It is not often that a book sets forth a well-constructed scaffold of detailed information and timely perspectives only to set a series of disappointing conclusions atop it. Unjust Transition (Eaton, Emily, Andrew Stevens and Sean Tucker, eds. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2024) is such a book.
This collection of nine focused, digestible essays each takes the 2019-2020 lockout of Co-op Refinery Complex workers in Regina, Saskatchewan as their starting point. Though ostensibly focused on the theme of economic transition away from fossil fuels and its impact on workers in the industry, the breadth is far greater than one might expect. Topics run the gamut from explaining changing trends in pension plans, to the human health impacts of petrochemical refining, to the gutting of mainstream labor reporting.
The Co-op Refinery Complex is owned by Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL), an amalgamation of a number of consumers’ and distribution co-ops, primarily in western Canada. FCL is the largest co-operative in Canada, and has enjoyed annual revenues in excess of $10.5 billion, and net incomes of over one billion dollars. Despite this immense profitability, FCL began raising the costs of “greening” their operations to push workers into concession bargaining.
Workers at the refinery are represented by UNIFOR, Canada’s largest private sector union, as Local 594. The local’s previous contract, ratified in 2017, had included a number of concessions which were made, ostensibly, in order to maintain the defined benefit pension plan. FCL were determined to do away with the plan, as well as eliminating a number of the highest paid jobs and, in December 2019, locked workers out. Workers were to remain out for 201 days, until late June 2020.
For those who may be unfamiliar, pensions are generally either “defined benefit” or “defined contribution,” with the latter tying retired workers’ benefits to the performance of the pension fund’s investments as opposed to guaranteeing a certain payout. Employers generally prefer the latter since they are absolved of any responsibility to ensure retired employees receive a stable income. The transition away from defined benefit plans by employers generally began in the 1980s, and, authors note, is part and parcel of the neo-liberal restructuring that has taken place in general as workers’ relative strength (in terms of union density, wages relative to productivity, etc.) has been eroded.
The book excels in exploring this type of question in some detail, providing important context for various issues and struggles that shaped the lockout. In understanding the strike itself and why, for example, Regina’s municipal government allowed FCL to construct a “scab camp” to house replacement labor, this background is indispensable.
The analysis of media coverage is particularly interesting because of what it fails to discuss, and how this represents the unfortunate flaw that runs through the book. While detailing the cutting of the “labour beat” from Canadian press and analyzing quantitative data of coverage, e.g. who was quoted by media, it fails to really ask what this means for workers’ strategy.
UNIFOR, as many unions do, attempted to conduct an “air war” with FCL, making press releases a key avenue for communication. When UNIFOR’s national president, Jerry Dias, was arrested on the picket line at the CRC in January 2020, it became national news, but it’s not clear that the coverage meaningfully served to advance workers’ struggle in any concrete way. This deeper question of what good media coverage is in the first place is never addressed. It is taken for granted that unions should seek favorable coverage and that this will strengthen their position; that “public opinion” must be won, and that a sympathetic mass media which focuses on labor issues is the path to doing so.
Taken as a whole, the authors paint a disturbing picture of government complicity with big oil and gas on every level from municipal to federal, to the use of “sustainability” as a rhetorical cudgel wielded against the working class, to media bias, to general trends in the neoliberal erosion of workers’ conditions, and so on. This is all backed up with a wealth of names, numbers, historical context and hard facts.
The ignoble conclusion of the lockout gives these critiques weight. The agreement which workers finally agreed to adopt in July 2020 was largely the same as the employer’s “final offer” which had been voted down in 2019. Existing employees would be required to contribute to their (defined benefit) pension, and new employees would be part of a defined contribution plan. Wages were tied to the industry-wide minimum. And, shortly after returning to work, 100 employees were laid off, and top positions were eliminated entirely (though the Saskatchewan Labour Board later ruled that this latter move was illegal).
Unfortunately, when it comes to discussing solutions, one is tempted to ask if editors had actually read the book. The concrete suggestions that are made—for example, that workers form caucuses within their unions to address questions of just transition—seem to entirely neglect the strong case the book’s essays have laid out against Canada’s employer-friendly labor relations regime, a complicit political caste (including the New Democratic Party) and the vast power wielded by petro-capital within the Canadian petrostate.
As an IWW organizer, I was deeply disappointed that more radical questions weren’t asked. How can workers organize differently, instead of relying on hostile systems? How can we communicate with other workers in a way that builds power and isn’t just more “noise” in a cacophonous media circus? What tools can workers use to move toward a “just transition” when existing institutions conflate “just” with “profitable”? The failure to go to the root of the problem and question the M.O. of business unionism is, in my opinion, a fatal flaw that undermines the Unjust Transition puts forward.
Relatedly, despite the fact that extractivism and the state are often at the front and center, not a single question is raised concerning settler-colonialism. This is an omission or oversight that is especially difficult to overlook considering that the environmental impact of the refinery on a nearby Indigenous community is mentioned explicitly. This seems to go hand-in-hand with the refusal to subject business unionism to critique, since, often, Canadian unions have found themselves vocally supporting the destructive industrial projects which employ their membership against Indigenous resistance. Asking questions about the relationship between workers’ struggles and colonialism seems like it should be obvious given the subject matter, and, yet, it is entirely absent.
In conclusion, while I can’t recommend the book to those hoping for a presentation of what ought to be done, I strongly recommend it on the basis that it offers a veritable bandolier of ammunition for arguing that something ought to be done and that it is urgent. It also provides significant insight concerning labor struggles in western Canada’s energy sector which are especially relevant in our political moment of powerful “petro-populism”. Though this review may come off as a backhanded endorsement, the book’s excellent research is worth considering despite its utter failure to provide any hope for a real alternative to the injustice it highlights.
Unjust Transition is available for sale in the IWW store.
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