SCEP Syndicat canadien des communications, de l'énergie et du papier

On January 24th 2002 the Alberta Labour Relations Board
issued a document entitled A Discussion Paper on Standard
Health Care Bargaining Units which outlined a proposed
change of policy regarding the certification of bargaining
agents in the Alberta Health Care Sector. The Board in the
document made several recommendations which caused
the Alberta Labour Movement grave concern.

The Board suggested in it’s document that although they
would “…continue to apply its (current) general guidelines
concerning appropriate bargaining units…” they suggested
that there would be an increase emphasis on consolidation.
The rationale advanced was that these larger units would
foster “…industrial stability and avoidance of
fragmentation.” The Board suggested heavily restricting
the right to strike and significantly reduced the employee’s
right to chose the union of their choice...

Predictably Alberta Labour was appalled. The document
sounded, to many readers, like an employer wish list. The
Board is supposed to be free from influence from both
employers and unions and it is supposed to be independent
from government.

Over a period of several months, all the unions in Alberta
representing health care workers, including CEP and the
Alberta Federation of Labour were caught up in a
consultation process with the Labour Board. Labour leaders
throughout the Province shared their concern with the
Board. They universally rejected the proposed changes and
spoke out passionately against the proposals. Our union
was front and center. On behalf of CEP I told the Board
“We completely reject the Labour Board’s justification that
refers to ‘Shifting priorities from collective bargaining to
industrial stability’. The industrial stability in a unionized
environment is achieved through fair collective bargaining and
fair legislation – not by administrative tampering.” The Labour
movement convinced that they could help the Board see
the error of its ways, were fully engaged in the consultative
process.

In the spring of 2003, to everyone’s surprise and despite the
on going consultation process, the Alberta Government
introduced and eventually passed Bill 27, a repressive bit of
legislation which radically changed the labour relations
landscape in that province’s health care sector. That bill
gave Ralph Klein’s Conservative Government the right to
rip up scores of collective agreements covering tens of
thousands of health care workers in that Province. It also
forced unions to hold run off votes to decide which unions
would represent those workers. It some situations forcing
workers to chose between two different unions, none of
them supported and denying them the right to remain
being represented by the union of their choice. The
legislation amalgamated 400 collective agreements into 36.

As if that wasn’t repressive enough Bill 27 went so far as to
remove the legal right to strike from thousands of union
members in areas like community health and mental
health without ever attempting to justify how the public
interest would be threatened. In many ways, this was the
most blatantly anti-union piece of legislation introduced
by an Alberta government in more than 20 years.

In the struggle to fight this draconian legislation and in our
dealings with the Board and the Government, it became
clear to us that the boundaries between the Board and the
Government had become dangerously blurred. We came
to understand that the Board’s ability to act as an
independent and impartial third party had been
compromised.

Our suspicions about the Board’s role in the drafting of Bill
27 prompted us to file numerous freedom of information
requests in our attempts to get a clear idea of what really
happened behind the scenes between Government and the
Board.

The concerns we had prompted CEP along with the
United Nurses of Alberta to launch legal action in an
attempt to get to the bottom of what we clearly saw as an
injustice.

In September of 2004, Justice Watson of the Alberta Court
of Queen’s Bench dismissed the unions’ application for a
judicial review of Bill 27, not because our arguments lacked
merit, but because so much of the case rested on things
that had gone on behind closed doors. We simply did not
have enough evidence.

In the months following the lower court decision, the
evidence we had earlier been unable to compile began to
surface. With the help of the Federation of Labour, and
freedom of information requests made by them, bit by bit,
a picture of what happened with Bill 27 began to emerge.

As that picture became clearer we saw;

The new evidence that we managed to gather – and the
picture that evidence painted – caused unions across the
province to ask a very fundamental question: how can we
possibly have confidence appearing before a this LRB that
had so clearly worked with a the employer to undermine
the rights and interests of a large group of workers?

Tuesday April 3rd was supposed to be our first day in front
of the appeal court in our efforts to have Justice Watson’s
decision overturned.

Tuesday morning the Labour Relations Board released a
new protocol which helps to define future interactions
between the Board and the government. These new
guidelines, signed by all six members of the Board, limits
when the provincial Government can ask the arm's-length
Labour Relations Board for secret advice.

The new protocol clearly states that the only way the
Board can maintain the confidence of the parties appearing
before it is to defend its independence from employers,
unions and government.

There will be no more veil of secrecy. No more backroom meetings. No more Government treating the Board like one of its departments. No more guessing about what’s going on behind closed doors.

The protocol also guarantees that, in those cases where the
Board does give technical advice, the Board officers
involved will not be allowed to sit in judgment on the laws
or regulations they gave advice on.

It also puts restrictions on the role of outside legal counsel
– so they can’t act for employers one day and as advisor to
the board the next.

With this document, the Alberta Labour Relations Board
has gone from having essentially no clear internal rules
dealing with its independence from government to having
some of the best rules in the country.

As AFL President Gil McGowan put it, “We may still
have some of the worst labour laws in Canada – and we do.
But this protocol makes it clear that the Board’s only role
will be to interpret those bad laws, not help write them.”

In return, CEP, the Alberta Federation of Labour and the
United Nurses of Alberta agreed to drop the court
challenge to the Bill.

The Alberta labour leaders said the new rules are some of
the best in the country for accountability and transparency,
but the deal means that health-care workers will have to
live with Bill 27.

We can’t rewrite history. At times I wish we could but to
reverse everything that has been done would create
hardship for these workers all over again. They have been
through enough already. Hopefully with this new protocol
in place, there won’t be another travesty like this one in
Alberta’s future.

Hopefully we can now begin to rebuild some faith in the
Labour Board. Hopefully they can regain their reputation
as the impartial arbiter they are meant to be.

The Alberta Federation of Labour plans to ask
Employment, Immigration and Industry Minister Iris
Evans to have the guidelines enshrined in legislation.
McGowan said, “If the Stelmach government is sincere in
its efforts to promote transparency and accountability, we
think this protocol is a very good place to start.”