Public Policy as a Determinant of Interest Group Behaviour: The Canadian Labour Congress'...

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Public Policy as a Determinant of Interest Group Behaviour: The Canadian Labour Congress'Corporatist Initiative, 1976-1978Author(s): Stephen McBrideSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 16,No. 3 (Sep., 1983), pp. 501-517Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3227393 .

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Public Policy as a Determinant of Interest Group Behaviour: The Canadian Labour Congress' Corporatist Initiative, 1976-1978*

STEPHEN McBRIDE Lakehead University

The imposition of wage controls by the federal government in October 1975 stimulated a debate in Canadian politics and political science about the desirability of establishing corporatist modes of interest intermediation in Canada.1 This normative debate had its empirical equivalent-to what extent were corporatist structures already in place or being introduced?2 Similar debates were already underway in other western political systems and quite an extensive literature has resulted.3

Initially Canada's largest labour federation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), spearheaded a vigorous campaign against wage controls. Mass rallies and demonstrations were held and the government condemned for interference with the free collective bargaining system. Coupled with these criticisms were accusations that the government was planning to establish some form of corporate state in which previously autonomous interest groups would be submerged and converted into agencies of social control.4 In a concrete expression of its opposition to

* I would like to thank Roy Adams, Faculty of Business, McMaster University, Phyllis Clarke, Department of Politics, Ryerson Polytechnic, and Henry Jacek, Department of Political Science, McMaster University, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

1 Corporatism may be defined generally as a system in which key interest groups, especially those representative of labour and capital, have a formally structured involvement with the state in policy-making and execution. A more detailed definition is utilized later in the article.

2 See Leo Panitch, "Corporatism in Canada," Studies in Political Economy: A Socialist Review 1 (1979), 43-92. Panitch persuasively argues that while corporatist ideologies are present in Canada, corporatist political structures are not.

3 A representative sample of this literature can be found in two recent anthologies: Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), and Suzanne Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

4 See Joe Morris, Towards a Corporate State (Ottawa: Canadian Labour Congress, 1976).

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, XVI:3 (September/septembre 1983). Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada



502 STEPHEN McBRIDE

such developments, the CLC in March 1976 withdrew its representatives from bodies such as the Economic Council of Canada and the Canadian Labour Relations Council on the grounds that participation in such agencies constituted encouragement of trends towards corporatism. Then, rather abruptly, the CLC, without dropping its opposition to wage controls, began to advocate the creation of tripartite power-sharing structures (corporatism) on which labour, business and government would be represented.5

This article concerns the CLC's conversion to a corporatist political strategy. Its aim is to describe briefly the CLC's corporatist initiative in the years 1976-1978, to review existing explanations of why it occurred (by focussing largely on factors internal to organized labour), and to propose an alternative explanation which emphasizes factors external to the labour movement.

Specifically it is argued that the CLC's corporatist initiative represented an attempt to extend the localized Canadian collective bargaining model, in which labour was used to dealing with wage questions, to the national level. This move was in response to the federal government's shift from macro-economic policy management affecting the environment of wage negotiations to wage controls which directly determined the outcome of wage negotiations. The CLC's reaction to changing economic policy is shown to have been shaped by its experience of existing public policy in the labour relations sphere. In this sense existing public policy acted as a determinant of the CLC's behaviour. This factor was reinforced by the anticipations of the CLC leadership about the future direction of labour relations policy.

The analysis assigns a major role to the influence that the state may exert on an interest group through past, present and anticipated future policy. Generalization on the basis of a single case study would, of course, be impermissible. But the prominent role played by the state in determining whether or not corporatist political structures will be established does tend to cast doubt on the validity of a widely accepted distinction in the literature on the emergence of corporatism-that which is said to emerge from below and that which is imposed from above by the state. This study suggests that the state's role will be crucial in either case, though the nature of its involvement may vary considerably.

The CLC Proposals The CLC became formally committed to corporatism at its May 1976 convention. The last-minute introduction of the policy document at the convention, and the vociferous criticism which developed within the 5 See Canadian Labour Congress, Labour's Manifesto for Canada (Ottawa: CLC,

1976).



Abstract. The Canadian Labour Congress' abortive corporatist initiative 1976-1978 is examined. Existing interpretations of the episode are reviewed and an alternative posited. CLC policy represented an attempt to extend the existing localized collective bargaining system to the national level in response to the federal government's shift from macro-economic policy management to more direct forms of economic intervention. The initiative's failure is ascribed to a misreading of government intentions and to an inconsistency between proposals for national corporatism and other, noncorporatist, features of the existing collective bargaining system. Emphasis is placed on the state's role, past and present, in shaping interest group behaviour and in establishing or vetoing corporatism.

