Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER CANADIAN HR REPORTER April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 6 NEWS NEWS Lost in legislation Lost in legislation Unions worry as back-to-work legislation crops up across Canada Unions worry as back-to-work legislation crops up across Canada BY LIZ FOSTER PROVINCIAL governments on Canada's east and west coasts re- cently met long-lasting labour dis- putes with a legislative response — and unions across the country are worried workers' rights will soon be lost in legislation. Back-to-work legislation was introduced in the Port Metro Vancouver truckers' strike after weeks of disruption from 250 unionized and 1,000 non-union workers. e legislation — which called for a 90-day cooling-off pe- riod — included potential fi nes of up to $400 per day for unionized truckers and $10,000 per day for the union itself if it refused to re- turn to work. " is legislation is being tabled reluctantly and comes after mul- tiple attempts over recent weeks to end the dispute and get Port Metro Vancouver back to full capacity," said Shirley Bond, Brit- ish Columbia's labour minister, in a statement following the bill's introduction. "The disruption at Canada's largest and busiest port is impact- ing our economy, jobs and our trading reputation." Unifor reached a deal with the province, the federal government and Port Metro Vancouver only days later — but Gavin McGar- rigle, Unifor's B.C. area director, said the threat of legislative ac- tion is a serious one. e second the government announced it intended to table back-to-work legislation, negotiations evapo- rated, he said. "What it did was make it far, far more diffi cult for us to reach an agreement," said McGarrigle. "Immediately, the employers started getting phone calls from their customers and the shippers telling them, under no uncertain terms, 'Don't agree to anything. Don't agree to one penny more.' In essence: 'We'll let the govern- ment do the dirty work for us.' It's just not the right way to proceed in collective bargaining." Had a deal not been reached before the bill passed, Unifor was prepared to stand behind its members in the face of the legislation. "Our members had no intention of going back to work or being bul- lied or swayed," said McGarrigle. "We were going to stand fi rm on behalf of those workers and we were determined to reach a fair deal." Complicating matters was the fact that as many as 1,000 of the striking truckers were not repre- sented by the union and would have been unaff ected by the leg- islation. But, unionized or not, back-to-work legislation aff ects all workers, said McGarrigle. "People are having their rights taken away," he said. "Back-to- work legislation is just misusing the power of the state to crush workers. It's no surprise they are completely outraged by that and they'll fi ght passionately. Govern- ments far too often resort to this and they don't really intend on ne- gotiating. For them, workers are people to be bullied and pushed around." N.S. looks to public safety While the bottom line in B.C. was profi t — at its peak, the strike aff ected $885 million worth of goods per week, according to the port — in Nova Scotia, the gov- ernment introduced legislation in an eff ort to protect public safety. It introduced essential services legislation in a strike by home support workers. "Government supports the principles of collective bargain- ing but we also have a responsi- bility to ensure essential services are provided," said Kelly Regan, minister of labour and advanced education, in a statement. " is bill is about giving Nova Scotians peace of mind and setting out a reasonable and orderly process so patients and families who need it most know they will get essential support, even during a strike." Essential service designation is based on the risk of death or se- rious health consequences if the service is not provided. Workers represented by the Nova Scotia Government and General Em- ployees Union (NSGEU) and the Canadian Union of Public Em- ployees (CUPE) were aff ected by the legislation. In an eff ort to curb workers' rights, however, governments designate as many workers as pos- sible, said CUPE's national presi- dent, Paul Moist. "We have always provided by agreement some degree of essen- tial services in a health-care set- ting," he said. "But when govern- ments can designate up to 100 per cent of the workers as essential… How could the groundskeeper at the hospital be declared essential if hospital workers went on strike? Nothing against groundskeeping, it's very important, but it's hardly a threat to life and limb." Essentially, he said, essential services legislation forces employ- ees back to work and weakens a union's bargaining power. It's for that reason CUPE recently an- nounced its intention to launch a legal challenge against Nova Sco- tia's Essential Services Act. e union says the legislation — Bill 30 — forced more than 400 home support workers back to work and pushed the employees into accepting a deal. Nurses working for Nova Scotia's largest health authority — also represented