Legislative changes in Nova Scotia, Ontario among union concerns
Looking ahead to 2016, Canadian Labour Reporter decided to talk to union leaders and a legal expert to hear about the opportunities and challenges they anticipate in labour relations in the coming months.
Regaining confidence
Joan Jessome — president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU) — announced her intention to move on after 17 years as president.
But Jessome said she still has big plans for the union’s future. She said NSGEU will be working in 2016 to galvanize workers after a year of being battered.
"This government has been vicious," Jessome said. "They’ve been able to pit the public against the public sector. And this has been an issue for the public
service across the country, not just here, that members don’t feel they have the right to push back."
Jessome said employees feel too afraid or ashamed to speak up for themselves and call for improvements to their contracts.
Compounding this issue are several new pieces of legislation — concerning essential services and the consolidation of 50 of Nova Scotia’s bargaining units into four health-care councils — that are putting serious pressures on employees as the parties prepare for collective bargaining, she said.
"Because we’ve had so much change and we’re dealing with so much new legislation, there’s a lot of uncertainty," said Jessome.
"And you don’t always hear from members because people are in temporary positions or casual positions and they’re afraid. They’re held hostage by their position."
Catching up
to changing workplaces
Working conditions, and the issue of precarious work in particular, will be a major area of focus for Unifor in the upcoming year.
In Ontario, the union will be working closely with the province as it reviews changing workplaces and addresses the gender wage gap.
Katha Fortier, Unifor’s Ontario regional director, said the union plans to focus on updating employment standards and labour relations acts to bring them up to date with today’s working conditions.
"There hasn’t been a significant update in Ontario in more than two decades," Fortier said. "If you look at work in the last two decades, it’s gone through some incredible changes."
She said Unifor will be reaching out to organizations in 2016 to partner on these reviews and work toward improving workplace conditions and addressing the issues employees are facing.
"I think almost everybody would agree that the rising inequality has led to a situation where many people are being left behind," Fortier said.
"Oftentimes, Ontario sort of leads the pack in these sorts of issues, so we’re hoping for some real progressive changes."
Raising the floor
One particular change Unifor will be pushing for is raising the floor for employees at the bottom of their wage scale.
"We did that for retail this year and for our Air Canada bargaining where workers that were at or just about minimum wage got significantly higher increases," Fortier said.
While increases were negotiated at every level, the union focused on negotiating higher increases for those on the floor to support members doing precarious and low-wage work.
These efforts to improve conditions for Unifor’s most vulnerable members present a challenge, Fortier said, as the union simultaneously works to prevent taking concessions for its members as a whole.
Balancing the budget
Ki Lin Tay, an associate lawyer at Levitt & Grosman in Toronto, said unions’ efforts to win improvements for their members could be significantly affected by the federal budget.
"There are a number of emerging issues that have been proposed by way of the April 2015 Federal Budget which will certainly have a significant effect on the current state of labour relations in Canada if implemented," Tay said.
Particularly, she pointed to a heavier emphasis on the labour market in an effort to ensure employers have a pool of qualified workers to draw upon.
Additionally, Tay said a major move on rationalizing the government’s own employment practices by reforming and reducing expenditures on sick leave, disability and workers’ compensation can be expected to have a significant impact on unions’ plans for the upcoming year.
Picking up the tab
Perhaps more than anything else, Tay said, the Ontario Liberal government’s highly publicized $3.7-million payoff to various public sector unions in 2015 will have a lasting ripple effect on 2016’s negotiations and labour relations.
The provincial government’s practice of paying money directly to unions to cover expenses during collective bargaining came under harsh criticism in 2015.
"As a result, there is a potential that unions may begin looking to the government or other parties to subsidize costs incurred in protracted bargaining, and an even greater likelihood that union members and the public will be holding unions accountable to report with respect to funding, costs and expenditures in light of the apparent conflict of interest borne out by the union payouts in 2015," Tay said.
"Practices such as those employed by the Ontario government this past year are certainly atypical and controversial, and once the dust settles, the outcome may very well affect how other unions proceed in negotiations."
