law

Nuclear Workers on Strike: Apparently Not A Threat

Over the last year, Canada’s federal government has been more than happy to force resolutions in collective bargaining disputes before the parties have had much chance to settle their disputes on their own. Using the rationale of avoiding damage to the Canadian economy, the government has intervened to end strikes at Air Canada, CP Rail, and Canada Post. So it’s more than a little surprising to hear Labour Minister Lisa Raitt continue to claim that the federal government prefers to let parties settle disputes themselves. And it’s especially surprising to hear this claim in the context of an unresolved dispute with potentially huge economic implications.

On July 9, nearly 800 workers at Candu Energy went on strike. (more…)

One Year and Counting: Rocky Mountaineer Lockout Keeps Chugging Along

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the lockout of Vancouver’s Rocky Mountaineer train attendants, which I wrote about a few months ago in this post. The Vancouver Courier newspaper has a very good update on the dispute here. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the last few months, other than the company expanding its services despite the dispute. It’s still using replacement workers to staff the trains – and, according to this press release, the company plans to expand its services even more in the 2013 season.

According to the Vancouver Courier story, the two parties in the dispute (Rocky Mountaineer and Teamsters Local 31), aren’t even bargaining. Hmm. Canada’s federal government seems quite happy to quickly impose laws to end labour disputes on the basis that any service disruption might affect the Canadian economy – and this is a dispute that falls under federal jurisdiction. (more…)

Professional Licensing and the Labour Market: Not That Tightly Braided

I’m usually a fan of the New York Times Magazine column “It’s The Economy”, some previous installments of which I’ve written about before. I like this column because it uses real life examples to demonstrate that economic and organizational  theories don’t just live in some isolated ivory tower, but are actually very useful in explaining why things in the real world work the way they do. That being said, however, this week’s column on licensing of professional work is really disappointing and superficial. (more…)

Update: Volunteer Work is Voluntary

I’m catching up on things after returning from ASAC 2012, but while I was away, the BC Labour Relations Board delivered its ruling in the case I wrote about here and here. involving BC teachers’ withdrawal of their volunteer work. The LRB ruling determined that volunteer work is exactly that, but that some kinds of work, mostly involving curriculum-related matters, is not voluntary, and that withdrawal of those services constitutes strike action. If the LRB issues a more detailed decision including its reasons, I’ll follow up on that, but I will say at this point that this seems like a thoughtful and reasonable decision.

Organizational Citizenship and the BC Teachers’ Dispute

The BC Labour Relations Board case about whether teachers withdrawing their volunteer work constitutes strike action got me thinking about organizational citizenship – a concept that doesn’t get much attention outside academic research, but which explains a lot about the impact of behaviour on workplaces. (more…)

Back to Work Legislation: If Cost is a Reason, Prove It

Today, the Canadian federal government introduced back-to-work legislation to end the strike at Canadian Pacific Railways. As my colleague David Doorey has so eloquently described over at his blog, this fourth piece of federal back-to-work legislation represents a very disturbing pattern of intervention. Critics from both union and management positions have said that these acts hamper the effectiveness of collective bargaining, not only in the immediate situations, but also in long-term bargaining relationships, where the parties will either be unwilling or unable to reach agreement on their own.

I’ll also point out that the government has done an extremely poor job of justifying the economic rationale for stepping in to end these disputes. (more…)

Is It Work if You Don’t Get Paid for It?

The British Columbia Labour Relations Board is struggling this week to answer a deceptively simple question: what is work?

That question is part of the ongoing bargaining dispute between the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) and BC’s provincial government (represented in this situation by the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA)). (more…)

The Union That Doesn’t Call Itself A Union: The UFCW and “Ask Target for Fairness”

Unions are having a hard time in Canada right now.  Union density (the percentage of the workforce represented by a union) has stayed relatively constant in Canada over the past few years, but union membership numbers have shrunk dramatically in some parts of the workforce, because of job reductions in highly unionized parts of the private sector (e.g. manufacturing). And although anti-union attitudes in the United States have always been strong,  it isn’t unreasonable to think that anti-union sentiment in Canada is stronger now than it has been, shown by such anti-union actions as the proposed revisions to labour legislation in Saskatchewan, and the over-eagerness of the federal government to intervene in labour disputes when a strike might be involved. (more…)

Strikes and Lockouts Are Bad. And Your Point Is….?

It’s no secret by now that the governing Conservative party  in Canada has, well, a conservative attitude toward unions. It’s been shown through the quick legislative intervention in the Air Canada pilots’ dispute this spring – following similar interventions involving Air Canada’s flight attendants and Canada Post. These were all justified as necessary to offset the potential damage of extended work stoppages to the Canadian economy. But the government’s reasoning was, shall we say, light on the specific details of the extent of this (alleged) damage, and why legislation was needed to prevent it.  So, not surprisingly, these back-to-work laws have been characterized as just a convenient way to disrespect the bargaining rights of the parties in these disputes.

Clamping down on strike and lockout activity is a high-profile indication of the Conservative government’s feelings about unions. But there are other, more subtle, things going on too. (more…)