The Alberta Labour Relations Board has ruled that the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees broke the law when some of its health care members took part in a short illegal strike in the fall of 2020 and yesterday ordered Alberta Health Services to stop collecting union dues, assessments and other fees payable to the union for one month.
The dues suspension, a shorter version of the six-month suspension sought by AHS, could cost AUPE about $1.6 million according to a union estimate quoted in the board decision, which was made public yesterday.
If the suspension ever takes place, that is, since AUPE is certain to appeal the labour board’s decision to the courts.
Labour relations experts also warn that if it is implemented, the labour board’s decision may be costly to the union, but it will make “wildcat” strikes by members more likely, not less, since it financially rewards participants in illegal strikes.
Front-line AUPE health care workers across the province walked off the job on the morning of Oct. 26, 2020. They went back to work the next day.
The walkout began at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton and soon spread to the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, and other locations including Cold Lake, St. Paul, Wetaskiwin and Leduc.
There are about 25,000 workers in AUPE’s health care general support services bargaining unit, and approximately 16,000 in its so-called auxiliary nursing care unit, the 47-page ALRB decision says, although by no means all of them took part in the wildcat walkouts.
Anger had been building among health care workers, and not just members of AUPE, as the Kenney Government continued to push forward despite the arrival of COVID-19 in Alberta with its plan to lay off more than 11,000 health care workers at AHS.
Earlier in the month, then health minister Tyler Shandro had vowed to eliminate almost 10,000 jobs by outsourcing laundry services, food preparation, and community medical labs.
“Those involved in this illegal action will be held accountable,” then finance minister Travis Toews insisted at the time of the walkout, reflecting the government’s confrontational attitude.
While AUPE argued there was no evidence it had planned the strike, in the ruling released yesterday the three-member board panel concluded that the union took no action to prevent the disruption, which AHS has claimed resulted in 249 surgeries being cancelled.
“There was nothing before the board to suggest the union took steps to discourage illegal strike activity prior to the strike commencing,” the decision says. “Nor is there evidence to suggest that, once the strike was underway, the union encouraged its members to return to their regularly scheduled shifts, or even encouraged some to stay behind to provide a measure of essential services.”
In a passage of unusually colourful writing for a labour board decision, the tribunal went on to say there was evidence that AUPE promoted illegal action. “… AUPE knew the pot was starting to simmer. Not only did it not take any meaningful steps to turn down the heat, but once things boiled over and a strike was underway, it continued to stir the pot. In these circumstances, seeking to avoid a dues suspension by arguing that its members ultimately cooked this up is inconsistent with both the evidence and the purpose of the provision.”
(That is, section 71 of the Alberta Labour Relations Code, which says that “No employees, no bargaining agent and no person acting on their behalf shall strike or cause a strike or threaten to strike or to cause a strike unless that strike is permitted by this Act.)
Accordingly, the board concluded, it was directing AHS “to suspend the deduction and remittance of union dues, assessments and other fees payable to AUPE by employees in the GSS and ANC units for a period of one month.”
“The parties can discuss the timing of the implementation of this order,” it added.
The problem with the board’s approach, said Athabasca University Labour Studies Professor Bob Barnetson yesterday, is that “workers know wildcats work.”
“Workers know wildcats work better than formal strikes because there are no rules and the employer has no time to prepare,” Dr. Barnetson explained. “Workers aren’t going to give up that kind of leverage.
“A $1.6-million dues suspension will not dampen workers’ appetite for future wildcats, which are triggered by intolerable employer behaviour,” he added. “Perversely, the labour board just gave every wildcatter a small monetary reward for wildcatting in the form of dues they don’t have to pay!”
United Nurses of Alberta Labour Relations Director David Harrigan agreed.
Mr. Harrigan asked: What is the average non-culinary expert worker to take from the board’s pot-boiling metaphor?
“Answer: That the LRB will not hesitate to award union dues cessation. But such a punishment is markedly different from a fine that the union must pay,” he said. “In the latter case, the money is paid by the union to the state. In the former, rank and file members save money, in that they do not have to pay union dues. So the half-day strike by a small percentage of the membership has resulted in an increase in take home pay of more than 1 per cent for all members of the bargaining unit for a month.”
“Union members will no doubt be calculating cost/benefit analyses of various conduct for future rounds of bargaining,” Mr. Harrigan concluded.
