now enjoyed by employers when dealing with strikes and lockouts.' Or how about the NDP's jacking up of power bills, gas taxes and user fees _ all concerns for the working man _ while still finding exploration subsidies for Hudbay, a corporation with $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents? Clearly when it's politically expedient to do so, and perhaps even when it's not, the modern NDP will throw organized labour under the bus. For the Hudbay unions, Pettersen's absence at last summer's rally was an extension of this new reality. People will have to form their own opinions as to whether the company unions were justified in ending their long-standing relationship with the NDP. But it's obvious the NDP is not as agreeable to organized labour as unions in Flin Flon, or anywhere else in Manitoba, would prefer. Local Angle runs Fridays.
