Bob Rae in 1990. Photo by Ron Bull/Toronto Star.

The following is an excerpt from The Left in Power: Bob Rae’s NDP and the Working Class by Concordia University professor Steven High. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with NDP politicians, senior economic policy advisors, and trade unionists, the book revisits the heartbreaking years of Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government—from their historic and unexpected 1990 victory, to their policy shifts that left working class voters feeling betrayed, to their landslide defeat in 1995—to uncover what we can learn from one social democratic party’s mistakes about how to govern from the left. For more information, visit www.btlbooks.com.

There was no question that substantial changes to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, making unionization easier and prohibiting the use of replacement workers during strikes, were the overriding priority of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Plant closings and layoffs were decimating private-sector unions, threatening their institutional survival. Between 1979 and 1985, for example, North American membership in the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers of America, and United Rubber Workers fell 32.6 percent, 40.6 percent, and 32.9 percent, respectively. Hundreds of union locals were merged or rendered defunct. Trade unions also had to lay off staff members, given the contraction in membership.

The NDP government’s inaugural throne speech promised comprehensive labour law reform, as had the election manifesto. To that end, in March 1991, Bob Mackenzie, the Minister for Labour, as he liked to say, initiated a social bargaining process between two parallel teams of management and union labour lawyers with a neutral chairperson. In theory, “rather than being dictated by government, the new legislation would reflect a consensus between the private sector actors.” But the process quickly broke down. According to insiders Chuck Rachlis and David Wolfe, “the union lawyers drafted an enormous wish list of reforms that proposed to rectify through legislation every arbitration case they had lost in the past decade and the management team called for no change at all.” To make matters worse, the labour side’s maximalist proposal was leaked to the press, sparking a media firestorm and a ferocious business backlash. One of Rae’s advisors recalls how politically damaging the leak was to the government: “I mean, it was just infuriating.........

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