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The United Steelworkers is the most diverse union in Canada. We represent working people across the country in almost every job imaginable.

Our union has grown beyond its "traditional industries" and embraced new challenges. We have welcomed call centre workers, security officers, restaurant and hotel employees, and health care staff to our union. We have brought the benefits of union membership to those who need it most.

We continue to organize the unorganized.

1. From crisis to opportunity

   For the better part of two decades, our traditional sectors in steel, mining, and manufacturing have seen a devastating decline in membership as a result of corporate-led globalization and technological change. The Steelworkers have quickly responded to this reality with a persistent effort to reach out and appeal to so-called non-traditional sectors. The major organizing drives in the early 1980s in Quebec (District 5) to bring thousands of poorly-paid, exploited security guards into our ranks provided a sparkling example for the rest of the union to follow.

   Ever since that pioneering effort, which created the largest Steelworkers local union, we have not hesitated to target and embrace all kinds of service industries. The United Steelworkers now represents tens of thousands of credit union clerks, bank employees, ski-resort workers, health care workers, scientists, municipal employees, restaurant and hotel staff, social workers, airline and railroad employees, truckers, bakers, and university administrators.

   At the same time as the first serious initiatives in security were underway in Quebec, the Steelworkers in Ontario (District 6) were targeting the growing problem of low-waged women in manufacturing ghettos. Several high profile strikes, boycotts, and public campaigns – Radio Shack, Fotomat, Irwin Toy among others – put the Steelworkers in the forefront of a remarkable surge in organizing working women. Those struggles helped build alliances with the broader women’s movement and fuelled the union’s own internal development of "women of steel" and empowerment.

   Organizing efforts in District 3 broke new ground when credit union clerks and University of Victoria Student Society employees joined the Steelworkers’ ranks. These workers recongized the value of having a union represent them in the workplace. Their decision brought them more dignity on the job and control over working conditions.

   From low-wage security guards to the Women of Steel and everything in between -- the organizing principle linking all of these efforts was our concept of ‘Everybody’s Union’. Steelworker organizers were actively rebuilding the union throughout the ‘80s. We refused to let the recession slow us down. The 1989 National Policy Conference officially adopted the ‘Everybody’s Union’ theme in recognition of the growing linguistic, racial, occupational, and gender diversity of the United Steelworkers in Canada.

   Throughout the 1990s, staff organizers and volunteers kept the Steelworkers consistently in the top five or six growing unions in Canada. Of course, the Canadian labour movement had the additional background benefit of a more responsive and relatively worker-friendly regime of labour laws. The NDP government of Ontario (1990 to 1995) kept a controversial election promise and directly facilitated a resurgence of organizing activity by all unions in central Canada, with an extensive package of labour law amendments. Similar changes in western Canada under NDP governments and in Quebec with the Parti Québecois, enhanced the organizing potential of unions.

   But the good times didn’t last. To no one’s surprise, the right-wing government elected in Ontario in 1995 gutted years of statutory progress for working people. British Columbians are also witnessing the devastating effects of a neo-liberal government as they watch over a decade’s worth of progressive legislation vanish at the stroke of a pen. These provinces’ sharp turns to the right have signalled other changes taking place all across Canada: much tougher attitudes by employers in both private and public sectors; increasing use of American-style anti-union consultants during organizing campaigns; and the crudest forms of intimidation to frighten workers off the idea of joining a union.

   Our union refused to let the brutal recession of the early ’80s kill our spirit, compelling us instead to regroup, refocus, and pour energy into organizing new sectors outside our historic jurisdictions. So too, we have not allowed the resurgent right-wing political reality of the ’90s kill our creativity and adaptability. In fact, some of our best organizing years in the past two decades across the country were in the late 1990s as major new units of employees in manufacturing industries as well as employees in new sectors such as post-secondary education chose to join the Steelworkers. And our organizing success continues in the new century as french fry plant workers in Alberta recently voted to join our union after a legal battle with the employer.

   Even before the new impetus provided by the Organizing Task Force in 1998, the National and District Directors encouraged and approved the development of new courses, new training exercises and new targeting in our organizing endeavours.

   Our union has conducted extensive member-outreach and training programs to spread the organizing message and to recruit talent. District 5 has made creative use of teams of trained, regionally-based volunteers who are called in to specific campaigns, or in to a wider regional effort, as determined by the organizing coordinator. Districts 3 and 6 have used conferences and schools to brainstorm about targets and about regional goal-setting. Both Districts have used mass membership mailings to recruit trainees for organizing training schools.

