All posts tagged Thomas Lukaszuk

Who leaked the Alberta government’s response to AUPE’s Labour Board complaint, and why?

by David Climenhaga on May 15, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Labour Relations with 3 Comments

AUPE President Guy Smith in a characteristic pose.

Who leaked the Alberta government’s response to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees’ unfair labour practices complaint to an Edmonton Journal political reporter, and why?

This is an important question because at the time the leak took place, the government document questioning AUPE President Guy Smith’s personal honesty in harsh and colourful terms was being kept confidential by the Alberta Labour Relations Board.

This was done as a fairly routine part of the board’s effort to effect a settlement of AUPE’s complaint that the Alberta government had broken an agreement it made to end the illegal strike by about 2,500 jail guards on May 1.

On May 9, the day before the Journal story was published, Labour Relations Board Chair Mark Asbell appointed Vice-Chair Lyle Kanee under the terms of Alberta’s Public Service Employee Relations Act “to enquire into the complaint and endeavour to effect a settlement.”

To assist Mr. Kanee’s effort to bring the parties together to reach a settlement, the board halted formal processing of AUPE’s complaint until the vice-chair’s inquiry and settlement efforts could be completed.

To promote opportunities for settlements, it is the board’s policy in such circumstances not to release or comment on any complaints or replies it receives from the parties to a dispute.

So, just to make this crystal clear, although the government document according to the Journal was filed with the board on May 7, acting officially, the ALRB did not provide and would never have provided the document to the Edmonton Journal.

Indeed, because the processing of AUPE’s complaint had been suspended by the board – and even before the vice-chair was appointed to seek a settlement, everyone involved must have known this was an almost inevitable step in the process – there was really no requirement or need for the government’s position to be filed with the board at that time.

Regardless, the only way the Journal could have received this document was in the form of an unofficial leak from a person or persons who for the time being remain unknown.

So it is reasonable for us to ask what the objective was of whoever leaked the government position.

AUPE and the government were making conflicting claims at the time and were in a battle for public opinion. AUPE said the guards who had struck illegally on April 27 had been offered an amnesty by the government, which in this case is also the employer. The government claimed there never was any such agreement.

So by making the government’s argument public, the leak of the government filing to the Journal story delivered a potentially significant public relations blow to AUPE.

The document was summarized by the Journal’s reporter as saying AUPE President Guy Smith, desperate to stop the heavy fines the courts were piling onto the union for the strike, intentionally lied to his own members to get them to go back to work.

It is reasonable to conclude the leak of this document was a gesture of bad faith, by whoever leaked it. It is possible to conclude it was an act of sabotage, intended to make a settlement impossible.

At the very least, the assault on Mr. Smith’s reputation will certainly make achieving a resolution much more difficult – although AUPE is now reacting in a very measured fashion, no doubt on the advice of its legal counsel.

Only four general groups of people would have had access to the document before it was leaked: ALRB staff and officials, the union, lawyers involved in the case, and the government, including the political infrastructure of the Progressive Conservative Party.

It is said here it is extremely unlikely that anyone associated with the board, the union or any of the lawyers involved in the case would have done this.

We can rule out the union because the document paints it and its president in an extremely unflattering light, and had the potential to damage the president’s reputation among the members who elect him.

We can rule out the ALRB because despite a legislated structure designed to be employer friendly, its staff is thoroughly professional and aware of the need to act in good faith and enforce its own policies.

We can rule out any lawyer involved in the case because they are sworn to uphold the law and obviously understand clearly the professional implications of engaging in unethical jiggery-pokery with material of this sort.

So this leaves us, by process of elimination, with only one group of likely suspects for this highly unorthodox and unethical information leak.

To wit: someone in the government, most likely associated with the Progressive Conservative Party.

One can argue that there are also practical arguments from the government’s perspective not to leak the document – at least if it is serious about reaching an settlement to end AUPE’s complaint.

Certainly, if mediation fails as a result of the leak, it seems extremely likely the union will call Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk to the stand and examine him under oath.

After all, what transpired at Mr. Lukaszuk’s dinner with Mr. Smith on April 29 – the one at which Mr. Smith says they agreed to an amnesty deal and Mr. Lukaszuk says they did not – is the key to the dispute between the union and the government.

Nevertheless, the government is the only party that stands to gain in any way from the publication of this material.

Moreover, the Progressive Conservative Party is well known to have a history of using questionable leaks to media of confidential information as a political strategy. Conservative parties generally are known to put a premium on appearing tough, and eschewing flip-flops like the one executed by Mr. Lukaszuk in the AUPE’s version of post-strike events.

It is highly evocative, moreover, that in addition to its timing, the leak was made to the Journal’s political reporter, who conveniently works in the Press Gallery of the Legislature Building.

Naturally, no one can fault a journalist for reporting on such a document.

But the leaker needs to be identified and dealt with if Albertans are to continue to have faith in the work of quasi-judicial bodies like the Alberta Labour Relations Board.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Athabasca University board to Athabasca University Faculty Association: Drop dead

by David Climenhaga on May 13, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Athabasca University, Post-Secondary Education with 2 Comments

The Athabasca University board meets to discuss its vision for the future of the distance-learning institution. Actual visioning board members may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: History Professor Alvin Finkel, AU Faculty Association President Mark McCutcheon.

It took Athabasca University’s rubber-stamp board less than 48 hours to tell the university’s faculty association to forget about its suggestion an interim president be appointed to get the distance-learning institution back on track while a replacement is found for President Frits Pannekoek.

Alert readers will recall that Dr. Pannekoek, the subject of an overwhelming non-confidence motion last year by the university’s faculty and another by a staff union, has announced his intention to resign, but not until his replacement is found – a process professors fear could take up to two years, with potentially disastrous results for Athabasca.