R6sum6. Dans cet article l'auteur examine l'initiative corporatiste avort6e du Conges du Travail du Canada de 1976-1978. Les interpretations existantes de cet episode sont passees en revue et une alternative est avanc6e. La politique du C.T.C. marque une tentative d'6tendre le systeme de n6gociation collective locale existant a l'echelle nationale en reponse au changement de la politique d'administration macro-economique du gouvernement f6d6ral par des formes plus directes d'intervention 6conomique. L'6chec de l'initiative est attribuable a une mauvaise interpretation des intentions gouvernementales ainsi qu'h l'incoh6rence entre les projets visant l'6tablissement d'un corporatisme national et une autre forme, non corporatiste, du systeme de n6gociation collective existant. L'accent est mis sur le r81e passe et pr6sent de l'Etat dans sa maniere de modeler le comportement des groupes d'inte6rts et d'encourager ou non le corporatisme.

labour movement in the following months, cast considerable doubt on the notion that this was an initiative consciously approved by the majority of the CLC's affiliates or members. Nevertheless, attempts to bring this corporatist impulse to fruition were actively pursued by the CLC leadership in the 1976-1978 period. It is clear from an examination of the key public documents6 that CLC policy envisaged major-and corporatist-structural reforms which would involve labour, business and government in tripartite policy formation, decision-making and policy implementation.

The CLC proposed that Parliament should create a tripartite board or agency which would have jurisdiction over a specified policy area and would also play an important part in the development of the regulations and future amendments to the founding legislation. The CLC noted that "such delegation of powers does no violation to our Parliamentary form of government since the tripartite body would be responsible through a Minister to Parliament." Beneath this legislatively created tripartite body, provisionally entitled the Council for Social and Economic Planning, would be a secondary level of boards and agencies, responsible to the Council and hence indirectly to Parliament, which would carry out the administrative and planning functions over the Council's sphere ofjurisdiction. The CLC went into detail on only one of the secondary level boards, a proposed Labour Market Board. Such a board would have authority over the following public policy areas: 6 Besides the Manifesto the key public documents are: Canadian Labour Congress,

Discussion Paper for the Meeting with the Prime Minister and Members of the Cabinet on July 12, 1976 (Ottawa: CLC, 1976); and Shirley Carr, "Replace Controls with National Forum," Globe and Mail, March 5, 1977. The account of the CLC proposals presented immediately below is based on these three sources. All quotations are from the Discussion Paper.



504 STEPHEN McBRIDE

labour market forecasting; manpower training and retraining; worker mobility grants; immigration regulations; and unemployment insurance. In addition, the Board would "have the power and authority to channel investment funds, both public and private, or to hold back on proposed projects so that cyclical and regional unemployment be evened out." The higher level tripartite body, the Council for Social and Economic Planning, would be involved in "reviewing draft legislation; reviewing current practice; proposing improvements to law and practice; initiating new programmes and projects" in a wide range of policy areas including old-age pensions, workmen's compensation, health, maternity, unemployment and other welfare benefits, family allowances, minimum wages, and the development of national industrial strategy. The CLC proposals were quite explicit on the need for tripartite rather than multipartite bodies arguing that other groups were represented through government's expression of the public interest or, in the case of unorganized workers and consumers, through the CLC itself.

This rather ambitious scheme has not been implemented and the CLC itself, under pressure from many of its affiliated unions and provincial federations has been forced to abandon its corporatist ambitions7 or, at least, to de-emphasize and disguise them.8 But an understanding of the conditions which triggered such a far-reaching corporatist initiative (and conceivably could do so again), as well as of the factors which inhibited its realization, is of considerable interest in view of the prominence which corporatism has attained in recent political science literature.

Explaining the Initiative

On the basis of articles dealing with the affair, interviews with selected labour and political leaders, and inferences from other studies of the Canadian Labour Congress, it is possible to construct four basic interpretations of the episode. These may be referred to as the ideological idiosyncrasy and personal ambition explanation; the class collaboration and collective ambitions explanation; the organizational imperative explanation; and the political culture explanation. These will be briefly outlined and an alternative perspective, which relies on existing and anticipated public policy as a determinant of the CLC's behaviour, will then be advanced.

7 Some of the most intense pressure originated at the provincial federations of labour. The most comprehensive denunciation of tripartism came from Saskatchewan. See Minutes and Proceedings, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, October 12-15, 1977, 13-15. The CLC's ongoing participation in consultative tripartite meetings was heavily criticized at the 1978 CLC convention. See the debate in CLC, Report of Proceedings 1978, 49-52.

8 "Slipping in the Back Door: Tripartism Today-Corporatism Tomorrow?" and "The Labour Movement, Corporatism and the Economic Crisis," Canadian Dimension 15

(December 1980), 30-44.



Public Policy as a Determinant of Interest Group Behaviour 505

Ideological Idiosyncrasy and Personal Ambition

In this view, some of the CLC leadership, particularly the then president, Joe Morris, became enamoured of European models of codetermination and participation by labour in national policy-making. This is sometimes attributed to Morris' participation in the International Labour Organization.9 The personal pay-off would be that national tripartite institutions would move the Congress and its president to the centre of the political stage.10 In this explanation the end of the CLC's adventure in corporatism and the forging of closer links with the New Democratic party11 is attributed to personnel changes in the Congress and particularly the replacement of Morris by Dennis McDermott in 1978. A "great man" interpretation of history is thus clearly implied.

