LABOR

Employers get okay to alter contracts

Continued from page 1
ployment and the growing encroachment of
non-union companies, have maintained an
unrelenting demand for wage and benefits
cuts — with the added threat that if they
don’t get them, they will go “open shop.”

The Amalgamated Construction Associ-
ation (ACA), made up of both union and
non-union contractors, played host at its
annual convention last month to US.
union-busting consultant McNeill Stokes,
who outlined a five-step process for “getting
nid of unions.”

It begins with the withdrawal from the
contractors’ bargaining association; fol-
lowed by notice to the unions to terminate
contracts; bargaining to an impasse; a final
offer and ultimatum; followed by either a
strike, in which case scabs would be hired,
or concessions wrested from the union.

Premier Bill Bennett was the keynote
speaker at the ACA convention, underscor-
ing the role played by the Socred govern-
ment in promoting non-union contractors
with its low-bidder policies and anti-labor
legislation.

Stokes’ meeting was followed last week
by the seminar in North Vancouver by the
right-to-work Independent Canadian Busi-
ness Association (ICBA) at which Peter Gall,
a partner in Jordan and Gall which has based
its business on anti-union cases, and U.S.
right-to-work advocate John Bentley were
the featured speakers on the topic, “Living
and prospering under B.C. labor laws.”

There, too, the direction was laid out:
extract major concessions from the Building
Trades or move the entire industry over to
open shop.

CLRA also sent out a questionnaire to its
member contractors in October asking
them to indicate the extent of concessions
they would want to see put on the bargain-
ing table and outlining various strategies for
the 1986 bargaining.

In a letter acompanying the question-
naire, CLRA president Chuck McVeigh
stated: “The explosive growth of non-union
construction over the past few years has
placed our members in a situation where
they are finding it increasingly difficult to be
competitive in the marketplace. It now
seems that the results of the upcoming
round of bargaining will be critical to the
future of the unionized sector. ..”

McVeigh offered five strategies for bar-
gaining, together with the pros and cons of
each: bargaining “the best deal possible”
before the expiry of the current agreement
May 1, 1986; imposing an industry-wide
lockout; negotiating a five-year agreement; -
bypassing the bargaining council and nego-
tiating with each union separately; and ter-
minating the collective agreements effective
May | and re-hiring the employees the fol-
lowing day at lower wages and benefits.

The letter noted that the “termination
option has some significant advantages but
it also has some major risks.”

The contractor whose copy of the questi-
onnaire was obtained by the Tribune, has
chosen the termination option. He had also
indicated that he wanted wage cuts of “$9
per hour or more.”

The termination option was utilized with
devastating effect by Alberta contractors
last year in the midst of the worst construc-
tion unemployment since the Thirties.
When collective agreements expired, the
contractors declared a 24-hour lockout
and then lifted it, and called workers back at
tates 25 to 50 per cent lower than laid out in
the agreement.

In the 18 months since Alberta contracts
expired, most of the Alberta trades are still
without collective agreements although the
International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers has signed a contract with no
bottom — the rates are set virtually with
each job.

The employers’ tactic was made possible
by a decision of the Alberta Labor Rela-

12 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 13, 1985

Vancouver CUPW president Evert
Hoogers addressses rally of postal
workers, members of the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers and the Pub-
lic Sector Alliance during noon rally at
Main Post Office Nov. 6 to protest the
“‘deteriorating’’ mail service and rela-
tions between postal workers and
Canada Post. CUPW national director
Pat Miller (I) said the protest, one of
several across Canada that day, was
targetting the ‘‘abysmal” decline in
mail serve and accused Canada Post
management of “‘deliberate sabotage
of the mail system.’’ He said the
Crown corporation’s management
appars to be “‘forcing’’ the govern-
ment to deregulate mail service and
oversee the end of the national,
publicly-owned post office. Miller
said continued deterioration of rela-
tions would lead to ‘open confronta-
tion” with Canada Post.

Postal cutbacks spark CUPW rally :

tions Board which ruled in April, 1984, that
expired contracts were void on expiry and
did not continue in effect until new ones
were negotiated.

Although B.C. labor relations law was
thought to preclude that scenario being
repeated in this province, the LRB decision
Oct. 2 may change all that — with ominous
consequences.

A five-member board panel headed by
LRB chairman John Kinzie has ruled that
employers have the right to alter unilaterally
the terms and conditions of a collective
agreement once it has expired, subject only
to the condition that they attempt in good
faith to bargain a new contract.