On Friday, the university board put out two press releases. In one, Board Chair Barry Wilson stated that the board “cannot and will not accept the ‘rescue plan’” proposed on Wednesday by the faculty association.

In the mean time, the board said, it “will move forward with the governance of the institution, including the presidential recruitment process and strategic direction for the future of the university.”

In its second release, the board stated explicitly it would not accept the faculty association’s “recommendation to appoint a faculty member nominated by the AUFA as interim president of the institution.”

In other words: drop dead, and get off our turf.

The board claims it cannot (and anyway, it will not) “delegate that responsibility to an organization that has no legislated public or ministerial accountability.”

Meanwhile, in a comment posted to this blog, a distinguished Athabasca professor charged that some professors who have recently been laid off “are excellent workers who got targeted because they have had run-ins with powerful people.”

“Management is using the ‘stringency’ section of the faculty association collective agreement to pretty much set aside everything in the agreement,” said Professor Alvin Finkel, a well-known political and labour historian, author of an important history on the Social Credit movement in Alberta.

“That section does require them to ‘declare’ stringency and demonstrate that there are long-term financial issues at play as opposed to short-term issues,” Dr. Finkel wrote. “They have not done that because they don’t want our students and potential students to know that we are allegedly in deep financial doo-doo.

“But they want to act internally as if it is just fine to ditch the agreement without having either declared or proven stringency,” he said.

Dr. Finkel said he felt safe making such a statement because he is “someone who is likely less vulnerable to be fired purely for spite. I’m a very senior professor with a huge sheaf of publications and awards both from the university and outside for my academic work.”

Also on Friday, the Athabasca University Faculty Association issued a press release expressing disappointment in the board’s swift rejection of its proposal that it “exercise its legal power to appoint an interim internal president, thus saving money and boosting morale at AU.”

“Why is the board of a university that’s supposedly in financial crisis not interested in saving the estimated one million dollars this proposal would save?” asked AUFA president Mark McCutcheon in the association’s news release.

“Nothing in AUFA’s ‘rescue plan’ asks for the board to delegate its duties,” Dr. McCutcheon, a professor in the university’s English Department, said in the news release. “Article 10 of the university’s president hiring policy makes a clear provision for the board to appoint a temporary president. AUFA’s proposal suggests a way for the board to exercise its duties more effectively, and to help return AU to more collegial governance.”

Notwithstanding its multiple press releases, the university’s board and administration continue to be able to fly largely under the radar on this important story because it is being ignored by Alberta’s mainstream media.

This is good news for Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk and Premier Alison Redford, who don’t need another embarrassing crisis to solve just now – especially one involving a university whose administration spent well over $10,000 making illegal donations to their Progressive Conservative political party, and which despite being a public institution saw the need to spend another $125,000 hiring professional lobbyists to sweet talk officials of their government.

Nevertheless, there are clearly serious and increasingly public problems at Athabasca University that may threaten the survival of the institution.

Moreover, it seems unlikely the board and the present administration have much intention of doing anything about them – although the board said in its second release it has scheduled “a planning and visioning retreat with all the current board members, senior administration and the school’s deans to set out a strategic direction for the institution and address governance issues.”

Well, we all know how useful visioning can be!

It’s pretty obvious the job of doing something meaningful to end the crisis at Athabasca University is going to fall to Mr. Lukaszuk and the rest of Premier Redford’s government, whether they like it or not.

Unless, of course, their plan is to let Athabasca University founder in a way that the government can escape any blame for its demise.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Negotiating with Alberta’s PC government? Better bring witnesses!

by David Climenhaga on May 11, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Labour Relations, Thomas Lukaszuk with 10 Comments

Wildcat strike scene, grabbed from AUPE’s website during the strike. Below: AUPE President Guy Smith, Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk.

Advice to anyone who tries to negotiate a deal with Alison Redford, Thomas Lukaszuk or any member or official of their government: take witnesses with you, and make sure you also bring a tape recorder.

You might want to bring a piece of paper, a pen, a Bible and a notary public as well. One-on-one meetings ending in “handshake deals” with these people? I don’t think so!

In what surely is one of the most outrageous Alberta news stories of the year to date, the Edmonton Journal reported yesterday evening that “Alberta Union of Provincial Employees president Guy Smith ‘misled’ union members when he claimed he had negotiated a full amnesty for striking workers, the province alleged in legal documents filed this week.”

As is to be expected, AUPE and the government are now slugging it out before the Alberta Labour Relations Board over the wildcat strike by about 2,500 provincial Correctional Peace Officers that began mid-morning on April 27 when a long-simmering dispute over occupational health and safety boiled over at the just-opened Edmonton Remand Centre.

The fight over what punishments the government can mete out to the union, including seeking compensation for the cost of the strike and a six-month dues suspension, can be expected to drag on for months or years.

As is most emphatically not to be expected, the government came right out in a statement of claim to the Alberta Labour Relations Board and called Mr. Smith a liar: “He then chose to falsely claim that he had the agreement that he desperately tried to get and never obtained,” the statement says.

The strike ended on May 1, when the jail guards went back to work, assured by Mr. Smith he had had negotiated an amnesty for them.

The deal looked like a climb-down by Deputy Premier “Stompin’ Tom” Lukaszuk, Ms. Redford’s designated tough guy and court jester, who just hours before had vowed he would never even talk to Mr. Smith or any other official of AUPE while the strike continued.

Just the same, as Journal political columnist Graham Thomson reported yesterday evening in an excellent column, Mr. Lukaszuk nevertheless met Mr. Smith on April 29 in an Edmonton restaurant where they discussed the illegal strike, and presumably how to end it.

