Why Forestry Workers Should Run in Elections
Monday, June 16, 2008 03:45 AM
Part 1 
- by Peter Ewart & Dawn Hemingway
(The following is the first in a series of three articles).
One of the striking things about the recent hugely successful rally held in Mackenzie, BC, on May 23, as well as a smaller one organized in Vanderhoof / Fort St. James a day before, was that both were spearheaded by laid-off forestry workers.
By all accounts, they did a tremendous job and, in the case of Mackenzie, were able to energize and mobilize the whole community to the point that about 20 to 25% of the population - over 1000 people – participated in the rally.
The rally, which had the slogan “Save Our Community,” was organized in response to the fact that Mackenzie and other forestry based towns in BC and other parts of Canada are facing unprecedented mill shutdowns and layoffs.
Forestry workers, who are employed in mills and other operations, are an important sector of the manufacturing workforce in Canada, which, according to some estimates, amounts to about 1,750,000 workers.
In many towns across the country, these manufacturing workers and their families constitute a good part, if not the majority, of the population, Mackenzie and Fort St. James being just two examples.
These workers are amazingly productive, creating through their labour the very material basis for our society and way of life, whether it be wood products, food, automobiles, aircraft, building materials, appliances, clothing, metals, oil & gas, and countless other items. This manufacturing sector, along with the natural resource sector, is the bedrock of both the British Columbian and Canadian economies, bringing incalculable value to the society as a whole.
Indeed, the vast pool of skill, knowledge and expertise of these manufacturing workers, along with those who work in the non-manufacturing sector, could be said to be Canada’s greatest asset.
Given the economic importance of these workers, as well as their skills, expertise and knowledge, an objective observer would surely conclude that this huge and vital section of the population would be well represented in the municipal councils, provincial legislatures and federal parliament of the country.
But that is far from the case. For example, let’s look at the Parliament of Canada, which has 308 members in the House of Commons. A person could comb the hallways in the Parliament buildings all day and never run into one manufacturing worker (or any other worker for that matter, unless of course you counted the occasional custodial worker sweeping the floor or washing a window).
On the other hand, according to the government’s own statistics, you could scarcely walk a few feet down that same hallway without tripping over an MP whose occupation is a lawyer, teacher or businessperson.
According to Statistics Canada, there are about 17 million people employed in industry in the country. Of those 17 million, only about 67,000 are registered as lawyers. Yet, according to the federal government’s own figures, there are 48 MPs in the House of Commons (15% of a total of 308 MPs) who are lawyers by profession. So an occupation that represents a very small percentage of the population (less than half of 1%) has a whopping 15% of the seats in Parliament.
The number of educators in Canada is higher than lawyers, with about 300,000 employed as elementary / secondary teachers and 65,000 as instructors and professors – for a total of about 365,000. But there are 49 MPs who are either categorized as teachers, instructors or professors, a little over 15% of total MPs, yet representing a sector that has only 2% of the people in the workforce.
But these two sectors do not have the most MPs by far. That distinction rests with the “Businessman / Businesswoman” sector, which has 76 MPs claiming that occupation. If that category is expanded to include the categories of “manager,” “administrator,” and “director,” the number of MPs in this enlarged category jumps to 147 MPs out of a total of 308 or almost 50%. Yet this category, like lawyers and teachers, is only a small percentage of the workforce.
So where do manufacturing workers fit into this picture? Well, quite frankly, they don’t.
Search as much as you like, but there appears to be only one MP in the House of Commons who has a chance of fitting the bill (Pat Martin, NDP, Windsor), and he is classified as a carpenter, which, technically speaking, is an occupation not in the “manufacturing worker” category, but rather “construction trades.”
There are, of course, a small handful of other MPs who are in the “manufacturing” category, but as managers or supervisors of one kind or another, or, like David Emerson and Belinda Stronach, as high-flying corporate executives. Whatever the case, not the people you will find slogging away on an assembly line or mill floor, or fixing the plumbing.
Yet we have this huge sector of 1,750,000 manufacturing workers and there is not even one MP who claims it as his or her occupation. We should note that the situation is just as bleak for other categories of workers, including retail, transportation, construction and so on.
The situation is marginally better in some of the provincial legislatures. For example, in the BC Legislature there are a couple of MLAs whose occupation might be classified as “manufacturing worker” out of a total of 179 MLAs, but this number does not come anywhere near corresponding to the proportion of manufacturing workers to the overall BC workforce.
At the municipal level, the number of councilors who are manufacturing workers can be at a somewhat higher ratio, depending on the town. But, again, the proportion is still way off.
Now, the purpose of this series of articles is not to bash lawyers, teachers or business people. They, too, have the right to be represented in Parliament, and they should be. Rather the purpose is to examine why manufacturing workers and other sectors of workers are not better represented in our society’s elected bodies; and, furthermore, how that might be changed.
Next article in the series: “Part 2 – Why forestry workers should run in elections.”
Peter Ewart is a writer and instructor, who lives in Prince George, BC. He can be contacted at peter.ewart@shaw.ca. Dawn Hemingway is a university professor, also based in Prince George, BC.
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Posted by: Jim13135 on June 16 2008 8:42 AM