Canadian Labour Reporter

MARCH 24, 2014 6 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 Discipline: Sunset clause is 18 months. Uniforms/clothing: The employer will provide personal pro- tective equipment when it is required. Mileage: Reimbursed in accordance with the employer's policy Travel-General. No other information available. Sample rates of pay current: Lecturers: $29,500 per year Editor's notes: Academic freedom: Academic freedom recog- nizes the employees' right to discuss and criticize policies and actions of the employer and the union and protects against any penalty for exercising that right. Academic freedom does not, however, confer legal immunity. Intellectual property: Em- ployees share ownership of all inventions, discoveries or cre- ations conceived or developed by them in the course of their employment in accordance with the employer's policy. Outside professional activities: Employees are free to engage in outside professional, scholarly or scientific activities. Reimbursement: Employees will be reimbursed for personal certification, licens- ing or registration fees that are required to complete research and for fees and/or permits for access to particular research environments. Facilities: The employer will provide employees with access to library and computer lab facilities, mail servic- es, printing, photocopying and to a university email address. Compassionate care: 8 unpaid weeks. Pregnancy, adoption and parental leave: Leave without pay granted in accordance with the Labour Standards Act, RSNL 1990, cL-2. Local support: The employer will provide $5,000 annually to assist the union in the administration of the collective agreement. Professional devel- opment: The employer will provide $3,000 annually to establish a professional development fund. The fund will cover the costs of tuition for credit courses at Memorial University for employ- ees during their appointment. Arbitration Awards Summaries of recent arbitration awards from federal and provincial arbitration boards. For summaries from past issues, visit www.labour-reporter.com for a searchable online archive. Your paid subscription includes unlimited access to the archive. Continued on page 8 care professionals and the provincial government. With negotiations reaching an impasse, the UNA com- plained health services failed to make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement — something nurses had been without since March 2013. At the time the complaint was filed, both the UNA and AHS had met at the bargaining table on a dozen occasions. More meetings slated At issue for the union was the employer's intention to im- plement a "staff scheduling transformation," by which, the union feared, it would impose a reduction in the number of nurses currently on the staff roster. As part of this transformation, AHS also said it planned to create regular relief positions and associated rotations to make up for any possible losses. "To date, not a single nurse employed by AHS has been laid off who does not have recall rights she can exercise," health services explained during the hearings. "The reduc- tions of nurses shown in the small number of units is not anticipated to result in layoffs as it is expected there will be other positions available to those nurses elsewhere in the operations." The aforementioned was relayed to the nurses' union before bargaining began, and further details were revealed throughout the course of negotiations. However, social media muddled the situation. AHS posted its intentions on its website and mentioned it on social media through the official Twitter account. The union argued this also demonstrated AHS's question- able bargaining tactics, as it was providing information which appeared to reflect there was going to be a reduction in the number of registered nurses. "(AHS) was providing information which appeared to re- flect there was going to be a reduction in the number of reg- istered nurses as a result of the implementation of the staff scheduling transformation initiative," the UNA alleged. "At the same time, AHS is informing the affected employees and the public there would be no reduction in these numbers of their nurses." This assumption was a major part of the problem, the AHS countered. "(The) UNA is attempting to rely upon forecasts made by AHS that relate only to a small portion of the total number of units affected by this initiative and extrapolates from that small number of units the effect upon all of the units," according to health services. "Any reduction in the number of nurses at a particular unit will be offset by the creation of new registered nurse positions, but the creation of positions for some of these nurses to work in regular relief rotations, and by the attrition process the par- ties earlier agreed upon." Gerald Lucas, the arbitrator presiding over the case, found health services did not act in bad faith, adding that the union acted hastily in filing its complaint. "(The) UNA has unfortunately interpreted what AHS has Nurses, health services back to bargaining table after labour complaint thrown out IT'S BACk TO the bargaining table for nurses in Alberta, whose bad-faith labour complaint against health services was thrown out by a judge. Late last year, the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) pe- titioned the provincial labour relations board, alleging its employer, Alberta Health Services (AHS), was bargaining in bad-faith. AHS is a province-wide, fully integrated health care sys- tem that governs collective agreements between all health

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