Class Collaboration and Collective Ambitions

This explanation, advanced by radical critics of the CLC leadership, both inside and outside the labour movement, attributes the move toward corporatism to an ideological preference for co-operation rather than conflict in relations between labour and capital.12 Even after the official retreat from tripartism at the 1978 CLC convention, it is alleged the CLC leadership remained committed to a gradual implementation of tripartite agreements about the future of the Canadian economy.13 Another version of this thesis places greater emphasis on the power-hungriness of the CLC leadership who allegedly view tripartism 9 According to one Ontario Federation of Labour official, Morris has the nickname

"Jetlag Joe" in labour circles. The same official considered that the prominence which European tripartite structures gave to European national labour leaders, in contrast to the relatively low profile of the CLC president, heightened the attraction of these models to Morris.

10 A point made by Desmond Morton, "Labour's New Political Direction: Is the CLC Serious?" Canadian Forum 57 (1977), 11-13.

11 The traditionally close relationship is acknowledged to have become quite frigid in the 1976-1978 period as a result of provincial NDP government's acquiescence in the federal government's anti-inflation policy. Though the federal NDP consistently criticized wage controls, the party's weakness at the federal level contributed to a cooler relationship.

12 See United Electrical Workers, Which Path for Labour in the Fight for Jobs and Independent Canadian Economy... Collaboration or a Militant Class Struggle Fightback? (Toronto: 1979).

13 In mid-1978 CLC representatives participated in 23 sectoral consultative task forces established to make recommendations to the provincial and federal governments. In addition, a high level CLC delegation served on a Second Tier Committee established "to identify and make recommendations about factors and policies that cut across sector lines." The report noted that this was "the first time business and labour, under government auspices, have jointly worked on major economic problems and come up with specific recommendations." A Report by the Second Tier Committee on Policies to Improve Canadian Competitiveness (Ottawa: Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, 1978), 5. That Report recommended continuing consultations of this type (32-33).



506 STEPHEN McBRIDE

"as a means to short-circuit the electoral process and project these leaders straight into positions of power."14 The reversal of the policy in 1978 is attributed to rank-and-file and ideological opposition within organized labour.

Organizational Imperative

The major academic study of the CLC as an interest group concluded that its leadership, like that of many other interest groups, was preoccupied with a desire to "protect and enhance the legitimacy of the interest they represent, the mandate of their organization as the representative of that interest, and their own mandate within that organization."15 Viewed from this perspective one might construct an explanation along the following lines. The CLC's corporatist impulse and an associated programme of structural reforms within the organization16 were a bureaucratic strategy to salvage procedural benefits from a substantive defeat through expanding the role of the organization in future decision-making and/or consultative processes.

In this view the de-emphasizing of corporatist ambitions after 1978 followed the realization that organized labour lacked the internal solidarity to move far in the corporatist direction and that the intentions of the other prospective social partners had extended only as far as consultations with a clear line being drawn around binding decisions emerging from tripartite bodies.17

Political Culture

The presence of a corporatist strain within Canada's political culture has received attention."8 It would not be unreasonable to argue that such an ideological environment could produce corporatist tendencies in a far from hermetically sealed labour movement. In any case, the presence of 14 Canadian Dimension 15 (December 1980), 30. 15 David Kwavnick, Organized Labour and Pressure Politics: The Canadian Labour

Congress, 1956-68 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972), 29. 16 The proposed constitutional amendments would have changed the basis of

representation at CLC conventions from delegates from local unions to delegates from affiliates (see CLC, Report ... 1976, 39-42). Opponents of tripartism interpreted the proposals as an attempt to shift control of the CLC away from the rank-and-file and further towards the leadership level of affiliated unions and the CLC (see ibid., 46-51 for the debate). Such a shift would help to fulfill one of the preconditions for the CLC's participation in a fully fledged tripartite system.

17 Anthony Giles, "The Canadian Labour Congress and Tripartism," Relations Industrielles 37 (1982), 93-125 refers to "leadership logic" as a determinant of the CLC's corporatist initiative. By this he means "the constellation of personal and institutional interests, as shaped by societal constraints on trade union action." This concept seems to encompass the first and third explanations presented above.

