In March 2016, Kevin Davediuk’s new job as chief government advisor on negotiations with Alberta’s public sector unions was described by media and Conservative politicians as a grave blunder by the NDP government.
“The optics of Davediuk’s hiring are terrible,” huffed the Calgary Herald in an editorial that showed a remarkable lack of understanding about how collective bargaining works.
Mr. Davediuk, you see, had been hired away from the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, where he had negotiated contracts from the union side.
Hiring an AUPE negotiator to bargain for the government was “little better than hiring the fox to guard the henhouse,” grumped Derek Fildebrandt, then still the Wildrose Party’s finance critic.
From his perch at the Calgary Sun, political columnist Rick Bell expressed his offended wonderment: “A union guy in charge of negotiating with the unions. The optics cause heads to shake and folks to do a double-take. Say what?”
This was practically proof the NDP was on Big Labour’s pocket, the critics implied.
The anonymous brainiac the Herald’s editorial board chose to write the editorial continued: “Instead of acquiring Davediuk’s services, the government should impose a two-year wage freeze” on public employees.
Mr. Fildebrandt, a former operative for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, agreed: “Albertans won’t put up with sham bargaining,” he told Mr. Bell. “The NDP is flipping the coin here and both sides are tails for the taxpayers.”
Ah, those were the days!
Yesterday, Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party made Mr. Davediuk Alberta’s Public Pay Czar for all public sector salaries.
Who could have seen that coming?
I mean, who other than your blogger, who back in 2016 wrote: “If you ask me, the parties that ought to be most concerned by his appointment are those on the union side of the table.”
“In my experience,” I wrote, “union contract negotiators (and their employer counterparts) are … like professional hockey players and litigation lawyers: they play to win for whomever they represent.
“Some of the best ones (and in my estimation Mr. Davediuk is one of the best ones) from time to time move from one side of the table to the other,” I added.
Apparently Premier Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner agree that from the government’s perspective, he’s worth every cent of his $200,000-plus yearly salary.
Either that or they’ve forgotten Mr. Davdiuk used to work for a union, as well as, before that, for private-sector employers.
As with his appointment by the NDP in 2016, the addition of non-union public employees’ pay to his duties was not directly mentioned in a government press release yesterday.
The government instead put out a release on its proposed Public Sector Employer Amendment Act saying it is bringing in a “new model” that will “harmonize government’s direction for non-union compensation across Alberta’s public sector, ensuring unionized and out-of-scope employees receive comparable pay for comparable work.”
This was the announcement by Mr. Horner that resulted in speculation the government might directly adopt the Free Alberta Strategy’s idea of creating an Office of the Alberta Public Sector Employer. It did not, at least not yesterday.
“The Public Sector Employer Amendment Act would ensure that strong government oversight continues, as employers would be required to provide their compensation plans for approval by the minister of Treasury Board and Finance,” the government’s news release said.
In it, Mr. Horner was quoted saying, “reducing barriers will help recruit and retain staff in the public sector.”
This slightly misstates the problem the government needs to rectify.
In the years when Jason Kenney was Alberta’s premier, the UCP struck a hand-picked “Blue-Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances,” led by Janice MacKinnon, to issue pre-determined recommendations of legislated cuts to public sector salaries, massive cuts to public spending, and many public-sector layoffs, including the firing of hundreds of nurses. Dr. MacKinnon was a former NDP finance minister from Saskatchewan notorious for closing 52 rural hospitals in that province in the late 1990s.
In the event, many of the panel’s recommendations were never followed. It proved easier to freeze the pay of managers and excluded public-sector employees than of those of employees represented by unions, whose right to bargain collectively was protected by the courts and the Constitution.
Then the world turned. Mr. Kenney’s austerity applecart was upended by the pandemic and the resulting economic and health care crises it created.
At a practical level, Mr. Horner’s announcement yesterday means is that the government’s secret mandates in bargaining with public-sector unions will continue, at least until a court disposes of them, and the same process will now be expanded, also with Mr. Davediuk’s oversight, to non-union and excluded employees of the government and other public employers.
More positively, it also means that unlike the Kenney Government, the Smith Government has recognized the famously obvious connection between supply and demand and knows that if Alberta’s civil service and its health care system are to continue to operate, non-union and managerial employees are going to have to get raises.
Don’t expect a Conservative government press release ever to boast that managers at places like Alberta Health Services and Covenant Health, post-secondary institutions, the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission, Alberta Innovates, Alberta Pension Services Corporation, Special Areas Board, Travel Alberta and the Workers’ Compensation Board are finally going to get meaningful pay increases.
But that’s what it means.
Hello DJC,
I am not sure exactly who is included in non-union workers in the public sector. Are people such as janitors who are, I think, employees of the company chosen to provide the service, paid whatever the service providing company offers?
