Public service bargaining rules violate human rights: unions
Last Updated: Monday, May 5, 2008 | 3:25 PM ET
CBC News
Two unions representing federal public servants are launching a constitutional challenge against a law that excludes issues such as pensions and job classifications from negotiations between the government and employee unions.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service (PIPSC) and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) argue that provisions in the Public Service Labour Relations Act violate a section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects freedom of association.
The unions are starting their challenge before the Ontario Superior Court.
"Federal employees should have the right — as do their private-sector counterparts, and most other public-service workers — to bargain all of their terms and conditions of employment," said Michèle Demers, president of PIPSC, at a news conference in Ottawa on Monday.
If unions were allowed to bargain collectively over such things, Demers said, the government would not have been able to unilaterally impose a salary freeze in the 1990s or spend a surplus from federal public service pensions between 2001 and 2004, which the unions characterize as theft.
Regarding the latter case, the unions are appealing an Ontario Superior Court ruling against them that was released in November.
Steven Barrett, a lawyer for Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP, who will be representing the unions, said if federal employees did not face the bargaining restrictions built into the Public Service Labour Relations Act, they would be able to deal with such issues as most employees in other unions do.
"Instead of having to go to court, they actually sit down at the bargaining table and try and resolve it," he said.
He added that being able to negotiate doesn't mean that the government needs to agree with unions on the issues, but right now those issues aren't even up for discussion.
Barrett was involved in a Supreme Court of Canada ruling last June on which the unions are basing their case.
It found the collective bargaining process is protected by the charter, and it was made in response to a challenge from the B.C. Hospital Employees Union.
The union was fighting Bill 29, a law that allowed the province to tear up the union's contract and led to the layoff of more than 8,000 unionized health-care workers. It also restricted collective bargaining on many issues.
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