18 For a critical review of some of the literature which advances this case see Panitch, "Corporatism in Canada."




corporatist tendencies within social democracy, the hegemonic ideology amongst Canada's labour leaders, could be viewed as reinforcing such societal influences.'9 Indeed one observer has gone so far as to characterize corporatism as "the highest stage of social democracy."20 The failure of this ideological climate actually to produce corporatist structures then becomes a key issue and has been attributed to the absence of strong centralized associations of business and labour; Canada's economic dependence on the United States; the balkanization of economic decision-making in Canada's federal political system; and the low legitimacy with which unions are regarded.21

An Alternative View: Corporatism as the Collective Bargaining System Writ Large

Undoubtedly all the explanations above contribute to an understanding of the CLC's attachment to corporatism in the 1976-1978 period. But with two partial exceptions, what is remarkable for present purposes is the extent to which explanatory attempts have focussed on factors internal to Canadian labour.22 The corporatist impulse is attributed to individuals within the group, the collective leadership's ambitions or ideology, or to organizational goals. Recent literature23 suggests that factors external to an interest group, such as public or state policy, may be a powerful determinant of interest group behaviour and facilitate the emergence of corporatist structures. It is this perspective which this article proceeds to explore.

In a general sense the impact of public policy on the CLC's behaviour in this case is obvious. From 1975 to 1978 organized labour in 19 See Gerhard Lehmbruch, "Concluding Remarks: Problems for Future Research on

Corporatist Intermediation and Policy Making," in Schmitter and Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, 304.

20 Bob Jessop, "Corporatism, Parliamentarism, and Social Democracy," in ibid., 207. 21 See Panitch, "Corporatism in Canada," 78-85, and Gordon DiGiacomo,

"Institutional Barriers to the Development of Tripartism in Canada" (unpublished master's research essay, Carleton University, 1977), 44-48 and 155-56.

22 To the extent that the political culture explanation stresses the diffusion of corporatist ideologies throughout the Canadian political culture and thus affects organized labour's policies, it qualifies as an exception. To the extent that the emphasis is placed on the corporatist aspects of the social democratic ideology held by most Canadian labour leaders it retains an internal orientation. The other partial exception is Giles's mention of "macro-societal forces and developments" ("The Canadian Labour Congress and Tripartism," 94), and the CLC leaders' anticipation of the future direction of public policy (liberal-corporatism) as determinants of the CLC's corporatist initiative (ibid., 106-08). The core of Giles's explanation, however, is based on what he terms the "leadership logic" of the Congress (ibid., 107).

23 Berger, Organizing Interests in Western Europe, 14-16. Schmitter too, in his "Modes of Interest Intermediation and Models of Societal Change in Western Europe," in Schmitter and Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, alludes to the possibility that interest groups may be "the product of, rather than the producers of, public policy" (92).



508 STEPHEN McBRIDE

Canada was responding to a specific public policy-wage controls. What has received little attention is the degree to which the specifics of labour's response to wage controls may have been moulded by already existing public policy.

Since 1925 public policy affecting labour relations has been a predominantly provincial area of jurisdiction in Canada.24 Despite this there is considerable similarity across provinces in labour legislation.25 This is because most provincial labour codes are the result of emulation and adaptation of federal order-in-council (P.C. 1003) enacted during the Second World War when, under the umbrella of the War Measures Act, labour relations had been returned temporarily to federal jurisdiction. It therefore makes some sense to talk of a Canadian collective bargaining system.

Historically one of the main obstacles to labour organization in Canada has been widespread employer resistance to recognition of trade unions. Employers had been reluctant to enter into a permanent bargaining and representational relationship. The indifference of the state and/or the active assistance given employers by its repressive apparatus combined, in the prewar period, to restrict union membership to around 15 per cent of the nonagricultural workforce. This low level of union organization was also, of course, partly the result of the mass unemployment of the 1930s. During the war, a combination of full employment, wage controls and continued employer resistance to organization proved to be an explosive mixture and strike levels steadily escalated.26 Labour's industrial pressure found a parallel on the political front. A series of by-elections produced several CCF and one Labour Progressive Party (Communist) victories and opinion polls pointed to a major threat from the CCF to the Liberal government.27

In February 1944 Mackenzie King's government moved towards defusing working class discontent. Order-in-Council 1003, partly modelled on the Roosevelt New Deal's Wagner Act, was enacted and was to provide the guidelines for much of Canada's postwar labour legislation. The legal framework for labour relations established by this

24 As a result of a decision by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the Snider Case.

25 See H. D. Woods, Labour Policy in Canada (2nd ed.; Toronto: Macmillan, 1973), 93. This comment is perhaps less true of legislation covering public sector employees where some divergence can be observed (169-71).

26 Laurel Sefton MacDowell, "The Formation of the Canadian Industrial Relations

System During World War II," Labour: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 3 (1978), 175-96.

