Employer did not bargain in bad faith, arbitrator rules
It’s back to the bargaining table for nurses in Alberta, whose bad-faith labour complaint against health services was thrown out by a judge.
Late last year, the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) petitioned the provincial labour relations board, alleging its employer, Alberta Health Services (AHS), was bargaining in bad-faith.
AHS is a province-wide, fully integrated health care system that governs collective agreements between all health care professionals and the provincial government.
With negotiations reaching an impasse, the UNA complained health services failed to make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement — something nurses had been without since March 2013. At the time the complaint was filed, both the UNA and AHS had met at the bargaining table on a dozen occasions.
More meetings slated
At issue for the union was the employer’s intention to implement a "staff scheduling transformation," by which, the union feared, it would impose a reduction in the number of nurses currently on the staff roster.
As part of this transformation, AHS also said it planned to create regular relief positions and associated rotations to make up for any possible losses.
"To date, not a single nurse employed by AHS has been laid off who does not have recall rights she can exercise," health services explained during the hearings. "The reductions of nurses shown in the small number of units is not anticipated to result in layoffs as it is expected there will be other positions available to those nurses elsewhere in the operations."
The aforementioned was relayed to the nurses’ union before bargaining began, and further details were revealed throughout the course of negotiations.
However, social media muddled the situation. AHS posted its intentions on its website and mentioned it on social media through the official Twitter account.
The union argued this also demonstrated AHS’s questionable bargaining tactics, as it was providing information which appeared to reflect there was going to be a reduction in the number of registered nurses.
"(AHS) was providing information which appeared to reflect there was going to be a reduction in the number of registered nurses as a result of the implementation of the staff scheduling transformation initiative," the UNA alleged. "At the same time, AHS is informing the affected employees and the public there would be no reduction in these numbers of their nurses."
This assumption was a major part of the problem, the AHS countered.
"(The) UNA is attempting to rely upon forecasts made by AHS that relate only to a small portion of the total number of units affected by this initiative and extrapolates from that small number of units the effect upon all of the units," according to health services.
"Any reduction in the number of nurses at a particular unit will be offset by the creation of new registered nurse positions, but the creation of positions for some of these nurses to work in regular relief rotations, and by the attrition process the parties earlier agreed upon."
Gerald Lucas, the arbitrator presiding over the case, found health services did not act in bad faith, adding that the union acted hastily in filing its complaint.
"(The) UNA has unfortunately interpreted what AHS has been saying to the public, in contrast to what they are saying at the bargaining table, as meaning their forecast of future events should be treated as the same as an explanation of current events," Lucas said in his decision.
The case was dismissed — for now, as Lucas added that a complaint of this nature might well be premature. Both the union and health services were urged to return to the bargaining table and carry on with negotiations.
Reference: United Nurses of Alberta and Alberta Health Services. Gerald A. Lucas — arbitrator. David Harrigan, Craig Neuman for the union, Mark Kent, Kim LeBlanc and Cory Galway for the employer. March 5, 2014.
