Air Canada pilots arrive for an information picket at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on Aug. 27.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Union leaders and policy experts are voicing concern that Ottawa might be getting too used to intervening in labour disputes to end strikes, in response to calls from employers to do so.
Their apprehension of the federal government comes in light of calls by Air Canada and business lobby groups that Ottawa intervene to prevent a potential strike by Air Canada pilots next week.
“I am very concerned with what I am seeing with federal employers calling for the government to intervene to end strikes. And the government then comfortably complying. They should not be eroding the right to strike for employees. That’s not the government’s role,” said Lana Payne, national president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union.
However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that the government would not intervene to end the dispute at Air Canada but would instead press both sides to avert a strike.
“Every time there’s a strike, people say, ‘Oh, you’ll get the government to come in and fix it’ – we’re not going to do that. We believe in collective bargaining, and we’re going to keep pushing people to do it,” he said.
Air Canada and the Air Line Pilots Association have been locked in heated negotiations over pilot pay and work hours for more than a year now – the two sides will be in legal strike or lockout positions on Wednesday, Sept. 18.
Citing the impact on travellers, as well as Canada’s hospitality and tourism sectors, Air Canada and business groups such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business are pushing Ottawa to refer the dispute to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board for arbitration, instead of letting negotiations play out between both sides and risking a strike.
Last month, after a short-lived strike, Teamsters rail workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) were forced to comply with a ruling by the federal labour board ordering them back to work. The board’s decision came after federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon used Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to direct the tribunal to begin arbitrating the dispute between the railways and Teamsters.
CN and CPKC had specifically requested that Ottawa use Section 107 to end the strike. The Teamsters union has since filed appeals with the Federal Court of Appeal of the minister’s referrals to the CIRB and of the arbitration rulings.
A 2015 Supreme Court decision that constitutionally protected workers’ right to strike effectively made it harder for governments to justify employing back-to-work legislation, explained Stephanie Ross, an associate professor of labour studies at McMaster University.
“So over the last few years, we have seen a recourse by the government to Section 107 which does an end-run around Parliament,” Dr. Ross said.
If the government does end up using Section 107 to refer the dispute to the labour board, it would not need to worry about getting support from the other parties in Parliament for back-to-work legislation, said David Doorey, a professor of labour and employment law at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. “That’s an important piece of the puzzle in a minority government setting.”
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has already said that he would not support any government action to intervene in negotiations and end a potential strike, a sharp departure from the party’s previous stand on labour disputes. The Conservative government under Stephen Harper used back-to-work legislation multiple times in 2011 and 2012 to prevent Air Canada and Canada Post employees from walking off the job.
But Prof. Doorey points out that Section 107 was never intended to be used as a tool to permit governments to suspend Charter rights and freedoms “simply by sending an e-mail to the CIRB.”
“The Liberals have found a useful little device to deal quickly with bothersome labour disputes,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Unifor’s Ms. Payne said she believes that if employers know that Ottawa will intervene on their behalf in the event of a looming strike, it will embolden them to not negotiate in good faith at the bargaining table.
“Employers are unhappy about anti-scab legislation that recently passed, and have consistently been lobbying to weaken the right to strike in the federal sector by using the argument that workers striking will devastate the economy,” said Ms. Payne, referring to legislation passed in 2023 which prevents federally regulated employers from using replacement workers during work stoppages.
Federal data on the frequency and number of strikes across the country show that 74 work stoppages took place between January and June of this year. The data only cover strikes and lockouts of more than 10 days. Last year, there were a whopping 745 work stoppages, more than four times the number of strikes and lockouts Canada usually experiences over the course of year.
Unions are still pushing hard at the bargaining table, playing catch-up after two years of high inflation, and locking in wage gains for the employees.
But in the case of the Air Canada-pilot union deadlock, the ALPA might be in for a tough fight, said Stephen Tufts, a labour geographer at York University. “Air Canada’s argument that these pilots are already rich, earning six figure salaries and that a strike will do damage to the economy will appeal to the public,” he said.
“It might force Trudeau to make a decision to end the strike.”
With report from Reuters