Carney’s Stability Problem

On The Repercussions Of Air Canada Mistakes

The point of electing Mark Carney was stability.

To whatever extent it was about Trump and the American relationship in specific, his pitch was that he was a serious person at a serious time and he and he alone could be this country’s saviour. It was a refrain we saw a lot, between going to Europe before the campaign, the interruptions to the campaign to make announcements, and his general pitch not to trust Conservatives at a time of volatility. But now, he’s the PM of volatility and chaos.

Mark Carney has to abandon this ludicrous policy of forcing binding arbitration on the flight attendants at Air Canada this week. He has to, both because the damage of him not doing so will be a disaster, but because there’s no guarantee that it’ll even work. And the only thing worse than busting union rights and pissing off everybody is doing so and not even guaranteeing flights go off as normal this week. And that’s what seems likely.

I intentionally didn’t get into the details of the issues in Saturday’s piece on the decision to send them to binding arbitration - I don’t know what the “right” pay rise is and nobody does. How to compensate for unpaid hours without making flight attendants, many of whom make barely any money as it is, file taxes in Thailand or China or whatever country they fly to and “earn” that income in is a complicated gambit. That’s what unions are there to determine, and what negotiations are there to decide.

The fact that you can make sub-$2000 a month gross income working as a flight attendant means that a 38% raise sounds nice, and can be still not worth it. How the union wants to fight their fight - from the prioritization of who gets the biggest raises and who benefits most and least from any deal - is for them and their members. It’s not for me or for anyone else who is learning this shit on the fly to micromanage this process we barely understand.

It is also the right of a union to overplay its hand. Some people are trying to implicitly suggest that the government’s decision to send this to binding arbitration in direct contravention of the Charter is somehow okay because the union is asking too much. Maybe they are - again, I’m not qualified to tell you - but it is the right of workers to be unreasonable. The ‘94 MLB strike was probably unreasonable, given the circumstances, but the strike was allowed to continue, because it was their right to nearly kill their golden goose. In the same way, the 2013 NHL lockout was allowed to continue, because we don’t regulate work stoppages just because the instigating side is being dumb. (I am aware of the fact that a court order ended the 1994 strike, but it ended it in 1995 because the players agreed to end the strike if the NLRB ruling was upheld by a judge. In that case, the court order backed the instigating party, which is the opposite of what happened here.)

Let’s be clear: the right to strike, while not universally applicable or absolute, does not depend on passing some arbitrary reasonableness test. Most of the great things we take for granted, like fucking weekends or free at the point of use healthcare, have been deemed unreasonable until the point at which they’re enacted. Whether Air Canada is being generous enough with a 38% offer is irrelevant to the right to strike, because it’s a union’s job to represent their members. If they think they can get more, they have the right to try.

As I wrote on Saturday, there’s an obvious way to back down - give Canadians a week of certainty by delaying the strike. Tell Canadians that the strike will be allowed as of the 24th of August, that any flights on or after that day aren’t guaranteed, and that it’s on Air Canada to rebook them, while giving Canadians currently waiting for flights the ability to get home, is a reasonable compromise. If CUPE seriously opposed such a measure they’d be rightly pilloried, and the government would look responsive and sensible for walking back such a bad idea. They’d still take a hit, but a small one.

If this is the beginning of wildcat action that destroys Air Canada’s business this week and sets a precedent that the rule book is worthless, then Carney’s whole fundamental premise is fucked. He’s the political equivalent of a knuckleball pitcher - somehow who excels by being different than you expect and being good at it. A knuckleballer who can’t find the strike zone won’t succeed trying to throw conventional pitches, and Carney won’t succeed if Mr. Stability leads to the new golden age of labour strife.

Carney’s a business guy, and it’s plausible that he mishandled this because of that fact, but I don’t really care about his motives. I care about his business background for a reason - he has absolutely seen dozens, if not hundreds, of corporate leaders defend bad decisions against cratering stock prices and shareholder anger that inevitably gets reversed. He would know better than me that the least lasting damage is done to the companies that move first. He has to back down, and the sooner he does it the better for all involved.

“In our rush to ensure that Canadians wouldn’t be stranded, we made a rash decision that unfairly trampled on Canadians’ hard earned rights. We intend to allow this strike action next week, while giving Canadians a chance to ensure their travel plans aren’t impacted and they can make alternative arrangements where needed.” That’s the message. It’s that simple.

At times I have felt like I am more concerned than this government with its survival. It’s a familiar feeling, given the raging against the dying of the light sensation that was the last 18 months of Trudeau, but a fucking exhausting one. It’s time for the government to show they care at least as much as I do. It’s time for them to stop assuming that we all get that the Very Important People know what they’re doing and dare to stoop down and speak to the people. It’s time for the government to get their heads out of their asses and get into fucking gear. Or it’ll be their asses on the unemployment line when Poilievre wins the next election.

I want, desperately, any sign this government can be on the front foot about an issue that matters. I’m not seeing it on basically anything else, so at least don’t be on the back foot here. Carney will have to back down on this soon, so do it now. Saturday’s fuckup is a sunk cost but it doesn’t have to be anything more than that if we do the right thing now.

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