Canadian HR Reporter

N E W S 12 www.hrreporter.com Despite downsides, virtual bargaining may be here to stay Amid the pandemic, labour relations were forced to go online, so virtual negotiations popped up across the country. And while the new format made some things easier to accomplish, not all labour leaders were satisfied with the results or the process, says John Dujay "When we do it virtually, someone could speak up and say, 'Hey, this goes on in my department,' but it's just become less likely to bring up those one-off situations in their workplace," says Sawyer. "The camaraderie of talking through things and maybe bringing that to the employer's attention — you lose some of that because of the virtual." However, when it came to reaching out to union members during discussions, the response was pleasantly surprising with the new virtual world, says Francois Bellemare, assistant director of organizing and regional services at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Montreal. "Actually, it's got more people involved that usually wouldn't go to the meeting because it was difficult for them to free themselves from daily tasks. [And] the fact that now we do it through the internet platform, that allows those people to participate in the union life. It's brought some people that we didn't see before." Union members quickly got accus- tomed to the new way of doing busi- ness, says Larry Savage, professor of labour studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont. "It was like a sacred cow, this idea that you negotiate in-person, but I didn't you're not in-person, you can't get to the nitty gritty of issues." The dramatic move to online talks is just one of the changes facing labour relations as Canada copes with the effects of the COVID-19 virus. Issues such as pandemic pay came to the fore- front, while other benefit entitlements may have been shunted aside. But there were also fewer disputes and longer agreements were negotiated. Pros and cons to virtual discussions Moving the talks to cyberspace put a damper on how robust negotiations have been, says Sawyer. "You don't have the same feel — maybe the bargaining takes longer, and because you're not in-person [you can't] say, 'This is what I really mean,'" he says. "If you're in-person along with eight other committee members, you' ll have that downtime for person-to-person talks where you'll find out nuances that are going on in the workplace." Negotiation via videoconferencing proved to be tricky at times and it may have silenced some important work- place voices, he says. For example, bargaining committee members who are front-line workers that know intimately the specific conditions of each work- place found it hard to be heard. detect that there were significant changes in the mechanics of collective bargaining by moving to an online forum. We were able to caucus more efficiently because all we do is press a button and then half of us were swept away virtually into our own caucus room," he says. "It meant people didn't have to travel from far distances in order to come to a meeting that may have lasted only two minutes, and so a lot of people have gotten over this hang-up around perceived ideas of how negotiations should be conducted." Areas of focus in talks Early on in 2020, when the pandemic was still fresh, the focus of union- management talks shifted to pressing day-to-day matters in the workplace, says Bellemare. "Anything to do with health and safety became really important: protection equipment, ensuring the safety of our members; wages remained important; but health and safety became a big topic, and it's evolving now to schedule flexibility and allowing people to work from home." With all of these challenges, some "I expect that into the future, online bargaining will stay with us [but] it certainly won't be used universally," Larry Savage, Brock University "IT'S more of a challenge and it would be a lot better served in-person." So says Barry Sawyer, executive at the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) Canada in Orangeville, Ont., in talking about the move to virtual bargaining amid the pandemic. "We're doing 90 per cent or more of the bargaining virtually, which changes things — just the chance to have face-to- face conversations with people… when MAJOR WAGE SETTLEMENTS IN 2021 49.8 Average duration in months of contracts 16 Number of settlements reached 59,308 Number of employees affected by new deals Source: Statistics Canada

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