by NSGEU — could face back-to-work or es- sential services legislation in their own strike. e union, represent- ing 2,400 nurses throughout the province, has reached an impasse with the employer. NSGEU president Joan Jessome said she hopes an agreement can be reached when the nurses are in a legal strike position, but she is losing confi dence the government will compromise. If push comes to shove, she said, nurses would defy back-to-work or essential services legislation. "We will conduct an illegal strike," said Jessome. "Essential services legislation puts 80 to 85 per cent of the workforce in the workplace at the time of the strike. It demoralizes workers. It's not collective bargaining, it's blackmail bargaining." This legislation is all about shifting power away from work- ers at a time when they are most in need of support, said Jessome. Workers never go on strike, legal or otherwise, lightly, said Moist. "People go on strike to back up legitimate workplace issues. It's in the public interest to have free col- lective bargaining to set wages and working conditions. at public interest was forged between em- ployers and employees. It's a deli- cate balance. You can't tip the bal- ance in the favour of employers or governments… and think there's not going to be consequences." LOOKING TO HIRE? CFA Society Toronto's employment posting service gives you access to over 8,000 investment professionals. Our Career Centre has become the job source for investment employers. WHY NOT JOIN US? For more information: Tel: 416.366.5755 option 4 Email: jobs@cfatoronto.ca www.cfatoronto.ca WANT ACCESS TO HIGHLY QUALIFIED INVESTMENT PROFESSIONALS? between interdisciplinary or interdepartmental employees, as well as it would also help you create test environments for de- cision-making. So if you wanted to know what the consequences of a certain decision would be, that would help you almost simulate the decision." A heavier use of robotics was another of Mushfi que's predic- tions, including an 'autobot' that would eliminate certain health risks. "It was a robotic arm and peo- ple would work remotely from diff erent locations, but the robotic arm itself would be at the research centre," she said. "It would help you do a lot of re- search that we can't do right now because of human health or (the) environment might be too haz- ardous," she said. Technology that monitors an employee's stress and cognition levels was another of Mushfi que's predictions. So was knowledge- sharing technology that retains an employee's knowledge after he leaves the organization. "They could track from the very beginning when an em- ployee enters, how he actually works," she said, adding there is a wealth of "hidden data" around productivity. Adaptable to market changes Another way organizations will evolve is by becoming more adaptable to changes in the mar- ket, according to Mikael Castaldo of the University of Toronto and Joseph Lundy of the University of Waterloo, who won third place in the competition. "In 2040, due to technological accelerators and increased hu- man populations, and also devel- opment in emerging markets, the world is going to be changing a lot faster, economically and techno- logically. And that's going to make it harder for corporations to pre- dict things," said Lundy. "Our goal for the organization in 2040 is to build a business mod- el that, whether or not you make the right predictions, it doesn't aff ect the overall success of your organization. So the point is to build organizations that are actu- ally able to survive volatility and change." To accomplish this, companies will have to adopt two key prin- ciples, said Castaldo. " e fi rst is to become what we call a module organization, so built around a core idea, but then extremely de-centralized so that products are managed by individual teams that are loosely related to the core of the organiza- tion. But it's super de-centralized — kind of like the way Google is structured," he said. "We envisioned a company in 2040 that is more like a collection of startups," said Lundy. "Corpo- rations in 2040 need to be built around a core idea instead of a single product because compa- nies that are built around a single product are going to be a lot more vulnerable to change." e second principle was for companies to hire more general- ists, said Castaldo. "We want companies to focus less on hiring single-function workers, specialists, and focus- ing more on hiring generalists because generalists make better problem-solvers," he said. at will become increasingly important as technology im- proves, processes become auto- mated and creativity becomes a valuable commodity, said Lundy. "Companies are going to have to focus on building more cre- ative, fl exible and general work- forces. So they'll need employees to have multiple skill sets and to be creative problem-solvers, because they're going to really depend on the employee, not for just linear input and output in 2040, but to be able to think creatively." Surviving volatility Surviving volatility FOCUS 2040 < pg. 3

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