In bringing down that ruling, the LRB
ruled that the existing labor relations
concept — that oncea collective agreement
has expired, the employer-employee rela-
tionship is determined by individual con-
tracts of employment whose terms are the
same as those outlined in the collective
agreement — no longer applied.

“We have concluded,” the ruling stated,
“that an employer has the authority under
the Labor Code to make unilateral altera-
tions to terms and conditions of employ-
ment after the expiry of the collective
agreement, subject to his duty and obliga-
tion. ..to bargain in good faith and to con-
clude a collective agreement...”

The board also noted that an employer
who put a proposal on the bargaining table
and then unilaterally implemented it after
the union negotiators rejected it, would not
be in violation of the Labor Code since he
had bargained in good faith by first offering
the proposal through the “‘avenue” of the
union.

In fact, that was what happened in one of
the cases before the board, involving the
Canadian Association of Industrial, Mech-
anical and Allied Workers (CAIMAW).
The employer, Paccar (Canadian Ken-
worth), sent a letter to the union June 29,
1983, declaring the negotiations at an end
and the contract terminated July 4, and
then laid out wages and conditions under
which employees would continue to work.

Vancouver lawyer Stuart Rush, who
acted for CAIMAW in the appeal, warned
that the Oct. 2 ruling was “a very, very
serious decision for trade unions in this pro-
vince.”

CAIMA W plans to seek a judicial review
of the decision by B.C. Supreme Court but
in the meantime, Rush said, “it sets up a
draconian imbalance between the relation-
ship between the trade union and the
employer.”

A number of factors went into the
decision — the increasing bias of the LRB

under a Socred administration towards
employers, the intensified campaign for
contract rollbacks, and the growing difficul-
ties faced by unions at a time of high unem-
ployment in getting a strike vote and
mounting a strike.

“The response of the board is that if a
union: doesn’t want to accept unilateral
employer changes, it can strike,” Rush said.
“But often unions can’t afford to strike.

“This decision seems to say that the
employer is free to change the agreement to
suit its needs.”

He emphasized that the ruling could
open the door to employers waiting out
their agreements, putting a set of conces-
sionary demands on the table — and then
implementing them unilaterally. ‘“That’s
why we’re so alarmed,” he said.

Effectively, the decision allows employers
to change the terms and conditions of
employment without disrupting production
and without imposing a lockout — as was
done at Paccar.

That route is still presumably closed to
employers in the construction industry
because most of the Building Trades unions
have “bridging clauses” which extend the
existing agreement until a new one is signed.

But even those bridging clauses offer
“minimal protection”, Rush suggested, not-
ing that most have some provision for
notice to terminate after a certain amount of
time has elapsed.

And the lockout is always available to
terminate construction industry agree-
ments.

Significantly, lawyer Peter Gall sug-
gested, in an article in the industry paper
Journal of Commerce, that the lockout
could be used by B.C. contractors to termi-
nate collective agreements and follow the
scenario laid out by Alberta companies.
And with their right to impose unilateral
changes upheld, he said, the employers
would be ina position to lay down the terms
they wanted in their contracts.

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In the same Journal story, McVeigh
called the LRB ruling “a landmark deci-
sion” and said that CLRA would be “look- ©
ing seriously at that decision as to whether
or not it can be used in the 1986 bargain-
ing.”

The decision poses the threat throughout
the trade union movement that employers -
may seek to impose unilateral contract |
reductions wherever they feel a union isn’t"
in a position to mount an effective strike for
a variety of reasons. But the danger to the —
Building Trades is immediate because of the
high unemployment, the experience in
Alberta and the longstanding problems of
unity among the trades. :

“There’s no quesiton — they’re coming —
at us from every direction,’ warned Car- ©
penters Provincial Council president Bill
Zander, whose union was cited as a particu-
lar target by Gall during a television intef-
view.

“McVeigh essentially laid it all out: they'll
wait till the last minute, then put a lot of
demands_on the table that we’ll have to
refuse, lock us out — and then lift the lock-
out the next day and call everybody back at
half the rates,” Zander said. ‘““And unless we
have a strike vote, we won’t be able to

“That’s why it’s necessary to have ear
strike votes,” he emphasized, noting that
the Building Trades convention last wee
endorsed a resolution calling for early votes. —

“We've seen what took place in |
Alberta — but there’s no reason we —
shouldn’t be ready after we’ve seen what —
happened to them. Concessions didn’t do
them one damn bit of good,” he said.

“We've got a big job to do to educate th
membership between now and next year.’

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