‘Where There Are Scabs, There Is Violence’—That’s Why Scabs Are Illegal in Two Canadian Provinces

Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has vigorously condemned violence on the picket lines in Michigan, Massachusetts, and California—laying the blame on management for using replacement workers, or as we usually call them in the labor movement, scabs.

But replacement workers are not a phenomenon we should take for granted. In Quebec and British Columbia, legislatures have adopted laws against the use of replacement workers.

SCABS BANNED SINCE 1977

The province of Quebec was the first jurisdiction in North America to pass legislation banning replacement workers, in 1977, after significant increases in picket line violence across the province. One dispute was a 20-month-long strike involving UAW Local 510 and United Aircraft (later called Pratt & Whitney), which became one of the most violent strikes in Canadian history. In a blunt observation about replacement workers, Quebec’s Minister of Labour, Pierre-Marc Johnson, stated on the floor of the legislature that “where there are scabs there is violence.” Johnson said his government further supported a greater balance in the bargaining dynamic between labor and management.

British Columbia’s progressive New Democratic Party government passed similar legislation in 1993. Both provinces provide very narrow exceptions to the ban, including the maintenance of “essential service” agreements (like paramedics) or the maintenance of vulnerable machinery.

Canada’s federal government considered a ban on replacement workers following the most tragic lockout experience since the UAW strikes in Quebec. The city of Yellowknife was torn between pro-union and pro-employer groups during the 18-month strike that began as a lockout in May 1992. Families who had worked the mine for generations were irreparably divided. Peggy Witte, the controversial CEO of Royal Oak Mines, employed Pinkerton guards whose primary purpose was to taunt picketers and flew in a police riot squad who fired warning shots above picketers’ heads. Canadian mining employers had rarely used scabs for 50 years; by bringing them in, Witte brought the collective bargaining to an end.

In response, the federal government adopted a ban on replacement workers—but only where it could be shown that the scabs were hired to undermine the union’s “representational capacity” rather than because the employer was pursuing “legitimate bargaining objectives.” Many advocates of the ban saw the federal response as lacking.

archive: https://archive.ph/gGY36