27 Ibid., 189-90, 193. Mackenzie King attributed the defeats to "the resentment of labour at the wage stabilization policy of the government and even more to what he felt sure was the failure of some of his colleagues in the Government to show sympathy for the

aspirations of organized labour for increased recognition" (J. W. Pickersgill, The Mackenzie King Record, 1939-44 Vol. 1 [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960], 570-71).




and subsequent measures was characterized by a highly formal system of bargaining with elaborate certification procedures, legally enforceable contracts, no-strike provisions for the duration of the contract, and union and unionists' liability in the case of illegal strikes. Clearly the package did not represent an unqualified victory for labour. But above all, from labour's point of view, the legislation guaranteed the right to organize and to bargain collectively, required employers to recognize and bargain in good faith with certified unions, granted such unions exclusive bargaining rights, defined unfair labour practices, and provided remedies under the law for violations. The attendant regulations and restrictions were a product of the relative historical weakness of Canadian labour. Lacking, for the most part, the economic power to force recognition and bargaining from employers, Canadian unions resorted to pressuring the state to provide assistance in establishing a bargaining relationship. The price of such assistance, reluctantly granted under intense pressure, was state regulation.

Two aspects of this labour relations system are of particular interest in the present context: first, the degree of "fit" between this collective bargaining model and prevailing definitions of the corporatist mode of interest intermediation; second, the linkage between the CLC's proposals for tripartism at the national level and their perceptions of the collective bargaining system at the local or plant level.

In general terms corporatism implies the integration of interest groups into public policy formation and implementation. In distinguishing between corporatism and other forms of interest intermediation, Philippe Schmitter has provided a detailed set of criteria:

Corporatism can be defined as a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports.28

A number of the features identified with corporatism can be detected in the collective bargaining system, largely at the plant level, established in postwar Canada. A singular group (the union) is certified

28 Philippe C. Schmitter, "Still the Century of Corporatism?" in Schmitter and Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, 13. In contrast, "pluralism can be defined as a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into an unspecified number of multiple, voluntary, competitive, nonhierarchically ordered and self-determined (as to type or scope of interest) categories which are not specially licensed, recognized, subsidized, created or otherwise controlled in leadership selection or interest articulation by the state and which do not exercise a monopoly of representational activity within their respective categories" (15).



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(recognized) as the exclusive bargaining agent (representational monopoly) for a group of employees (functionally differentiated from employers). A duty of fair representation is imposed upon the union which not infrequently negotiates compulsory membership or dues contributions as the price of its performing as bargaining agent.29 Thus at least six of the eight corporatist characteristics identified by Schmitter are also characteristics of Canada's localized collective bargaining system. These are: singularity; compulsion (subject to certain conditions); functional differentiation; recognition; representational monopoly;30 and limited controls on the union's mode of operation.

On the other hand, the degree of fit between the corporatist model and the actual collective bargaining system is not complete. In particular a great deal of power over collective bargaining rests at the local union level and the notion of hierarchically ordered groups does not therefore apply. In addition the adversarial aspects of collective bargaining are contrary to the implication common to models of corporatism that some kind of organic unity binds the constituent units.

This combination of characteristics of corporatism with others more identified with pluralism has led one author to refer to the collective bargaining model as a "third possibility" which he termed the "structured adversary" model.31 Some of the implications of the collective bargaining system's hybrid characteristics and consequent lack of fit with the corporatist model will be explored below in discussing the CLC's abandonment, or de-emphasis, of its corporatist initiative. For the moment the linkage between that initiative and the existing collective bargaining model, established by public policy at the end of Second World War, will be outlined.

The introduction of the new labour relations system coincided with the Canadian state's adoption of Keynesian economic management goals and techniques and with a limited implementation of welfare state measures. This policy package profoundly influenced the environment in which the newly acquired bargaining rights were exercised. It is not unreasonable to suppose that national economic management imposed 29 In some jurisdictions, such as Ontario, compulsory dues contributions, or the

equivalent sum donated to charity, must now be granted by the employer, if the union so demands.

30 Schmitter recognizes that representation in the sense of accurate and faithful representation of the demands and preferences of the members may not be the main activity of interest groups. The term intermediation is employed elsewhere to indicate that interest associations "not only may express interests of their own, fail to articulate or even to know the preferences of their members, and/or play an important role in teaching their members what their interests 'should be,' but also often assume or are forced to acquire private governmental functions of resource allocation and social control" (Schmitter and Lehmbruch [eds.], Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, 93).

31 Charles W. Anderson, "Political Design and the Representation of Interests," in ibid., 271-98, especially 291-92.




limits on, as well as created possibilities for, what could be achieved through collective bargaining at the plant level, the typical unit for which a union was certified. Not unnaturally labour organizations saw a need to shape that environment. For a variety of reasons, including a weak social democratic party, the low legitimacy with which the labour elite was regarded by other elites,32 and the decentralized structure of labour relations and the CLC itself,33 they were unable to do so to their own satisfaction.

