Paul Weinberg
Straight Goods
November 4, 2001

Not so long ago, John Murphy was president of the 15,000-member Power Workers Union of Ontario (PWU), a foe of privatized energy services and a supporter of the NDP. But the one-time staunch unionist surprised friends and foes alike last May when he quit that position to accept the job of executive vice-president for human resources at Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the major generator of electricity in the province in the new deregulated, post-Ontario Hydro era. For Tom Adams, Executive Director of Energy Probe, Murphy is simply "a pragmatic politician." But Jim Stanford, economist for the Canadian Auto Workers, has a different view. "There is nothing new about being a management stooge," he says. "I view his switching of camps as a real disservice to those unions who are trying to better their workers."

Outside of police unions, no other labour organization is as tight with the Ontario Tory government as the Power Workers.

Zeal of a convert

An assistant to one of Ontario’s labour leaders was surprised that I had snagged an interview with Murphy. After an hour in his office in the Ontario Hydro building, however, it dawned on me that I was facing a man who had undergone a conversion and was anxious to spread the news. But like anyone with a new faith, he can be impatient with former colleagues, who are stuck in what he calls the "North American model" of adversarial labour-management relations. As OPG prepares to compete in a deregulated power market, Murphy is responsible for ensuring that both workers and managers are, as he says, "motivated, engaged and empowered." Upon closer examination of his recent history, Murphy’s action does not appear surprising. For a year after Mike Harris came to power in 1995, Murphy stood with Howard Hampton and the NDP against the sale of Ontario Hydro to private interests. In fact, the PWU is credited with having boosted support for public ownership and delayed Queen’s Park’s privatization plans. Eventually, however, Murphy began to shift his position as it became clear that the Harris government was hell-bent on taking control of power away from Ontario Hydro. Using the Energy Competition Act of ’98, the province broke Hydro up into a series of separate entities (still largely publicly owned), each of which is expected to duke it out in a deregulated market with other players, including U.S. companies.

Schmoozing with the enemy

Murphy began writing articles and speeches in favour of deregulation (ironically, he and his union had earlier railed against similar schemes in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain). He also joined the electricity transition committee, established by Ontario Energy Minister Jim Wilson – who was featured on the cover of the PWU’s magazine and invited to speak at a union function. And one of his last acts as PWU president was to schmooze with Mayor Mel Lastman, backroom guy Paul Godfrey, police union chief Craig Bromell and Harris at a PC fundraiser. Murphy defends his change of allegiance, saying, "We have not experienced any government that has done such broad consultation with the union on every step of the electricity industry restructuring as Mike Harris’." Murphy, who started as a technician at the Pickering Nuclear Station, may have simply been trying to save his members’ jobs in the face of the inevitable Tory restructuring. "If you keep saying you are opposed to a change but don’t have any alternatives, you are going to get marginalized, and are not going to have any opportunity for influence," he explains.

Creative horse-trading

Indeed, in exchange for co-operation with the energy ministry, the PWU won the right to maintain representation of the members in all of the reconfigured post-Ontario Hydro units, including the Bruce nuclear facilities leased last spring sold to British Energy. In addition, it will gain hundreds or possibly thousands of new members in Ontario’s newly restructured municipal electric utilities, although the stage could be set for a clash with other unions in those workplaces, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – the Power Workers as local 1000 are part of CUPE, but have always maintained a separate identity.

Energy Probe’s Tom Adams suggests that a damning August ’97 report by Ontario Hydro chief nuclear officer Carl Andognini on poor management and labour practices in the nuclear power plants frightened the PWU, causing it to alter its opposition to deregulation and privatization. "It was a fundamental threat to the existence of the nuclear program," Adams says. But Myron Gordon, a U of T finance professor who advised the PWU when it was trying to save Ontario Hydro, says that Murphy and his union "threw in the towel" by siding with their own self-interest rather than the greater public good.

While deregulation might make sense in telecommunications because it encourages the development of new technologies, he says electrical power is an industry where little innovation is occurring. "People in the union are not exactly working at the minimum wage," he says. "They are more like doctors than orderlies." (Indeed, some PWU members earn salaries as high as $100,000.) Gordon says deregulation and privatization will mean higher electricity bills for Ontario consumers, billions of profits going into the pockets of foreign companies and a less secure provincial economy, which has traditionally been reliant on cheap electric power. But Murphy claims his move was a natural extension of his work in eliminating friction between the PWU and management. "My own view and the view of [OPG president] Ron Osborne is that the only ‘us and them’ in the future is going to be us as the company and the competition that wants our business," he says. But critics like Bruno Silano, president of CUPE Local One at Toronto Hydro, say some friction is necessary because unions and management represent different interests. "There is always inequity," he says. "The only power we have is in the collective agreement."

Geoff Bickerton, a labour columnist for Canadian Dimension and research director for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, wonders if Murphy’s past negotiations with Ontario Hydro and OPG management as union president might have been compromised by his ambition for advancement within the corporation. But Don MacKinnon, the new president of the PWU, counters that no concessions regarding wages and benefits were made after the Harris government embarked on its restructuring process. And Murphy says that the number of employee grievances has dropped from 3,000 two years ago to 300 today, a result of a changed atmosphere inside the post-Ontario Hydro orporation.

Still, Patrick Case, an ombudsman for a brief period at OPG and an expert in human rights and race relations, says that in 1998 the PWU negotiated an "unusual" agreement with OPG that essentially allowed the corporation to force employees to transfer from the Bruce facilities at Port Elgin to Darlington or Pickering, east of Toronto, regardless of the disruption for families and themselves. MacKinnon stands by the PWU’s partnership agreements with OPG and the rest of the post-Ontario Hydro companies. The PWU is officially non-aligned, but outside of the police unions in the province no other labour organization is as tight with the provincial Tory government as is this one. All this might change, however, in view of Labour Minister Chris Stockwell’s changes to provincial labour legislation. The PWU has called for the maintenance of the status quo – one of the few times the union has made public statements about issues outside power. Meanwhile, University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman suggests that the Harris government probably does not regard its coziness with the PWU as a valuable political asset. "It doesn’t fit with the redneck image they like to convey," he says. As an aside, John Murphy is originally Irish as is Ontario CUPE president Sid Ryan. Both worked at Pickering, became active in the PWU and sparred as rivals within the councils of labour. But they remain personal friends despite their ideological differences. Together, they went to Northern Ireland to support the peace agreement. Reached on the cell phone, the usually outspoken Ryan, a committed left-wing, was suddenly mum. He apologized and said he couldn’t comment on Murphy’s move.

Paul Weinberg is a Toronto journalist specializing in information technology issues. A shorter version of this article was originally published in Toronto’s eye Weekly magazine.