At the time of these Comment contributions, Ed Bosveld was Ontario Provincial Director for the Christian Labour Association of Canada, an independent Canadian trade union representing more than 45,000 members. He served as part of the union’s national management team as well as its provincial organzer and legal affairs coordinator.
Ed holds an Honours B.A. (Political Science, History) from Redeemer University College, a Master of Business Administration from the Odette School of Business at the University of Windsor, as well as a professional certificate in municipal administration. In early 2008, Ed received a Governor-in-Council appointment to the Canada Immigration and Refugee Board, where he now serves as a full-time Member of the Refugee Protection Division in Toronto.
Abraham Kuyper exclaims: ‘Sin is such a tremendous power that it mocks all your dikes and sluices… it will again and again flood the field of human life with the waters of its passion and selfishness’ (The Problem of Poverty). Market mechanisms… are not sufficient to contain the effects of sin on the workplace and are in fact themselves corroded by sin.
Labour officials and activists have been known to point out that corporations have a responsibility to the communities in which they operate. Whether in the maquiladoras along the Mexico-United States border or in small-town Ontario, a company has a moral responsibility to invest in its community.
“The reality is that our health system has been on a fast track to collapse. We’ve got to get the situation under control so we can meet the needs of the patients and the needs of the people of British Columbia.” So said British Columbia Minister of Labour Graham Bruce in early 2002 as his government asked the legislature to pass the controversial Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act.
The basic concept of unionism correctly recognizes the communal nature of the workplace. A workplace is not a collection of individuals who operate in isolation from or in competition with each other. It’s not every man (or woman) for himself. The workplace is not a family unit (I shudder when I hear an employer suggest this, because often it reveals his view of the owner as parent and the workers as children), but it is a mini-society.
The lack of choice, which annoys me when it concerns my car or computer, has far greater implications for the modern workplace. Much has been said and written about making work meaningful, but much of it boils down to this: there is a strong correlation between job satisfaction and the amount of decision-making freedom a worker enjoys.
In the previous issue of Comment, Ray Pennings argued thatIf [unions] intransigently resist the change and try to hold onto the old order, the system will implode. They will be replaced by the emerging worker representative organizations. If, on the other hand, they...
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