In the quest for influence over national economic and social policy, labour leaders occasionally drew on the collective bargaining model for inspiration for there, they felt, was an arena in which labour did exert real influence. In the early 1960s, William Dodge, then an executive vice-president of the CLC, outlined a scheme of labour-management co-operation as an instrument of national economic planning. He saw labour's role as being an extension of its traditional collective bargaining role and the argument is worth quoting at length:

Instead of merely bargaining at the plant or industry level ... unions will have to take on new responsibilities. We shall have to be prepared to participate in decisions on monetary policy, economic development, maintenance of full-employment, both nationally and regionally, the problem of trade, social welfare, and even the cultural aspects of our national life. Where conflicts arise, as they inevitably will, we shall have to be prepared to press the case of the people we represent. In the past, decisions we have made... have been unilateral in character. Perhaps the great difference in the future will be that decisions of labour, management and government will be made after consultation, debate and perhaps negotiation of economic and social goals.34

Dodge's argument, while not itself explicitly corporatist, is indicative of a line of thinking, drawing its inspiration from the existing labour relations system, and conceptually extending it to the national level. Labour's Manifesto for Canada and subsequent pronouncements by the CLC and its officers represented a far more explicit extension of the same ideas. This development in CLC thinking coincided with the extension of state economic management from policies affecting the environment of collective bargaining to policies regulating its outcome.

In the Manifesto a direct analogy was drawn between corporate managers, traditionally dealt with through collective bargaining, and the

32 John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 310-14.

33 In 1978 the unions affiliated to the CLC represented 67.2 per cent of total union membership. The CLC has a decentralized power structure with the affiliated unions retaining considerable autonomy (Joseph Smucker, Industrialization in Canada [Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1980], 212-13).

34 William Dodge, "CLC Proposals for Co-operation," Canadian Labour 8:3 (1%3), 5-8. See also Dodge, "Labour-Management Relations Today," Canadian Labour 9:2 (1964), 13-14.



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"economy managers," or government, who would henceforth be dealt with through the proposed tripartite structures. Both sets of managers, with whom labour had to deal, shared the common goal of minimizing labour costs. Government, in its role as economy manager had traditionally relied on a mixture of monetary and fiscal policies in pursuit of this goal. The resort to wage controls indicated the ineffectiveness of the traditional methods and that government was now resorting to a direct political instrument instead. In the CLC's view the basic question in mid-1976 was whether labour would be able

to force the economy managers to make decisions which improve the position of working people generally in the same way that successful unions have been able to force corporation managers to make decisions which improve the position of the members of a bargaining unit?... The elements are all the same whether we are dealing with corporation managers or economy managers. We need a legal framework of bargaining rights, bargaining power and a bargaining position.35

In operational terms the CLC outlined a bargaining position based on the achievement of a system of national planning which would aim at job creation and the right to employment; tax reforms and the protection of low income earners against inflation; redistribution of income; constraints on the power of corporations to set prices; and the subordination of private investment decisions to the interests of

ordinary people.36 Within the labour movement such goals were hardly contentious. The means for achieving these goals, however, were to

prove highly controversial within organized labour. By "a legal framework of bargaining rights" the CLC meant full partnership in the

tripartite national planning structure previously outlined. By the

development of "bargaining power" the CLC meant two things: first, a National Day of Protest against wage controls and in support of the goals of the Manifesto;37 second, structural reforms within the CLC itself designed to give the central body the ability to commit its affiliates to the outcomes reached within the legally established national bargaining framework. Power within the CLC would be dramatically centralized. Constitutional reforms, interpreted by opponents as

moving in this direction, were defeated at successive CLC conventions.38

By 1978 it was clear that the CLC executive under Joe Morris had failed to convince a majority of the organization of the merits of either the tripartite national planning system or of the desirability of greater centralization within the CLC itself. In explaining this failure, a number of contributory factors have been advanced. These include a lack of

35 Labour's Manifesto, 9 (emphasis added). 36 Ibid., 12. 37 See the Programme of Action resolution adopted at the 1976 CLC Convention in

CLC, Report... 1976, 25. 38 Ibid., 39-42, 46-51, and CLC, Report ... 1978, 52-59.




advance preparation on the part of the CLC executive for what was a dramatic departure from traditional strategy; the unfavourable economic climate worked against establishing a closer relationship with either business or government; the apparent downgrading of the CLC-New Democratic party relationship provoked opposition from NDP loyalists inside the labour movement; radical denunciations of tripartism as collaboration with the class enemy; and widespread suspicions that the CLC leaders would inevitably be co-opted in such a forum .39

In terms of the component characteristics of Schmitter's definition of corporatism with which we have been working, one could argue that a common thread binding opponents of the CLC's initiative was an awareness that corporatism would transform labour leaders from representatives into intermediaries40 and that a more hierarchical labour movement with a consequent loss of grass roots democracy would inevitably result.

To a considerable degree both proponents and opponents of corporatism could build their cases on one or other of the contradictory elements embodied in Canada's collective bargaining system. If this system provided the model for the tripartite proposals, it also provided its antithesis. As well as containing elements of corporatism, co-operation and collaboration, the collective bargaining system also reflects the adversarial role embodied in class relationships in a capitalist society.

