Surviving union certification (Guest Commentary)

Putting a hostile beginning and a year-long strike behind them, the B.C. Automobile Association and its union bury the hatchet and come out ahead

February 1997: The union has landed. The news took management by surprise. In its 90-year history, the British Columbia Automobile Association had never experienced a serious attempt to sign up with a union.

BCAA is affiliated with the Canadian Automobile Association and operates an unusual business model. In addition to its cornerstone business of providing emergency roadside service to its 750,000 members, the BCAA employs a group of about 300 travel agents, as well as several hundred sales agents specializing in a broad range of insurance products. In 1997 the organization employed 1,100 people.

Perhaps fearing the prospect of contracting out work and other changes to the business, a group of employees at various locations signed union cards.

What followed was a brutal period in BCAA’s life: months of legal battles and public blood-letting that resulted in upset and confused customers, as well as increased staff stress. And that was just the certification period.

In November 1997, the Labour Relations Board certified Local 378 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union as the formal bargaining agent for 10 of BCAA’s 21 sales centres, and later for a group of dispatchers and administrative staff at the Emergency Road Services office.

What followed was months of meetings and mind-numbing negotiations in addition to more hearings before the Labour Relations Board. Limited progress finally led to a strike that lasted a full year.

Today: The picture of employee relations can’t be more different, with the BCAA and the union, now Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, having built a genuine working business relationship.

There’s obvious evidence of ongoing trust, mutual respect and effective collaboration. Both sides listen. Both sides regularly communicate. There are few formal grievances — four in 12 months, to be exact. Both sides make every effort to be reasonable and work out areas of conflict. Both sides want the business to succeed.

The last set of re-negotiations of two collective agreements took just 10 weeks to complete, a major change from the two years it took the first time around. And better yet: BCAA has just completed its best financial year in a decade.

What happened?

For a period after the strike ended, the parties continued on the established path of distrust, confrontation and litigation. However, it soon became apparent that this approach was not only exceedingly unproductive, it was also very costly for both sides to maintain.

New players, new approach

So, with new representatives appointed as key contacts, an attempt to repair relations was launched — tentatively, cautiously. These new players, individuals with successful track records of collaborative conflict resolution, decided to implement something “radical.” They would try trusting each other — a little bit at a time.

To build and reinforce this trust, they recognized the importance of on-going and meaningful communication. They decided that they would meet regularly, at least on a bi-weekly basis, to try to iron out issues before they ballooned into grievances.

They also committed to give each other a “heads-up” of any impending significant issues, such as serious disciplinary issues or planned changes to the workplace. They rigorously followed through on these commitments. In contrast to past practices, in which practically no information was shared, both parties now made an effort to share as much information as they could.

They continued to work at defusing the environment of confrontation — both between the parties and internally, within each of their respective organizations. On the organization’s side, the challenge was to convince managers to give the process a chance. Feeling that they had been burned in the past, many managers were reluctant to believe that there was a way or a desire to move forward. Likewise, the union leadership faced similar skepticism among membership ranks.

Grievances drop 70 per cent, absenteeism 20 per cent

And, with one issue at a time, both sides ended up proving that they were able to satisfactorily resolve the majority of complaints and grievances without setting unreasonable precedents or spending a small fortune on litigation. To broaden and strengthen this approach, BCAA and the union provided ongoing training to their front-line representatives in effective contract administration and conflict resolution techniques. Within two years, formal grievances dropped by 70 per cent.

With input from the union, BCAA introduced an attendance management program, one that presumes an employee’s absenteeism is legitimate unless there’s evidence to the contrary. In the first 12 months, absenteeism dropped by about 20 per cent.

Both sides then introduced an Alternate Dispute Resolution Program based on a model the union had used at the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. In this process, both parties voluntarily use the services of a mediator/arbitrator on a cost-sharing basis, with little or no requirement for lawyers and minimal formality. This model has since proven to be an outstanding success for resolving disputes on a broad range of difficult issues such as job classification and competitions, medical and disciplinary grievances.

Slowly but surely, the overall relationship between the company and the union improved. Trust grew. Genuine communication became the norm. Both parties were prepared to take some positive risks. Both parties began focusing on creating win-win resolutions to issues in dispute.

When the business climate turns bad

An excellent example of the progress made took place shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. In the aftermath, the travel industry experienced a worldwide slump. Many travel agencies throughout North America immediately laid off a large part of their staff, and quite a few closed their doors permanently.

BCAA’s response, with the co-operation of the union, was to cut back on discretionary spending across all business lines and to ask for temporary voluntary reductions in the employees’ work week. This action was widely supported by staff and the union. It minimized the need for layoffs to just a handful of staff, and only on a temporary basis. What could have been a major disaster for BCAA and its employees became a strong example of a win-win resolution for all the parties.

The moral: Sometimes “arranged marriages” can work effectively.

Most companies, particularly in the private sector, prefer not to have unions and collective agreements to deal with. The example of the BCAA and the COPEU, however, has shown that, with some reasonable effort by both parties, a genuinely effective collaborative relationship can be forged.

It does take commitment, communication and mutual respect — as well as a willingness to take some measured degree of risk. But the results have proven to be well worth the effort.

Vern Oster is manager of employee relations at the British Columbia Automobile Association. He may be reached at (604) 268-5282 or at [email protected].

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