NDP can only hope for voluntary wage freeze

We are just beginning the Year of the Rooster, according to the Chinese calendar.

Politically speaking, though, we in Alberta are well into the Year of the Contract Negotiation.

Alberta’s big three public sector unions — the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the United Nurses of Alberta and the Alberta Teachers’ Association — are either in contract talks or are about to start.

And this year’s bargaining will be unlike anything in the past.

The 40,000-member ATA, for example, is formally negotiating for the first time directly with the government at the provincial level, rather than with individual school boards at the local level.

To make this work, the NDP government set up a new organization called the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association. The idea is to give the government a seat at the table because, after all, it’s the government that supplies the money to pay the teachers.

Provincewide bargaining is a good thing if it gets all of Alberta’s teachers to settle on a contract in one fell swoop. It’s less great if it gets all of Alberta’s teachers to walk off the job in one fell swoop.

Then there’s the 30,000-member nurses’ union that is now able to have its members go on strike legally, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling.

Not all nurses can walk off the job, mind you. Enough will have to keep working to ensure hospitals stay open, among other things.

But nurses now have access to strike action to push their contract demands, if they’re so inclined.

Their current contract expires at the end of March. Nobody is expecting them to get a new deal by April 1. They’ll keep on working under the old contract until they get a new one or, um, until they take job action.

Working without a new contract is nothing new. About 13,000 licensed practical nurses, members of the AUPE, have not had a contract for the past two years and are about to vote on a new two-year deal that gives them a 1.2 per cent wage hike for the first year and .08 per cent the second year.

This is a retroactive contract that covers the period April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2017.

That means even if the members approve the deal, they’ll be right back into contract talks for a new deal starting April 1.

But the Wildrose has made this contract ratification a political issue by demanding the Alberta government freeze workers’ wages.

“Out-of-work Albertans don’t send their hard-earned money to Edmonton, just so this NDP government can pad the pockets of its union bosses,” said Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt.

“This government needs to do something, anything, to show it understands the plight of people in our province right now. I suggest it start by imposing a freeze and putting a stop to these out-of-touch union pay hikes.”

I’m sure Fildebrandt’s message will fly well with his anti-NDP, anti-union supporters, but it’s worth pointing out that the wage hike would be paid to 13,000 nurses, not “union bosses.”

It’s also worth noting the government cannot easily freeze the wages of public sector workers, even if it wants to (which the union-friendly NDP does not).

In 2011, the Progressive Conservative government of Alison Redford tried it with Bill 46 that unilaterally imposed a two-year wage freeze on 22,000 AUPE members.

A court ruled the bill was arbitrary, unfair, possibly unconstitutional and reeked of bad faith.

The PC government eventually scrapped the bill and awarded the workers a 6.75 per cent wage hike over three years.

This time around, Premier Rachel Notley is committed to letting the collective bargaining system run its course.

She’ll be hoping that the province’s publicsector workers, whether they be teachers, nurses or someone who drives a snow plow, will appreciate the fact the government is not slashing spending or laying off workers or trying to interfere in contract talks.

In other words, the government is hoping public sector workers will accept a wage freeze voluntarily.