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Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin, Unions in the Time of Revolution: Government and Restructuring in Alberta and Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2003)

IF A PERSON had their choice of occupations during the 1990s, the role of union leader in Alberta or Ontario would likely not top the list. It was a job entailing difficult struggle against an onslaught of right-wing government reform under the leaderships of Ralph Klein and Mike Harris, respectively. The 1990s was clearly a period of unfiltered conflict and historic challenges for unions in those provinces. It was also one of those rarely occurring periods that provide researchers with bountiful material for research into unions and their response to political challenges.

Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin explore this fertile territory in their book, Unions in the Time of Revolution. They conduct a comparative study of union responses to neo-conservative political attacks in the two provinces. In particular, they examine the use of collective action by unions to achieve political ends. Their study uncovers significant differences in how unions in each province responded to threats to their membership.

Alberta and Ontario are an appropriate pairing for study. In the 1990s both provinces elected governments with similar ideological outlooks and policy agendas. Their respective periods of aggressive neo-conservative change overlap — Alberta between 1993 and 1997 and Ontario between 1995 and 2001. But despite their similarities, important differences exist in the political cultures and in the policy agendas of the two provinces. It is these differences, Reshef and Rastin find, that explain the divergent choices made by unions in response to neo-conservative threats.

Reshef and Rastin focus on two key differences. The first is that the "Harris and Klein governments operated within different political cultures and industrial-relations environments. Overall, the Alberta political culture and industrial relations scene was more conducive to a neo- conservative upheaval." (193) Second, Ontario and Alberta differed in their policy approach to unions. "Harris set out to inflict lasting damage upon the unions by significantly changing the long-established informal and formal rules of the industrial-relations game." (188) Despite Klein's reputation, Reshef and Rastin build a case that he led a more pragmatic government, at least in terms of labour relations, and neither needed nor chose to challenge unions directly. For Reshef and Rastin it is union leaders' perception that "territorial rights and boundaries" of the union itself are at risk that leads to collective mobilization. This perception was created in Ontario, but not Alberta.

As an account of the "revolutionary" periods in these two provinces, the book is masterful. Reshef and Rastin provide detailed, insightful accounts of key labour relations struggles in the two provinces — including mandatory wage rollbacks and the Calgary laundry workers' strike in Alberta, and the Days of Action and the 1997 teachers' strike in Ontario. They weave the stories with accuracy and ensure the proper political context is included. Their accounts of the evolving relationships between public sector unions and the Conservative governments underscore the complexities of the neo-conservative policy agenda.

However, Reshef and Rastin overstate the inherent conservatism of Alberta, while simultaneously under-estimating Ontario's conservative strains. Alberta unions are perceived as pursuing traditional business unionism, while their Ontario counterparts are cast as more politically attuned. They are correct to point out the weakness of the Alberta industrial relations regime for union activism. Restrictive labour laws, low union density, and an oppressive political culture are important factors to consider. However, they do not provide adequate evidence to suggest that Alberta unions are more conservative than their Ontario counterparts. The lack of collective action from Alberta unions may relate more to the restrictive environment in which they operate than any political predisposition of the leadership within those unions.

Reshef and Rastin adopt an industrial relations model, while folding in collective action theory to fill out their analysis. This is a useful framework, as it allows them to isolate the elements of the employer-union relationship that have the potential to lead to collective action. However, the framework also has inherent limitations.

These limitations are embedded in how they frame the decision to mobilize for collective action: "This decision is a result of a cost-benefit analysis that, in turn is the product of the union leaders' perception of the degree of the government threat, the leaders' belief about the merit and feasibility of collective action, and contextual contingencies that are internal and external to the union organization." (183)

First, as the quote demonstrates, Reshef and Rastin's hypothesis rests heavily on a rationalist, economic calculation. They argue that unions assess their organizational self-interest and weigh the various advantages and disadvantages to collective action — a cost-benefit analysis. While this theoretical lens is useful in many respects, it neglects many of the richer aspects of how unions operate. Decisions such as these are made in a boiler-room atmosphere under difficult timelines and tense discussions. Factors such as internal union politics, personal psychology, political disposition, leaders' perceptions of the union role in politics, and other factors can play strong roles in shaping the final decision.

The second limitation is their leader-focussed approach. Reshef and Rastin rely heavily on a series of interviews with union leaders in the two provinces. The membership of the unions is relegated to a supporting role.

There is a certain irony in an analysis of collective action and rank-and-file mobilization that centres on union leaders exclusively. Conceptually, if we only look at leaders' decisions, we cannot come to understand why union members act or fail to act collectively. If we wish to understand what motivates a union member to engage in collective action, then we need to explore the rank-and-file in relation to their leadership, as well as the leadership's relationship with political decision-makers.

The tendency to examine elites builds a bias toward conservative explanations. Union leaders in many of the case studies examined believed they could not successfully mobilize their membership. However, this perception is not tested or challenged. Reshef and Rastin are quick to accept the explanations that the membership is reluctant to act, and many actually supportive of Klein and Harris.

Reshef and Rastin construct a vivid re-telling of how collective mobilization such as the Days of Action came to occur (or not occur), and of their ultimate failure, for the most part, to change government policy (or election results). The explanation of why these actions failed to change political directions was not Reshef and Rastin's primary concern, but their failure to explore the reasons for the ineffectiveness is a missed opportunity. A fuller discussion of why union political mobilization failed to change government policy might shed light on the reasons for labour's recent political impotence, and may offer suggestions for how unions should go about trying to mobilize members more effectively in the future.

Ultimately, Unions in the Time of Revolution provides a partial picture of how union collective action arises. It offers a rich analysis of institutional structures and relations during the 1990s in the two provinces. In this respect it is a valuable contribution to understanding the formalized aspects of post-Fordist industrial relations. However, for those wishing to learn more about how and why workers mobilize workers, it offers little insight. For those readers, this book may be more useful for demonstrating the barriers to union collective action, rather than for identifying keys to unlocking the power of unionized workers. For that answer, we need to look elsewhere.


Jason Foster Alberta Federation of Labour

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