When the meeting was over, notwithstanding the things now said in the government’s statement of claim, Mr. Smith appears to sincerely have believed he had a deal – a belief he used (at considerable political risk to himself within AUPE, it should be noted) to get the guards back to work.

Pretty quickly, though, various government spokespeople started backing away from the deal that Mr. Lukaszuk either made or didn’t make with Mr. Smith. When they began to do so, AUPE filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Labour Relations Board.

The union complaint said in part that AUPE members “feel betrayed by the government and AUPE and take the position that they were tricked into returning to work.”

It is the government’s response to that complaint in which Mr. Smith is accused of intentionally misleading his members.

The government’s and AUPE’s filings to the ALRB were leaked to the Journal by some person or persons unknown for some reason, about which we can only speculate. But the government statement of claim, Mr. Thomson accurately reports, “reads like a political speech, using inflammatory language that would be at home on the floor of the legislative assembly.”

It is hard to say with any confidence what the principal actors on the government side of this story truly believe, or who came up with this particular strategy, but it is a fair observation that the government’s response is not a particularly astute one.

Now, to those of you who are grumbling, “Yeah, but Dave’s a union guy, and he used to work for Guy Smith,” all that is true. Full disclosure: I know Mr. Smith, I used to work for him and I hold him in high regard.

Beyond my personal confidence, however, there’s not much sense to the government’s story – which, as they say, has not been proved before the ALRB, let alone in a court of law. The most obvious flaw, of course, is that doing what the government now claims he did would amount to political suicide for Mr. Smith within AUPE. For that reason alone, it seems highly unlikely.

Then there is the matter of the documents on which the story is based. They were supposed to be held in confidence by the ALRB. It is interesting to speculate on who did the leaking and for whose benefit.

Whatever the answers to those questions are, it is said here the government’s response was foolish because there is no way the union is going to roll over on its unfair labour complaint – and now they’re bound to go before the labour board and try to prove the government did make the commitment that is now in dispute.

If they don’t succeed before the labour board – which, after all, is a tame and employer-friendly body – expect this fight to move on to the courts.

And so at every step of the way, in a public forum, the honesty and trustworthiness of a government that growing numbers of Albertans mistrust on those very grounds will be disputed in a public forum.

As good an idea as it may have seemed at the time to whoever came up with the idea of leaking the government’s statement of claim and AUPE’s documents, it’s hard to see how this will do this government much good. Some of the potential consequences include:

Other groups going into negotiations with the government – and not just unions – will now to be extremely wary and distrustful, with good reason. Can it be trusted? Likely not.

The credibility of the ALRB has also suffered another blow, even if the documents were not leaked from its offices.

Jail guards represented by AUPE will be so furious another illegal walkout must be considered a possibility.

Chances are also good this is another nail in the coffin of the 11th Hour progressive coalition Ms. Redford’s government cobbled together to save her government from the Wildrose Wave in the April 2012 election.

Next time, it is said here, many progressive voters will be prepared to take a chance on another Smith, Wildrose leader Danielle, even if they do it by voting for the Liberals or the NDP.

As for Mr. Smith, I can only say that if I were him, I’d challenge Mr. Lukaszuk or the premier to state the government’s allegations in public, instead of in a privileged document. That way he could respond in an appropriate manner to the government’s claim he lied to his own members.

It might have been momentarily less satisfying, but surely it would have paid dividends in the long term for the government to argue Mr. Smith must have merely been mistaken, and for the documents to be kept confidential until they were presented to the ALRB panel.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Premier explains Alberta politics to children: ‘Opposition Leader, what big teeth you have!’

by David Climenhaga on May 3, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Alison Redford, Fairy Tales with 5 Comments

Alberta Premier Alison Redford, right, meets Opposition Leader Danielle Smith, left, while on her way to announcing a new school opening. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Premier Redford, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith.

Once upon a time, while Alberta’s premier was telling fairy tales to impressionable children, some of her senior officials were spinning fairy stories of their own.

Actually, this all happened yesterday.

The premier told a group of Grade 1 students at an Edmonton school library a story about a good princess named Alison, who built schools for children just like them, and a very bad princess named Danielle, who wouldn’t build any schools at all!

The Alison in question, of course, is Premier Alison Redford herself, the one telling the story. The Danielle is Danielle Smith, leader of the Opposition Wildrose Party. And maybe Ms. Redford didn’t use exactly those words, but you get the general idea.

If you think I’m just making this up to be mean, well, forget it! You can’t make up stuff like this! Anyway, you can read all about it yourself courtesy of the Canadian Press, which is usually pretty dependable.

“Alberta Premier Alison Redford is warning young schoolchildren to beware of the Opposition Wildrose party because, she says, it is committed to not building anything,” the anonymous CP reporter managed to write without breaking into hysterical giggles. “Redford told the children – and the parents and dignitaries seated behind them – that while her government is committed to building things, her opponents are not.”

The CP report didn’t say if anyone’s jaw actually hit the floor when the premier started saying stuff like this to little children, but it did mention that she said the same thing to another group of kids in Calgary the day before – so apparently this is part of an actual plan cooked up by the communications braniacs in her office, not just a horrible error in judgment.

She also announced that her government will be building seven new schools in the Edmonton region.

Meanwhile, across town at the Edmonton Remand Centre, where bad children who don’t attend to their lessons will find themselves when they grow up, either as inmates or guards, Deputy Solicitor General Tim Grant was said to be taunting guards who illegally walked off the job for five days last week in a dispute over safety issues in the recently opened jail.

According to the leader of the guards’ union, Mr. Grant “was telling members there was no blanket amnesty for the Correctional Peace Officers, contrary to the agreement I reached with the government to end the strike.”

