ɫɫ��

For years now, with the predictability of an early Leafs’ playoff exit — a hockey reference, in deference to Mark Carney — the federal government relied on a legal ploy, invoking an obscure subclause to simply order strikers, usually public sector, back to work or face high fines and jail for their leaders. They assumed the threat would suffice and it did, until it didn’t. The AC strikers (private sector by the way) said no. Fine us or jail us and, I quote, “so be it.” The power players blinked. Bargaining resumed and a deal was quickly struck.

My favourite academic, retired law professor Harry Glasbeek, explained the highly subtle dynamics here. One of the legal system’s stupidest ideas — that a corporation is a person — allows a heterogeneous gaggle of CEO’s, party boffins, investors, media moguls etc., to be treated as a single individual, not a mighty combine. Its employees, on the other hand, whose individual members have far less strength, are treated generally as a menacing collective who mustn’t be allowed to threaten individual rights. So money talks, in all the voices it can generate. But the far weaker side, the workers and their union, is portrayed as the greater danger.

Workers have only one real counterweapon: their numbers, which AC strikers wielded with a deep awareness of the issues. Once that’s in play they need more numbers, and polls showed the public understood too, and backed them. When Carney said he “had no choice” but order the workers back, he lied, or worse, given his self-presentation, was uninformed. As Glasbeek says, he could’ve pressured the company instead, ordering them not to lock out workers, as they always do, in order to create the chaos they then urge politicians to resolve. To induce the strikers back, Carney could’ve simultaneously imposed the last offer the union had put on the table, making it hard to turn down. That would’ve at least been creative, rather than tiresomely one-sided.

If that sounds fanciful, or absurd, it also shows how metronomically governments have come to back companies over workers in these disputes. (If there’s any doubt where Carney means to stand, Glasbeek notes he’s also changed his “Minister of Labour” to his “Minister for Jobs and Family.”)

Defiance has its merits, even when it fails. When it succeeds, as here, in a noble if unfavoured cause, it turns into something else: resistance, which has a better chance of surviving the long haul, and growing in strength.

Carney has hit a defiant chord, sometimes stridently, since he entered politics: Trump “wants to break us so American can own us,” etc. That has perceptibly diminished over time. He doesn’t seem to know how to combine defiance and political realism. It’s not an easy task, but that’s the job.

Why does the flight attendants’ strike matter in this context? Because to take on the U.S., you need more than some ambivalent Canadian CEO’s behind you. And workers are the largest, most available pool for this fight. Lately many have gravitated toward the venal right: Trump, Farage, Poilievre. No one in Carney’s inner team seems to have a clue about how they think.

And in case you’re wondering what I mean by workers, here’s a definition: people who must consider applying for whatever jobs are advertised, vs. seeking a place to practise skills they’ve acquired through diligent study and training, like “professionals.” Even if they took a course somewhere, it’s not nearly as dependable as the prospects of doctors, lawyers and, of course, scions.