The signboard outside Central Middle School on Fort Street announces hopefully: “See you Sept. 2.” With that date just days away, the prospect of school starting as normal on the expected date is becoming highly doubtful.
One thing is certain — the 70-year-old adversarial system of labour relations borrowed from the private sector in the United States is fatally flawed when it comes to resolving disputes involving the complex issues associated with the delivery of our vital public services.
Prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had worked at industrial relations for the Rockefellers in the U.S., borrowed heavily from president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1935 depression-era Wagner Act when introducing labour law during the Second World War.
In 1944, an order-in-council was passed, designed to provide for union recognition and collective bargaining, as well as for dispute resolution in mining, railways, logging, shipbuilding, manufacturing and other industries.
Some 20 to 30 years later, most of the rapidly expanding public sector was shoehorned into the same legislative model.
It was a bad fit from the get-go, and the public is increasingly being made the victims of these long-ago, misguided public-policy decisions.
The private-sector model is the wrong one, because it is designed for disputes that directly affect primarily the employer and his or her employees, while in the public sector, the cessation of the delivery of needed public services mostly affects the innocent members of the public who rely upon and truly need these services.
The provision of public education, health care and a host of other critical public services has little in common with the production of a particular brand of automobile or other product where so many alternatives are so readily available in the event of a work stoppage.
In October 1999, when public-sector labour relations in Canada were going through another difficult period, the federal government mandated a task force to review the state of labour-management relationships and to assess how well the current system was serving Canada.
The 10-member tripartite task force worked for two years, listening to union leaders present and past, managers and experts, plus other interested parties from coast to coast. They studied labour-relations practices throughout the world.
Its second report in 2001, entitled “Working Together in the Public Interest,” contained 33 unanimous recommendations for creating a more co-operative, collective and problem-solving labour-relations regime in the public service, working within the public interest.
Let’s look for a moment at the current teacher-versus-government brouhaha against the background of a public-interest model of labour-management relations.
First off, the parties might agree to suspend their strike/lockout at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 31, so that the teachers would be in class on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 2.
What better way to demonstrate that both teachers and government really do put the best interests of the children and parents first?
Second, both teachers and government could agree to send unresolved wage and language issues to a three-member board for binding arbitration.
The board would be tripartite, with a nominee each from the teachers and government, chaired by an independent professional third party.
The only caveat would be that the board must make only unanimous recommendations. Items without unanimity go back to the parties to keep working on in search of a negotiated solution.
Final authority, if no agreement can be reached, is on the floor of the legislature, not in the streets.
Third, a fund would be established consisting of the $12 million a day already saved on teachers’ wages, matched by an equal amount from the employer.
This fund would be jointly administered by the teachers and government and used exclusively to fund initiatives to reduce class sizes as well as give classroom teachers more assistance in ensuring a good education experience for children with special needs.
An announcement that a new joint problem-solving labour-relations model for the public sector would be sought — designed to put in place an approach changing the climate in the public-sector labour-relations environment in our province — would be welcomed. It would give much-needed substance to the premier’s “families first” agenda.
Finally, it would make that hopeful sign outside Central Middle School both a relief as well as a reality for all concerned.
John Fryer is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria and a former general secretary of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union and a former president of the National Union of Public and General Employees. J. Barton Cunningham is a professor in the School of Public Administration at UVic.
