Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

PS unions scoff at idea to end right to strike; Federal workers dismiss call for dispute-solving alternative

No way.

That sums up the response of the largest public service union to a federal study that calls for a new collective bargaining system for government workers that removes their right to strike.

“It’s a non-starter,” Patty Ducharme, national executive vice-president of the 150,000-member Public Service Alliance of Canada, said yesterday. “Quite honestly, I think it’s a non-starter for the government as well.”

The reaction was similar, though less emphatic, from the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC). “The stars would have to be perfectly aligned for us to consider something like that,” said Johanne Bray, PIPSC’s manager of policy and national representational activities.

The wide-ranging study, known as the Lahey report after its lead author, senior bureaucrat James Lahey, questions whether the current conciliation/strike model is appropriate for public servants.

The study, which does not represent government policy, was completed in 2006, but released only last week.

The report concludes that use of strikes to resolve public sector labour disputes “is of doubtful public policy,” noting that governments have suspended public service collective bargaining rights for a total of 11 years since their introduction in 1967.

While the current approach “sort of works,” the report says, “it is neither reliably stable, nor designed really to serve the public interest.”

Though governments can impose settlements, they are likelier to be tempted to buy peace by offering generous settlements because public servants deliver services the public considers vital.

“Neither situation is really in the public interest,” the report says. “Public sector employees should not find their compensation determined unilaterally.
“But neither should the public pay premiums to groups of employees whose bargaining strength arises from their position as public servants supplying services no one else is authorized to provide.”

While workers who provide essential services can’t strike, the Lahey report says this protection can be compromised if departmental managers are unable to designate enough employees to deliver those services.

“When this occurs, the capacity of the employer to withstand a withdrawal of services on which the public depends is limited.”
Another problem is the growing refusal by union pickets to allow essential workers to enter a workplace without long and arbitrary delays, it says. “In effect, this practice is a form of intimidation that risks getting out of hand.”

The new Public Service Labour Relations Act, approved two years ago, prohibits this sort of interference with designated essential workers.
But the report says it’s too soon to evaluate the impact of those changes.

The report rejects binding arbitration as an alternative to strikes, calling it “unpredictable in its results, to the point sometimes of appearing to be arbitrary.”

Instead, it suggests the best course lies in replacing the right to strike with a third-party dispute resolution system.
While not endorsing any specific model, the Lahey report says the “most interesting proposal” came in 2001 from the Advisory Committee on Labour Management Relations in the federal public service.

That committee recommended creating a “Public Interest Dispute Resolution Commission” that would use a variety of established dispute-settlement techniques to help resolve bargaining impasses.

The idea, says the Lahey report, is that this approach “would keep the parties in a sufficient state of uncertainty to encourage a voluntary resolution of disputes.”

The report encourages Treasury Board to sponsor public debate on possible designs for third-party dispute resolution approaches “that would permit us to abandon the strike and traditional arbitration options.”

The debate, it says, should involve public sector unions, federal employers, academic experts and non-governmental organizations.
If a suitable model can be developed, the government should propose draft legislation before the next parliamentary review of the labour relations act in 2010.

But Ms. Ducharme said it makes little sense to overhaul the collective bargaining system now, given that the government just rewrote the act in 2005 after extensive consultations.

The revised act, which retained the right to strike, has yet to be tested at the bargaining table. But negotiations with public service unions on new contracts will resume this fall.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, what was Lahey thinking when he wrote this report,” Ms. Ducharme said. “It’s not the direction the government went in when they enacted new legislation.

“So I think Lahey’s position on the right to strike has been seen by both the government and by at least this union as a non-starter.”
Ms. Bray said the right to strike is sacred to unions. But she said PIPSC might be willing to at least look at alternatives if the government broadened contract negotiations to include such things as pensions, benefits and job classifications — something the Lahey report favours.

She and Ms. Ducharme also suggested that the sort of changes discussed in the Lahey report might be affected by a Supreme Court ruling in June that found collective bargaining rights are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, though the ruling didn’t deal with the right to strike.
The Lahey report acknowledges that public service unions will be suspicious of any proposal to move away from the current system, at least initially.
On reflection, however, the report says many unions may adopt “a more nuanced approach.”

“Aside from militants, it appears that federal public servants are uncomfortable with leaving their work serving the public. So if a credible alternative to strikes could be developed, it might be attractive to all concerned.”

source: The Ottawa Citizen, Aug 1^st 2007