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

Woes at Concordia U of Edmonton continue

Tim Loreman, CUE President and Mansion Enthusiast

Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) has been struggling since its strike almost 18 months ago. As I wrote last month, CUE has engaged in behaviours that include layoffs and a large number of disciplinary investigations. Meanwhile, enrollments are tanking, governance procedures are being hollowed out, and programs are being identified as not meeting quality standards.

Two weeks ago, CBC ran a story that the CUE faculty had voted no confidence in President Tim Loreman. This was the second non-confidence vote in Loreman since the strike. The Board of Governors doesn’t seem interested in engaging in any dialog over these concerns.

 

Last week, Loreman responded to the most recent non-confidence vote in missive to staff. He begins by acknowledging dissatisfaction with his performance. 

As many of us are aware, last Friday the CBC published a story about CUEFA’s dissatisfaction with my leadership. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation, but thankfully, I have the ongoing support of the Board of Governors, strong support from many in our community, and a committed personal support system that keeps me grounded. I am not going to allow these tactics to distract me from my efforts to make CUE a great place to work and study. 

There’s a lot to unpack there:

• He suggests the dissatisfaction with his performance is on the part of the union, subtly ignoring that the union represents its members, the majority of whom voted non-confidence.
• I can’t tell if “this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation” is part of his “the lady is not for turning” routine or just some kind of inadvertent admission. Either way, I can’t see that the admission really gains him anything.
• The Board does seem to be backing him. But Athabasca University’s most recently sacked president is an instructive example of how fickle Board support it. As soon as Loreman becomes a political liability, that support will evaporate.
• He's telling the workers that they will need to increase the costs attached to his behaviour in order to get him to change that behaviour.

Then there is this bit:

I would like to see decorum befitting a university community in the way we speak to, and about, each other. … At CUE our responsibilities towards one another can be found in our Code of Conduct and in policy. … It defines how we should interact with one another in order to retain positive, ethical, and healthy relationships. 

One aspect of codes of conduct is that they can be weaponized by the administrator of the code (the boss) to silence legitimate dissent on pain of discipline. It is unclear of Loreman’s statement was meant as a veiled threat, but that is how many CUE faculty are reading it. In the context of between 10 and 15% of faculty being subjected to disciplinary investigations since the strike (which is a wildly huge percentage), the faculty’s inference is pretty understandable.

The message then ends on a positive, “my door is always open” note. In the context of deteriorating staff relations, it is unlikely to convince or interest anyone. 

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, a hearing is scheduled at the Labour Board on June 28^th to address an unfair labour practice complaint filed by the union against CUE. Based on the sections of the Code cited in the complaint it looks like a gooder.

Labour Board proceedings are usually characterized by lengthy delay (which is one way the government manages class conflict). But the complaint (coupled with declining enrollments and ongoing staff dissatisfaction) remains a potential landmine for CUE and for Loreman.

 

-- Bob Barnetson

U of Alberta faculty association leaves CAFA

The Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA) appears to be in the middle of a significant transition that was triggered by the departure of the University of Alberta faculty association this spring.

CAFA was formed in the early 1970s to represent the interests of Alberta university faculty associations, primarily to the government. Over time, the membership has ebbed and flowed. The University of Calgary faculty association has been in and out a couple of times since the 1990s and is presently out.

The departure of the U of A faculty association this spring financially destabilized CAFA, resulting in staff layoffs. The remaining member associations (Athabasca, MacEwan, Mount Royal, and Lethbridge) have decided to soldier on in a reduced capacity.

The good news is that this offers CAFA a chance to pivot away from its focus on lobbying the government. This has not been very effective and there now seems to be space to try something different. This is likely to include greater emphasis on the issues affecting mid-sized universities and cross institution coordination around bargaining and organizing. This is a sensible response to the secret mandates approach the UCP has taken to bargaining.

No one I have talked to has been particularly forthcoming about the reason(s) for the U of A FA’s departure from CAFA. Publicly, this is being portrayed as an amicable parting and a fresh start. Privately, there is a distinct whiff of “good riddance”.

An interesting question is the degree of cooperation that will be possible between CAFA member associations and the U of A FA. Certainly, the CAFA messaging is pretty rah-rah on that. Whether key players in member organizations are prepared to actually play ball is another matter.

Interestingly, members of the U of A faculty association that I’ve spoken to have said they have not been informed their association has left (or is about to leave--the timing is a touch unclear) CAFA (“uhhh… what?”) and I see no mention of it on the FA website. Of particular interest to those members is whether their dues will go down.

