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Essential services
FAQs: The right to strike across Canada
Last Updated May 6, 2008
CBC News

The government of Saskatchewan is hoping to enact new essential services legislation that would require bargaining units and employers to determine at least 90 days in advance of a strike which workers must remain on the job and maintain services during a work stoppage. Following an April 2008 transit strike, the city of Toronto is considering making the TTC an essential service, forcing workers to remain on the job even in the event of a strike action.

What does an essential service designation mean?
Essential services are those necessary to prevent danger to life, health or safety and disruption of the courts. Employees who are designated as having essential positions must continue to provide services during a strike.

Who can and cannot strike?

Essential service designation is different from legislation that prohibits the right to strike. For example, across Canada police, firefighters, and hospital employees don’t have the right to strike as stated in their collective agreements and their disputes must be settled through binding arbitration. But for most sectors considered essential, some workers can still go on strike while the employees whose positions are determined to be vital by their employer must continue to work.

Who decides what’s essential?

The Public Service Labour Relations Act designates which federal public employees will continue providing service in the event of a work stoppage.

The Canada Labour Code ensures other federal services like telecommunications, railways, banks, ports and national security are staffed during a strike action.

Provincially, it starts to get a little tricky. Each province has varying legislation and collective agreements to determine what services are essential.

How does it work in each province and territory?
Nova Scotia amended their Trade Union Act three years ago to replace the right to strike for police officers and firefighters with “interest arbitration.” The province is also proposing an act that would force health service sector workers to binding arbitration in the event of a dispute. Saskatchewan is proposing something similar.

Manitoba enforces essential services through the Essential Services Act, which specifies which public sector employees must continue to provide service during a strike. The province considers services like the department of finance, air ambulances, community living and the department of highways and transportation as essential.

Quebec’s Essential Services Council determines which employees are subject to restrictions barring them from withdrawing services completely. While public transit is not considered an essential service in Quebec, the council requires transit workers to provide normal service during rush hour and other times the council deems necessary.

In P.E.I. and Alberta, there is legislation that prevents hospital employees, the department of health and social services and police and firefighters from going on strike. Like many other provinces, including British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, their essential service legislation allows employers to designate positions that will continue to provide crucial services while a strike is taking place.

Legislation in Ontario requires that Crown employees and ambulance workers have an essential services agreement in place before a strike can begin so that certain services can continue.

In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the Public Service Act specifies that services deemed essential must ensure a continuation of minimal service in order to protect the health and safety of the public. The act also calls for senior employees of power plants to remain on the job.

The Yukon relies on federal legislation.

Is essential service designation bad for unions?

Unions worry about the implications of legislation and say that potentially undermines their bargaining power and takes away the right to strike. Critics of essential services legislation complain that a continuation of services lessens public pressure on the employer to end the work stoppage, resulting in longer strikes. However, lengthy strikes generally end in arbitration, which tends to yield more favourable contracts for employees than negotiations.

Is essential service designation good for taxpayers?
While the retention of essential services is beneficial for the public, lengthy strikes that end in arbitration can mean a bigger payout for union workers, which can be costly for taxpayers.

Ugh, I don’t want to get into writing a philosophical manifesto here, but our economic system is founded on Adam Smith utilitarian ethics which is rife with paradox and does not recognize greed or avarice as moral wrongs but rather enlightened self interest. There is a reason for this. Add greed to the utilitarian calculus and the system falls apart – results in the greatest good for the smallest number. Free market capitalism is supposed to rectify inequality by allowing free competition, which necessarily results in inequalities. Marx was a tradition rebuttal but his system didn’t work out any better for the peasantry. There is the equilibrium mathematics of John Nash, but it took 100 years after Smith for humans to notice that child labour was a moral wrong.

This is also a very new ‘economic’ invention as most cultures in our tribal history punished greed (hoarding) with death. We celebrate hoarding. Tony Toldo is a big hero. Bill Gates is a near-deity, in spite of his guilt ridden ‘philanthropy’ he always needs another billion or ten. He sees no connection whatsoever between his enormous wealth and the poverty and suffering of millions, in fact just the opposite.

History also tells us people resist change unless faced with real, massive levels of crisis.
I would suggest stocking up on canned food, gold coins and shotgun shells.

When Federal or Provincial government employees go on strike, a certain percentage of unionized employees are deemed essential and are required to report to work. Their colleagues hit the picket line. Whatever agreement the union members agree to will apply to those deemed essential. There is no binding arbitration for those deemed essential.

Policing and firefighting is different in that they are deemed to be essential services by the province and all employees are usually represented by a single association. Also binding arbitration isn’t automatic. Both sides still have to attempt to negotiate a contract – and that included mediation. Binding arbitration kicks in after both sides agree that a negotiated agreement is not possible and mediation has failed.

How must this be fundamentaly changed?

I agree, and I think Mr. Lewenza would as well, how do we make it sustainable?

Reading the council minutes from the strike, Mr. Lewenza is simply pointing out there were more affordable options on the table that were rejected than what we were ultimately saddled with.

It boils down to the contracting out argument and the pros and cons.

If those who produce nothing (ie government employees) is transferred to the private sector, what miraculous transformation occurs in that something is produced?

You need planners. You need lawyers to interpret the laws. You need administrators to keep the records, etc. etc. even in the private sector.

I would agree government has gone way too far in regulating every minute detail of our lives which in turn creates a demand for more employees to provide the support, but aside from a complete revolution, I unfortunately do not see this changing substantially unless something precipitates that change – which may be coming – because you’re right the current structure is simply not sustainable.

So what do we do? What thresholds are acceptable? How do we ease the transition without significant disruption?

This is a good discussion.