Trying to organize the union vote: federal parties go after northern Ontario's workers

Unionized workers have become one of the most targeted voting groups in this federal election and it's largely because of a party sometimes labelled as "anti-union."

The Conservative party has pitched several labour-friendly policies including wanting to see union representation on the boards of federally regulated companies and offering more protections for the pension plans at companies going through restructuring. 

"I'm out there every day trying to remind voters this is something the NDP has been fighting for forever," says Marie Morin-Strom, the New Democrat candidate in Sault Ste. Marie.

Her riding has been gripped with pension fears in the past with the financial uncertainty at Algoma Steel and the collapse of St. Mary's Paper a decade ago. 

"And the Conservatives seem to be new to this party."

Morin-Strom, a high school teacher and leader in her own union, says it's a mistake to think that all union members are the same and all vote based on labour issues.

"My members certainly don't vote as a monolith. We discuss issues of education when we're talking about teaching, but I'm sure that's the same for mine workers and steel workers and other government agency workers," she says. 

John Lundrigan of Sudbury agrees.

He has been a card-carrying Conservative party member since he turned 18 and the 45-year-old also has a union card, as an employee of the Glencore mining company.

"I've never played into that," says Lundrigan.

"I don't follow union rhetoric. And I just vote for what I think is best for myself and for my family."

But he wonders if there'll be room for true blue Tories like him in a bigger tent party that's become "like a Conservative light."

As for the unions themselves, there are several in northeastern Ontario who say they are not picking a side in this campaign. 

"We're not going to overly exert ourselves for any political party," says Cody Alexander, the president of United Steelworkers Local 9548, representing the 400 workers at Tenaris Tubes in Sault Ste. Marie.

"It causes a lot of division among our membership when we endorse a particular party."

He says his is one of several unions organizing an all-candidates meeting for next week to help workers decide who to vote for. 

"I would say very few of their opinions have to do with the workplace. Usually it's the union leadership that's pushing the political agenda as far as it addresses the workplace," says Alexander. 

"Most people are just worried about getting food for their family and paying their bills."

Political pundits say that with the Conservatives' new worker platform, "blue collar" ridings have become the battlegrounds of this election.

But Larry Savage, a labour studies professor at Brock University, says these days most union members work in an office, school or hospital and many construction, manufacturing and mine workers are not in a union. 

"It is wrong to associate blue-collar communities with unionized communities. They are increasingly becoming two different kinds of things," says Savage. 

He says the big workers' rights issues in this election should be the increasing number of "working poor" without benefits and pensions. 

"There is this growing demographic of precarious workers where unions are not present," says Savage. 

"And it's not clear that any of the parties are speaking to their concerns."