“He has been inflaming raw emotions and threatening labour peace with his actions,” said Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith. AUPE has made a complaint to the Alberta Labour Relations Board, not that that’s likely to do much good, given the Board’s transparent pro-employer bias.

Well, you can only hope AUPE thought to get their strike-ending deal with the government in writing, preferably notarized and signed by witnesses. And you can only wonder if the Redford Government is now trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest broken promise in history.

The guards, meanwhile, are so furious that it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if they walked off the job again. If that happens, and you thought last week was a gong show, just wait!

Well, there’s one thing you can believe Ms. Redford about, and that’s her commitment to not changing Alberta’s election financing law – which alert readers will recall has now been shown to permit billionaires to write humungous cheques and then decide later who among their employees, friends and relatives were actually making $30,000 maximum donations.

“We’re comfortable that we have a system that Albertans can have confidence in — that is transparent — and we’re going to move forward,” the premier told reporters at the school-building announcement after nearly five days in virtual hiding during the jail guards’ wildcat strike. (I threw in the italics myself.)

This is actually part of her communications team’s plan, by the way. Ms. Redford will only be around to make happy announcements, plus tell scary stories to toddlers. The rest is left to Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk.

To those who suggest banning huge donations from unions and corporations, this government says: “Never!”

The explanation for that position is probably pretty simple. As NDP Leader Brian Mason explained it last week, without huge corporate donations, the Redford Government wouldn’t stand a chance of re-election.

Speaking of which, Ms. Redford closed the day yesterday with a “campaign-style” (not Gangnam style) speech at a $500 a plate dinner to 1,400 or so supporters, each of whom presumably wrote their own cheque.

Even though there’s not supposed to be an election in Alberta until 2016, Ms. Redford needs to campaign hard because she’s facing a Progressive Conservative Party leadership review in November and elements of her own party are growing antsy, thinking things may be slipping out of control under her leadership.

So you can count on hearing many more fantastic tales from Mr. Redford and her retinue in the next few weeks. If this keeps up, even school kids won’t believe what she’s peddling, just like a lot of their parents.

The End.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

All lawbreakers will be punished … unless they happen to be Alberta Conservatives

by David Climenhaga on May 2, 2013 in 2012 Provincial Election, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Election Financing, Elections Alberta, Labour Relations, Wildcat Strike with 2 Comments

“’Ave you got a leesence for your minkey?” An investigator for Elections Alberta pauses momentarily in his probe of political donations made to the Progressive Conservative Party by seeing-eye monkeys. If you don’t get it, I can’t help you. Actual Elections Alberta investigators by now have likely been transferred back to plain clothes. Below: Justice Minister Jonathan Denis, retired Chief Elections Officer O. Brian Fjeldheim and drugstore billionaire Daryl Katz.

In Alberta, lawbreakers must be punished, and they will be punished – unless, of course, they happen to be supporters of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party.

So, the government announced yesterday, it will be going after the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees for the full cost of the wildcat strike by 2,500 jail guards – a figure the government ministers were somewhat fancifully suggesting yesterday will be about $6 million.

In addition, on top of the $350,000 in fines AUPE has already paid, Justice Minister Jonathan Denis was promising to use Alberta’s primitive labour laws to refuse to collect union dues from thousands of AUPE members who had nothing whatsoever to do with the strike for six months. That could cost AUPE another $8 million or so.

However, also yesterday, the Alberta government was delighted to learn nobody broke any laws when Premier Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative party accepted a donation of $430,000 on a single cheque from drugstore and pro-hockey bazillionaire Daryl Katz seven days before the April 2012 election.

Now, Alberta election law states that no individual, corporation or union may make a donation larger than $30,000 during an election year, so as a layperson you might have thought a $430,000 cheque from one person was pretty strong prima facie evidence that something wasn’t quite kosher.

But don’t worry about it, said a report by Chief Electoral Officer O. Brian Fjeldheim that was released yesterday, everything was OK because the Katz Group sent along a letter explaining that the donation was really just a convenient way to deliver personal gifts from Mr. Katz and 17 of his friends, relatives and business associates.

Mr. Fjeldheim had hired a retired judge and a couple of private dicks to look into whether the rules were broken or merely bent when Mr. Katz turned up at PC Headquarters in the final desperate hours of the 2012 election campaign, when it looked very much as if the Wildrose Party was about to win.

Based on that investigation, Mr. Fjeldheim – who is a long-time Tory stalwart and Chamber of Commerce president from Vegreville in former premier Ed Stelmach’s riding – said he was satisfied that each of the contributors had made the donations from their own funds. You see, Mr. Fjeldheim explained, each of the contributors repaid Katz Group Properties Inc. some time later.

Premier Redford herself and Mr. Denis were quick to declare the ruling meant the story was over.

“None of the people the Opposition has repeatedly maligned throughout this entire province over the last few months were found in any responsible, they were completely vindicated,” Mr. Denis huffed.

“Mr. Katz has been vindicated,” echoed a spokesperson for the billionaire in a statement. (Or, maybe Mr. Denis was echoing the spokesperson. Whatever!)

Actually, one of the 17 donors was found to have broken the rules. You see, the Katz Group’s chief financial officer lives in Ontario, and non-Albertans aren’t allowed to make donations in this province. A donation from the same fellow’s professional corporation, though, was ruled A-OK.

His penalty? They put a stiff letter on his file!

“I just don’t see how they could have made this finding,” said a bemused Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason. But if Mr. Mason, or anyone else, would like to ask Mr. Fjeldheim any questions about the investigation, well, forget it! You see, Mr. Fjeldheim retired last month, and he’s not taking phone calls.

