Unions can’t block wage controls, province argues in court

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This article was published 29/05/2018 (2403 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadian law sets the bar so high that Manitoba organized labour has no claim for an injunction blocking wage controls the government has the constitutional right to impose, provincial government lawyer Heather Leonoff argued Wednesday.

“The government has the right to legislate in the field of collective bargaining, in the field of labour relations, in the field of associational activity in the workplace, to the point of substantial interference,” Leonoff told Court of Queen’s Bench Judge James Edmond.

Injunctions are only rarely granted in constitutional cases, and none is a precedent for what’s happening in Manitoba, Leonoff said.

Leonoff told the court that legislation similar to Premier Brian Pallister’s Bill 28 wage controls has been held up across Canada and does not violate the constitutional test of substantial interference in bargaining.

A coalition of 25 labour unions and the Manitoba Federation of Labour is challenging the constitutionality of the bill. The coalition is in court this week seeking an injunction that would block implementation of the legislation until the constitutional issue can be heard.

The province has passed but not proclaimed Bill 28. There is no intention to proclaim the legislation until the court has dealt with the challenge, Leonoff said.

The bill imposes four-year wage controls on the next collective bargaining agreements of 110,000 public-sector workers. There will be no salary increases and improvements to benefits for the first two years, a raise of .75 per cent in the third year and one per cent in the fourth.

Leonoff said the legal term that applies is the government’s “constitutional space of reasonableness.”

Courts have upheld government wage controls that are time-limited and broad-based, not exceeding five years and one round of bargaining in duration, she said.

“That’s what governments do, they control the public purse. They make decisions, they make policy choices. The courts do not supervise government policy choices within its constitutional space,” she said.

She pointed out Bill 28 lasts for only four years, that the parties can bargain for non-monetary items and workers still receive their incremental salary increases.

Leonoff reminded the court labour lawyer Garth Smorang raised the example in court Tuesday that the provincial government had ordered the University of Manitoba during 2016 bargaining to impose a one-year wage freeze and to not disclose that information to the union.

That led to the Manitoba Labour Board’s finding the university guilty of bargaining in bad faith and ordering it to pay $2.4 million to its faculty union members.

Leonoff said that the labour board found that information should have been shared. But it upheld that the government has the right to change the mandate of public bodies to meet government policy.

Smorang said that the labour coalition is hoping for a ruling by early July. If labour gets the injunction, Smorang believes that public-sector employers would then have to bargain normally.

About 30,000 health-care workers have been without a collective bargaining agreement since last year, 15,000 teachers’ contracts expire June 30 and most other civil servants in the province have a deal that expires next year.

 

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca