Province to appeal ruling on wage-freeze law

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2020 (1594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Province of Manitoba is appealing a recent Court of Queen’s Bench decision that struck down controversial wage-freeze legislation passed by the Progressive Conservative government in 2017.

In her June 11, 2020 decision, Justice Joan McKelvey ruled the legislation—called the Public Services Sustainability Act—violated the constitutional rights of unionized public sector workers by eliminating their right to collective bargaining.

Heather Leonoff, legal counsel for the province, filed an appeal on Aug. 13, arguing McKelvey’s ruling was mistaken.

The judge erred in her determination of what is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and ruling the legislation was unconstitutional violated the right to freedom of association for some workers, Leonoff asserts in the appeal.

After the Progressive Conservative government passed the PSSA in 2017, which imposed four years of wage controls on a new collective agreement for 110,000 Manitoba public-sector workers, unions rallied against the legislation.

Under the PSSA, salary bumps and improved benefits were frozen for the first two years, before a maximum pay increase of 0.75 per cent would be allowed in year three, followed by a maximum pay increase of one per cent in year four.

Initially, the province argued the PSSA was a reasonable limit on the rights of unions because there was a budget deficit crisis when the legislation was drafted, although it later abandoned that line of argumentation.

Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour and spokesman for the coalition of more than two dozen public-sector unions that challenged the law, said the judge’s ruling in the case was fair and just.

“It is unfortunate that the Pallister government has chosen to drag this process out further instead of bargaining fair contracts with Manitoba’s dedicated public sector workers. Over 120,000 have been impacted by this unconstitutional law, and many of them have been working with expired contracts while stepping up for all of us during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rebeck said in a written statement.

“The Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench decision was clear: this law is draconian and unconstitutional. Working families deserve better from this government.”

The coalition of unions has previously said it will likely return to court to seek costs and possibly ask for damages.

“The door is open to both of those options right now,” Rebeck previously told the Free Press.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @rk_thorpe