Speaking of unions, as we were a few minutes ago, can you imagine what would have happened if the $430,000 donation had been made to Mr. Mason’s NDP in the form of a cheque from, oh, say, the AUPE, and that the union has said it was really just a convenient way to deliver donations from a few dozen of its members?

You’d hear the cries of rage and hysteria all the way to Newfoundland! And do you think for an instant Elections Alberta would have ruled everything was just hunky-dory with the donation? Please!

Well, never mind children. Laws can be twisted into the shape of pretzels when it suits our rulers in this province, or ignored altogether for that matter.

As Dave Hancock, Alberta’s de facto labour minister explained the PC government’s thinking last month: “People should be able to organize their lives the way they want to, and if it’s more convenient for them to contribute through their company than personally, I don’t have a problem with that.” As previously noted, this convenience factor is unlikely to apply to union members.

Meanwhile, if you think this means you can break a law that they do find convenient, especially if it concerns something as insignificant as your right to work in a safe place and go home at the end of your shift in one piece, well, guess again.

That said, all the Redford Government’s blustering about what it’s going to do to AUPE may not be as simple as likes of Mr. Denis and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk make it sound – owing to the fact we still live under the federal constitution bequeathed in part to us by Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

One can understand the government’s wish to make it appear as if it didn’t blink first, especially after all the noise Mr. Lukaszuk made about not negotiating with lawbreakers.

But to proceed with its plans in any way except by unconstitutional legislative fiat, it will have to prove in a court somewhere its unlikely claim the strike cost $1.3 million a day, and that the dues suspension should be applied to workers who did not participate in the strike.

This could take years and cost taxpayers millions with no guarantee of success – although I suppose Premier Redford’s political brain trust may have concluded swaggering about it now and spending our money on it later may pay off in the next election.

But remember, Alberta Health Services and its predecessor organizations never managed to impose on AUPE the dues suspension they demanded for an illegal auxiliary nurses’ strike in May 2000 – and that one was over money, not workplace safety.

If you’re wondering about all these illegal strikes, by the way, I guess that’s what happens in a jurisdiction where most strikes are illegal – and employees’ concerns are treated with disdain.

Regardless, the important lesson from today’s two big stories is quite simple: In PC Alberta, the law must be obeyed, unless you’re a Conservative and you don’t feel like it.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The government blinked: Defiant Alberta jail guards have every right to declare victory

by David Climenhaga on May 1, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Edmonton Remand Centre, Labour Relations with 9 Comments

The picket line during the five-day strike by Alberta Correctional Peace Officers, which ended last night. Below: Another scene from the strike; Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk; AUPE President Guy Smith.

Even without last night’s deal with the Alberta government, Alberta’s defiant jail guards would have been entitled to declare a victory in their illegal five-day wildcat strike.

And that was before the illegally striking guards reached the agreement to end their walkout largely on their terms.

The agreement came last night after negotiations between the government and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees – politely termed discussions to allow the government to save a little face – that Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk had scornfully vowed would never happen unless the guards unconditionally surrendered first.

The Correctional Peace Officers, who walked out over safety issues the day after the International Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job, will return to work victorious on the International Day of the Worker – so how about that?

The deal includes no retribution for any AUPE member who joined the strike – including members of other work units such as Alberta Sheriffs, Probation Officers, social works and court administrative workers who joined their picket lines, all but shutting down court proceedings yesterday in Edmonton and Calgary.

More important, it also includes an agreement for an expedited occupational health and safety review, to be conducted by OH&S officers with full involvement by AUPE – which has to be seen as a complete vindication for the guards and their longstanding safety concerns about the $580-million Remand Centre that opened just two weeks ago.

There will be a price, of course. Because the members of AUPE Local 003 defied an order of the Alberta Labour Relations Board to return to work, and for a time an order of a judge as well, the union will have to pay fines of $350,000.

Moreover, count on it, the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Alison Redford, a group of people who are used to always getting their way and who are disinclined to be philosophical about it when they are thwarted, will try to exact a price for the union’s audacity in future.

Still, it is said here, today the Local 003 members have every right to celebrate: They pushed their safety concerns about the new jail onto the agenda, after being cavalierly ignored by their own bosses in the Solicitor General’s department since they first saw the blueprints years ago.

And they forced Alberta’s blustering Deputy Premier to publicly abandon his declaration he would never to negotiate with them until they had meekly surrendered. And they even appear to have driven the province’s premier into hiding.

After five days of eerie silence, the premier resurfaced after the deal was reached to say in a press release that “I am pleased AUPE has chosen to end its illegal strike and return to work.”

You will read little of this in public statements by either party to the agreement, naturally, and that is as it should be in such circumstances.

“As we have stated repeatedly, we will investigate all new and specific occupational health and safety concerns raised by government employees at the Edmonton Remand Centre,” the premier also said in her press release. She also dropped hints the government will try to recover the cost of the strike from the union – an effort bound to fritter away taxpayers’ money on legal fees for years if the government is foolish enough to persist.

How did this come about?

Part of the story is solidarity. As a said in an earlier post, I had the privilege of working with AUPE Local 003 members for a dozen years, and I have never met tougher, more united trade unionists.

The government tried to spin the story yesterday that the strike was crumbling and 42 of 2,500 CPOs had returned to work. Good try, but that was hardly a river of returnees. Anyway, it’s respectfully said here this tale is mostly baloney.

Part of the story was also the changing mood in the province. The PC Government under Ms. Redford is starting to suffer from what we used to call a credibility gap, and that showed in the significant sympathy shown for the guards by many members of the public who would not normally side with public sector unionists.

