Athabasca University stalls bargaining right out of the gate

Bargaining between the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) and Athabasca University (AU) kicked off June 28th with an exchange of proposals. You can read the details here but the short version is: 

1. AU refused to table its monetary proposal, and 
2. AU has refused to set further bargaining dates unless AUFA agrees to meet in person (instead of bargaining via video conference). 

Since I'm no longer president of the union, I don't have to be polite about this approach to bargaining, which is stupid for many reasons, including:

• Practical: A union can’t get an agreement (which is the goal of bargaining) when the employer refuses to say what it wants and refuses to meet. Being unreasonable serves no one’s interests, including the employer’s.
• Strategic: While AU might have gotten away with stalling on a full proposal for a while, refusing to bargain until AUFA agrees to bargain exactly how the employer wants to bargain is contrary to the Labour Relations Code. There are good reasons to bargain online (e.g., significant travel costs, child-care issues, health issues) and AU has provided no coherent or compelling reason to refuse to bargain by unless it is face-to-face. The employer will eventually have to abandon this demand and, when it does, it will look (even more) incompetent and unreasonable than it does now.
• Political: AU ran this same play last round and it resulted in a near strike. A repeat of this approach has dramatically raised tensions among the members for no real gain. Most AUFA members are now angry and frustrated and AU’s bargaining team just spent all of the new president’s political capital for no real gain (“meet the new boss, same as the old boss”). In less than 20 minutes, AU also drove AUFA’s bargaining team (who are mostly new) from “let’s bargain in good faith and try to get a deal” to “fuck these clowns.” For a union, there is simply no better organizing force in the world than a terrible employer.

It is hard to fathom why AU insists on meeting in person. My best guess is this is some kind of dick-measuring contest, where the employer wants to show the union that it sets the terms of bargaining.

Alternately, it could be that the employer is stalling because it is not prepared to bargain. The union hasn’t shared AU’s non-monetary proposal yet (I imagine that is coming in the next few weeks) but it is basically a rehash of stuff from the 2020-2022 round of bargaining, which provides some support for the “not ready” hypothesis.

If there is a strategy behind refusing to provide a monetary offer, I’m hard pressed to see it. The government has issued a mandate across the public sector for a four-year deal with a cost-of-living adjustment of 2%, 2%, 1.75%, and 1.75%. AU will either open with that or with something even worse (like the U of Lethbridge has). Either way, withholding the monetary just makes AU look like uncooperative dicks and AU gains nothing from the eventual reveal.

Maybe the strategy is to try and lure AUFA into settling the non-monetary stuff first (thereby giving up the opportunity to trade language for a monetary offer the employer could live with)? Since AUFA isn’t stupid, it is obviously not going to fall into that trap so delaying providing a monetary proposal is just wasting everyone’s time.

Overall, alienating the union and its members (to no real gain) is a bad way for Athabasca University to start to bargaining and raises real questions about the competence of whomever is directing AU's bargaining approach. At this point, the employer’s best pathway to a deal that doesn’t involve a work stoppage is to set dates and provide a full offer, maybe with a mea culpa to smooth things over.

Since AU is showing zero labour-relations game, I imagine we’re off to the Labour Board. In the meantime, the union will begin the process of dissecting the employer’s proposal and building resistance to it among the members as part of its strike preparations.

I’d hoped that AU changing its spokesperson signalled a desire for better labour relations. Apparently not. If I had to guess how this will play out, I'd say there will be no real progress at the table, AUFA will declare impasse in the fall, and we go to mediation where the employer will be forced to actually start bargaining. 

This is super disrespectful of the employer and heightens the risk of an  unnecessary "fuck you" strike. Glad I kept my picket sign from last time. If anyone wants in on the pool about which employer-side rep gets throw under the bus first by AU when this goes off the rails, shoot me an email.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Government interference in collective bargaining

Earlier this week, the Parkland Institute released a report that I contributed to, entitled Thumb on the scale: Alberta government interference in public-sector bargaining.

This report examines how, in a time when workers’ Charter-protected associational rights appear to be expanding, the rate at which governments interfere with collective bargaining has skyrocketed.

It specifically looks at Alberta’s ongoing use of secret bargaining mandates, which turn public-sector bargaining into a hollow and fettered process.

This report is relevant because both UNA and AUPE have exchanged opening proposals with the government in the last few weeks and will be bargaining against secret mandates. The government opener in both cases was, unsurprisingly, identical and there is a huge gap between what workers are asking for and what the government is offering.

-- Bob Barnetson

New research on unions' impact on wages and benefits

In November, Andrew Stevens and Angele Poirier released a report that examined the union effect on wages and benefits across Canada to 2022, with the data for Saskatchewan also broken out.

Nationally, unionized workers earned an average of 11% more than non-unionized workers. There was significant provincial, gender, age, and sectoral variation. The union advantage appeared particularly pronounced for workers aged 15 to 24 (+26%) and part-time workers (+41%).

Unionized workers were also more likely to have paid sick time (80% versus 555 for nonunionized). Unionized workers were also much more likely to have employment-related pension plans (825 versus 37%) as well as other supplementary benefits.

Interestingly, non-unionized workers experienced slightly higher wage increases between 2020 and 2022. This might reflect pressure on non-union employers to improve wages in order to attract and retain staff (i.e., is a union spill-over effect). It might also reflect that union contracts (which fix compensation for a period of time) may delay increases (e.g., inflationary bumps) or unionized workers (who are very often in the public sector) may have been subject to mandated wage freezes and rollbacks by the state.