What is the situation of contract nurses who, if he press is accurate, are hired through private agencies? Is their pay determined by the agencies chosen by the government to provide the nurses?
Are the non-union workers only managerial workers who are not covered by union so-called collective bargaining?
And as you point out, how can the bargaining be called collective bargaining when the government basically determines, prior to the so-called bargaining, the maximum salaries that can be paid? Has this be challenged in court by the union?
The Labour Relations Code defines who can and who cannot be part of a collective bargaining unit and represented by a union. Excluded employees are mostly management and top-level executives, as well as HR personnel and certain professions — physicians and lawyers come to mind. It’s in the “Definitions” section of the Code:
‘(l) “employee” means a person employed to do work who is in receipt of or entitled to wages and includes a dependent contractor, but does not include
(i) a person who in the opinion of the Board performs managerial functions or is employed in a confidential capacity in matters relating to labour relations,
(ii) a person who is a member of the medical, dental, architectural, engineering or legal profession qualified to practise under the laws of Alberta and is employed in the person’s professional capacity, or
(iii) repealed 2020 c28 s11(3),
(iv) a person employed on a farming or ranching operation as determined under subsection (2) whose employment is directly related to the farming or ranching operation;’
Nurse Practitioners were recently removed from that list and are now permitted to unionize. NPs employed by Alberta Health Services now have their own union.
Other non-union employees would be those in public sector workplaces that are not “organized”, meaning that no union has successfully signed up members and engaged in collective bargaining.
Hi Christina. I was AUPE till April 2021, a lab tech at Innotech Alberta, known in better days as the Alberta Research Council. Disclaimer: I was not active in the union, I just voted on contract proposals after they were negotiated. My view is that of the guy who’d rather just get on with my job.
Union staff included us techs, admin staff (department secretaries) and support services like librarians, the company nurses and all non-management staff in the usual corporate offices (accounting, HR, pay & benefits).
It did NOT include professional staff—the scientists and engineers I worked with—or managerial staff, from business unit managers up to the CEO. (There was a lot of overlap at the BU manager level, many of whom were PEng or PhD promoted to middle management.) These people had to negotiate for themselves (CEOs typically were offered a 5-year contract), or take what was offered to all managers at whatever level. Honestly, I had my own problems and didn’t worry much about how my boss was paid.
Collective bargaining only applies to unionized workers, but it applies to all of them within a given contract. Negotiating pay levels for multiple skill levels can be brutal (ARC used a “grid” of maybe 16 “levels” with 11 “steps” per level).
The big advantage of unionization is the “collective” part. Union negotiators represent ALL of us at the bargaining table. This eliminates one of the power imbalances that keep wages low in non-union shops: the boss can’t play off one worker against another anymore. Of course, the employer always has lots of other options to avoid giving raises, but that’s where the “bargaining” comes in—hours of work, benefits, vacation, name it, are all bargaining chips for both sides.
But it all breaks down if either side refuses to bargain in good faith. The UCP never did, and never will. The Old Tories did, sometimes, reluctantly. The Notley NDP did, more or less, but they were constrained by the global oil-price crash of 2014-15.
As to court challenges, yes. Both court challenges and strikes have happened under the UCP. Mostly the strikes have been from nurses or university staff, and the court challenges have come from the UCP to end the strikes. Expect a LOT more of both going forward.
Christina:
My apologies for not responding when I approved your note before I left for work this morning. Didn’t have a moment. You have received sound answers from Mike Danysh and JerryMacGP. In simple terms, managers, confidential executive secretaries and the like are said to be “excluded” from union membership. Temporary sub-contractors and their employees – including agency nurses – are not represented by workplace unions, although they could in theory bargain collectively with their actual employers. (For example, postal workers bringing and picking up mail from public worksites are members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.) Is agency nurse pay determined by the agencies? Yes. Is there any accountability as a result? Beyond what the agency is paid, no. And maybe not even that. Regarding the secret mandates in Kenney’s legislation and now in Smith’s, whatever the courts eventually decide, it is an obvious example of bargaining in bad faith. Has this been challenged in court? No. Will it ever be? Probably.