Even some of the usual far-right suspects over at the Sun News Network who, normally bare their teeth at the mere mention of public employees, wrote fairly laudatory expositions on the guards’ battle. However, the anti-union Opposition Wildrose Party was uncharacteristically silent, despite the government’s obvious discomfort with the increasingly embarrassing situation.

Aided and abetted by the media, Mr. Lukaszuk has also tried pass off the guards’ rage as a sly negotiating tactic by their union in its current negotiations with the government in the wake of Ms. Redford’s post-Bitumen-Bungle budget, in which the party executed a screeching smuggler’s turn from pre-election progressive to post-election conservative.

Expect the efforts to retail this unlikely tale to intensify in the coming days, as well as the deputy premier’s dubious claim the deal got the union nothing because the review was “always available to them.”

Like hell it was! I personally have listened to CPOs’ frustration at being ignored and seeing their safety concerns brushed aside by their employer literally for years.

It’s said here far more members of the public than might have been the case in the past refused to take the bait, and will likely continue to do so. After all, this is a government that claimed on Day 1 of the strike inmates were tearing the jail apart – then dropped that story when it proved unproductive.

Much learned commentary will be written about this short dispute in the next few days, interpreting the situation in favour of one side or the other.

My views are well known, but in this situation, it is hard to see how the facts can be interpreted as anything but a victory for the union acting in defence of its members.

Under the circumstances, as AUPE President Guy Smith said last night, the $350,000 fine was “absolutely” worth it. It is money well spent indeed if it saves a single employee’s life.

The guards are expected to return to work this morning.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

This just in: Deal reached, victory and vindication for striking Alberta jail guards

by David Climenhaga on April 30, 2013 in Jail Guards Strike with 3 Comments

Supporters and striking Alberta jail guards on the picket line yesterday.

Illegally striking Alberta Union of Provincial Employees jail guards have reached an agreement with the government of Premier Alison Redford in “discussions” that Deputy Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said would never happen.

AUPE announced five minutes ago that it had reached ago a deal with the provincial government that includes no retribution for any AUPE member who walked off the job and a full occupational health and safety review of all issues raised by the Correctional Peace officers in the new Edmonton Remand Centre.

The guards walked off the job Friday after one of their colleagues was disciplined for speaking out against the AUPE members’ safety concerns about the new 2,000-bed jail, which opened just two weeks ago. The agreement reached tonight sounds to me like vindication for the guards and their safety concerns.

The wildcat strike started at the Edmonton remand centre and quickly spread to 10 other jails across the province. Yesterday, the approximately 2,500 CPOs were joined by Alberta Sheriffs, Probation Officers, court workers and social workers, all but shutting down court proceedings in Edmonton and Calgary.

The members of AUPE Local 003 ignored an order of the Alberta Labour Relations Board to return to work and for a time also defied an order of a judge – an action that resulted in a contempt conviction that will cost their union $350,000.

But their determination, and the spontaneous support they quickly garnered from the public, also demonstrates they are a force to be reckoned with.

More details will be available soon in the mainstream media, presumably, and additional commentary will be posted in this space.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Craziness in Alberta jails continues – and may get worse today

by David Climenhaga on April 29, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Edmonton Remand Centre, Labour Relations with 16 Comments

The scene on the darkened lane that runs past Edmonton’s giant new Remand Centre has resembled the set for an apocalyptic movie the past couple of nights, with striking jail guards’ huge-wheeled four-by-fours crowding the ditches, AUPE banners flapping in the dark and strikers gathered around burn barrels.

With Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk at the helm, the stalemate in Alberta’s provincial jails continued through the night with wildcatting Correctional Peace Officers still manning picket lines and the government making dubious claims guards were returning to work.

The dispute started months ago over occupational health and safety concerns about Edmonton’s just completed $580-million Remand Centre, turned into a strike Friday when two CPOs were disciplined for complaining about them, and quickly spread to the province’s other seven provincial Correctional facilities.

Yesterday, Alberta Sheriffs, who handle some courthouse security and are members of the same local of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees as the striking guards, voted to join the job action – even though the strike had been declared illegal on Saturday by the reliably employer-friendly Alberta Labour Relations Board.

Probation Officers, also members of AUPE Local 003, voted to join the strike as well.

The government of Premier Alison Redford, meanwhile, seems to have been caught completely off guard and doesn’t have a clue in a carload how to respond beyond bluster and bullying, which so far have not improved the situation much.

So if things were interesting on a quiet Sunday, which coincidentally happened to be the International Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job, they have the potential to get a whole lot more exciting when the judges of Alberta make their way into their courtrooms this morning.

All rise!

One thing we know about Canadian judges is that they’re unlikely to be pleased if they don’t get their way about court proceedings. So what happens if prisoners on remand they have ordered to appear today don’t turn up because of the chaos in provincial jails, and now in courthouses too?

Nor is it clear what impact this will have on contract negotiations now under way for all 20,000 direct government employees who are members of AUPE – of whom the 2,500 CPOs make up an influential component.

Meanwhile, claims and counterclaims were being furiously traded yesterday about whether the CPOs were giving up and obeying the government’s demand that they return to work.

Alberta Justice issued a statement implying the strike had been all but broken. AUPE denied it. Both sides accused the other of lying. The media didn’t seem to know whom to believe and just reported the competing claims straight up.

Now, a moment of full disclosure here. I worked for 12 years for AUPE, but I haven’t worked there since 2011. I have never met tougher trade unionists than Local 003’s members, for whom solidarity is more than a slogan.

So I am skeptical that very many have crossed picket lines and gone back to work, even when they received intimidating court papers ordering individual guards to go back to work or face the consequences.

