Here’s an interesting stat I stumbled on while researching this column: 97 percent of all labor contracts in Canada are resolved before any union workers walk out to picket their employers with biting signs and songs of solidarity.

That’s too bad, I say. Nothing makes a Monday morning like listening to grown men chant “Hey hey, ho ho, fake raises gotta’ go” while you’re stopped at a red light.

Regardless, the majority of our parliamentarians in Ottawa feel there’s a need to give a huge — and I mean huge — leg up to unions when negotiations collapse in those remaining three percent of contracts.

Earlier this year, a union-spurred private-member’s bill that bans federally regulated companies from bringing in replacement workers, contractors, or picket crossers wanting to work during strikes, moved another step closer to becoming law.

The anti-scab Bill C-257, which naturally is being denounced by most Canadian businesses, including trucking companies, passed a second reading vote in the House of Commons by 167 to 101 last December. The bill is before the Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, and barring a springtime federal election, it’s likely to pass the formality of third reading and become law just in time for strikers to enjoy the improved outdoor weather.

Inspired by provincial anti-scab legislation in force in Quebec and B.C., the bill was introduced by Bloc Quebecois MP Richard Nadeau, whose party has been trying to export the law nationwide for over a decade. Call it competitive imbalance.

This time around, the proposal was backed unanimously by the NDP, and with a small handful of pinkish Tories jumping on the bandwagon, the survival of the bill rested with the Liberal Party. It swayed heavily left, of course. But it kinda’ makes you wonder, if the Grits were so hot for this idea, why they didn’t greenlight likeminded proposals in their own 14-year rule. Oh well, I guess the issues just look different from the opposition benches.

Nadeau insists a similar 30-year-old law in Quebec has cut the average length of strikes in half compared to those under the Canada Labour Code.

Business groups like the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) say the opposite is true. Either way, it’s not hard to imagine how it would bite into that aforementioned 97-percent
pre-strike settlement rate. With almost all the leverage, why wouldn’t unions be a little braver about doing battle — at least until they squeeze a better deal through arbitration?

While the level of unionization in the trucking industry is relatively low — only about 20 percent of drivers in the for-hire sector (many of those in LTL) versus 32 percent of the general workforce — the portion of the industry that is unionized is characterized by a stable labor-relations climate, points out CTA chief David Bradley. He adds that from 2000 to 2006, there were only seven work stoppages in trucking companies regulated under the Canada Labour Code, and there were no strikes or lockouts at all in 2004 or 2005.

“From our perspective Bill C-257 is unnecessary — some have called it a solution in search of a problem,” he says.

While only one in five drivers is unionized, trucking companies, as any link in the supply chain, are at the mercy of other businesses — many unionized — in order to operate efficiently. And how many more truckers’ livelihoods are dependent on the federally regulated railways, seaports, and airports — all prime targets for unions to test their new, legislated muscle?

Also, as Bradley warns, MPs shouldn’t expect the trucking industry as a whole to step in and keep freight moving in the event of a prolonged strike affecting one of these modes — especially rail. “Capacity constraints in trucking and the physical nature of much rail freight would prevent the trucking industry from taking up all the slack,” he says.

Successful economies crave stability. After years of legislating away the stability of what Bradley calls the “labor relations balance”, Canada increasingly looks like a country that does its best to scare away investment.

And wouldn’t a little more investment in say, the auto sector, look good to unions right about now?