DJC
PS, in Canada, under the “Rand Formula,” workers who choose not to join the union for reasons of conscience or ideology are still required to pay union dues because they benefit from the union’s work. The right-wing in Canada has forgotten that this measure was put in place to stop unions from becoming radical agents of revolutionary change, and achieved that goal with spectacular success. It is true that getting rid of automatic dues check-offs for ideological libertarian reasons will emasculate current business-oriented unions, as is intended, but it ignores the reality that in their place will rise revolutionary unions like those of old. So if you want a return to Marxist unions, with balls, attacking the Rand Formula is a way to do that. In the mean time, employees of a unionized workplace who choose not to join the union are often called “duespayers,” and the union will help them as if they are members if they get in trouble. DJC
Excellent question. In our University technicians and many other employees are AUPE members. Faculty members are The University of Calgary Faculty Association Members. TUCFA was not a union, though it was a bargaining unit. That worked reasonably well, since both sides in negotiations had unilateral recourse to binding arbitration. However, the NDP forcibly unionized TUFCA and other faculty associations in the province, giving us the right to strike (which most of us did not particularly want), but removing the unilateral recourse to binding arbitration. They did this while we were in the middle of contract negotiations, and of course had not strike fund. Needless to say this did not go over well, though I suspect the majority of members did, like me, still campaign and vote for the NDP in the subsequent elections.
Academic Administrators like Deans, Vice Deans, VPs, Provosts and Presidents are not part of a bargaining unit. Nor are lower level administrators and supervisors, who are designated as Management and Professional Staff, and who are legion these days. Included in the MaPS group are people like athletics coaches, as I recently found out. There is no reason most MaPs staff could not be part of either AUPE or TUCFA, with the exception of those in HR whose roles make it expedient for them not to be part of a bargaining unit.
The former head honcho of the UCP put in Janice MacKinnon on the Blue Ribbon Panel, so that more Ralph Klein style cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta could happen, in order to usher in private for profit healthcare. Janice MacKinnon is another Liberal, turned NDP, who then turned into a Reformer. She was emulating what Ralph Klein did in Alberta, and it didn’t help the NDP in Saskatchewan. Ralph Klein was also a Liberal turned into a Reformer. So was the former head honcho of the UCP. Ralph Klein’s cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta put people’s lives at risk, or cost people their lives. Danielle Smith is certainly intent on bringing private for profit healthcare to Alberta too.
Looks like the UCP have taken the advice of former US President Lyndon B. Johnson that, to put it delicately, “it is better to have someone inside the tent, micturating outwards, than to have them outside the tent micturating inwards.”
Kang: I’m pretty sure “micturating” wasn’t the word that President Johnson used. DJC
One person’s experience with being “hired out”: Company got triple what they paid me – a very sweet deal! If that is still the case, or even if those companies ‘only’ get double the employee cost, it is still a very expensive way to use tax-payer bucks.
Someone should ask Davediuk how much his soul is worth?
Seriously, the UCP. If this were an April Fool’s joke…
I take solace in knowing karma comes for all of us, Davediuk included.
I suppose this says that behind all the wacky populist rhetoric, there is at least someone in the provincial government who knows what they are doing.
However, it probably is a bit embarrassing for the UCP that this came out – they kept a former union negotiator appointed by the NDP and gave him a new position. Maybe it will hurt the UCP’s populist cred, but its quite possible their supporters will totally miss this. Some may mostly only read Rick Bell columns in the Calgary Sun. It sure would be interesting if he picked up a story like this, wouldn’t it?
Fortunately, oil prices have recovered a bit, partly due to all the trouble in the mideast, so perhaps the post election austerity a lot in the UCP are inclined to pursue has been postponed for a while and government employees will not be subject to rollbacks or cutbacks at least for now.
Friends of mine in Saskatchewan certainly credited Janice McKinnon with getting the NDP kicked out of office and the Brad Wall conservatives elected. Closing 52 hospitals was a really stupid idea, and you can bet she was hired to do the same thing in Alberta. Right after she was hired by Kenney his health minister Tyler Shandro began attacking rural Alberta doctors to try to get them to leave so he would have an excuse to close down their hospitals. It didn’t work like they wanted it to. After whining about how our doctors were highly overpaid and blamed them for our cost of healthcare the fools started their privatization stupidity to make it even more cost that’s how stupid they are.
And when does the axe fall on the post-retirement benefits enjoyed by retired provincial public servants? Paid for all their working lives. Easy to cut coverage when no one besides the NDP and a few bloggers will go to bat for you.
Thanks Jerrymacgp, Mike Danysh, and DJC for the explanations.
Christina
Who ever is pissing now, should tell us all about what in the good lord”s name the piss is all about!
DJC, off topic, but I feel this is important.
to: Danielle Smith/ UCP
….As an Albertan, born and raised, but now living in another province, for all the years I worked in Alberta and paid into the CPP….
I DEMAND THE RIGHT TO VOTE ON THE REFERENDUM ON WHETHER TO WITHDRAW FROM THE CPP OR “NOT”.
and this applies to “anyone” who has worked in Alberta, whether they are living there now or not, because the referendum affects ALL of us who contributed to “your numbers ”
# We demand the right to VOTE !!!