Privacy, harassment, pensions, wages continue to be hot-button issues this year
Labour experts foresee an uneven pattern to collective bargaining in 2013, based on a gap between unions defending relatively secure workers, who may take a more aggressive approach to negotiations, and unions acting for relatively vulnerable workers, who may settle their contracts more readily.
On the organizing front, some union leaders expect the economy to make it difficult for unions to expand into new workplaces.
“Job security for unorganized workers is important, and when you have the kind of tactics utilized by employers to discourage workers from being organized, it is an extra hurdle that we have to overcome,” says Wayne Hanley, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW), one of the country’s largest private-sector unions.
But if employers overreach, “then overanxious management styles more or less invite unions to come in to preserve respect and dignity at work,” he warns. UFCW Canada plans to increase the share of its annual operating budget for organizing workers over the next couple of years.
Legislation will also pose a hurdle to union growth in the private sector, where only 16 per cent of workers are unionized compared to 71 per cent in the public sector, according to Statistics Canada data for 2011.
“The shift away from automatic certification since the early 1990s to secret-ballot votes on certification gives employers more opportunity to influence the outcome,” says Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist and professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Unions are also concerned that some multinational manufacturers may follow the example of Caterpillar, which last year opted to move its locomotive production from Ontario to Indiana.
But Ben Ratelband, a partner at McCarthy Tétrault’s labour and employment group in Toronto, does not foresee an exodus of plants to places like Michigan — the latest jurisdiction in the United States to adopt right-to-work legislation. Nor does he expect right-to-work laws to cross the border.
“I don’t see that type of legislation likely to make its way north despite the rumblings of some politicians,” he says.
Layoffs lead to more disability, employment standards claims
If layoffs occur at Canadian plants, Ratelband anticipates an increase in the number of employment standards claims and disability claims as workers struggle to retain their jobs by filing complaints alleging ulterior motives for their dismissals.
On the other hand, “if you’ve been grieving excessively, you might be less likely to do so in a weak economy,” Skuterud adds.
Privacy
Worker complaints over employer violations of privacy are also likely to continue to grow, says Ratelband. Last January’s ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal in Jones v. Tsige recognized a common law tort of invasion of privacy in Ontario for the first time.
Privacy flashpoints are likely to be employees’ personal use of computers at work as well as the confidentiality of medical records, particularly those relating to the employer’s duty to accommodate sick or injured workers.
Violence, harassment
Bill 168, Ontario’s workplace harassment and violence legislation which took effect in 2010, is likely to make workplace harassment and violence hot-button issues, says Ratelband.
“It introduces a formality to interpersonal relationships within the workplace, which was a lot less regulated in the past,” he said.
‘Downward pressure’ on wages continues
With economists forecasting a modest growth rate of around two per cent in 2013 for Canada, employers are expected to take a tough stance in private sector wage negotiations, while the federal and some provincial governments continue to impose austerity on public-sector workers.
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast in its November report that Canada’s economy would grow by only 1.8 per cent in 2013. It cited weak demand outside Canada, low commodity prices and the high loonie hurting economic activity and corporate profits.
“The downward pressure on wages that we’ve seen over the past two or three years will certainly continue,” says UFCW’s Hanley.
Wage hikes are likely to be limited to the rate of inflation in most parts of the country, he says.
Unions focusing on pensions
Absent much potential for wage gains, unions will concentrate on trying to stem the erosion of employer pension plans.
“2012 was a tough year for pension plans and, in 2013, this will be a large focus for our collective bargaining,” Hanley says.
Much of the pension friction could be removed from the bargaining table if governments were to agree upon an expansion of the Canada Pension Plan to offset the inadequacy of private retirement incomes, he says.
Failing that, unions will resist further conversions by private-sector employers of defined-benefit to defined-contribution pension plans as well as the trend toward hybrid plans.
“Hopefully, (pensions) will be resolved without labour disputes,” says Hanley. “But those issues are probably just as important to workers as are wages and other terms.”
