Canadian Collective Agreements

Collective Agreements Overview

• Collective agreements serve as records of negotiating results and guides for future negotiations.
• Discussions consist of the functions of collective agreements.
• Review of common agreement provisions and union-management relationship.
• Examination of the strengths and weaknesses of collective bargaining.

Evolution of Canadian Collective Agreements

• Canadian agreements have evolved over the past century from short, straightforward to lengthy and complex documents.
• The reasons for this evolution include the growth of larger, more bureaucratic workplaces and of industrial unionism.
• Unions represent a large number of different groups of workers, which adds complexity to collective agreements with different wage scales and work rules.
• Technological change has been introduced, along with hazardous substances at workplaces, leading unions to negotiate protection, resulting in longer agreements.
• There is growing diversity in the Canadian labor force, including women, ethnic groups, and people with disabilities.
• Anti-discrimination, maternity leave, flexible hours, and accessibility provisions are being negotiated by unions.
• General application of the residual management rights doctrine means unions write detailed provisions to limit management's authority.
• Collective agreements conform to laws beyond labor relations statutes, such as work standards, health and safety, and human rights laws.
• Unions incorporate legal requirements to give workers access to the collective agreement's grievance procedure.

Perspectives on the Evolution of Collective Agreements

• Unionists and IR institutionalists defend complex agreements as necessary to protect workers' rights, despite the costs to administer.
• Managerialists regard the evolution as unhealthy due to added costs and the destruction of trust between parties.
• Managerialists feel it makes it more difficult to bring in progressive HRM practices.

Types of Collective Agreement Provisions

• At first glance, collective agreements contain a range of provisions, but most fall into four general categories.
• Provisions govern the rights of the union and management.
• Provisions govern wages and hours
• Work rules and job control provisions.
• Provisions cover work behaviour and the workplace environment.

Union and Management Rights and Conflict Control Provisions

• Ground rule provisions, found in Canadian agreements, include management rights clauses of both a general and specific nature.
• Clauses may outline the rights management reserves, such as hiring, promotion, transfer, or layoffs.
• Union rights provisions officially recognize the union's position and grant specific rights for union officials like stewards.
• Union security provisions address dues collection, payroll deductions, and whether employees must be union members.
• Conflict-control provisions address how disputes are handled, generally through a grievance process, and may establish joint committees.

Wage and Hours Provisions

• Outline different rates of pay for different classes of worker.
• Wage schedules incorporate service increments and detail conditions for premium pay (overtime, shift premiums, standby, call-back pay).
• Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) clauses are less frequent than in the 1970s-80s.
• Incentive pay (individual and team-based) is increasing in frequency.

Benefits and Work Hours

• Benefits language specifies included benefits, employee eligibility, and costs to union members.
• Benefit plans may be attached to the collective agreement. Specific benefits like vacation pay and sick pay are detailed.
• Work hours provisions cover normal hours, overtime premiums, whether overtime is mandatory or voluntary, and flexible or reduced hours.
• Time allowed for lunch, coffee, and washroom breaks, and the allotment of vacation and holiday time off for seniority levels are taken into consideration.

Work Rule and Job Control Provisions

• These provisions are the most contested in the agreement.
• Management resents restrictions, while unions preserve worker control.
• Hiring Process and Job Assignment includes that employees be union members before being hired, or shortly thereafter.
• Management includes probation language that gives reduced rights to employees on probation to grieve if management deems an employee unable to perform the job.
• Work rule provisions regulate assembly line speed and production processes.
• They regulate the number of people assigned to jobs, maximum workload, and who is allowed to do certain jobs.
• Workload restrictions in education restrict the number of students and courses assigned to teachers.
• Job control provisions govern criteria used for changes in the internal labor market.
• Unions negotiate provisions requiring vacancies to be filled from within the organization and prevent supervisors from performing bargaining unit work.
• Unions try to negotiate provisions stating that seniority will be the criterion for decisions on promotions, transfers, and layoffs.
• Technological change language is included in limited agreements, consisting of advance notice or training and retraining provisions.
• Tech change affecting 50+ employees is subject to Canada Labour Code joint meetings for Federally regulated employees.
• Workforce reductions can prohibit or restrict employers from contracting out work, and unions seek to cushion layoffs through severance packages.

Work Behavior and Work Environment Provisions

• These provisions address issues relating to the social and physical environment in which work is performed
• General rules govern work behavior and disciplinary methods, and specific prohibitions on harassment.
• Health and safety provisions are concerned with the physical environment, and are often lead by the unions.
• Agreements permit management to discharge or suspend employees for "just cause" and may incorporate progressive discipline for minor offenses like absenteeism.
• A trend is the inclusion of sexual harassment and anti-discrimination provisions.
• Unions negotiate provisions for safety equipment and allowing workers to refuse unsafe work, allowing unions to avail themselves of agreements' grievance procedures.

Collective Agreements and Union-Management Relationships

• Agreement provisions reveal the union-management relationship.
• Detailed delineation characterizes an exploitive relationship.
• General terms and latitude in interpretation characterize an accommodative relationship.
• Parties are concerned with the viability of the enterprise and with maintaining a good long-term relationship, as well as with addressing their own interests.
• Shell Chemical Plant in Sarnia, Ontario, and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' Union adopt an egalitarian approach with no management rights or grievance provisions.
• The agreement reflects management's and union's joint commitment to principles that employees are responsible and trustworthy and capable of making decisions relating to their work arrangements.

