The Rand Formula: Heart and soul of the labour movement?
by SEBASTIAN LAMB
As people who have worked in unionized workplaces in Canada know, union dues are automatically deducted from your pay-cheque, along with CPP and EI contributions. Everyone covered by a collective agreement negotiated between a union and management must pay union dues, although no one is obliged to join the union.
This practice – “the Rand Formula” – dates back to 1946. Ivan Rand was a judge appointed as an arbitrator to come up with a settlement to resolve a 99-day strike by 10 000 Ford workers in Windsor, Ontario. In late 1945 these auto workers had struck for a “union shop” (requiring all workers to join the union) and “check-off” (compelling the employer to deduct union dues from pay-cheques and hand them over to the union, relieving union activists of the time-consuming task of collecting dues from each member). They used mass direct action against the intransigent anti-union employer: mass pickets, shutting down the Ford plant power-house, and a car blockade of the plant.
Solidarity strikes by about 8 500 other workers from some 30 establishments and the threat that such strikes would spread across Canada made it too risky for the government to try to smash the strike with repression. But by promising not to send in troops the federal Liberals were able to get key labour leaders to agree not to escalate the struggle. Then the government convinced the company and the union to let Rand settle the dispute.
Rand ruled that Ford workers did not have to join the union, but that they all had to pay dues to it, since they all benefited from the fruits of collective bargaining. He also granted the check-off. For its part, the union was required to not only disown strikes that happened during the term of a contract (wildcats) but also to discipline members who took part in them. If the union failed in its duties, the company could withhold the dues it collected from members.
This “Rand Formula” spread far beyond Ford. It was later incorporated into labour law so that today it applies in almost all unionized workplaces – a distinctive feature of organized labour in Canada. It has generally been accepted by employers and right-wing parties, although hard right ideologues like those of the Fraser Institute and National Post columnists fulminate against it.
This past August, the youth wing of the Quebec Liberal Party passed a motion calling for the abolition of the Rand Formula. It will be discussed at the Quebec Liberals’ convention in November. The National Union of Provincial and General Employees (NUPGE) quickly responded. Noting “a warning that Canadian labour must take seriously,” it issued a statement that called the Quebec Young Liberals’ proposal an attack on “the basis of Canadian trade unionism.” It warned that the governing party in Quebec will soon “debate the abolition of what amounts to the heart and soul of the labour movement in Canada.”
Without question, any attempt to strip the Rand Formula from the law must be opposed – like any other reactionary change to labour law. The removal of the Rand Formula in any province would throw unions there into chaos, strengthening bosses’ hands over workers in the workplace and emboldening capitalists to press other provincial governments to follow the leader.
But when right-wingers attack the Rand Formula, the last thing the labour movement should do is heap praise on it like NUPGE did. Far from being “the heart and soul of the labour movement,” the Rand Formula has contributed to the bureaucratization of unions. The duties it imposes on union officials give them a greater interest in opposing direct action on the job and policing workers, all for the sake of keeping the dues flowing. The mandatory payment of dues by check-off insulates officials from workers: when all workers must pay dues no matter what union officials do, officials have less reason to respond to workers’ concerns. The Rand Formula is one of the reasons why, ironically, few unions today are capable of the kind of law-defying militancy and solidarity that won the 1945 Ford strike.
In 1946, the dangers of the Rand Formula were recognized by only a few insightful radicals. The Marxist paper Labor Challenge wrote that “The company, holding the check-off purse-strings, hopes to convert the union into a strike-breaking agency by compelling it to declare wildcat strikes illegal and to repudiate its own picket lines.” Almost sixty years later there is no excuse for uncritically defending the Rand Formula.
Why the brass loves it
Why, then, does the labour officialdom sing such praises to it? For one thing, it guarantees the steady flow of union dues. More fundamentally, it’s one of the foundations of stable union institutions. The Rand Formula gives the blessing of the state to “responsible” unions – unions that negotiate pay and benefits, help to minimize strikes and direct action on the job, and endorse capitalism.
The NUPGE statement reveals what top officials think the “basis of Canadian trade unionism” is. For full-time officials (and those who aspire to become full-timers), acceptance by the state and employers is vital. It allows them to go about their business with a minimum of trouble. For the officialdom, the stability and legitimacy of union institutions are much more important than the power of unions as organizations of workers’ solidarity and struggle.
It is unlikely that any government in Canada will go after the Rand Formula in the short-term because this would provoke a major confrontation with the unions of a kind that many unionized employers see as unnecessary. But with the percentage of wage-earners in unions slowly declining, fairly low levels of workers’ confidence and resistance, and most labour leaderships cautious and compliant, it’s possible that a provincial government might decide to see what it could get away with.
Whatever happens, activists need to be clear about why we need to oppose right-wing attacks on the Rand Formula while at the same time pointing out how it strengthens the worst aspects of our unions and saps their real heart and soul: workers’ power. ★
Sebastian Lamb is an editor of New Socialist.