It wasn’t just the $1 billion that sealed the deals, say unions
What does a billion dollars buy these days? Apparently, years of labour peace. With contract ratification votes running at 80 and 90 per cent, the British Columbia government’s bargaining tactic of dangling cash in exchange for hammering out collective agreements by a deadline has proven to be a success.
With 90 per cent of its public-sector contracts coming up for renewal last spring, the province came up with an unusual gambit in the hopes of securing labour peace in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It set aside $6 billion to fund wage increases for the province’s 300,000 public-sector workers.
Last month a potential holdout, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, signed on the dotted line, quashing the fear of labour disruptions when students return to classes in the fall. Though not yet ratified by press time, the deal provides increases of 16 per cent over five years and an enhanced signing bonus of $14,000.
Looking back on one of the biggest assignments she has yet to face as B.C.’s Minister of Finance, Carole Taylor said she was searching for a novel approach to public-sector bargaining. The process in B.C. has historically been rife with confrontation whether under the Socred, the NDP or the Liberal government.
“One of the first briefing books I had was one that said, ‘Oh, by the way, the Public Service Employer’s Council comes under you and oh, by the way, 90 per cent of all your public workers’ contracts are all up on the same day in March,” said Taylor, who was sworn in last June. “That clearly focuses the mind. The potential for a major disruption in the economy is there when you’ve got all of your workers able to strike on the same day.”
Thanks to a booming economy, $4.7 billion was available for wage increases, but that didn’t amount to more than 2.7 per cent a year for each worker over four years.
“My feeling was this was a lot of money but, on its own, it’s not going to be enough to convince our workers to sign contracts,” said Taylor.
Then, as a ripple effect of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, natural gas prices went up, swelling the province’s coffers by an extra $684 million in the months between September and December.
That injection allowed Taylor to set aside $1 billion to offer as an incentive for unions to reach agreements by March 31. She also found $300 million to entice unions to extend the contracts to March 31, 2010.
But money alone wouldn’t have been enough to seal the deal. George Heyman, president of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU), said he felt the province’s negotiators approached talks with the attitude of “not having to bargain seriously on important things such as job security or limits on privatization.”
At one point, with an 80-per-cent strike vote, the BCGEU pulled out of talks, balking at the government’s proposed limit of 6,000 job losses due to privatization. The union represents 24,470 members in the public service.
“I think as the course of bargaining went on, it became apparent that those issues would have to be settled in order to get a collective agreement,” said Heyman.
The job protection it secured is a guarantee of no involuntary job loss for regular employees.
At the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU), chief negotiator and secretary-business manager Judy Darcy said she heard a message loud and clear from the union’s 35,000 members.
“Signing bonuses — sure. But it had better be a good collective agreement,” she said. “Don’t come back just with the signing bonus.”
In fact, members at the bargaining conference debated for a couple of hours on how they felt about the signing bonus.
“There were people who said, in principle, they don’t like the idea of a signing bonus. They felt it was a bribe,” said Darcy.
The union, which represents employees in a wide range of job categories at hospitals and long-term care facilities, had reasons to be skeptical. The last negotiated contract they had was in 2001. The year after, the government passed Bill 29 to void key successor and seniority provisions, resulting in 8,000 jobs lost. Then Bill 37 rolled back HEU members’ wages by 11 per cent, which the union considered to be a 15-per-cent reduction because hours were also lengthened.
But Darcy said, signing bonus aside, she sensed a different approach to bargaining on the part of the government.
“They had taken a beating politically because of previous disputes, both with us and with the teachers last fall,” said Darcy, referring to the two-week strike by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation last October. “There was a sense from the government that they didn’t want to see a repeat of the confrontations of the past.”
She also heard from senior officials at the Health Employers Association of British Columbia (HEABC), the employers’ association representing 315 publicly funded health-care organizations, “that they wanted to see a change.”
A major part of this change was the willingness on the part of both employers and the government to discuss concerns about the quality of care, said Darcy. At what’s called “a policy table,” licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and care aides represented by the HEU sat down with employers and senior government representatives to hash out issues of concern in their profession outside the context of collective bargaining. Such a forum is not entirely new — the first policy discussions were held with the nurses’ union in 2004 — but this time they were more wide-ranging.
Part of the LPNs’ discussion did end up on the bargaining table and made it into the contract, said Darcy. For example, there’s now a process for LPNs to bring up concerns about patient care, workload or standards of practice.
“It was a parallel process but one really fed the other. It was the first time it was recognized by the government that we should be at a policy table and we had a great deal to contribute to policy changes in health care,” she said.
