Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector in Canada
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000001023 |
| Date | 01 February 1990 |
| Published date | 01 February 1990 |
| Pages | 19-26 |
| Author | John R. Calvert |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN CANADA 19
A
review of recent developments and pre-
diction for the future of Canada's public
sector trade unionism.
Collective
Bargaining
in the Public
Sector in
Canada
John R. Calvert
Introduction
This article gives a brief account of
public
sector bargaining
in Canada. The first section places Canadian labour relations
in the wider context of the federal political system. The
division of powers between the federal and provincial
governments has had a profound effect on the institutions
of collective bargaining. Many areas of the public sector
which, in Britain, are funded and administered centrally,
fall within the jurisdiction of the ten provinces in Canada.
This has led to a mosaic of services whose scope and
structure varies substantially from province to province.
The terms "decentralised" and "fragmented" apply to
a very large proportion of Canada's public sector, a fact
that makes explanations of how the public sector is
organised unduly complicated and filled with qualifications.
The second section offers a brief overview of the patchwork
quilt of labour legislation in Canada. Ninety per cent of
Canadian workers are covered by provincial labour laws and
almost 80 per cent of public sector workers have their
bargaining arrangements within provincial
jurisdictions.
To
complicate matters further, there are normally different
labour acts governing the public and private sectors in each
jurisdiction, and there are commonly a number of specific
acts dealing with different groups of public sector workers
within each jurisdiction. Workers performing identical jobs
in similar institutions may have widely differing legal rights
depending on the province in which they
live,
and whether
they are covered by federal or provincial legislation.
The third section of the article gives a short account of
the development of public sector trade unions in Canada.
It discusses the emergence of the major unions during the
past two decades and assesses the impact that public sector
unions have had on the wider labour movement in recent
years.
The fourth section begins by outlining the various bargaining
structures within which negotiations take place. It then
discusses some key bargaining trends of recent years and,
particularly, the impact of fiscal restraint policies on the
bargaining climate. One of the most salient developments
in the past decade has been the growing willingness of
governments to use their power as legislators to resolve
disputes in the public sector by enacting "back-to-work"
legislation and by imposing other restrictions on the right
to strike.
In the final part of the article, the question of the future
of public sector unionism in Canada is addressed. There
are now two major schools of thought on this matter. The
first sees the structures put in place in the past two decades
as being relatively stable and mature. Within this view the
rights of public sector workers and their unions are now
firmly entrenched in the Canadian political system.
Consequently, the future is seen primarily in terms of
refining and consolidating the emergent industrial relations
system. Proponents of this view acknowledge that
governments have used their power to limit bargaining rights
on a number of occasions in recent years. But they argue
that these actions were largely a response to the serious
economic pressures of the 1980s, rather than signifying
the abandonment, by governments, of their commitment
to collective bargaining in the public sector. Thus they
believe that the return of a more stable economic
environment, coupled with the gradual easing of the fiscal
problems of government, should result in a return to a more
balanced and stable pattern of collective bargaining[1].
The other, more pessimistic scenario is one in which
governments seek to resolve their fiscal problems by
removing many of the rights conceded to public sector
unions in the 1960s and early 1970s. It foresees growing
confrontation between public sector unions and the State
and a return to the more repressive approach to trade
unions which characterised Canada's history until the recent
post-war period[2].
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