NDP says labour laws lead to confusion
Omnibus bill replaces 12 existing acts
REGINA — The NDP Opposition says there is a lot of confusion when it comes to new employment rules for the province, but Labour Minister Don Morgan insists regulations will be drafted carefully.
“With the labour legislation, what we know is that there are so many unanswered questions,” NDP interim leader John Nilson told reporters Wednesday. “The minister didn’t really provide much guidance at all today in his second reading speech. Normally a minister would give a very detailed speech explaining all the different parts. He didn’t do that. It was very short. I was surprised about that.”
Labour Minister Don Morgan introduced new labour legislation Tuesday that will replace 12 existing acts with one omnibus bill covering a wide range of employmentrelated areas.
Nilson said the problem is much of the detail will be in regulations, not in the legislation itself, so “you have no clue what the policy is and I don’t think the minister does either.
“What we have to do is make sure that all the regulations that they put in place are actually going to do what the intention is of the government. When you’re talk- ing about 100 years of negotiated rules, you’d prefer to have some of the key ones very clear in the legislation and so far we’re not seeing that,” Nilson said.
“We know that every time we look at that legislation, another question pops out, so I think that’s what we’re going to be seeing all winter — it’s very disappointing we don’t have this full fall session as well as the spring session to look at such important legislation,” he added.
Specific areas of concern for the NDP have related to overtime for part-time em- ployees, call-out pay and minimum wage indexation. The government has said rules around the first two won’t change — employees will still get overtime after eight hours (unless in a fulltime shift of four 10-hour days or another presently permitted arrangement) as well as call-out pay — and, regulations will address the new plan to index minimum wage.
Morgan stressed Wednesday that the government is “doing a second round of consultation and we’ll want to hear what people have to say and I’m looking forward to hearing the specifics of their comments.”
That consultation will conclude by March 1 and Morgan acknowledged issues could arise after that date. But officials won’t start readying the regulations until March, the minister said.
“We’ll want to draft it really carefully to try and avoid somebody trying to do something that would circumvent the intent,” Morgan said about regulations, noting officials have “clear direction” not to change rules where unintended.