The CLC's tripartite proposals were not congruent with the adversarial and competitive elements of the collective bargaining mode. The Manifesto attempted to anticipate such criticisms by stressing the need to develop bargaining power and exact a price for partnership and participation in tripartite forums. Despite this rhetoric it was hard to see how the adversarial component could be incorporated into the structure envisaged by the CLC. First, the government would play a far more active role in such structures than it does in the regular collective bargaining process.41 If the Manifesto's analysis of the similarity of goals between the corporate and economy managers was correct, then labour would normally be outvoted. The normal sanction available to labour in collective bargaining is the strike. Could this weapon, or the realistic threat of it be applied in "national collective bargaining" under tripartism? Despite the relative success of the National Day of Protest, there is nothing in Canadian labour history to suggest that the general 39 For a useful discussion, see Ed Finn, "Tripartite Consultation at the National Level,"

Labour Gazette 78 (1978), 65-70. In terms of the distinction between internal factor and external factor explanations advanced earlier in the article, all but one of these, poor economic conditions, rely on internal factors.

40 I am grateful to Professor Henry Jacek for this insight. 41 There its role is largely confined to the provision of conciliation and mediation

services and sometimes acting, through back-to-work legislation, as compulsory arbitrator of last resort.



514 STEPHEN McBRIDE

strike weapon could be regularly applied in this fashion. The analogy with the bargaining unit situation therefore did not hold and its inappropriateness aided the disparate opponents of tripartism within organized labour.

Conclusions

Existing public policy in the labour relations sphere seems to have both stimulated the CLC's corporatist initiative and impeded its realization. There is little doubt that the CLC leaders saw an opportunity to escape from the impotence which had been their organization's lot as an interest group.42 But it was not simply a grab for power. Under conditions of national wage determination most collective bargaining at the local level was futile. There was a real logic in seeking to extend the system to the national level. But as we have seen, opponents were unconvinced that two essential ingredients of the existing arrangements, membership control and retention of the strike sanction in an adversarial process, would remain. The key analogy on which the CLC executive's case was built would not hold.

Nor was the government, or the social forces to which it was responsive, convinced of the necessity or desirability of restructuring labour-capital relations: 1976 was not to be 1944 revisited. Either because of labour's weakness or because the configuration of economic and social problems was insufficiently acute, there was no attempt to integrate organized labour into the political process in ways which would have enhanced its powers and responsibilities.

The CLC's anticipation that this was to be the future direction of public policy clearly influenced their conversion to corporatism.43 But those responsible seem to have misinterpreted the signals sent out by the government. The Manifesto went further in a fully corporatist direction than anything envisaged by Ottawa. Publicly, the government chose to interpret the Manifesto as "offering business and government... co-operation and partnership in avoiding the excesses of an adversary system which tends to submerge the common interest,"44 and Labour

42 In Kwavnick, Organized Labour and Pressure Politics, chapter 9 documents the

inability of the CLC to influence government policy outside of a narrow range of

directly labour-related policy areas on which the government chose to regard the CLC's representations as legitimate.

43 In the Manifesto controls were viewed as "the launching pad for the future" with some form of corporatism being virtually inevitable. The big question for labour then became what form of corporatism it would be: liberal, in which organized labour would function as a social control agency; or social, in which labour would exert real

power. The phrase "social corporatism" was changed to "social democracy" at the Convention (CLC, Report ... 1976, 22).

44 Paul Malles, "The Road to Consensus Policies: Challenges and Realities"(Ottawa: The Conference Board in Canada: Occasional Paper No. 4, September, 1976), 4. It




Minister John Munro was at some pains to stress that he welcomed the "CLC's avowed willingness to enter into a consultative mechanism for dealing with national and social issues."45 Such a response undermined the CLC executive's ability to win support for its initiative within the labour movement. In turn its inability to carry out internal structural reforms, or to neutralize opposition to its initiative served to eliminate the possibility of implementation at least for the forseeable future.

There is some evidence to suggest that meaningful consultation with government and business prior to decisions being reached was quite satisfactory to the post-Morris CLC leadership as an alternative to tripartite integration into the decision-making process itself.46

The government's willingness to participate in bilateral and tripartite meetings with labour and business on the economy and the anti-inflation programme, together with the establishment of 23 sectoral committees to examine various sectors of the Canadian economy, represented a considerable advance in the legitimacy accorded to the CLC as a pressure group.47 In the face of major opposition within their own ranks, the CLC leadership seemed content to abandon proposals for decision-making tripartite structures at the 1978 CLC convention.48 The ongoing participation in bilateral and tripartite consultations certainly represents a new form of interest group representation for Canadian labour. It may well be, as critics allege, that this new form of representation involves a high degree of class collaboration. But class collaboration, or co-operation, can take other forms than corporatism. And if the concept of corporatism is to have any empirical utility, it should be reserved for cases in which labour and business groups are more formally integrated into the policy formation process and have formal responsibilities for implementation of policy.

The CLC's participation in a series of bilateral (with business) and tripartite forums needs not therefore imply creeping corporatism. The CLC's adoption of specifically corporatist proposals can be viewed as an episode rather than an ongoing strategy. But is it an episode which could recur? There are certainly a number of obstacles to such an event.

