Unions & The NDP: Conventional Wisdom

Last weekend, the BCNDP's provincial council approved a reform package which addresses the longstanding issue of affiliated union memberships. Unfortunately, the package doesn't go far enough....for the Scampbell Lieberals nor their right wing media cheerleaders. They were looking for a fight on the convention floor in three weeks, pitting the "New NDP" vs. the "Old Guard" in the hopes that the party would be caught out as still being in the sinister clutches of "Big Labour". Unfortunately (for them), what they ended up with was another example of Carole James' common-sense, consensus building approach.

If the key resolution in the package is approved, the NDP will no longer grant affiliate memberships to Unions based on their total memberships. Instead, an affiliated membership will be granted to a Union based on how many members of that Union are NDP members. Not only does that grant more power within the party to individual members, it also rewards those Unions who work to support the NDP and sign up new members. I always found it strange that a Union like the IWA, whose history of playing along with right-wing governments dates from the Kelowna Accord to Bill 29, had more pull on the convention floor than public sector unions like BCGSEU or CUPE BC, who, by the nature of their members' work, are more often than not in lockstep with NDP policy.

If anybody still needs to see something ugly, tune in a few weeks later when James rises in the Legislature and introduces a Private Member's Bill to ban corporate and union donations to BC political parties. The simultaneous explosion of Lieberal heads will not be pretty.