Collective Bargaining In Canada

Introduction

In Canada, within the numerous jurisdictions, the complexity and variability of labour law concerning collective bargaining rights reflects the needs of all parties to maintain bargaining power, and for society to maintain industrial peace. Under provincial labour relations legislation, employees, unions, and employers each have specific rights and duties when industrial disputes arise. These statutorily protected rights and duties, and the freedom to exercise or fulfil them unimpeded, are of great significance when a lockout or strike occurs because the timely use of economic sanctions is an integral component of the collective bargaining process. Infringing on these rights produces consequences in direct opposition of the intent

These conditions include: no collective agreement in place (expired), real bargaining at an impasse, unsuccessful mandatory conciliation, strike vote majority attained by union, and due notice of lockout/strike intent given by the initiating party (Foster, 2013, p. 87). In this dispute, all conditions were met and the lockout was legal. A statutory freeze (meant to dissuade parties from inciting an impasse in negotiations) maintains ongoing provisions for workers after an agreement expires and during collective bargaining, but effectively ends once a strike or lockout begins, as per Division 13 of the Labour Code (Foster, 2013, p. 73). Once the statutory freeze ends, the employer is legally within its right to unilaterally change the terms of employment up to what was already expressed before the impasse occurred (Alberta, s. 130(2)). Therefore, the union’s claim that Airtex’s unilateral change of terms was illegal was incorrect, but how they changed terms and workers’/union rights to legal recourse is a different

Employer recognition of the union is a cornerstone of union rights and interfering with this is a strictly prohibited action under the Code (s. 148). Airtex omitted “the recognition clause, union security clause, grievance procedure, non-discrimination clause, and provisions for union communication with employees,” replacing certain union provisions (complaint, grievance, and discipline procedures) with management-centred ones. The first issue was that these clauses had previously not been in dispute, and removing clauses already outside the parameters of the dispute, already agreed upon or uncontested, is an example of bargaining in bad faith (Bad, 2003, p. 4). The second issue was that these actions show clear anti-union animus by Airtex and leave no room for interpretation other than the company deliberately undermining the union (Bad faith bargaining, 2003, p. 3). The third issue was that the inclusion of the “Hot Air Social Club” into the interim terms was easily perceived by employees to be an alternative employee representational unit, also prohibited under the Code (s. 148). An employer cannot continue to bargain in good faith with a union while simultaneously excluding it from all employee-directed literature and from every process. These tactics all attempted to devalue the union’s