-- Bob Barnetson

Bill 5 continues government interference in collective bargaining

Canada has a long tradition of governments using their power as legislators to give themselves a further advantage in their role as an employer. This is called permanent exceptionalism. Basically, governments pass laws undermining public-sector workers’ bargaining power, justifying them as temporary and exceptional interventions, except they are neither.

My colleagues Jason Foster and Susan Cake and I published a study of legislative interventions in labour relations from 2000 to 2020 in a recent issue of the Canadian Labour & Employment Law Journal (vol 25, issue 1) called “Catch me if you can”: Changing forms of permanent exceptionalism in response to Charter jurisprudence.”

The upshot is that, during a time when the Supreme Court was finding that workers’ associational rights in the Charter included the right to collectively bargain and strike free from substantial interference, the rate of government interference significantly increased (tripling over the 1990s). Basically, governments have become addicted to rigging the game against public-sector workers.

Back in 2019, Alberta’s UCP government passed the Public Sector Employers Act. The PSEA allowed the government to give public-sector employers secret and binding bargaining mandates. This made the 2020 round of public-sector bargaining a hollow and fettered process (our study about this is currently in review) and let the government drive home a combination of wage freezes, miserly wage increases, and other rollbacks. This built upon a similar strategy use by the NDP government in the 2017 round of bargaining that also delivered several years of wage freezes.

Presently, the legislature is debating Bill 5, which amends the PSEA. The headlines around this Act have focused on how the government will be better able to attract certain types of public-sector workers (i.e., wages are too low) while also now controlling the wages for non-unionized workers via secret bargaining directives. In the house, the NDP is flagging how Bill 5 opens the door to pork-barrelling for public-sector CEOs.

Almost no one is examining how Bill 5 extends the original secret mandate powers. The new bill allows the government to create employer committees and associations to coordinate (and perhaps perform) bargaining, potentially on sector-wide bases. This is pretty much how it works at the big tables in education, health-care, and the core civil service now.

But, for the 250-odd bargaining tables among agencies, boards, and commissions, these amendments would allow for big changes. In theory, employers could bargain cooperatively against dozens and dozens of disparate small unions and union locals, each bargaining on their own. Combined with an inflexible government mandate, this would make it very hard for these workers to get a decent deal and would make it much easier for the government (via these employers) to drive further concessions into these contracts. There are no similar provisions for sectoral bargaining arrangements for workers.

Alberta is already suffering from significant staffing shortages in health-care and education. Further grinding wages and hollowing out of public sector-bargaining (combined with the government threatening to take control of Albertan’s Canada Pension Plan contributions and its efforts to grab up public-sector pensions) will make Alberta an unattractive place for new graduates to stay.

-- Bob Barnetson

John Oliver on Union Busting

A friend sent me this clip of John Oliver exploring union busting in the United States.

Very applicable to Canada as well.

-- Bob Barnetson

Six Worries for Workers This Labour Day

This blog was originally posted on the Parkland Institute blog.

What can Alberta workers expect from a United Conservative Party government over the next four years? The UCP’s first term cheapened labour costs for employers. Its 2023 election platform contained few promises related to labour and employment issues beyond the usual nostrums about low taxes creating jobs. We think workers should watch six issues.

1. Low wages, high unemployment, and Inequity

While the number of jobs in Alberta has increased, more job seekers and layoffs mean Alberta’s unemployment rate remains the fifth highest in Canada. For those with jobs, the purchasing power of their average hourly wage has fallen by 4.95% (or about $3,000 per worker) over the past 10 years. Alberta is only one of three provinces to experience this loss.

By October, Alberta’s minimum wage will be the third lowest in the country while Alberta’s cost of living remains among the highest. The UCP is unlikely to raise the minimum wage from 2018’s $15 per hour. This means inflation will further erode the purchasing power of 11.5% of Alberta workers, the majority of whom are women.

Not surprisingly, Alberta also continues to have the highest gender wage gap in Canada. In July of 2023, Alberta women earned 84 cents for every dollar men earned (averaging $31.52 per hour vs. $37.61 per hour). The UCP is unlikely to address this gap.

2. Illusion of low-cost childcare

Under an agreement with the federal government, the UCP has promised to implement $10 per day childcare by 2026 as well as create 70,000 additional spaces. While childcare fees have declined, $10 per day childcare is likely to be a chimera.

In February, the UCP established a cost-control framework for childcare. Government funding will ensure that “core” childcare is provided for $10 per day. But the UCP is encouraging providers to charge fees for “enhanced” childcare, such as food, activities, playground equipment, and better qualified staff. Providers are being told they do not have to spend all of these enhanced fees on the enhanced services (i.e., private providers can pad their profits with these fees).

Since demand for childcare spaces will continue to outstrip supply, parents who decline to pay the enhanced fees (i.e., want $10 per day childcare) may have difficulty securing a space because they reduce the providers’ profits. Further, low wages and limited training and professional development opportunities suggest the goal of 70,000 additional spaces may be wildly optimistic.

3. An Alberta Pension Plan

Alberta has been flirting with the idea of leaving the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and creating an Alberta Pension Plan (APP) since 2019, putatively to lower premiums. The UCP did not campaign on the APP, likely because more than half of Albertans are opposed to the idea.