Moreover, I have been told the few who wavered have mostly been coaxed back to the picket line by their colleagues – whom Mr. Lukaszuk, tit for tat, also accuses of intimidation.

All that said, it must be acknowledged that AUPE Local 003 marches, shall we say, to the beat of its own drum, another reality the government seems to have missed completely. Moreover, it’s not clear to the public or anyone else if the striking guards really have a plan, and if they do, what it is.

Tough and angry wildcat strikers without clear goals versus a one-trick pony of an austerity government that defaults to bullying is not a formula for negotiating a settlement that will stick.

Instead, we have more RCMP officers heading from Saskatchewan to man the province’s jails – a plan that’s certain to cost us a supposedly scarce Bitumen Buck or two!

Meanwhile, Mr. Lukaszuk insists that everything’s just dandy inside the jails, which Mounties untrained as correctional officers and exhausted managers have on permanent lockdown.

No one has yet asked the inmates what they think about this, but count on it pressure is building there too.

No one can be very happy about this situation except opposition politicians.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk: exactly the wrong man to solve Alberta’s jail crisis

by David Climenhaga on April 28, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, Labour Relations, Thomas Lukaszuk with 7 Comments

Wildcatting Correctional Officers on the picket line at the Edmonton Remand Centre just before midnight last night, long after the government’s ultimatum ordering them back to work. Below: Trade unionists occupy an Alberta Labour Relations Board boardroom yesterday afternoon in support of the striking guards. Below that: Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk as he appeared during a post-news-conference visit last night to the Edmonton Beerfest.

“You know what a tense, sensitive and dangerous situation like an illegal strike at a prison needs? Thomas Lukaszuk.”

So Tweeted well-known Edmonton New Democrat Lou Arab yesterday, the self-described political geek, Internet junkie, father, husband and smartass sarcastically nailing the problem with the Alberta government’s borderline bizarre response to the wildcat strike by provincial jail guards at eight correctional facilities across the province.

Stompin’ Tom Lukaszuk? The guy the Edmonton Sun once dubbed Mr. T. when he chased a car full of kids he reckoned were breaking the law through the snowy streets of an Edmonton bedroom community? The master of the ill-considered Tweet?

Mr. Lukaszuk is Progressive Conservative Premier Alison Redford’s deputy, the fellow who after last month’s budget was hurriedly assigned the additional job of delivering the nasty financial news to Alberta’s post-secondary institutions. He is undiplomatic at best, not particularly thoughtful and quite capable of pouring gasoline on a blazing fire.

Now the premier’s handed him responsibility for managing a dangerous jail wildcat by members of the 80,000-plus-member Alberta Union of Provincial Employees – and as Mr. Arab points out, he is exactly the wrong man for the job.

Pouring gasoline on a fire is pretty much what Mr. Lukaszuk did when he appeared at an afternoon news conference and all but called the Correctional Officers liars for saying the main reason for their walkout was workplace safety at the just-opened Edmonton Remand Centre, then announced he would have nothing to say to them until they’d surrendered and shuffled back to work.

The $580-million facility that may be Canada’s largest jail is where the wildcat began when two Correctional Officers were disciplined by management earlier this week for complaining about the safety problems at the jail, which only opened two weeks ago.

Excuse me, but if you were the minister facing a wildcat strike by 2,500 tough Correctional Officers, wouldn’t you at least want to keep the door open a crack to finding a solution? This doesn’t mean saying there will be no consequences for illegal actions, but it does mean being prepared to sit down and try to figure out how to negotiate an end to a dangerous dispute.

Not Stompin’ Tom! “We will not be negotiating with a union that chooses to engage in illegal activity,” he kept telling reporters at a hastily called news conference yesterday afternoon.

By late yesterday, the Alberta Labour Relations Board had naturally done the government’s bidding and ordered the approximately 2,500 Correctional Peace Officers, as the guards are technically known, to return to their jobs.

Never mind the fact that the guards have been publicly complaining about the safety implications of the way the Remand Centre was planned and built, literally since they first saw the blueprints, while they were studiously ignored by the Solicitor General’s department and everyone else in the government..

A couple of hundred rambunctious union members attending an Alberta Federation of Labour convention briefly invaded and occupied the hearing room at the Labour Board’s downtown headquarters, chanting their support for the guards and adding to the surreal sense the province is spinning out of control under Premier Redford’s uncertain hand.

By late evening, striking Correctional Officers were receiving threatening emails from the government warning them of dire consequences of staying on strike.

So by midnight last night, the guards remained in a surly mood, with dozens still defiantly blocking all the still-poorly lit entrances to the locked-down Remand Centre.

Inside the monster jail, a skeleton crew of managers and Mounties was trying to control the 1,100 prisoners who had just been moved in last week – many of them technically innocent and awaiting trial – by keeping the place on permanent lockdown. Needless to say, this is not going to improve the mood of the inmates – particularly if they are only fed cold baloney sandwiches today.

For all the power that a government has, the striking jail guards may turn out to be tougher guys than Mr. Lukaszuk, no matter what his Sun News press clippings say.

The guards are certainly tougher than Mr. Lukaszuk’s most-recent targets, a bunch of shell-shocked university administrators and teachers who until March thought the worst they were likely to face was loss of some of their promised stable and predictable funding. And that was before the Mounties’ overtime bills came due!

So where is Dave Hancock, you ask, Alberta’s bright and diplomatic human services minister, a lawyer who just might have the skills to unravel a difficult situation like this one? No sign of him.

Instead, only Jonathan Denis, the province’s Solicitor General, stood meekly at the deputy premier’s side yesterday while Mr. Lukaszuk gave the guards their talking to and claimed the inmates were “trashing” the new facility.