-- 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

Reflections on Unifor's strategy during Regina's Refinery strike

Andrew Stevens and Doug Nesbitt recently published an article entitled “Refinery town in the petrostate: organized labour confronts the oil patch in Western Canada" (this article does not yet appear to be open access). This piece examines the lengthy strike and lockout at the Co-op refinery in Regina in 2019 and explores three main themes.

First, it examines how the union’s long-term approach to bargaining (which the authors term conciliatory and cooperative) left the union unprepared to cope with an aggressive employer intent upon driving major concessions into the union’s agreement (this is likely an important finding or many unions…). This included taking significant steps (e.g., building a camp to house a scab workforce) to ensure that a lockout of workers would be successful.

Second, it explores how the state and employers colluded to limit the union’s ability to effectively apply pressure on the employer through traditional and legal means (e.g., striking, picketing) through court injunctions and demands that workers’ picketing behaviour be treated as criminal. Allied employers also began demanding further legal constraint of picketing activity.

Third, the paper examines the effectiveness of civil disobedience and building solidarity networks to apply pressure to the employer in the face of collusion between the state and the employer and profound anti-union sentiment. The state’s response to union tactics that infringed upon the employer’s property rights included imprisoning union leaders and demonizing the union as an outsider. Of particular interest in the article is the analysis of how community support for the oil and gas industry benefitted the employer’s efforts to grind the compensation of workers.

The authors suggest that a more thoughtful approach to community engagement an the deployment of civil disobedience tactics by the union might shift the terrain of future disputes and increase the union’s leverage.

-- 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

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

UNA staffers change bargaining agents

Two weeks ago, 45 staff members at the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) voted to leave the Steelworkers Union and be represented by the Union of Labour Professionals (ULP), an independent union that the workers formed. The impetus for this change in representation was questions about whether being a part of Steel was the best fit and in the unit's best interests. There were concerns about autonomy and financial transparency, and the catalyzing event was Steel’s perceived interference with the operation of the bargaining unit during a dispute with the employer.

I’d originally planned to use this event as the jumping off point for a discussion about the tension between worker choice and union cartel behaviour and the politics of raiding. But the story itself also proved to be pretty interesting, providing insight into how unions can cause and respond to member dissatisfaction. So I decided to foreground the story.

Background

The Steelworkers represented what I’ll call the professional staff at UNA (as distinct from the clerical and administrative staff) by virtual of a voluntary recognition agreement between Steel and UNA. The skills of the bargaining-unit members (i.e., union staffers) means that the unit is mostly self-sufficient in terms of bargaining, grievances, and other membership servicing tasks. For the most part, then, the unit was left alone by Steel manage its internal affairs (which was sesible for the unit).

During COVID, UNA staffers began working from home. In mid-2021, when UNA called the staffers back to work in the office, the bargaining unit asked UNA to negotiate some flexibility and terms around working from home. UNA said “nope” and referred matters to the next round of bargaining (which was imminent). The workers never did go back to work in the office that year.

Later, bargaining started and, while the unit tried to negotiate some flexible-work language, once again UNA called the workers back to the office. Calling the workers back to the office, according to the bargaining unit, constituted a change in the terms and conditions of work during bargaining, something employers are prohibited from doing.

The bargaining unit filed an unfair labour practice complaint against UNA about this change during the “freeze period”, after telling Steel they were going to, and getting a provisional blessing. Subsequently, a different Steel representative decided the bargaining unit did not have the authority to file an unfair and ordered the bargaining unit to withdraw it. The bargaining unit basically said “yeah, no” and Steel reconsidered.

UNA’s response to the unfair questioned whether the bargaining unit had standing to file an unfair at the Labour Board. Steel’s submission also seemed to question the unit’s standing to file the unfair, which sat poorly with many members of the bargaining unit.

This interference in the unfair crystallized long-term dissatisfaction among many members of the bargaining unit and triggered an organizing drive to replace Steel with an independent union. (The acronym of the Union of Labour Professionals (ULP) is also a commonly used acronym for an unfair labour practice complaint.)

Selecting a Different Bargaining Agent

Alberta’s Labour Relations Code, like labour laws in all Canadian jurisdictions, allows unionized worker to periodically revisit their choice of which union will be their bargaining agent. During these “open periods”, workers can:

• take no action and thus remain represented by their existing union, 
• have a different union apply to be certified at their new bargaining agent (colloquially called a raid), or 
• file a revocation application to become a non-unionized group of workers. 

In Alberta, both raids and revocations both entail votes of the member of the bargaining unit, with the majority of voters determining the outcome.

The policy rationale underlying open periods is that they hold unions accountable to their members by giving the members the option to periodically revoke their consent to be represented by the union. This option backstops other union accountability mechanisms, such as union’s internal democratic structures (that workers can attempt to use to change union policy) and unions’ duties to fairly represent members during grievance handling.