Collective Agreements and Collective Bargaining: An Assessment

• Legalistic interpretation is characteristic of exploitive relationships.
• Can cost both sides time and money in addition to deteriorating relationships.
• Collective agreements can't cover all workplace situations, particularly technological change and plant closures, which raises the question of how bargaining can stabilize employment terms.
• Criticism of collective bargaining is that it assumes equality between parties, which doesn't exist in bad economic times creating structural problems.
• The basis of most Canadian agreements is detailed regulation of workplaces, but workplace-level bargaining seems unable to address Canadian workers' and unions' concerns.
• Without centralization of bargaining, agreements will remain long, complex, and legalistic, reflecting power struggles.

Conflict Resolution: Grievances, Strikes and Lockouts

• The significance of strikes in the Canadian Industrial Relations system, as well as what causes strikes and some of the policy measures used to control them.
• A ‘strike' is defined as it is used in labour relations acts.
• Different types of strikes are considered along with a discussion on how to measure incidence and some of the measurement problems involved.

Significance of Strikes and Lockouts

• Strikes are not all there is to industrial relations. 90%+ of Canadian agreements are negotiated without a work stoppage, and strikes are but one form of industrial conflict.
• Labour relations legislation exists to prevent or reduce damage from strikes, and acts are devoted to defining and regulating strikes.
• Consequences of strikes can be serious, and public sector strikes pose challenges for governments.
• Strikes are significant due to the resurgence in strike activity in Canada and Europe.

Strikes and Lockouts Defined

• A strike must be a ‘concerted' activity, involving a collective refusal to work.
• Jurisdictions rule that partial and total stoppages constitute a strike, thus unions must be cautious in actions like work-to-rule campaigns, slowdowns, or refusals.

Legalities of Strikes and Lockouts

• The right to strike in Canada is tightly circumscribed.
• Collective agreement must have expired, and parties must have made a “good faith” effort to obtain a settlement.
• In every jurisdiction except Saskatchewan, a strike cannot be legal until a government has appointed a conciliator, and that person has reported his or her lack of success and a certain length of time has elapsed.
• Public sector workers face additional restrictions, including a total ban on the right to strike.
• Back-to-work legislation is frequently used to end strikes.

Measuring Strike Activity

• Percentage of working time lost is calculated measure strike intensity
• Multiply the number of strikes by the size or total number of workers involved, and duration.
• The result is total number of person-days lost to strikes, which is then divided by the total number of person-days worked in the jurisdiction or industry in question.

Trends in Canadian Strike Activity

• In 1996/1997 almost a decade of declining strike activity dwindled.
• The percentage of working time lost to strikes rose in both years.
• Major increase in person-days lost in the public sector and in Ontario.
• Strike activity tends to rise and fall with the business cycle.
• High strike activity has primarily occured in times of high inflation, such as after the two world wars and the middle and late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Strike levels have risen, at least in the short term, as a response to major collective bargaining laws such as PC 1003 and the Public Service Staff Relations Act (PSSRA) which have granted unionization and strike rights to large numbers of new workers.

Disputes

• Wages are usually a factor in all disputes.
• Important for public sector disputes since public sector workers had been wage frozen for many years during the 1990s
• Lack of respect/recognition by the parties involved has been noted.
• Government restrictions on unions' bargaining rights are a key factor
• Globalization and increased competition creates issues.

What Causes Strikes: Models

-The Asymmetrical Information or Private Information Model: - Treats strikes as a method of eliciting information from the employer. - Strike frequency can be reduced by information-sharing measures such as a union member appointed to the board of directors. -The Joint-Cost Perspective: - Views strikes/lockouts as one mechanism for resolving disputes, where the joint cost is relatively low compared with other methods. - A legislative prohibition on using replacement workers increases the cost of the strike or lockout to employers only -Strikes as Collective voice: - Mistake strikes from immature or flawed bargaining relationships. - Strikes the result of members having a negative collective voice in the workplace

Dispute Resolution Methods

• Canadian jurisdictions evolve a variety of dispute resolution methods designed to help prevent strikes or serve as alternatives to strikes, virtually involving a neutral third party.
• Conciliation entails the use of a third party who meets with the parties to determine the possibilities of settlement.
• Mediation involves more active intervention from a third-party neutral.
• Arbitration, conditions of the new collective agreement, is used primarily in the public sector.
• Fact-finding is a type of dispute resolution used outlining key issues.
• Back-to-work legislation is used to end strikes which are considered to pose a significant risk to the public health, safety, or welfare.
• Overall, there has been a gradual trend away from formal investigative approach and towards a more informal facilitative approach.

Understanding Strikes and Lockouts

• Developing dispute resolution methods designed to prevent strikes or minimize their impact on “innocent” third parties.
• Attention must be paid to broader institutional factors, such as decentralized bargaining structures and grievance procedure.

Explore Canadian collective agreements, documenting negotiation results and guiding future discussions. Review common agreement provisions. Examine the evolution, strengths, and weaknesses of collective bargaining in union-management relationships.