Withdrawing from the CPP requires three years of notice. The terms of Alberta’s departure are difficult to predict since no jurisdiction has ever left the plan. Departure may constitute a major change in the plan, which would require the approval of 7 of the 10 provinces (representing two-thirds of the population) and the federal government.

There are many unanswered questions about an APP, including its financial stability and likely returns, operating cost, the portability of contributions, and its susceptibility to political meddling. Quebec’s experience with running its own pension plan suggests that doing so does not necessarily result in lower premiums.

4. Public-sector bargaining

In 2019, the UCP gave itself the power to foist secret bargaining mandates on public-sector employers, rendering collective bargaining a fettered and hollow process. All unions eventually settled for wage increases well below inflation, after years of prior wage freezes. Despite the negative impact that uncompetitive wages have on recruitment, retention, and productivity, it is likely the UCP will go back to this well in the hope of further grinding public-sector wages.

It is unclear whether Alberta’s public-sector workers and their unions have the will to meaningfully resist such a tactic. Resistance would require workers to strike and, perhaps, to do so illegally in the face of back-to-work legislation. That is a risky proposition for both workers and their unions’ leadership. That said, only last fall, Ontario’s unions forced the Ford government to walk back legislated contracts through an illegal strike by education workers that looked set to escalate to a general strike.

Public-sector workers are also likely to see further privatization of their jobs, as the UCP did with laundry and laboratory services in health care. The UCP may also provide more public funding to private-sector providers of education and health-care services.

5. Recruitment and Retention

Not surprisingly, declining compensation, childcare shortages, and uncertainty about the CPP have meant some Alberta employers are struggling to recruit and retain workers. The UCP has promised a $1,200 tax credit for workers in fields such as health care, childcare, and the skilled trades who come and work in Alberta for at least a year, and a $3,000 to $10,000 tax credit (spread over multiple years) for new graduates in unspecified fields who stay in Alberta to work.

These promises are essentially an admission that Alberta is not an attractive place to live and work. Neither promise is very significant in monetary terms and, if implemented, they are unlikely to have much impact on worker shortages because of the negative impact of the UCP’s education and health-care agenda. Increasing post-secondary tuition and a defective K-12 curriculum (e.g., “find gravity on a globe”) make Alberta an unattractive place to study or raise children. Ongoing staffing shortages, the unavailability of rural obstetrical care, and the botched privatization of laboratory services suggest the health-care system is also failing.

6. Union Dues and Bill 32

The UCP has promised to fix one of their controversial changes to Alberta’s labour laws (commonly called Bill 32) that accidentally cost community organizations $2.5 million in lost donations from unions. This happened because Bill 32 required unions to get each member to authorize dues deductions for activities beyond collective bargaining and contract administration. This was designed to constrain unions’ abilities to participate in political and advocacy campaigns but also affected donations.

Before the election, many unions quietly decided to simply ignore Bill 32. It will be interesting to watch how (and, indeed, if) the UCP handles enforcement. It may choose to pursue legal action against these unions. Or it may take the position Bill 32 achieved its political goals and ignore widespread non-compliance.

Conclusion

The UCP has a difficult course to navigate over the next four years. Its political goals include low taxes, low wages, a diminished public sector, and increased privatization. None of the outcomes of these goals are attractive to the skilled workers that Alberta requires. Indeed, declining real-dollar wages, failing health-care and education systems, unstable retirement income, and unavailable childcare are likely to impede both worker recruitment and retention.

-- Bob Barnetson, Susan Cake, and Jason Foster

Hollywood strikes highlight undercurrent of violence in labour relations

Two strikes, one affecting writers and the other actors, have brought most Hollywood productions to a stand-still over the past two months. 

You can read a summary here but the gist is major studios are trying to cheapen work in order to gain a greater portion of the surplus value generated by labour.

The bosses’ strategy, at least with respect to the Writers Guild of America, appears to be simply starving out the workers. According to Vanity Fair, the bosses expect writers to run out of money by October and, once the workers are facing homelessness, they will resume negotiations and press for concessions. Starving workers until they give up is an age-old employer tactic.

Actor Ron Perlman, in a now deleted video, reacted to the bosses’ plan this way:

The motherfucker who said we’re gonna keep this thing going until people start losing their houses and apartments — listen to me motherfucker. 

There’s a lot of ways to lose your house. Some of it is financial. Some of it is karma. And some of it is just figuring out who the fuck said that — and we know who said that — and where he fucking lives.

There’s a lot of ways to lose your house. You wish that on people? You wish that families starve while you’re making 27 fucking million dollars a year for creating nothing? Be careful motherfucker. Be really careful. Because that’s the kinda shit that stirs shit up.

Perlman’s statement got quite a lot of media play because it is out of step with most people’s understanding of how contemporary strikes play out (basically people stop working and walk around with signs until the boss decides to negotiate). Suggesting that bosses might face violent, real-world consequences for trying to get even richer by economically destroying workers’ lives is pretty uncommon these days.

That hasn't always been true, though. Underlying every job action is the potential for violence. Often it has been used by bosses to bust a strike. But, occasionally, workers will destroy the bosses’ property or attack them directly. The post-war labour compromise in Canada has attenuated this risk, in part by strictly regulating strikes and strike behaviour.