Steel’s Reaction

When ULP filed a certification application with the Alberta Labour Relations Board, the Steelworkers took steps to try and retain the bargaining unit as a Steel unit. Additionally, some members circulated information to bargaining unit members about the effect of a decertification vote, including that the collective agreement with the employer would be terminated. This is a pretty typical tactic designed to highlight the costs of leaving the union.

This gambit ran into two problems:

1. this was a raid, wherein a new union would inherit the collective agreement, not a decertification, wherein the collective agreement is terminated, and
2. the members of the bargaining unit (i.e., union staffers) were savvy enough to know that. 

Steel then held two “decertification” meetings with the bargaining unit. Typically, a union will use these meetings to highlight both the reasons members might want to stay with them (e.g., access to a large strike fund) and the costs of leaving the union.

The accounts of the meeting I have is that Steel had no coherent presentation and said just wanted to learn about the concerns of the members. Given that a certification had been filed and a vote was likely, this seems like a mis-step: things were well beyond “tell us about your concerns”.

This approach also ceded the initiative to the bargaining unit members, who demanding to see financial statements related to their dues and policies around access to the strike fund. The answers provided by Steel were partial and unsatisfactory and further galvanized support for leaving.

It also opened the door to a member querying whether Steel would be raising objections to the certification application at the Labour Board or would let members democratically decide the matter. The framing of this question neatly backed Steel into a corner (i.e., agree to raise no objections or look anti-democratic) and, in the end, Steel agreed to not raise any objections.

The eventual vote was 29-13 in favour of leaving (about 69%) and the Labour Board recognized the ULP as the new bargaining agent. ULP then served notice on UNA to bargain (or continue bargaining from where Steel left off—that seems to be a bit up in the air at the moment). As the vote suggests, not every member was thrilled with the decision to leave Steel and/or to join an independent union.

The Politics of Raiding

Raiding (when one union tries to recruit members who are already represented by another union) is an extremely contentious issue within the Canadian labour movement. The argument against raiding basically come to down to raiding being divisive (i.e., pitting unions against one another, when they should be cooperating) and wasteful of resources (which could be better spent on servicing members and organizing unrepresented works). There is also concern about the de-stabilizing effect of large-scale raids on the raided unions (which lose dues revenue when they lose members).

Many unions are affiliates of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and affiliates are often referred to as being a part of “the House of Labour”. This terminology is essentially a legitimacy claim that throws shade at non-affiliated unions, suggesting that they are in some way suspect (more on that below). The CLC’s constitution bars raiding by its member affiliates. Article 4.5.a states:

Each affiliate respects the established collective bargaining relationships of every other affiliate. No affiliate will try to organize or represent employees who have an established bargaining relationship with another affiliate or otherwise seek to disrupt the relationship.

The CLC constitution also sets out a process for handling efforts by members of CLC-affiliated unions who seek representation by a different union. These provisions basically serve as an impediment to workers changing bargaining agents by bureaucratizing the process and disincentivizing affiliates from seeking to represent such workers.

In this way, the bar on raiding prioritizes union stability (which is not an inherently bad thing) over worker choice. Workers, of course, retain their statutory right to seek a different bargaining agent during an open period and, at times, CLC affiliates have left the House of Labour (e.g., Unifor in 2018) as a result of raiding (and/or in order to raid).

To navigate these circumstances (wherein no union with “the House of Labour” was likely to agree to represent them, given that Steel was already the recognized bargaining agent), UNA staffers decided to create their own non-affiliated union. This new union may (or may not) decide to affiliate with the House of Labour at a later date.

Non-affiliated unions exist throughout Canada. They are sometimes criticized as being lesser unions, perhaps subject to employer domination and/or unable to provide competent representation and support. Sometimes this criticism seems to ring true, such as with the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC). Other time, such as with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, it doesn’t.

In this case, I don’t see much reason for concern. The ULP comprises staffers of a trade union (UNA), who are, by virtue of their professions, able to provide skilled representation. They are also, by virtue of their dispositions, unlikely to be employer dominated. Other union staff in Alberta (such as those who work for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees) are also represented by independent unions.

If there is a legitimate potential concern about ULP’s ability to serve its members, it might be that the union has not yet accrued significant financial resources to, for example, allow it to provide its members with strike pay. Given the relatively high pay of ULP members, this is unlikely to be a significant barrier to job action, should the union take it. Further, the members of ULP are pretty sophisticated about union matters and would have considered that risk when they decided to cast their vote.

-- Bob Barnetson