Some of the Measures Taken in Bill 21
The Public Sector Employers Act Extends to Any
Entity that Receives Public Funding and/or Provides a Public Service
Rally at Calgary city hall, November 6, 2019.
The reach of the new legislation called the Public
Sector Employers Act
is broad. The Act applies to health authorities, school boards,
post-secondary institutions, crown corporations, and at the Minister's
discretion can be applied to "any entity which receives public funding
from the Crown to provide a public service." Employers of
entities which do not receive public funding are also included, such as
the Workers' Compensation Board, and the Crown Corporation ATB
Financial.
Every agency, public or community-organized, which
receives any public funding to provide public services can be required
to submit to government dictate over negotiations with its employees.
In theory this could encompass privately-owned and operated entities as
well, although the government has provided an escape clause to allow them to be exempted.
 Bill
21 authorizes the Minister to issue confidential directives that an
employer must follow when "engaging in collective bargaining or a
related process." These directives are secret. The employer cannot
disclose the directive to any third party without prior consent of the
Minister, including to the union with which it is supposedly engaged in
"good faith bargaining." Secret directives may set out the length of a
collective agreement, and "fiscal limits."
The government can also issue directives requiring an
employer to provide the government with any and all "information which
the Minister considers necessary respecting collective bargaining, or a
related process" including information for the purpose of monitoring
compliance with directives. The Minister can determine the form,
manner,
and time in which the directive is to be complied with. In other words
the employer who is at the table is not actually conducting the
negotiations, and effectively cannot breathe without the approval of
the Minister. This means that the union has no one with whom to
negotiate. The decision-maker is not at the table, and their directives
are secret.
Even if a contract is reached under these conditions, the government
has made it clear that the employer's signature means nothing and the
government might declare that it needs to tear up the collective
agreement anyway. Not a shred remains of the conception of "good faith
bargaining."
In case of a conflict with existing labour law, the Act,
or the regulations under the Act, will apply. This provision is also
quite extraordinary, in that it specifies that existing labour law can
be overturned by writing regulations attached to the Public Sector
Employers Act.
Finally, having usurped the authority of the employer,
the Act then declares that the Crown is not the employer of a person of
whom the Crown is not otherwise an employer. What this means is that
the Crown is the employer only for provincial government employees. How
such a declaration will help the government get off the hook in a
challenge to the constitutionality of the legislation is difficult to
imagine. Is it that the government is well aware that its legislation
will not stand up to the scrutiny of the courts, but it does not care,
because the damage will already be done by the time the matter wends
its way to the Supreme Court? It seems so.
Changes to the Employment
Standards Code
The Alberta government is amending the definition of an
employee in the Employment Standards
Code
to permit exclusion of a class of workers from the regulations. At
present there is a long list of sectors where certain provisions, e.g.
overtime and hours of work, do not apply or are amended. This change
allows the government to exempt
workers in an entire industry from the Employment Standards Code, for
example farm workers or domestic workers.
Workers who belong to a union can no longer make
Employment Standards complaints. Reports indicate this has been the
general practice, but is now enshrined in law. The impact of this
change is profound given the rise of situations where workers are
"represented" by an organization widely known to be a company union and
the worker
has no recourse through Employment Standards.
Labour Relations Code Removes the Ban on Replacement Workers
 The
Alberta NDP government introduced essential services legislation in
2016, replacing legislation criminalizing strike action for all
employees of the provincial government, hospitals, health authorities,
ambulance service providers, municipal firefighting services, and
municipal police forces, as well as most staff at public colleges and
universities. This outright ban had been rendered unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Saskatchewan Federation of
Labour v. Saskatchewan, January 30, 2015.
Employees of privately owned continuing care facilities
who had previously had a legal right to strike were included in the
legislation. The use of scab replacement workers was banned where
essential services legislation applied.
The legislation as amended continues to impose the
requirement for essential services agreements on the collectives of the
workers, but not the employers. Employers can choose instead to try and
break the union using replacement workers. The employer can start
negotiating an essential services agreement, and then decide that it
will hire scab
replacement workers instead.
Tearing Up Agreements with Alberta's Physicians
Alberta's Bill 21 also contains an unprecedented assault
on the province's physicians. It states that the government can cancel
any agreement regarding physician remuneration made with the Alberta
Medical Association (AMA) or any other entity or person at any time.
AMA President Dr. Christine Molnar points out: "This is
not only for the existing AMA Agreement, the bill also clearly
identifies that government is not required to live up to terms of
future contracts. Government is cynically asking us to work toward
agreements when it appears we are the only party to be bound by them."
Dr. Molnar also points out that decision-making has been
moved behind closed doors to Cabinet, apparently in the name of the
public good. "What is the value of an agreement when it can be revoked
at any time with no public discussion?" she asks.
In short order, the government cut the payment to
physicians on call (mainly rural physicians) by 37 per cent.
Bill 21 also enables the Minister of Health to restrict
the number of physicians practicing, and where in the province they can
practice, as of April 2022. Physicians who already have billing numbers
as of April 2022 will be grandfathered.
Other changes have been made to the legislation
concerning "opting in" and "opting out" of the Alberta health insurance
plan. People are asking what else the government has up its sleeve.
They suspect that by restricting the number of physicians who can bill
under the provincial plan, the Kenney government has not given up on
the plan to
impose two-tier medicine on the people of Alberta. Such plans have met
with determined opposition to the point where the government has always
been forced to abandon them.
This article was published in
Number 26 - November 13, 2019
Article Link:
Some of the Measures Taken in Bill 21
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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