Greens not easy
Andrew Weaver wields power to block even labour matters NDP hold sacred
After weeks of putting the B.C. Liberals on notice that they should no longer be taken for granted, Green Leader Andrew Weaver rounded on the New Democrats this week with the same message.
He was responding to the NDP’s vow to continue the game of legislative PingPong that the major parties have been playing over the past few decades with union certifications.
The Social Credit government required a vote by secret ballot whenever a union was seeking certification as the exclusive contract bargaining agent for a group of workers.
The New Democrats got rid of the secret ballot because it was making it harder for unions to organize. They instead legislated that certification would be automatic once a majority of workers signed cards in open support of joining the union.
The B.C. Liberals, believing the card check system was open to coercion and intimidation, brought back the secret ballot. There matters stood until the final phase of the provincial election campaign when NDP Leader John Horgan promised to rewrite the labour code with a view to again eliminating the secret ballot.
“The right to join a union is fundamental in Canada and I believe card check is an appropriate way for that to happen,” he told The Vancouver Sun editorial board in a May 1 interview.
He reiterated that intention in a speech last week to the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, backstopped by followup comments from MLA Shane Simpson, who has served as Opposition labour critic.
“We believe it (card check) is a legitimate thing to do,” Simpson told Sun reporter Nick Eagland. “We’ll be moving forward around labour code changes and other changes that support workers’ rights.”
As for the Greens, Simpson seemed optimistic that the junior partners in the power-sharing arrangement would be supportive of the planned changes in the labour code.
Enter Weaver. “I will never support legislation that will eliminate the secret ballot,” the Green leader told The Sun’s Rob Shaw this week. “It’s simply not going to happen. And no amount of convincing will ever convince me to do that.”
Moreover, Weaver insisted he had made all that clear to John Horgan during the negotiations leading up to their landmark accord: “I told them that at the negotiating table multiple times.”
Some NDP supporters were aghast that their new-found ally would be so adamant on a matter that is practically gospel to the party’s labour wing. Lest there be any doubt, Weaver repeated his determination at a media briefing Wednesday. “I made it clear to them. They can’t be surprised.”
Weaver’s reasoning derives from his time as a member of the bargaining association for unionized faculty at the University of Victoria.
“I know from first-hand experience that in any certification drive there are those people who feel pressured to sign a certification drive but they want the opportunity to have a secret ballot,” he said.
Thus Weaver supports the secret ballot for union certifications for the same reasons that provincial elections are decided by secret ballot — to protect the privacy of voters and minimize opportunities for coercion and retribution.
Open voting was replaced by the secret ballot in provincial elections almost 150 years ago in 1873. Yet in 2017, members of a party with “democratic” in its name, still want to deny workers the right to vote in secret on whether they want to join a union.
But with the New Democrats having only 41 seats of their own in the legislature, the Green demurral means they won’t have enough votes to repeal the secret ballot provision brought in by the Liberals.
Weaver also threw out another challenge to the Liberals Thursday, calling for a change in the preferred route for relocating Highway 29 around the Site C dam on the Peace River. He made the call after he and the other two Green MLAs — Sonja Furstenau and Adam Olsen — visited the Peace River country for talks with the folks who are most affected by the current routing.
Those included the two families facing eviction next month and the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations, which together advocate that the road be rerouted well away from an ancestral burial site and a sweat lodge.
Weaver cited a report from an engineering consultant retained by the two First Nations, indicating that the road could be rerouted for an additional cost of $5 million. Later he conceded that it might be as much as $50 million.
Either way, the call came too late to attract the attention of the B.C. Liberals.
The provincial transportation ministry last week called tenders for the construction of an 8.4-kilometre-long rerouting of the highway along a path that will take it through the homes, the sweat lodge and the burial site.
Bids close Aug. 3. Decision to be made by fall. But by then the New Democrats will be in power and Weaver referred all questions about the fate of the tendering process to Horgan.
It did raise the question of why Weaver would be suggesting changes at the periphery of a project that he and the Greens want killed altogether.
The Green leader said it was because the road might need to be rerouted in any event because it sometimes floods on the current alignment.
But perhaps he was also anticipating that his NDP partners will eventually decide to let Site C go ahead and was trying to make the best of the situation.
I will never support legislation that will eliminate the secret ballot. It’s simply not going to happen.
ANDREW WEAVER, Green Leader