But, when the bosses refuse to negotiate in good faith (or the system looks otherwise completely rigged against them), worker commitment to obeying labour law may fray because it is no longer in their interest to do so.

We most often see this dynamic play out in wildcat strikes. But worker frustration doesn’t have to be channelled in that direction. A worker or smnall group of workers could, as Perlman hints, just destroy a boss’s house or yacht or factory or mine or whatever.

It is worthwhile for both bosses and workers to pay attention to the potential for this kind of behaviour as they strategize how to bargain. Bosses who decide to play hardball, may be opening Pandora’s box. And worker may be overlooking a significant source of leverage by discounting alternatives to picketing.

-- Bob Barnetson

Update: AUFA members to vote on reversing exec decision

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) executive deciding to make a cash donation to a member. Yesterday, the AUFA membership forced a special meeting on the issue and will soon be voting of a motion to reverse this decision.

A good outcome of the meeting was support for the development of a formal member emergency fund. There are lots of examples to choose from. Most have these features:

• a low- or no-interest loan for a fixed period of time,
• available to members on application,
• a requirement for some disclosure of the circumstances giving rise to the need, and
• decisions being made by a committee without a real or perceived conflict of interest.

The meeting itself flushed out some additional information about the executive’s donation. While I am hopeful that a recording of the meeting will be available to all AUFA members prior to the vote, I worry that the disclosure of the member’s identity by a member of the incoming executive during the meeting may preclude the union from sharing the recording. So, for those who could not attend, here is a recap (I have flagged the new info below):

1. In early June, the executive held an emergency meeting three days before a regularly scheduled executive meeting.
2. The purpose of the emergency meeting was to vote on a donation to a member whose salary had been cut off for refusing to comply with an employer direction (i.e., the member choose this outcome).
3. NEW The member did not ask for this money. Rather, this motion was an initiative of a member of the executive.
4. The executive was not told before voting on the donation that the member could have their salary restored simply by complying with the employer’s demand.
5. NEW The donation was to another member of the executive.
6. The recipient was not named in the notion meaning the payment could not be implemented.
7. Multiple members of the executive resigned over the decision.
8. The executive did not communicate this unprecedented move to the membership until nearly a week later and under pressure that I would tell the members if they did not. 
9. The eventual disclosure (which occurred after voting for the next union executive had concluded) left out important information about the donation, including the resignations that had resulted from it.

So, is this decision by the executive one that should be reversed by the members?

One way to answer that is to look at how far the executive’s process deviated from the typical approach to emergency funds that I set out above.

• There was a donation in lieu of a no-interest loan. There is no explanation for this.
• The member never asked for the money; this was an initiative of an executive member. This raises the question of whether the member is even in need of the money? 
• Key facts were not disclosed to the decision makers. Specifically, (1) evidence of hardship, and (2) that the member was refusing to take action that would restore the member’s salary (which is a bit like drowning in a bathtub because you refuse to sit up).
• The recipient was a member of the same committee that made the decision. This may not create a conflict of interest (that is very hard to tell given the information the executive has provided) but it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Overall, this was a bad process that led to what looks like a bad decision that was then communicated in way that was untimely and incomplete. Consequently, I think this decision, at the very least, warrants a do-over using a better process. The way to achieve that is for the members to pass a motion reversing the decision. The executive could, of course, rescind their decision and do a proper job of it once they have a fund set up.

It is notable that the executive has not followed through on the other motion it passed during the emergency meeting: strike a committee to establish a member emergency fund. Had they done that, members could be voting on that right now (there are lots of examples to cut and paste from, including AUFA’s emergency fund from its strike prep). This inaction is notable because the executive are, on the one hand, aggressively defending their decision but, on the other hand, taking no actual steps that would get their decision implemented (and get the member the money).

Several other motions planned for the meeting (including a non-confidence vote in the lame-duck executive) did not get discussed. An important issue going forward is that AUFA members (who almost all work from home) have no effective mechanism to discuss matters of concern as a group. Hopefully next year’s executive will do something about that.

-- Bob Barnetson

AUFA executive resignations follow unusual payment to member

Last Friday, the executive of the Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) held an emergency meeting. After an apparently acrimonious discussion, the executive voted 5-4 to “donate” $2500 to another member. Subsequently, five members of the executive resigned and the treasurer is unable to make the payment because of the wording of the motion. 

The remaining members of the AUFA executive finally released some information about this payment a week later, after I threatened to go directly to the members. But the executive have left out important context and the subsequent resignations. These omissions are very troubling. This information also comes only after the union’s elections have concluded.

This post compiles the information I have been able to verify about these very concerning events. I believe this decision shows very poor judgment and that the remaining members of the executive who voted in favour of this motion should resign. I understand that one of them has done so this morning.

Background

I’ve redacted some of the details but the gist is that a member declined to comply with an employer direction (i.e., was insubordinate). After several unsuccessful attempts to gain compliance, the employer placed the member on an unpaid leave.

As much as I don’t generally like how AU behaves, placing a member on unpaid leave is permissible in these very specific circumstances (that I am carefully not discussing). This has happened periodically over the past 15 years that I’ve been active with the association and is not an unprecedented situation (what is unprecedented is the payment).

The member decided to continue not complying (and thus not be paid). While being placed on an unpaid leave can certainly create a financial emergency for a member, this is not a labour-relations emergency for the union.

