Union calls Bill 46 ‘trump card’

Labour board hears AUPE complaints over bargaining

The Alberta government used Bill 46 as a “trump card” that coloured its negotiations with the province’s largest public-sector union, a provincial labour-board hearing was told Wednesday.

The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed a complaint of badfaith bargaining and unfair labour practices against the province last month after the legislation took effect.

The Public Service Salary Restraint Act, which only applies to the AUPE, would legislate a fouryear agreement that would see a wage freeze for two years and one-per-cent increases in the following two.

It also eliminates the union’s ability to take a contract dispute to compulsory arbitration.

“This was always the employer’s trump card, in one way or another,” AUPE counsel Bill Rigutto said in his opening remarks on the opening day of the Alberta Labour Relations Board hearing. “It coloured the manner in which collective bargaining was carried out by the employer. In fact ... while the union presented rational and reasonable and economically justifiable positions, the employer took a stance which amounted to arbitrary, unilateral and dogmatic refusal to even consider most if not all of the positions that were submitted by the union.”

The AUPE has been without a collective agreement for its members since March 31, 2013, and had been seeking a six-per-cent wage increase over two years. When negotiators for both sides reached an impasse, the union applied to go to compulsory arbitration.

With Bill 46, the province took that option off the table, which was “a repudiation of 30 years of established practice in Alberta,” Rigutto said, adding the board should find that constituted badfaith bargaining.

But Hugh McPhail, who represents the Alberta government, rejected those claims, saying the union “made up its mind that the only way to get what it wanted ... was to go to third-party arbitration.

“It sped through bargaining, it sped through mediation (and) it raced to get a compulsory arbitration board established.”

The hearing is scheduled to continue for several days and will hear evidence from Peter Watson, deputy minister of executive council and the province’s top civil servant.

The AUPE has already filed a lawsuit against Bill 46, and on Wednesday both it and the United Nurses of Alberta filed Charter of Rights challenges against the law’s companion legislation, Bill 45.

The Public Sector Services Continuation Act was introduced in the legislature in late November. It dramatically increases fines levelled against unions that launch illegal strikes and introduces fines for “strike threats,” a provision that critics say violates freedom of expression.

Both bills sparked an outcry after they were introduced, and prompted the Alberta Federation of Labour to launch a TV spot calling Premier Alison Redford a “bully” for ramming the legislation through the legislature.

In statements of claim filed Wednesday in Court of Queen’s Bench, both unions say Bill 45 violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The lawsuits also challenge portions of the Alberta Labour Relations Code that prohibit public-sector employees from striking.

The stiff fines included in the act violate freedom of association “by having a purpose or effect of financially crippling the trade unions to whom the legislation applies,” the AUPE lawsuit says.

The broad definition of a strike threat “encompasses a wide range of otherwise lawful expression,” the United Nurses lawsuit says.

Both unions are asking that provisions of the act be struck down.

Deputy premier Dave Hancock, who sponsored the bill, said it was a response to an illegal and costly AUPE strike at the Edmonton Remand Centre last spring.

Statements of claim include allegations that have not been proven in court. The province has 20 days to file a statement of defence.