Louise Simard, president and CEO of the HEABC, said one crucial difference was in how it and the five unions it bargains with approached negotiation. Instead of spending time with a long list of proposals, they focused on a few key issues.
“Then we engaged in discussions about why we needed certain things, and they did likewise with us. ‘Here is what we’re feeling and this is what this means to us and this is why we’re asking for it,’” said Simard. “It was much more about problem solving and looking at common goals.”
For Taylor, a key difference in this round of bargaining was a departure from the “one size fits all” approach to bargaining.
“We said every single sector is different so you’re not going to be able to compare the doctors’ contract with the electricians’ contract with the social workers’ contract. And in some cases, there may be other ways to put dollars on the table that don’t have to do with wages, like training dollars or technology dollars,” said Taylor.
She acknowledged the hardship this created for union leaders, who had to explain why some members were getting more than others, sometimes within the same sector and within the same union. A glaring example of this is found in the nurses’ contract. A labour shortage in the province meant a wage increase was going to be on the table, but particular difficulties staffing nurses for the night shift or on weekends meant that premiums were needed — $3.50 per hour for nights and $2 per hour for weekends — to reward the nurses for taking these shifts, said Taylor.
“That’s common sense but it hasn’t always been part of labour negotiations,” she said. “It took some time at the table to talk it through, because some people were saying, ‘Nurses are nurses are nurses.’”
The province’s gambit seems to have paid off, said Mark Thompson, professor emeritus of organizational behaviour and human resources at the Sauder School of Business in Vancouver and an expert on labour relations.
“The bonus was a powerful incentive,” he said. “Union leaders were saying, ‘Wait a minute, it’s only a one-time thing. This doesn’t go into the rates. It’s taxable up front.’ And the members said, ‘We wanted the money.’”
The ratification votes in the range of 80 per cent or 90 per cent were clear indications that these were satisfactory deals, said Thompson. However, “the background was something that Ms. Taylor’s too polite to say. But if anybody had seriously resisted this, I don’t think there’s any doubt that they would be legislated back to work. (The government) did this frequently in the past and they would have done it again.”
Still, he warned the government may not have put all its labour troubles behind it. There may yet be labour unrest in the construction sector, especially in the approach to the Olympics.
“If the construction workers are on strike or not working at all — if they’re moving to Alberta — that’s going to affect the Olympics,” said Thompson.
With 90 per cent of its public-sector contracts coming up for renewal last spring, the province came up with an unusual gambit in the hopes of securing labour peace in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It set aside $6 billion to fund wage increases for the province’s 300,000 public-sector workers.
Last month a potential holdout, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, signed on the dotted line, quashing the fear of labour disruptions when students return to classes in the fall. Though not yet ratified by press time, the deal provides increases of 16 per cent over five years and an enhanced signing bonus of $14,000.
Looking back on one of the biggest assignments she has yet to face as B.C.’s Minister of Finance, Carole Taylor said she was searching for a novel approach to public-sector bargaining. The process in B.C. has historically been rife with confrontation whether under the Socred, the NDP or the Liberal government.
“One of the first briefing books I had was one that said, ‘Oh, by the way, the Public Service Employer’s Council comes under you and oh, by the way, 90 per cent of all your public workers’ contracts are all up on the same day in March,” said Taylor, who was sworn in last June. “That clearly focuses the mind. The potential for a major disruption in the economy is there when you’ve got all of your workers able to strike on the same day.”
Thanks to a booming economy, $4.7 billion was available for wage increases, but that didn’t amount to more than 2.7 per cent a year for each worker over four years.
“My feeling was this was a lot of money but, on its own, it’s not going to be enough to convince our workers to sign contracts,” said Taylor.
Then, as a ripple effect of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, natural gas prices went up, swelling the province’s coffers by an extra $684 million in the months between September and December.
That injection allowed Taylor to set aside $1 billion to offer as an incentive for unions to reach agreements by March 31. She also found $300 million to entice unions to extend the contracts to March 31, 2010.
But money alone wouldn’t have been enough to seal the deal. George Heyman, president of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU), said he felt the province’s negotiators approached talks with the attitude of “not having to bargain seriously on important things such as job security or limits on privatization.”
At one point, with an 80-per-cent strike vote, the BCGEU pulled out of talks, balking at the government’s proposed limit of 6,000 job losses due to privatization. The union represents 24,470 members in the public service.
“I think as the course of bargaining went on, it became apparent that those issues would have to be settled in order to get a collective agreement,” said Heyman.