Subsequently, a member of the executive sought an emergency executive meeting to authorize payment of $2500 in financial aid. AUFA does not presently have a system for providing financial aid to members. The union did create an emergency-loan system in anticipation of a strike last year. Absent a work stoppage, that system does not operate because the members have not approved expanding its parameters.

Consequently, this request was brought to the union executive as an ad hoc motion. Article 12.8 of the AUFA bylaws permits the executive to authorize unbudgeted payments of up to $5000 without seeking membership approval.

Nine (of then 13) voting members of the executive were able to attend the emergency meeting:

• Davina Bhandar 
• Pamela Holway
• Jonathan Leggo,
• Gail Leicht
• Katie MacDonald
• Darka Pavlovic
• Kristin Rodier
• Rhiannon Rutherford
• Ching Tan

After an in camera discussion, MacDonald and Bhandar moved:

“AUFA make a one-time donation of $2500 to the member in question in support of undue hardship.”

This motion passed 5-4 with Leggo, Leicht, Pavlovic, and Rutherford opposed. A subsequent motion established an ad hoc committee to look into establishing a formal member emergency fund (which is a good idea).

While no one has been prepared to discuss all of the details of the in camera discussion, some attendees have characterized the information provided to them an incomplete. For example, they were not told that the member could have their pay restored by simply complying with the employer’s direction.

Over the next several days, Leggo and Pavlovic along with Florene Ypma and Dave Powell resigned from the executive over the motion. Leicht (who is also the treasurer) has also indicated she will be resigning as soon as the executive can put someone in place to perform financial oversight functions. In the meantime, she has declined to issue the cheque because she does not have a name and mailing address to permit the issuance of a cheque.

Questions

A number of questions jump to mind:

1. Why it was necessary to call an emergency meeting last Friday when there was regularly scheduled meeting three working days later? An emergency meeting likely reduced the number of executive members able to attend.
2. Why the secrecy within the executive about who the member is? How can the executive make an informed and accountable decision without recording to whom the payment was made (even if this information is shared only on a need-to-know basis)?
3. Why was the executive not informed during the discussion that the member who received the payment could have their pay restored by ceasing their insubordination?
4. Why was the funding provided as a donation, rather than as an interest-free loan?
5. Has this decision established a precedent whereby other members who refuse to comply with legitimate employer directions (i.e., are insubordinate) can now seek financial support from the union?
6. Why did the remaining executive not inform the AUFA membership of this significant departure from past practice and the subsequent resignation of five executive members in a timely manner? This question is especially salient since (1) there was an immediate member request for disclosure (within minutes of the meeting ending) and (2) the payment decision was made in the middle of union elections wherein some of the executive members who voted in favour off the payment were running for office.
7. Does this expenditure fall within the definition of non-core expenditures under the Labour Relations Code (as amended by Bill 32 several years ago) and, therefore, does it require the executive to get the permission of members to collect and expend these dues notwithstanding the bylaws? If so, will payment open AUFA up to a complaint to the Labour Relations Board?

Analysis

While the union executive can spend up to $5000 on its own initiative, this sort of expenditure (which was not an emergency) should likely have been subjected to meaningful consultation with the membership. Indeed, many of the executive members who voted for this motion ran last year on a slate that promised greater transparency.

Savvy union leaders go out of their way ensuring that union decisions, particularly about spending, are transparent and above reproach. Last Friday’s decision does not demonstrate this sort of political acumen. Instead, we see executive members:

1. Calling an unnecessary emergency meeting that only a portion of the union executive could attend.
2. Authorizing an unprecedented payment to another member (with the support of only 5 of 13 executive members).
3. Failing to disclose to the executive members in attendance that the member could resolve their problem on their own by complying with the employer’s direction.
4. Not naming the member who is to receive the funding in the motion, which has resulted in the treasurer being unable process the payment.
5. Disclosing information about the decision only after members threatened to release the information directly to the members and only after the end of the union election, in which some of the remaining executive members were candidates.
6. Possibly created a precedent where the union is on the hook to financially support other members who are insubordinate (or, at least, having to fight off claims for such support).

This behaviour demonstrates why it is important for members to pay attention to union operations and be very choosey about who they elect to manage the affairs of their union.

Now What?

The good news is that a new executive will take control of AUFA as of September 1. Many of the key players in this decision will not be a part of that executive.

AUFA members could also call a special meeting (under Article 5.4 of the bylaws). At this meeting, they could demand an explanation from the remaining executive and/or they could advance motions. These motions could include overruling the payment, voting nonconfidence in some or all of the remaining executive members, or setting up a committee to develop an emergency loan system with meaningful oversight and sensible parameters.

Really, though, the simplest way for the remaining executive to restore membership confidence in the executive would be for the members of the existing executive who voted in favour of this motion to tender their resignations. I understand one of them has done so already (that is six resignations now, if you're keeping track). This would still leave enough executive members to get through the traditionally slower summer months and hand the organization over to the incoming executive in September.

-- Bob Barnetson

Resisting company doctors through moral suasion

Unionized workers can make gains and stave off concessions by attaching costs to employer behaviour in the hope that the employer will decide to behave differently.

Most often, we think about strikes. Strikes attach primarily financial costs to employer intransigence at the bargaining table by disrupting production. If the strike causes the employer enough pain, the employer tends to compromise.

