ABSTRACT
Today, trade unions are under increasing assault from both politicians and employers. Private sector trade unions in North America and the United Kingdom have had to deal with downsizing, layoffs and the casualization of employment. Public sector unions have had to confront legislation or court decisions which limit their power and growth, the privatization of public corporations; and government action abrogating freely negotiated collective agreements (Catano, Cole and Hebert, 1995). Hartley (1995) recently assessed the impact of changes in the economic, political and social context on these employment relationships. Referring primarily to the situation in the United Kingdom, she noted the dominance of a right wing ideology in the national government which valued the private market above all other organizational relationships. As trade unions are seen as impediments to the operation of the free market, the U.K. government enacted legislation to reduce the power and growth of trade unions and professions. The dominance of these right wing ideologies is reflected in the privatization of the public sector, that is, the selling off of public corporations to the private sector. Hartley identified privatization as causing ‘… considerable employment uncertainty in parts of the public sector, such as local government, health and the civil service, where the future of jobs is unknown, or where market forces push down wages, make jobs redundant and casualize others’ (Hartley, 1995, p. 8). She could just as easily have been describing the political situation in Canada today, at both the federal and, particularly, the provincial levels.