“We live in a law abiding society and we expect people to obey the law,” Mr. Denis said in his minor contribution to the news conference. “Just as our government has to obey the law, we expect the union to obey the law as well,” he added, prompting general hilarity from that rather large contingent of Albertans who share the view this government isn’t really very good at obeying its own rules.

More Mounties are expected to arrive from Saskatchewan today to help inside the jails. Correctional Officers from Saskatchewan are expected to turn up on the picket lines outside.

No matter who visits from Saskatchewan, this latest mishandled crisis adds to the sense the Redford Government is not capable of handing the complex task of running a province as rich and large as Alberta.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Mysterious 2011 review of Alberta Labour Code explained – corporate influence, of course!

by David Climenhaga on April 26, 2013 in Alberta Federation of Labour, Alberta Politics, Construction Competitiveness Coalition, Labour Relations with 4 Comments

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan, right, speaks to yesterday’s AFL news conference at the Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre. Your faithful blogger can be glimpsed at the far right. Beside him, the CBC’s Charles Rusnell. Below: Rusnell, Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason.

Back in the summer of 2011, as Ed Stelmach’s reign as premier of Alberta ground toward its inevitable terminal moment, then-employment-minister Thomas Lukaszuk sent around a letter advising stakeholders he was about to commence a review of the Alberta Labour Code.

It had to be done, said the minister responsible for the province’s labour portfolio, “to ensure we remain competitive over the longer term.”

Major players in Alberta’s labour movement found this development disquieting, not because the Code doesn’t need revising, but because no one in labour had any idea how such a thought had come to enter the minister’s normally relatively empty headspace.

No one connected with a labour union had been given a hint anything was up – with the sole exception, it turned out, of the Christian Labour Association of Canada, a group condemned in labour circles as an employer-dominated union that works hand in glove with construction employers.

It also seemed like an odd time to launch a review, with the government about to change leaders. Moreover, the make-up of the two-member review panel hardly inspired confidence – a lawyer with tight connections to the Progressive Conservative government and another known for his anti-union views.

So union leaders could be forgiven for wondering what the heck was happening.

Now we know – thanks to some assiduous research work by the Alberta Federation of Labour and some investigative journalism undertaken by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Yesterday morning, CBC Edmonton investigative reporter Charles Rusnell revealed a tangled web of unregistered lobbying, donations to the Progressive Conservative government and Premier Alison Redford’s leadership campaign, and behavior by a well-connected coalition of construction companies and anti-union contractors that one lawyer quoted by the CBC suggested “crosses the line in the Criminal Code bribery provisions.”

Regardless of the merits of that claim, for sure substantial donations were made to the PCs and there was intense lobbying by the group, made up of companies and individuals who with one exception were not registered as lobbyists.

It appears quite clear from the correspondence uncovered by the AFL researcher that members of the group, which termed itself the “Construction Competitiveness Coalition,” tried to tie generous support of the PC Party to specific changes in legislation, namely the Labour Code, desired by member companies.

Many of the changes the CCC wanted were clearly designed to put construction trade unions out of business. The Code as currently written, they claimed at the time, was “making Alberta companies uncompetitive,” which likely explains where Mr. Lukaszuk got his breezy explanation for his actions.

The evidence reported by the CBC yesterday also suggests several influential government members – including then-premier Stelmach, Premier Redford and Mr. Lukaszuk – enthusiastically entertained the CCC’s lobbying efforts, although they must have known only one member, the virulently anti-union Merit Contractors, was registered as a lobbyist.

In fairness, Alberta’s lobbying law is subject to interpretation in places, allowing unregistered lobbyists 100 unregulated hours as freebies. But it is known that Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign received donations of $26,900 from CCC members, and all leadership campaigns received donations of at least $121,800 from the group’s members. The PC Party got $186,750 in donations from the anti-union coalition between 2009 and last year.

CCC members received close to $1 billion in government contracts and grants over a six-year period.

By the 2012 election campaign, many of the CCC’s ideas had made it into the PC Party’s official election platform, where they can be found on page 30.

Less than two months later, when Ms. Redford was premier and the CCC was growing dissatisfied at the pace of the changes it was looking for, Tom Brown, a senior vice-president of Ledcor, one of the companies in the CCC, fired off a sharp note to the executive director of Premier Redford’s Calgary office.

In it, Mr. Brown said of his company and PCL Construction, “We both made major contributions to Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign and to the PCs’ election campaign fund (in Ledcor’s case up to the legislated maximum). Other members of our Coalition were also significant supporters of both the Premier and the PC Party. … there will be huge disappointment and possibly misgivings within our Coalition if I do not have something concrete to report next week.” (Italics added by me.)

For all intents and purposes, it sounds very much as if Alberta’s anti-union construction companies demanded, and very nearly got, the chance to write their own governing legislation!

As Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason noted at a news conference with AFL President Gil McGowan yesterday, “what these letters and emails show is that the PCs have been more than willing to collude on changing laws that affect Alberta workers and their families with the usual group of funders, friends and insiders.

“The premier accepted significant donations from Merit and the rest of this coalition during the PC leadership race and the last election,” Mr. Mason said. “It’s very clear they weren’t asking for changes to the Labour Code – they were expecting them.”

By the way, Ms. Redford’s office fought hard to keep several pages of this correspondence secret – but was overruled by the province’s privacy commission when the AFL appealed.

The AFL has called for the review put into motion by Mr. Lukaszuk in 2011 to be scrapped immediately as it is obviously hopelessly tainted.

The labour umbrella organization also demanded a full investigation of the CCC and the government under the Conflict of Interest Act and the Lobbyists Act.

Observers of the continuing travails of Ms. Redford’s government can only shake their heads and wonder, “What next?”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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