SOME REAL PROBLEMS WITH BIG CANADIAN UNIONS
I think my union - the BCGEU - is very undemocratic. I wish we members could actually VOTE for our union leaders - but our leaders won't let us.
July 27, 2025: I'm a member of the BCGEU, which is British Columbia's largest union with over 90,000 members. The British Columbia General Employees Union represents a lot of people who work directly for the BC government, but also represents people who work in education, government liquor and cannabis stores, credit unions, wildfire fighters, highway maintenance, and etc.
In my opinion, the BCGEU 'leadership gang' does not have - or want - democratic elections. I think our union elections are phony and undemocratic. The way they have it set up is that the voting turnout of members is about, I think, 2% or 3% of the members. (Maybe 5%?) Maybe I'm wrong about this? If so I am definitely open to correction. For the most part, when elections take place, most members don't even know that elections for the union leadership are happening. There is no real 'election campaign' where candidates for the presidency and executive can talk to the members about their ideas and plans. There is no real opportunity for candidates and members to talk about the important issues of the day, and no real opportunity for union members to decide who they would like to vote for. None of that really happens. That kind of an election campaign never really happens.
And one result of this lack of democracy is that times are getting tougher and tougher for all union workers, while the banks and the oil companies and the investors and the 1% are getting richer and richer. And the BCGEU, and the union movement in general, does not fight against these things. The unions limit themselves to 'negotiating contracts', which is very nice, but while the unions limit themselves to that, our society is being devastated by powerful corporate forces who operate largely unopposed. In my opinion the Housing Crisis of the past twenty years has been quite deliberately done to us. The corporate sector has deliberately created a shortage of homes in Canada and used that shortage to push up rents and prices and mortgage payments. And this has been financially devastating to a lot of working people.
And our unions have never fought back against the housing disaster that's been imposed on us. I spoke to a UBC professor some months ago who said that if the BC government had kept "The High Tax On Land Profits" THAT WE USED TO HAVE ..... he said if we still had that tax he thought that the real cost of renting a 2 bedroom apartment in Vancouver would be about $1500 a month. Now, maybe these numbers are correct and maybe not, but why are our unions absent from the field when these kinds of things are being done to us. The corporate media of course are not going to tell us how to bring down the cost of housing, but our unions maybe 'should' be telling us about how to do it. But they don't. They remain absent from the field of battle, and so the 1% control government policy and millions of people are in a completely un-necessary housing disaster.
Our unions do have power. They have money and they have staff. They have the ability to fight for working people when we are being attacked. We hear that hundreds of thousands of Canadian families can barely afford to eat, while the super-rich keep getting richer and the corporations make record profits. But that doesn't seem to be an issue for our union leadership. If it is an issue, where are they? Why don't we ever hear from them? Why do they do nothing to help union members on these issues? Or ...maybe us union members don't want our unions to fight for us on these things. If so, then that's fine. But union members are never asked what we want; and the union leadership chooses to basically do nothing.
Why do our unions have no media with which they can reach out to, and inform, and educate, the public about all the important issues of the day. And they don't WANT to have a media. The BCGEU leadership was told many years ago they could be on television province wide here in BC - for free - to talk to the public about whatever they want to talk about. And they would not do it. The GEU leadership refused to be on TV for free, with their own show, to talk about worker's issues. Why did they not want to have free TV time? Maybe because they don't really work for us.
Decades ago, the unions used to be a voice on the important social issues of the day, because we union members NEED to have a voice with which we can talk to people about important issues. And we need to have union influence within our governments as well. The corporations and the .01% certainly have influence over our governments. In fact in my opinion they control all of our governments. So why don't the unions have a media that can discuss these things. And it could be done VERY cheaply.
The way it seems to work is that ..... the union leadership are allowed to have phony elections and these little gangs stay in power for long periods of time. And neither the media nor our governments seem to have any concern about the lack of democracy in our unions. And then the union leadership 'stay out of' all the big issues of the day and betray the interests of their members who are being sucked dry by the corporate and investor classes who run Canada. To me, that seems to be the way it works. And of course I could be completely wrong here, but from what I've seen over my many years in the union, I don't think I am wrong....
And I'm not faulting anybody for the way things are. That's the way it is with the BCGEU. And maybe a lot of other unions as well. But it really is time for some change.
For example, I've been a member of the BCGEU for maybe 20 years. And over that twenty years, there has been an economic disaster for millions of Canadians, and especially working-class and lower income Canadians, as the housing crisis and the health care crisis and inflation and the cost of living (and pollution and chemicals) have harmed a lot of Canadians, including BCGEU members. And our unions have not really fought for us on those things. Why not?
The BCGEU is now talking about a strike. Why? According to a survey done by the union ... and I don't know how accurate the survey is, but the survey says: Almost half of GEU members are living paycheck to paycheck. About 30% are using their savings to pay for normal monthly living expenses. One in five who responded to the survey said they have a second job to make ends meet. And 70% are paying more than 30% of their income for shelter. It is generally thought that when a person or family is paying more than 30% of income on housing, they are entering a danger zone for financial problems. And as we know, these days a LOT of people are having to pay a lot more than 30% of their income for a place to live. And a lot of that money is flowing up the ladder to the people at the top. And why are our unions silent on all of this, when they could and maybe should be leading the fight to fix this mess up.
Our unions can be fixed up. But it can only be fixed up if union members recognize the problem, and then begin to work together to regain control of our unions and get them to do what we want them to be doing. Whatever that may be. Personally I would love to see our unions begin to speak up for working people and to begin to fight for working people on issues like housing and health care and pollution and health. For too long the corporations have had far too much power, while one of our power groups, the unions, seem to be lost to us.
We have to begin to change that if we want to be doing better for ourselves. If we don't, then things will, I think, only continue to get worse for working people.
