Could paper's 'hard bargaining' lead to unfair labour complaint?
A strike and ongoing labour dispute at the Chronicle Herald in Halifax continues after talks broke down again last week.
About 61 newsroom employees at the daily paper walked off the job on Jan. 23 after negotiations came to a halt earlier that week.
Management is seeking to lay off up to 18 employees, according to the Halifax Typographical Union (HTU), which operates under the Communications Workers of America-Canada union (CWA Canada), along with reducing wages and changing schedules and future pension benefits in order to adapt to the financial demands of running a newspaper in a bleeding industry.
The bargaining team made significant concessions but the employer wouldn’t budge, said Martin O’Hanlon, president of CWA Canada. That included a five per cent wage decrease and changes to severance provisions.
"That was part of our goodwill attempt to address the company’s financial issues. It’s not like they’re hemorrhaging money but they want to be making money, moving forward — we said, ‘OK, it’s a business,’" O’Hanlon said.
When an agreement still could not be reached, employees walked off the job. At the next round of bargaining, the union offered more concessions, including moving editorial jobs around that would "save them a million dollars," he said, but talks broke down the night of Jan. 25 and, as of press time, there were no negotiations scheduled for the future.
The union said the company wanted to move certain editorial employees, including senior design staff, to a non-unionized facility, where some would have to take a $10,000 pay cut.
"We’ve done all the compromising so far — that’s not bargaining — bargaining has to be both sides trying to find an agreement. One side just saying, ‘Give us everything we want’ and we’re not going to get a deal," he said.
Further complicating the matter is that in the hours following the employees’ strike, 18 bargaining unit workers were issued layoff notices, which the company then suspended, Nancy Cook, a spokesperson for the Chronicle Herald, confirmed in an email.
"The result of a work stoppage, in this case a strike, suspends various aspects of the employment relationship, including the layoff notices," she said.
Among the 18 employees was Ingrid Bulmer, president of the HTU union and photographer.
O’Hanlon added that the union would not hesitate to consider pursuing legal action for anything that may have happened during the labour lockout that should have been hammered out at the bargaining table.
"Regardless, all of that stuff is irrelevant, it gets settled at the bargaining table; what doesn’t get settled, well, we’ll take legal action," he said.
Grounds for
labour board complaint
One route the union could take is to file an unfair labour complaint with the province’s labour relations board.
The onus would then be on the union to show that the publisher’s managers did not bargain in good faith — a situation that is sometimes difficult to prove, said Jonquille Pak, a labour and employment lawyer at Whitten & Lublin in Toronto.
"An employer is entitled to hard bargaining, and when it becomes an unlawful issue is whether the employer is engaging in tactics in what is called surface bargaining — going through the motions but tabling proposals with no intention of reaching a collective agreement with the union because you know it will never accept them," Pak said.
But because those layoffs were discussed during bargaining, and because the employer operates in a beleaguered industry, proving that the layoffs that were issued and then suspended may not exactly have been so-called union-busting, as the HTU has said.
"The act of a layoff is not necessarily union-busting," Pak said. "It depends on whether it was designed to undermine the union in the situation.
"It’s highly possible that it was and that’s going to depend on the context of what took place during the negotiations."
She added that while the company is certainly engaging in "hard bargaining," it would need to prove its actions do address a financial necessity.
"There’s no way to insulate or protect employees in an industry that’s generally suffering from a downturn, from change — regardless of the fact that employees belong to a union or not," Pak said.
"However, there is an obligation on the employer and the union to negotiate in good faith," she added.
Long-term repercussions
for labour relations
Though O’Hanlon said he remains positive that both sides will come to an agreement at some point, there could be long-term repercussions for the future of labour relations at the Chronicle Herald — where the relationship was not so rosy to begin with, he said.
"Of course, they haven’t just damaged their labour relations — they’ve blown up their labour relations," said O'Hanlon.
"When you start off your labour dispute by issuing a layoff notice, you know it's inflammatory and against the collective agreement. But you know that’s going to upset people.
"They’re treating their employees like a commodity."
O’Hanlon said the union understands the financial pressures facing many traditional media outlets, but that there is a right way to tackle these issues with the union.
"There’s a nice way to do it. You don’t have to demonize your employees," he said.
"So, yes, there is going to be a very negative effect on labour relations. They weren’t the best to start with over there, and this will chill it further."
