The Big Three and Other Employers Shouldn’t Be Able to Use Scab Labor
The Big Three automakers have been deploying scabs against the UAW strike. In the US, we often take the practice for granted — but in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and British Columbia, replacement labor is banned. We should make scabs illegal here too.
United Auto Workers members on a picket line outside the Stellantis NV Toledo Assembly Complex in Toldeo, Ohio, September 18, 2023. (Emily Elconin / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain has vigorously condemned violence on the picket lines in Michigan, Massachusetts, and California — laying the blame on management for using replacement workers, or as we usually call them in the labor movement, scabs.
But replacement workers are not a phenomenon we should take for granted. In Quebec and British Columbia, legislatures have adopted laws against the use of replacement workers.
Scabs Banned Since 1977
The province of Quebec was the first jurisdiction in North America to pass legislation banning replacement workers, in 1977, after significant increases in picket line violence across the province. One dispute was a twenty-month-long strike involving UAW Local 510 and United Aircraft (later called Pratt & Whitney), which became one of the most violent strikes in Canadian history.
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