The job protection it secured is a guarantee of no involuntary job loss for regular employees.
At the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU), chief negotiator and secretary-business manager Judy Darcy said she heard a message loud and clear from the union’s 35,000 members.
“Signing bonuses — sure. But it had better be a good collective agreement,” she said. “Don’t come back just with the signing bonus.”
In fact, members at the bargaining conference debated for a couple of hours on how they felt about the signing bonus.
“There were people who said, in principle, they don’t like the idea of a signing bonus. They felt it was a bribe,” said Darcy.
The union, which represents employees in a wide range of job categories at hospitals and long-term care facilities, had reasons to be skeptical. The last negotiated contract they had was in 2001. The year after, the government passed Bill 29 to void key successor and seniority provisions, resulting in 8,000 jobs lost. Then Bill 37 rolled back HEU members’ wages by 11 per cent, which the union considered to be a 15-per-cent reduction because hours were also lengthened.
But Darcy said, signing bonus aside, she sensed a different approach to bargaining on the part of the government.
“They had taken a beating politically because of previous disputes, both with us and with the teachers last fall,” said Darcy, referring to the two-week strike by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation last October. “There was a sense from the government that they didn’t want to see a repeat of the confrontations of the past.”
She also heard from senior officials at the Health Employers Association of British Columbia (HEABC), the employers’ association representing 315 publicly funded health-care organizations, “that they wanted to see a change.”
A major part of this change was the willingness on the part of both employers and the government to discuss concerns about the quality of care, said Darcy. At what’s called “a policy table,” licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and care aides represented by the HEU sat down with employers and senior government representatives to hash out issues of concern in their profession outside the context of collective bargaining. Such a forum is not entirely new — the first policy discussions were held with the nurses’ union in 2004 — but this time they were more wide-ranging.
Part of the LPNs’ discussion did end up on the bargaining table and made it into the contract, said Darcy. For example, there’s now a process for LPNs to bring up concerns about patient care, workload or standards of practice.
“It was a parallel process but one really fed the other. It was the first time it was recognized by the government that we should be at a policy table and we had a great deal to contribute to policy changes in health care,” she said.
Louise Simard, president and CEO of the HEABC, said one crucial difference was in how it and the five unions it bargains with approached negotiation. Instead of spending time with a long list of proposals, they focused on a few key issues.
“Then we engaged in discussions about why we needed certain things, and they did likewise with us. ‘Here is what we’re feeling and this is what this means to us and this is why we’re asking for it,’” said Simard. “It was much more about problem solving and looking at common goals.”
For Taylor, a key difference in this round of bargaining was a departure from the “one size fits all” approach to bargaining.
“We said every single sector is different so you’re not going to be able to compare the doctors’ contract with the electricians’ contract with the social workers’ contract. And in some cases, there may be other ways to put dollars on the table that don’t have to do with wages, like training dollars or technology dollars,” said Taylor.
She acknowledged the hardship this created for union leaders, who had to explain why some members were getting more than others, sometimes within the same sector and within the same union. A glaring example of this is found in the nurses’ contract. A labour shortage in the province meant a wage increase was going to be on the table, but particular difficulties staffing nurses for the night shift or on weekends meant that premiums were needed — $3.50 per hour for nights and $2 per hour for weekends — to reward the nurses for taking these shifts, said Taylor.
“That’s common sense but it hasn’t always been part of labour negotiations,” she said. “It took some time at the table to talk it through, because some people were saying, ‘Nurses are nurses are nurses.’”
The province’s gambit seems to have paid off, said Mark Thompson, professor emeritus of organizational behaviour and human resources at the Sauder School of Business in Vancouver and an expert on labour relations.
“The bonus was a powerful incentive,” he said. “Union leaders were saying, ‘Wait a minute, it’s only a one-time thing. This doesn’t go into the rates. It’s taxable up front.’ And the members said, ‘We wanted the money.’”
The ratification votes in the range of 80 per cent or 90 per cent were clear indications that these were satisfactory deals, said Thompson. However, “the background was something that Ms. Taylor’s too polite to say. But if anybody had seriously resisted this, I don’t think there’s any doubt that they would be legislated back to work. (The government) did this frequently in the past and they would have done it again.”
Still, he warned the government may not have put all its labour troubles behind it. There may yet be labour unrest in the construction sector, especially in the approach to the Olympics.
“If the construction workers are on strike or not working at all — if they’re moving to Alberta — that’s going to affect the Olympics,” said Thompson.