Moreover, Dr. Barnetson added, “unions are unlikely to act against wildcatting members. Explicitly sanctioning AUPE for supporting wildcatting members will likely just encourage ‘please return to work, wink-wink’ communications in the future to attenuate any penalties.”
The real culprit here is the UCP government, he asserted, “which sought to lay off health-care workers and turned collective bargaining into a hollow and fettered process with its secret mandates.”
“If Danielle Smith goes back to this well,’ Dr. Barnetson warned, “I expect we’ll see more wildcats and continued shortages of health-care workers.”
AUPE has not yet published a response to the board’s decision.
When governments behave like Fascists, the obligation of right-thinking citizens is civil disobedience. Ask any Frenchman.
The UCP has demonstrated time and again how lawless they truly since its inception. By the way how is that RCMP investigation into Kenney’s leadership of the UCP going? Get my point?
Pretty sure I did the horn honk, fist pump, shout out for the kids on the corner of the Lethbridge hospital which now makes it one of very few days I could actually verify my presence anywhere, your Honor. No dues , eh? Still not as good as sent home with pay.
David, when Jason Kenney was first elected in 2019, he did a massive personnel change with all sorts of boards, agencies etc. Do you know anything about the makeup of the Alberta Labour Relations Board? I am wondering if it is stacked with a bunch of Jason Kenney’s union hating hacks.
Bob: While it’s not a good sign that Mr. Harrigan of UNA and Tom Hesse of UFCW 401 were not reappointed to the Board, we have to remember that the role of the board is to fairly administer Alberta labour law, not to write it. Certainly UNA, Mr. Harrigan tells me, continues to have confidence that the board is neutral. That doesn’t mean, of course, that unions will agree with every decision the board makes. DJC
Nor does it mean the law itself is fair.
How nice. A Con appointed Board comes up with a penalty to a Union based on a law created by Cons for their friends in private business. This looks like guilt by association to me. By that logic every bird-watcher and hunter and fisher in Alberta should be fined whenever energy business projects are delayed by dissent.
So, if a wildcat strike is effectively the arbitrary breaking of a contract deserving of a penalty, what does the law say about the behavior of a Con/UCP government arbitrarily breaking contracts with doctors and workers?
As I recall from my now almost mystical past in Political Economy classes, Mussolini defined fascism as putting the power of the state at the disposal of big business. He blathered on about “binding the people and the state to business” like the rods tied around the axe to make the Roman symbol known as a Fasces. He then stole any independently owned farm land that was of value to his business cronies and after that went after the unions and any other dissenters.
One can be forgiven for seeing a resemblance to Alberta’s practice of giving impunity to the energy industry to steal farm land and pollute the environment along with its ongoing harassment of labour unions. Breaking both legal and social contracts is typical of the breed.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fasces
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
It is my guess that union dues are deducted from workers’ wages as a result of the programming of the computers that calculate wage packets. If this is the case, wouldn’t it be fairly expensive for AHS to stop deducting union dues for a month and then re-program the the computers to start deducting them again?
Christine: That’s a very good question, to which I don’t know the answer right now. I will try to find out. DJC
I suspect it will be, but it will cost the taxpayer, not the individuals who make the decision.
Story I heard several months ago from a health care worker: they were at the end of their rope and knew their area was on the verge of collapse. They called their union, got voicemail, and left a message saying things are unbearable, nothing is getting better, the only people who can change anything insist they are powerless to change anything, and the only option this worker can think of that might change anything is a wildcat strike, and they know it’s a bad idea, please please help them. Then they called the human resources main office for their health care department and said the same thing.
Story goes the “W” word gets people’s attention, but not in a positive way. Apparently they avoided being fired on the spot only because both calls were recorded and the specific verbiage they used couldn’t be interpreted as a threat to strike and avoided being written up only because their manager went to bat for them and said “yeah, things are actually worse than they describe, their coworkers know what they did and are grateful to them, and if you punish them you are going to lower morale even further than it is now, which will make things even worse for me, and I’m at the end of my rope too, btw all this mandatory overtime you’ve had me working these past two years has my bank account full, I can afford to not work for quite some time.”
Story ends by saying that no one (union, management, head office) attempted to deal with the concerns raised by this worker, just to make sure that there wouldn’t be a wildcat strike, that that worker was lost to severe burnout (the articles that talk about nurses quitting with burnout do not attempt to describe what it is), and that there are now 2 workers remaining in a department that is supposed to have 6. Final coda is that apparently that hospital has been advertising for more than a year for more of these workers and has not had a single applicant.
The UCP prove how bad of a government they really are.