    

2. Building on a strong tradition:

Organizing is about more than making house calls and leafleting. It is about building pride in our accomplishments – celebrating our successes. It is about sharing our expertise. It is about not only seeking to represent workers but supporting working families and their communities in their goals for economic and social justice and equality. Strong and progressive gains at the bargaining table gradually become known to non-union working people. Our strong record of bargaining progress continues to attract new members.

Organizing is not just a priority for the union. It is fundamentally what ‘Everybody’s Union’ must be about. We must continue our efforts in both our traditional resource and manufacturing sectors, and in the new and emerging service sectors where we have experienced so many recent successes.

When we look to the future, we know that we can do more. Our success in organizing in the coming years will depend on our ability to further develop the networks with which we have worked so effectively in the past.

1. Solidarity with Young Workers

In Canada, unionization has historically been strong in the "goods sectors" such as manufacturing, construction, mining and logging. However, 95 per cent of job growth has been outside these sectors. More "part-time" jobs and low-paying service jobs dominate our economy, and most part-time workers (or a disproportionate number of them) are young workers. The Steelworkers must reach out to young people because they will bring a new energy to our union and because it is the right thing to do.

We must continue to develop stronger links with our members and their communities. Supporting the campaigns and activities of community, aboriginal and ethnic organizations will help Steelworkers better understand issues faced by those communities. In turn, community organizations will better understand the role unions can play and provide support to the unorganized members of their communities in joining a union.

Community organizing has inspired the American labour movement to believe that organizing is possible even when the governmental environment is unfavourable.

Our work with community-based and ethnic organizations will also help to develop training materials for staff and volunteer organizers on workplace challenges facing people with disabilities, visible minority workers and aboriginal persons.

Finally, we must co-ordinate with Steelworker aboriginal members for the union to better understand and respect aboriginal traditions so that we may more effectively reach out to aboriginal workers.

We must continue to focus on new organizing opportunities in our more traditional resource and manufacturing sectors. We must also explore ways for regional, area and sector-based councils to play a stronger and more active role in cross-District strategic organizing initiatives in areas such as call centres, transportation, security guards and the hospitality sector.

Ongoing research and polling on demographics and attitudes on organizing can help to explore the strengths that Steelworkers bring to workers as well as to help the union develop new organizing materials and resources.

We must use the tactics and strategies of "corporate campaigns" in support of organizing campaigns where employers break the law. Employer opposition to unions has been emboldened by the removal of penalties from labour laws across the country. Our union must send a message to employers that use illegal means to oppose the organizing rights of their employees. We will not stand idly by when employers engage in coercion and intimidation against workers who are exercising their rights.

We must look at what services the union can provide to the diverse membership in small units. The Steelworker Trusteed Benefit Plan, specifically designed to bring the benefits of large groups to small bargaining units, is growing rapidly from its base in the security industry. As well, there are now four fully-functioning dental offices in Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton and Ottawa. Steelworker-sponsored initiatives like the Canadian Steel Trade and Employment Congress (CSTEC) and the Mining Industry Training and Adjustment Council (MITAC) are other examples of programs and services that help workers in areas of training and adjustment. In addition, labour-sponsored investment funds such as le Fond Solidarité, the First Ontario Fund and the Crocus Fund and other Steelworker affinity programs benefit our members and their families.

We must continue to expand our global labour partnerships and union exchange programs with, for example, the Authentic Workers’ Front in Mexico, Cominco workers in South America, and with our sister unions in Australia and Great Britain. These strategic alliances allow us to share critical information on organizing strategies and can help us put pressure on employers in organizing drives.

5. Solidarity – the Bottom Line

The resources needed to succeed in growing the union are both financial and human. The dues structure was changed in 1998 to provide additional revenues to supplement the existing three per cent organizing fund. But the bottom line to building ‘Everybody’s Union’ is each and every Steelworker member.

It is the involvement of members inside and outside of the workplace that builds the union. It is talking about the union and it is building pride and confidence in the union.

We must continue to strengthen our own link with our members and potential members. We must use our ‘You and Your Union’ course more extensively and we must use technology more effectively to communicate and motivate our members inside and outside the workplace.

We also need to better co-ordinate our education and organizing efforts so that we can learn from each other and we can identify new opportunities. Ongoing Working Groups of National and District staff in the areas of education and organizing would help serve this purpose.

We must continue to identify and train designated organizers. And, we must train and support community-based organizers. We must develop specific targets, allocate our resources, and involve our members, their families and communities in helping to build and strengthen ‘Everybody’s Union’.