Moral suasion is a different way to attach costs to employer behaviour. Athabasca University’s (AU’s) unsuccessful efforts to impose company doctors on its academic staff provides a useful example of this tactic and its limitations.

AthabascaU’s demand for company docs

In 2018, AU pushed its workers to agree to new contract language around company doctors. Essentially, the employer wanted to be able to send a worker for a so-called independent medical examination (IME) if:

• the worker used sick leave frequently or for a prolonged period,
• the employer believed the worker was unable to do their duties due to illness or disability, or
• the employer believed a worker was mis-using their sick leave.

This proposal would give the employer a largely unfettered ability to impose and IME upon pain of discipline and/or loss of sick leave. Such a power would:

• interfere with workers being able to choose their own health-care providers,
• open the door to illegitimate employer demands for non-therapeutic medical examinations, and
• would end-run the requirement for the employer to get an arbitrator’s order to require an IME. 

Seventy-seven percent of union members were opposed to this proposal. Of particular concern to the union’s members were the possibilities of:

• worker fear of being sent to an IME might cause them to not use their sick leave when its use was medically required,
• when workplace harassment had caused a worker’s performance to deteriorate or the worker to go off sick, the employer might weaponize the IME process to further harass the sick member, and
• the medical opinion of a company-paid doctor may result in a refusal of sick leave or the alteration of work restrictions set out by the worker’s treating physician.

The employer’s rationale for this proposal was cost-savings (i.e., no arbitration hearing required). In fact, the proposal shifted costs from the university (lower financial costs) to the worker and their families (less privacy and greater stress).

There was, of course, no evidence of any meaningful level of sick leave abuse. A review of 15 years of union files (with a membership of more than 400 workers) identified one case where the university officially raised concerns about the accuracy of medical information provided to the employer. This was conern was resolved.

Pushing back on company docs

Resisting company doctors could certainly form part of the basis for a strike mandate. But there is always the risk that members might be willing to accept company-doctor language as part of a package deal (i.e., if the employer offered something good in exchange) or to avoid a strike (if company doctors was the only major issue). Given this risk, the union opted to explore a different approach first.

The company-doctor proposal was obviously repugnant. The union also suspected it was being driven by the desires of the HR shop, rather than being a core mandate from the university’s Board of Governors (which was the ultimate decision maker). These factors opened the door to applying moral pressure on Board members to abandon the proposal.

Activists identified 15 members who (1) were secure in their jobs, (2) had experience with ill-health that required medical leave, and (3) had a reasonable degree of political acumen. The union then used its membership map to divide them into five three-person groups based on pre-existing relationships.

Each team was tasked to write a five-paragraph letter to individual Board members (the union provided contact details). The first and last paragraphs were boilerplate, respectively introducing the issue and asking the Board to drop its proposal.

Each team member wrote one of the middle three paragraphs, disclosing their personal experience with medical leave and explaining how the company-doctor proposal would have affected and harmed them. The letters were heart wrenching and drove home the odious nature of the Board’s proposal.

The union coordinated the members sending their letters such that Board members received a new letter every week. The Board members eventually concluded that their negotiating team’s proposal truly was not worth pursuing because, shortly thereafter, the employer’s chief negotiator said “company doctors (suddenly!) wasn’t a hill to die on” and the proposal fell away.

Analysis

This example illustrates one (of myriad) ways that workers can attach costs to employer behaviour and, thereby, possibly change it. The costs attached by the letters were mostly emotional. Few people (even employers!) enjoy being shown how their behaviour will profoundly and personally harm others.

The Board members may also have been concerned about being publicly and personally associated with such a disgusting and harmful proposal. That threat was not contained in the letters, but was an obvious next step and was part of the union’s overall escalation strategy.

Having workers write about their very personal experiences of ill-health appeared more effective at driving home to the employer how awful the proposal was than were the union’s broader communications about the proposal. The pressure exerted by the letters was applied discretely enough that there was no real loss of face for the employer in doing so.

The union members, both those directly involved and those who simply heard about the tactic, got to see how they could take effective action to protect their own interests. This built confidence among the members in their ability to resist employer demands and advocate for themselves.

A weakness of this tactic is that it creates the possibility of a rapid reversal by the employer. For example, if the employer catches even one worker malingering or faking sick in the future, it is likely to bring this proposal back to the table. And, because the employer will feel like it got emotionally manipulated into withdrawing the earlier proposal, the employer will likely pursue the renewed proposal vigorously. In this way, both the employer and the union now have a shared interest in ensuring no workers malinger.

-- Bob Barnetson

Concordia University of Edmonton strike triggers hard-line response

A meme from the 2022 CUE strike.

Strikes and lockouts can have profound effects on workers, managers, organizations, and their relationships. The research suggests a strike or lockout can result in:

• decreased worker job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and psychological well-being,
• strained relations with other organizational members (e.g., students),
• increased class awareness and solidarity among workers, and
• deteriorating relationships between workers and managers as well as between managers and owners

An interesting Canadian analysis can be found this 2008 article by Chaulk and Brown.

Concordia Faculty Strike

The fallout from Alberta’s first post-secondary strike at Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) in January of 2022 appears to offer an example of a strike resulting in a heightened level of organizational conflict. The CUE strike centered on wage and workload demands, with the small faculty association (about 80 members) being among the worst paid (68th out of 70) in Canada.

