Northwest Territories
Public Service Workers
Persist in Fight
for Dignity of Labour
Public service workers protest outside
the NWT legislature,
March 9, 2018.
Workers' Forum reported last November
that 4,000
public employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories
(GNWT)
are waging a determined fight for significant improvements to
their
working conditions.[1]
Changes are needed to meet their needs in this
northern
environment where the cost of living is much higher than in most
of
southern Canada. The refusal of the GNWT to improve the living
and
working conditions of public service workers is an attack on
their
dignity and cannot be tolerated. Public sector workers provide
services
essential to
the functioning of society, in health care, maintenance of roads
and
highways and all the necessary infrastructure.
The GNWT does not treat public sector workers as
the
backbone of the infrastructure who create immense value for the
Northwest Territories. Instead, the GNWT as is the case
throughout
Canada consider workers not as value creators but a "cost" that
needs
to be reduced and humiliated. This upside down backward outlook
is
unacceptable in
the modern world.
Workers report that after close to three years of
attempting to negotiate a collective agreement that meets their
demands, no progress has been made, so stubborn is the government
in
denying their just demands. The government is now addressing
individual
workers directly to misinform them about its offer, trying to
split
them from their
fellow workers and pit them against the union.
In recent developments, the Union of Northern
Workers
(UNW), which represents the workers, reports that all workers
received
a document from the GNWT that was sent to them without the union
even
being informed. The document says the wage offer will be part of
a
five-year agreement, a term the union has refused to consider
since the
very beginning of the negotiations.
The document also makes reference to both wage
increases and step increases, increases that workers receive when
they
gain experience in a position. The union reports that the
document
includes step increases in the calculations and then presents a
false
average wage increase. According to UNW, for two thousand of the
Territories most
experienced government employees, no step increases remain. This
renders the actual overall wage offer below what is needed to
cover
cost of living increases, which unlike many collective agreements
are
not included in the GNWT contract.
UNW reports that after close to three years of
negotiations, the government still refuses to provide measures of
job
security to its workers. A large number of them are still treated
as
relief, casuals or terms. Term and casual workers are often
extended
over and over in that position rather than allowing them to
become
fulltime workers.
Creation of fulltime jobs would improve the overall staffing
while
providing workers with benefits and pensions, none of which they
have
at the moment in their precarious position. Some workers who have
been
working steady for the government for decades are still
classified as
casuals. Under the anti-worker mantra of reducing the "cost" of
the
human, which in fact is the source of new value, the government
states
that it wants to expand the use of relief workers to the entire
GNWT
workforce, which the workers firmly oppose.
The union has been in a legal strike position
since
November of last year. It demands that the government sit with
the
negotiating committee and address their two main demands: a wage
increase that allows government workers to face the increased
cost of
living in this northern territory, and measures of job security
that
allow more workers
to become fulltime employees so as to put an end to their most
precarious conditions which include, for many of them, being
deprived
of pensions and benefits. To push for a settlement, the UNW
proposed in
January that the government agree to binding arbitration, which
was
flatly refused. A factor in this outright refusal to negotiate is
found
in
the Public Service Act governing the Northwest
Territories.
Under the Act, the government cannot lock the workers out but it
can
unilaterally change any terms and conditions of employment for
employees in the bargaining unit.
The workers are determined to defend their
dignity and
improve their living and working conditions. This is the first
time in
almost 50 years that the employees of the government have
been in
a legal strike position.
Note
1. "Public
Service Workers Wage Determined Fight
for Their Rights and Dignity," Workers' Forum,
November 8, 2018
This article was published in
Number 3 - January 31, 2019
Article Link:
Northwest Territories: Public Service Workers
Persist in Fight
for Dignity of Labour
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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