For immediate release: Saturday, April 10, 2004

EDMONTON — The United Nations labour agency has criticized the government of Alberta for depriving many health care workers of the right to strike.

In a report published last week, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization also condemned the government for not consulting the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees and other affected unions when it passed legislation to restructure health region labour relations bargaining units last year.

The ILO report was issued in response to a complaint filed by AUPE in May 2003 against the Labour Relations (Regional Health Authorities Restructuring) Amendment Act, 2003 (Bill 27).

“By bringing this to the attention of the United Nations last year, we wanted to let the government know that the world is watching when it uses legislation to remove internationally recognized rights,” AUPE President Dan MacLennan said today.

“We recognize that this ruling is symbolic and unlikely to persuade the province to change its policies,” MacLennan said. “Nevertheless, we hope it will add to the pressure on the government to do better in future situations.

“Alberta’s laws need to reflect the basic right of people to withhold their services in a labour dispute,” MacLennan said. “We believe the ruling emphasizes the need for that right to be respected when a world agency like the ILO examines Alberta laws and concludes that we have come up short.”

The ILO report outlines AUPE’s complaints and the responses of the government of Alberta. The ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association, which examined the complaint, then recommends that “in future rounds of negotiations, only workers of the health care sector providing essential services in the strict sense of the term may be deprived of the right to strike.”

In addition, the ILO said, those who lose the right to strike should “enjoy adequate, impartial and speedy conciliation and arbitration proceedings, in accordance with freedom of association principles.”

Said MacLennan: “This goes right to the heart of what we at AUPE have been saying for years about the fundamental problems with Alberta labour law. Many people who do not provide essential services are nonetheless denied their right to strike, and our experience is simply that the arbitration process in Alberta is neither impartial nor fair in terms of timeliness.”

The ILO committee concluded that before Bill 27 was passed in March 2003, restructuring health region labour relations, “in spite of the government’s general statement that there were consultations with health-care stakeholders, the evidence adduced shows that there have been no real and meaningful consultations with trade unions, to the extend that the magnitude of the changes would have warranted.”

The committee advised the Alberta government to provide “an adequate consultation process conducted in good faith and where social partners have all the necessary information” before the introduction of legislation.

In response to other AUPE complaints, the ILO committee requested the Alberta government to amend its legislation to return to nurse practitioners “the right to establish and join organizations of their own choosing.”

And the ILO committee asked the government to keep it informed of developments concerning a dispute between AUPE and the government resulting from the removal by legislation of freely negotiated severance provisions for former Alberta Mental Health Board employees.

Said MacLennan: “One of the most troubling aspects of Bill 27 was the idea that legislation would override legally negotiated contracts. The implications of doing so in labour relations or other legal areas would be detrimental to any form of legal contract negotiated.”

“We hope that the this report by a respected international body will persuade the government not to extend this kind of treatment of front-line workers to other areas of labour law,” he concluded.

The full report of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association can be found by clicking here. The section dealing with AUPE’s complaints is found on pages 54 to 63 of the document.

For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-232-8392 (cellular phone)
Pamela M. Kirkwood, Senior Manager, AUPE, 780-930-3303 or 780-232-3303 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)