Balancing Act: Card-Check, Anti-Scab, and the Case for Rebalancing Manitoba’s

Prior to the 1970s card-check union certification, which allows a union to be legally formed when a certain percentage of the workforce signs a union card, was accepted in every Canadian province as the standard for union certification that optimally balanced the competing interests of workers and employers (Johnson 2002). [...] A review of the research on this, undertaken in 2014, concludes that “the impact of (mandatory elections) has been the subject of a number of studies and while their findings differ on the extent of the impact, they are unanimous in its direction. [...] The effect of the change is buffered to an extent by the tight timelines the legislation typically imposes between the filing of a certification application and the holding of an election, but a negative effect still remains.” (Tucker 2014:3) Given this conclusion, Manitoba’s seven-day certification vote timeline is not a reasonable substitute for card-check union certification. [...] At issue for labour is the fact action — undermining the that scabs give employers the power to continue business as usual during a power of a strike to push job action — undermining the power of a strike to push forward negotiations at forward negotiations at the bargaining table. [...] During the 2023 strike at MBLL, a worker at the distribution centre described a confrontation between striking workers and replacements in which a replacement worker attempted to provoke those on the picket line: “One of their scabs came in and parked right up against the fence where we had people sitting and standing and revved up his car for a while to throw exhaust fumes at the strikers.