In the year prior to the strike, CUE recorded an operating surplus of 33% and had significant savings. Instead of offering faculty a reasonable wage increase or addressing workload issues, the Board decided to off a 3% increase over five years and buy the nearby century-old Magrath Mansion. The mansion was putatively intended to serve as a campus but was neither zoned nor architecturally suitable for instructional space, so draw your own conclusions there.

CUE also pushed new disciplinary language that would allow it to fire faculty without just cause. CUE then offered to withdraw its disciplinary proposals if faculty handed over their intellectual property rights to the employer. This led to an 11-day strike in January of 2022 that, apparently, was some kind of surprise to CUE’s Board.

In the end, the employer dropped its discipline demands. The faculty association’s wage demands (which amounted to $350,000 or, if you prefer, 0.18 mansions) were mostly met and the strike wrapped up. CUE’s reputation in the community and with students took quite a hit. Subsequently, CUE’s sessional instructors filed to unionize with CUPE, in part because the employer refused to pay them during the strike, even though there were not in the faculty association and were not on strike (they were eventually paid).

Concordia Strike Fall Out

In the 14 months since the strike settled, the CUE faculty association has documented a number of concerning trends, including:

• Enrollment is down (I’m hearing 10%) and there are "budget shortfalls". Past accrued surpluses have apparently been transferred to a capital fund to build more buildings and buy more land. CUE is providing no real information about its finances to the community.
• Twelve staff were laid off this year.
• Four programs do not meet quality council faculty complement criteria and five more were identified by external reviewers as being understaffed but there is no indication of any institutional response. This is very bad news for a university.
• Approximately 10% of the CUE membership has been subjected to disciplinary investigations since the strike (the provincial average is about 2% per year) by expensive external investigators using inconsistent processes. Almost all of the discipline is being grieved, but CUE has not really engaged in resolution efforts, so off the grievances go to arbitration.
• Elected faculty representatives have resigned from the Board after being disciplined for raising concerns about deteriorating staff relations and faculty representatives are now to be chosen by the Board.
• General Faculties Council meetings have become hollow exercises in rubber stamping. Some faculty councils have also become inactive and/or are routinely end-run by deans, and other administrators are acting outside of policy.

The result is an organizational climate characterized, according to faculty, by fear and uncertainty. The Board of Governors has refused to meet with faculty to discussion these issues.

This outcome is not particularly surprising. Sometimes, the experience of weathering a strike can cause an employer to seek to improve its relationship with staff. Other times, the employer can double down on the behaviours that triggered the strike and even engage in retaliation (which is what faculty are saying is going on).

Doubling down can sometimes reflect a desire to punish workers and break their will to resist. Employers, especially those with religious origins, often resist any challenge to the organization's authority. This approach may also reflect a cost-benefit analysis by the employer (i.e., treating workers poorly is worthwhile in some way). Or it may just reflect the absence of any idea by administrators about how to move forward productively.

Maybe CUE will decide to change course. More likely, though, the conflict will continue until there is a change in the institution’s leadership.

-- Bob Barnetson

Workplace safety versus worker privacy

Employers often struggle to balance their interest in improving workplace safety with workers’ right to privacy. For example, the history of workplace drug and alcohol testing often turns on the circumstances under which is it appropriate for an employer to require a worker to submit to testing (e.g., post incident, suspicion of impairment, randomly).

Employers often assert (and behave as if) workplace safety considerations trump workers’ privacy rights. This is good rhetorical terrain for employers to argue from because it frames opponents of testing regimes as being opposed to (or at least not prioritizing) safety.

When there is an absence of evidence to support the efficacy of initiatives like testing (which is often the case), employers can revert to some version of ”better safe than sorry” as a rationale to justify their position. This rationale runs contrary to the generally acceptable proposition that they who make a claim must substantiate it.

I recently read a 2018 arbitration decision about cognitive testing for Edmonton transit drivers that was quite interesting. You can find the full decision on canlii.org under this reference:

Amalgamated Transit Union, Local No. 569 v Edmonton (City), 2018 CanLII 82319 (AB GAA)

The nub of the case (and I’m paraphrasing pretty liberally) is there had been two bus-related pedestrian fatalities and the government regulator required the city to implement a transit driver evaluation policy. The city’s response was to implement mandatory (1) road testing and (2) cognitive testing.

The cognitive testing included a computerized screening tool. If workers scored above a threshold on the tool, they were then suspended with pay and required to undergo medical evaluation. (There was no evidence that the two fatalities were related to cognitive impairment of the drivers.) The medical testing and release of information violated these workers’ privacy.

The grievance basically asserts that the city had no legal or factual basis for implementing (1) the mandatory screening and, for those who fail the screening, (2) the follow-on medical assessment. The union also argued the cognitive screening test, having been developed primarily to screen for cognition decay in older drivers, was not a valid test for an otherwise healthy population.

In the end, the arbitration panel ruled based upon the union’s argument around the testing being unreasonable and declined to address the (rather troubling) issue of the test’s validity and reliability. What makes this case interesting is that, while the matter awaited adjudication, the employer proceeded with the testing under the “work now, grieve later” principle and we actually have results about the efficacy of the testing.

