Ford victory could disturb labour peace

One likely outcome of a Doug Ford election victory is a return to long, bitter public-sector strikes by teachers, nurses and other taxpayer-paid employees. It is part of the mantra of modern conservative parties that all governments are wasteful and inefficient and its employees overpaid.

But squeezing 2 or 3 per cent from public spending when $3 billion of every $4 billion spent goes to wages can only mean one thing: pay cuts, freezes and layoffs. Three per cent of Ontario’s planned spending next year is not chump change: it’s roughly $5 billion. That’s a lot of jobs.

Nasty labour battles are the bright line that connects the governing history of most Canadian conservative parties, from B.C.’s Liberals to Ralph Klein’s in Alberta to Mike Harris’ in Ontario, and on and on.

The experience of employees of the state having the right to bargain collectively — and to strike — has been an unpleasant roller-coaster ride for much of the past half century for all concerned. Large private-sector unions deal with private employers determined to survive financially. Teachers’ bargainers deal with politicians, more focused on their personal political survival. Too many politicians are happy to either buy peace with cash, or buy votes with humiliating rhetoric and deliberate attacks. Rarely is respectful, fiscal responsibility achieved.

Conservatives claim to squeeze public salaries, until they get in trouble in pre-election polls. Then they negotiate big settlements. Progressives, usually coming in to clean up the bloody labour battlefield, often give away too much in return for too little in improved performance or public-service delivery. Then the roller-coaster begins its inevitable slide down to another round of battle.

Sometimes conservative governments try on all the roles in sequence: first, tough but not outrageous bargaining, then the hammer and, finally, an expensive pre-election climbdown. This was the history of the Klein/Stelmach/ Redford era that Rachel Notley inherited.

Klein fought public employees with a meat axe, all the while centralizing the bureaucracy and raising executive salaries. Stelmach and Redford softened the rhetoric and — backed by $100-a-barrel oil — allowed higher settlements. Jim Prentice was trying to find a more Canadian “mutual accommodation,” when he was summarily turfed by Alberta voters.

Right now, Alberta is lucky to have Rachel Notley as premier, for several reasons, including her grace under pressure.

Additionally, as well as being a progressive, she is a labour lawyer who knows a lot about the traps and dead ends of public sector bargaining. She was determined to prove that a progressive government facing an economic crisis could deliver peace in the public sector.

First, her government took charge of the process. With Alberta’s teachers, for example, they sat as one team of provincial government bargainers across from the union for the first time, replacing the need to negotiate with 61 separate bargaining units. Then they named a seasoned former public-sector union leader as senior adviser on their grand strategy, to predictable Tory guffaws about foxes, chickens and hen houses.

In fact, he helped to guarantee “no games, no B.S.” on all sides.

Rebuilding confidence in any postconflict environment is never fast. Getting to a settlement with the teachers took many gruelling months. The nurses took even longer, all of 2017, in fact, but achieved another no-increase deal with many working-condition, training and performance changes.

Next up were the rest of the healthsector employees who settled for similar terms this winter.

The biggest challenge is the broad government employees’ union whose bargaining is now underway. Together these agreements would mean that the vast majority of tax-paid employees in Alberta have agreed to zero wage increases for two to three years. They have agreed to work-life balance changes, in return for new efforts to improve service delivery. Impressive.

Sadly, if those who engineered these impressive brakes on the public-sector roller-coaster are defeated, the result is entirely predictable. Jason Kenney has already promised a return to meat axe bargaining. Ontario voters might want to reflect on this Alberta success as they weigh their ballot choice a few weeks from now.

Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, was an NDP strategist for 20 years.