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The worst economic slowdown to hit the world since the Great Depression doesn't seem to have deterred workers from taking their grievances to the picket lines.

Indeed, the number of work days lost to strikes in the first three months of 2009 was almost double that of a year earlier, before the financial crisis hit and the national unemployment rate soared, according to data from Statistics Canada.

Labour experts say workers' anger about being asked to bear what they see as the brunt of the recession, as well as fear of losing hard-won benefits, are overcoming nervousness that striking could cause them to lose their jobs.

Major strikes under way include those by city workers in Toronto and Windsor; miners at Vale Inco in Sudbury, Port Colborne and Voisey's Bay, N.L.; and paramedics in B.C.

Alan Hall, director of labour studies at the University of Windsor, said it's unusual to see workers so willing to embark on major strikes during a recession, indicating that this economic slowdown is different from ones that have preceded it.

Hall said many workers resent their employers for asking for major concessions from their employees while continuing to enjoy raises, benefits -- and often huge bonuses -- themselves.

"I think part of the reason the workers are willing to stay out in these kinds of conditions is they see the causes of the current recession and crisis as being clearly not of their making, and that there's a certain level of anger that's out there that can be mobilized," Hall said.

The city workers in Ontario were driven to hit the picket lines by "an element of 'Do as I say, not as I do"' in negotiations with Toronto and Windsor, said Paul Moist, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

In Windsor, city councillors who sit for four terms, or 16 years, are given retiree benefits, but the same council is requesting that new CUPE hires do without, Moist said.  And in Toronto, workers were upset when city council voted to give itself a 2.42 per cent cost-of-living raise in February but asked workers to accept a pay freeze, he added.

"Many commentators have blistered that council, saying, 'Wait a minute, how can you take a 2.4 per cent wage increase?' The recession was occurring in February, and now you say to someone who cleans washrooms or picks up garbage for a living, 'Have zero,"' Moist said.

In the private sector, there's an even deeper sense of distrust, as many see major corporations as primarily responsible for the financial crisis and the global recession that followed.  In the northern Ontario city of Sudbury, employees of international nickel miner Vale Inco hit the picket lines on Monday after failing to ratify a contract that proposed eliminating a bonus tied to the price of nickel. It would also move new employees into a defined-contribution pension plan, instead of allowing them to join the defined-benefit plan that already exists.

The United Steelworkers, which represents more than 3,000 Vale Inco workers in Sudbury, saw Vale's demands and immediately questioned how they would benefit the company in the short run, said Steelworkers economist Erin Weir.

"Scaling back the bonus plan would only have an effect if things rebound and the bonus plan starts paying again, and similarly, getting rid of defined-benefit pensions for new hires would only save the company money 30 years from now when those workers retire," Weir said.

"I think there is a sense of outrage that the corporate sector caused this mess and is now using the mess to demand concessions from workers who really aren't responsible for the crisis at all."
In addition, workers resented a profitable international corporation -- Vale earned $13.2 billion US in 2008 -- trying to take away their hard-earned benefits, said Ken Neumann, the United Steelworkers' national director for Canada.

"These collective agreements have taken years and years of struggle to get to where we're at today, and yet here's an employer that's using the global recession as an excuse to try to claw back some of these hard-fought gains that our members have made," he said. "They're significantly profitable and yet they're trying to turn the clock back."

Statistics Canada data show that an average of 271,370 eight-hour work days were lost every month to work stoppages in the first quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which numbers are available. This is almost double the monthly average of 137,780 work days lost in the first quarter of 2008, before the recession started.

However, this is still down significantly from numbers that were regularly in the millions in the 1970s -- an indication that the overall relationship between unions and their employers has improved, said Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti.

"Some employers are trying to take advantage of the economic climate to get concessions, and that obviously is ending up in some significant disputes, but overall most employers are coming to the table with reasonable expectations and reasonable demands, and we're finding settlements," Georgetti said.

Windsor University's Hall questioned how long the short-term trend towards more labour unrest will continue if current strikes prove to be unsuccessful. "Certainly if some of these current strikes end in failure for the unions, that's not going to encourage other unions to take the same position," he said.

The major strikes under way are affecting approximately 1,800 city workers in Windsor and 24,000 in Toronto, 3,500 Vale Inco employees and 3,500 paramedics in B.C.

Labour disputes were recently resolved for 3,400 teaching assistants, contract faculty and graduate assistants at York University, and 2,300 Ottawa transit workers. View the full article here.