The firm providing the testing predicted that, of the 1535 drivers tested, 1-2% would be suffering from cognitive impairment (so 15 to 31 drivers, roughly). At the time of the hearing, only one driver was confirmed as having cognitive impairment and a second driver’s status was undetermined (so the true rate of cognitive impairment was 0.12%, or one-tenth the rate the testing firm asserted). The screening tool sent 88 drivers for medical assessment, of whom the vast majority were false positives. (A small number of other drivers returned to work with modest work restrictions related to other medical conditions.)

This sort of outcome (where the proponents vastly over-state the true level of risk in order to push forward with testing) is not uncommon. Random drug testing is another example where, despite decades of effort, there is no good evidence that random testing reduces injuries. Certainly, we would expect a company that is selling testing to make claims that create the appearance that their product is valuable to potential clients. And, these kinds of circumstances are why, generally speaking, we expect those who make a claim to substantiate it.

It is also interesting to note the uneven application of the better safe than sorry principle by employers.

• When it is employees who bear the cost of an OHS intervention (i.e., have their privacy invaded), employers are happy to play by better safe than sorry and not demand high levels of proof. 
• When employers must bear the cost (e.g., face disrupted production or higher material costs) because workers have concerns about unsafe working conditions or materials, employers generally demand very high levels of proof before they will alter their processes. 

This existence of this double standard speaks to which (and whose) interests are prioritized in workplace regulation.

-- Bob Barnetson

Complaint over “Mafia-esque” union Xmas cards resolved

An unfair labour practice complaint, alleging Christmas cards sent by a union to the employer’s bargaining team amounted to “Mafia-esque” intimidation, provides insight into the unexpected impact that Alberta’s restrictive picketing laws may have on union pressure tactics during bargaining.

Alberta’s picketing laws

In 2019, the United Conservative Party (UCP) formed government in Alberta. In the summer of 2020, the UCP passed Bill 32: Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act (2020). This act substantially restricted picketing activities by:

• rendering it illegal to obstruct or impede someone from crossing a picket line,
• requiring a union to seek Labour Board permission to engage in secondary picketing, and
• allowing the Labour Board to determine the conditions of any secondary picketing.

These changes effectively rendered legal picketing ineffective and effective picketing illegal. This, in turn, reduced the ability of workers and unions to exert pressure on the employer to move at the bargaining table (which was the intent of the legislation).

Christmas card “intimidation”

Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) served notice to bargain in the spring 2020. By the late autumn of 2021, the employer had not yet provided its monetary proposal and bargaining was stalled. The union began applying pressure in order to generate movement. For example, it filed a bargaining in bad faith complaint with the Labour Board. This proved predictably ineffective due to delay in getting the matter to hearing in a timely way.

The union also began experimenting with the alternative strike tactics that it had developed, in part, because of Alberta’s restrictions on effective picketing. These tactics included choking-off revenue by applying reputational pressure. The first effort was a 12 Days of Christmas meme campaign based on the song “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.” Members tweeted these memes at the employer and its bargaining team.

At the end of the online campaign, the most popular meme was then made into a Christmas card. Copies of the card were mailed to homes of the university president and bargaining team co-chairs. In January of 2022, the employer filed an unfair labour practices complaint, alleging the cards were intended to be intimidating, an implicit threat to the safety of the employer’s representatives and their families, and were a “Mafia-esque” tactic.

In April of 2023, the union and the employer settled the unfair. In this settlement, the union agreed, in future, to collect personal information in accordance with Alberta’s privacy legislation (which it is legally bound to do in any case). The union also “acknowledged that those who received the Christmas Cards and members of their families felt that they had been intimidated and harassed.” This settlement is, I think, best read as saving the union the financial cost of the hearing and saving the employer the political cost of losing.

Analysis

The UCP’s changes to Alberta’s labour laws were intended make it more difficult for unions to exert meaningful pressure on employers via picketing that disrupts operations. The desired effect was to attenuate unions’ abilities to make meaningful contract gains.

These changes do not, however, eliminate the need for workers and unions to exert pressure on employers during bargaining. That doesn’t mean these picketing restrictions have no effect on union power. Rather, they just push unions to (1) develop alternative tactics and/or (2) ignore the law and take whatever punishment that entails.

On the surface, mailing Christmas cards to the boss was a very mild alternative pressure tactic. Yet, it triggered a very strong response from the employer. This reaction may have been an effort by the employer to generate some pearl-clutching and internal dissent within the union membership by equating the union with the mob. Or it may have been designed to generate litigation to trade away against the union’s bad faith bargaining complaint.

The tenor of the employer’s complaint, though, suggests real outrage. (I recognize these explanations are not mutually exclusive.) The memes and cards may have driven home for the recipients that collective bargaining can have real world consequences for bosses (just like it always does for workers). It may also have highlighted that the government restricting traditional picketing activities increases the likelihood that unions will expand their tactics to include applying pressure directly on bosses.

While the overall effectiveness of this sort of pressure tactic remains unclear, the employer’s over-reaction to the Christmas card complaint certainly suggests that bosses intensely dislike even the mildest personal pressure and are surprisingly easy, according to their own complaint, to intimidate. This, in turn, tells unions that they should continue to explore this space.

There is significant room to escalate these forms of personally targeted pressure while still staying within the bounds of legal leafletting activity. And the nothing-burger settlement of the employer’s unfair suggests the cost to the union of using these tactics is low.

-- Bob Barnetson