Employees ordered back to work
Judge finds union in contempt of court for illegal walkout, levies escalating fine
The Alberta Labour Relations Board ordered all public service employees back to work Monday night after a judge found their union in contempt of court for a wildcat strike that spread to the province’s courts earlier in the day.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees was hit with a massive, escalating fine late Monday for failing to take steps to end the job action among correctional workers.
Court of Queen’s Bench Justice John Rooke blasted AUPE’s leadership, including president Guy Smith, for mocking and defying a labour relations board directive on the weekend that commanded the union to tell workers to stop the strike and request that they return to work.
Rooke, the associate chief justice of the court, slapped a $100,000 fine on the union, but said it would rise by an additional $250,000 if the strike was not over by noon Tuesday. An additional $500,000 would be added if the strike was not over by noon Wednesday, and would continue adding up at that rate every day until workers returned to their jobs.
AUPE lawyer Simon Renouf asked for a week to pay the fine; however, Rooke said there must be no delay so as to “purge” the strike as quickly as possible.
“The banks are open tomorrow (Tuesday), last I checked,” he told Renouf.
Government lawyers used media stories and videos posted on the AUPE’s website to try to prove their case of contempt. The videos showed Smith, Local 003 president Clarke McChesney, and other union leaders addressing striking workers outside the Edmonton Remand Centre.
In one of the videos from the union website, Smith tells workers that he was “directed to inform you” of the labour board’s directive to return to work. But Rooke said the message essentially had the opposite effect because he did it in a “sarcastic” tone of voice.
The video then shows Smith saying, “Let’s stay here until we get what we need from this government, until they listen to us.”
Rooke said this essentially gave solidarity and support to the workers’ actions.
“They didn’t tell (the workers) what they should do, they didn’t give them the leadership they deserve, they leave it to the mob,” Rooke said.
The labour board decision late Monday expanded a weekend ruling ordering an end to a wildcat strike joined earlier Monday by Alberta sheriffs and court staff, after corrections workers walked off the job Friday.
The ruling gives the province the ability to fine any public service employees who disobey.
The decision came after a long delay Monday night while the board awaited a ruling on contempt of court charges against officials from the AUPE. The directive noted that public service employees who failed to show up for work “constitutes an illegal strike.”
Earlier in the evening, AUPE’s representative at the hearing had argued the board had no jurisdiction under the Public Service Employee Relations Act to rule on the wildcat strike or other labour disruptions.
The province countered that the AUPE’s concerns should have been raised on the weekend. By not objecting then, they had effectively waived their right to do so, argued Christopher Lane.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the board ruled it did have jurisdiction over the public service employees, a decision it said it would elaborate on at a later point.
Earlier Monday, deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk reiterated the province would not negotiate until AUPE members ended the illegal action and returned to work. His remarks came as the walkout widened, with Alberta sheriffs, court clerks and social workers joining correctional guards on picket lines across the province.
The wildcat strike made for a chaotic scene Monday at the Edmonton courthouse and led to the unscheduled adjournment of at least two trials.
At the courthouse’s west and east entrances, long lineups developed as Edmonton police, filling in for sheriffs, searched each bag by hand rather than using the X-ray machines.
About 100 people gathered outside the courthouse in the morning, after sheriffs voted Sunday to join the job action. About 50 social workers, protection workers and other front-line workers also joined striking correction guards Monday morning, gathering outside the Edmonton Young Offender Centre.
The labour dispute began Friday afternoon, when workers from the Edmonton Remand Centre walked off the job in response to the suspension of two correctional officers the union said had been raising health and safety concerns.
One of the two suspended correctional officers, Todd Ross, spoke earlier Monday at a news conference with Liberal Leader Raj Sherman and Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman about how efforts to get a meeting about workplace safety escalated into the wildcat strike.
Ross is the elected chapter chair of 550-member Remand Centre’s AUPE local. He said he had been lobbying for a meeting with the Remand Centre’s executive director and then the deputy minister to discuss worker safety concerns.
Ross said he and another member of the chapter executive were suspended with pay after a chain of emails over the last week, which expressed frustration with their inability to secure a meeting and demanded the province remove the Remand Centre’s executive director and associate executive director for their “refusal to work with members.”
Ross was escorted out of the Remand Centre on Friday afternoon in front of 70 correctional officers coming in for their shift. Correctional officers walked out about an hour later, he said.
Ross said Monday his concerns about safety at the new Remand Centre are the biggest risks he has encountered.
“This one is a million times worse than anything that I’ve ever been involved with,” Ross said. “Someone is going to die in that Edmonton Remand Centre. It’s like a crapshoot as to whether it’s going to be one of my members or one of our inmates and it won’t take very long for that to happen. That’s why we’re here today.”
The wildcat strike prompted officers at Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre to walk off the job as well, and the movement soon spread to correctional facilities across the province in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Red Deer and Peace River.
Lukaszuk said the new $580-million remand centre was inspected multiple times and endorsed by Alberta Health Services staff, who are also AUPE members, and that the strike “has little to do with occupational health and safety.”
The union disputed that claim Monday, calling it “completely false.” Its health and safety representative, Dennis Malayko, said in a statement that the union still hasn’t received a safety assessment of the Remand Centre.