First, the 1976-1978 experience demonstrated a strong ground swell of opposition within the labour movement to corporatism in general.

was precisely this interpretation, of course, which also fuelled labour opposition to the proposals.

45 See John Munro, "Federal Proposals to Improve Labour-Management Relations," Labour Gazette 77 (1977), 358.

46 In March 1977, Dennis McDermott, subsequently to succeed Morris as CLC president, downplayed the mechanics of tripartism while emphasizing labour's demand for "serious, day-to-day legitimate input into the decision making process" (Macleans, March 21, 1977, 9).

47 Provision for such formalized input from labour and business is continuing. See "Labour, Business Will Get a Voice in Mega-projets, Ottawa Says," Toronto Star, May 21, 1982.

48 CLC, Report... 1978, 4.



516 STEPHEN McBRIDE

Such opposition continues to be fuelled by the economic crisis and a fairly widespread mood in labour circles that neither business nor government would make trustworthy partners in dealing with the crisis. Further the defeat of tripartite proposals once, and the educational process amongst labour activists in defeating them, would make their introduction a second time much more difficult.

Second, the post-Morris CLC leadership has gone to considerable lengths to strengthen labour's commitment to the social democratic NDP.49 In itself this stronger commitment does not serve as a barrier to renewed corporatism since that mode of interest intermediation has elsewhere proved quite consistent with the presence of strong social democratic parties and governments.50 But certain features of the renewed commitment to the NDP, notably the mobilization of local union leaders and activitists in "parallel campaigning" on behalf of the NDP, do run counter to the accommodation between elites which is central to the corporatist model.51

Third, in the fight against wage controls and subsequently against other economic policies the CLC, and its provincial federations and affiliates, have become much more involved than previously in building coalitions with other interest groups around specific issues. In pursuit of common interests, organized labour has participated in or organized a variety of extra-parliamentary activities including petition campaigns and demonstrations.52 Apart from the mass mobilization involved in these activities, the fact of building coalitions with other groups tends to work against the concept of an exclusive tripartite decision-making structure.

Whether these obstacles would prove insurmountable in the event of a determined effort by the business and political elites to recast the labour-capital relationship in a corporatist mould must remain an open question. Certainly there was no systematic attempt on the part of either business or government to accomplish this objective in the 1976-1978 period. But there is enough evidence from the experience of that period to suggest that an intelligently packaged public policy, with a judicious mix of rewards and sanctions, might well produce a favourable response in at least some labour circles. Since the existing adversarial collective

49 This represents a reversal of a general interpretation of the thrust of Labour's

Manifesto for Canada. See Morton, "Labour's New Political Direction." 50 Gerhard Lehmbruch, "Liberal Corporatism and Party Government," in Schmitter

and Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, 169. 51 A senior NDP official interviewed laid much stress on the revitalization of local union

structures and enhanced upward and downward communication which had, in his

opinion, resulted from the parallel campaign strategy. This phenomenon, however, is

probably unevenly developed with some unions being hardly affected. 52 Most recently, on November 21, 1981, a CLC organized demonstration against high

interest rates drew 100,000 people to Ottawa to hear speakers from organized labour and a wide variety of other organizations denounce government policy.




bargaining system is incongruent with corporatism, it is likely that some recasting of the industrial relations system would be part of or precede such a policy package.

Such a sequence of events, of course, depends upon the extent to which government or business perceive corporatism as offering an escape from the economic and political problems besetting them. To that extent corporatism is likely to remain a potential part of the Canadian political agenda.

More generally the analysis presented stresses the significance of state policy in shaping, directly or indirectly, the behaviour of at least one of the interest groups necessary for the formation of corporatist structures. Further, the state's willingness, or in this case unwillingness, to participate in such structures determines whether they will be created.

In terms of a widely adopted distinction between two subtypes of corporatism-societal, which is seen as emerging "from below" as a result of interest group demands, and state, which is imposed "from above'"53-this case study suggests that the distinction may be invalid. If the involvement of the state is as central to the success or failure of the creation of corporatist structures as is suggested here, what is really at issue is the nature of state involvement-whether it consists mainly of inducement or principally of sanctions backed by coercion. The notion that societal corporatism emerges from below also suffers from its implicit assumption that organizations of labour and capital interact on roughly equal terms and that the state's role is essentially a passive one.54 Since both these implicit assumptions are highly debatable, it should be made clear that the preceding analysis does not imply that it stands independent of social forces. Rather the configuration of those social forces and their interaction with the state and the resultant influence relationships become central to understanding how and why corporatism may emerge in particular countries at particular times, and fail to do so in others. 53 See Berger, Organizing Interests in Western Europe, 16. In terms of the debate

referred to by Berger, this article tends to support Offe's argument rather than that of Schmitter. But for a recognition by Schmitter of the role of public policy in shaping interest group behaviour see Schmitter and Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, 92.

54 Ibid., 20-22.



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