John Robson: Unions Have No Business Supporting Anti-Israel Protests

Protesters chant near a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on the University of Toronto campus on May 2, 2024. The Canadian Press/Christopher Katsarov

Commentary

Permit me to draw your attention to the curious incident of the public-sector unions in the campus protest. You may see nothing curious in Ontario government unions embracing Hamas because it’s the sort of radical extremist thing they always do. But to see the world clearly, we must preserve the capacity to be surprised at what does not surprise us.

Frankly, I think we should be startled at the image of these unions preventing rapacious Dickensian governments from exploiting downtrodden bureaucrats. We all know state employees enjoy better average pay, far better job security, and lavish pensions, though they don’t seem very happy on average. But there’s something even weirder about organizations whose ostensible purpose is to protect Canada’s labour aristocracy as if they were the proletariat going about encouraging public servants to join pro-Hamas demonstrations.

For instance here’s Fred Hahn, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario and ex officio a VP of CUPE nationally, donning a keffiyeh to wave pink union flags and shake hands at the “People’s Circle for Palestine encampment” at U of T. It’s a thing for Hahn, who caused a commotion last fall by immediately enthusing about the Oct. 7 atrocities on social media.

It’s also a thing for his union, whose militant leadership is urging members to join a demonstration organized by the ghastly Palestinian Youth Movement beloved of progressives. Something dark is going on here.

Not in the dark, mind you. A spokesman for another public-sector union, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, threatened a professor who documented the non-student presence at the U of T “encampment” with “street-based consequences” on X, adding “Watch your back.” Arguably such conduct would get you fired from almost any other outfit. But the public-sector unions are all-in on the radical package.

What’s going on here? And why aren’t we surprised?

Even economically, these unions are a disaster. In a sense, the problem with unionization is that it works. It manages to squeeze more out of employers than the labour in question is worth. At least in the short run. In the long run there is no free lunch, so companies and industries facing state-mandated unionization, like U.S. carmakers, go into long, ugly declines.

It can be delayed, including by back-loading benefits. But as GM’s CFO said in 2014, “You can’t be a $100 billion pension plan with a car company attached to it.” At least not indefinitely. And as Henry Hazlitt said of the childless John Maynard Keynes’ famous flippant dismissal of prudence (“In the long run we are all dead”), “Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.” And Hazlitt’s retort dates to 1946. That tomorrow arrived decades ago.

The bottom line is that private-sector unionization means the job that just disappeared would have paid more than it was worth. (Just as the health care you can’t access would cost less than it was worth.) So in Canada, private-sector unionization is down to only 15.5 percent from 32.2 percent in 1970. But in the public sector it’s 76.7 percent. And not coincidentally, our governments are as efficient, open, and pleasant as a British coal mine in 1974.

Naturally, unions switched to targeting the public sector where you can raise prices, wreck service, and stick citizens with the bill. Not indefinitely, but far longer than firms dependent on voluntary customers with choices.

Sure, government becomes sclerotic and unaffordable and the public and political mood sours. But we’re all right, Jack, with defined-benefit pension plans and early retirement to barbecue thick juicy cuts of meat while you boil rice. It’s called “social justice.”

It gets worse. Much worse. This wealth-destroying disaster can only strike if unions succeed in usurping crucial management decisions. But if the entity is government, seizing control offers far bigger prizes than mere cash. Powerful public-sector unions can dictate policy. And they do, endlessly organizing, agitating, wrangling, speechifying, and voting after normal people have fled the room, only to wonder years later what went wrong.

Parents, for instance, do not run education in Ontario, directly or through school trustees. Nor do politicians, or teachers. Unions do. And not coincidentally, schools are unbearably woke, discipline is in ruins, and students learn little or nothing.

Which brings me to CUPE, OPSEU, and Hamas. These unions aren’t just squeezing taxpayers’ wallets into their members’ pockets relentlessly. They’re squeezing public policy into DEI and now anti-Semitic lawbreaking. And it’s especially odd that Hahn, frequently and pointedly dressed in pink because “in 2010, Fred made labour history by becoming the first openly gay President of CUPE Ontario,” is a public serial enthusiast for an outfit that hates homosexuals at least as much as it hates Jews.

We need to be astonished. And appalled.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.