Canada Post and the PC Gov't were wrong! ha ha

[walkonby]

I knew it was all guff in 2011 when CP locked us posties out and then tried to smear us all in the media saying our " strike " caused the revenue losses. Then the PC gov't ordered us back to work forcing us to take a less than beneficial contract and one that we were denied the right to properly collectively bargain for.

So it makes me very happy that the courts have upheld the workers rights and agreed that what CP and the government did was a violation.

Read the news here:


Posties Win Big: Tory Back-to-Work Legislation Ruled Unconstitutional

Thursday April 28 2016


For Immediate Release

OTTAWA – Postal workers are cheering today’s ruling that the former Conservative government violated its members’ freedom of association by legislating them back to work on June 26, 2011.


“This is a win for workers everywhere,” said Mike Palecek, National President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

“In 2011, Canada Post and the Conservative government gamed the system by first locking postal workers out and then forcing us back to work. This interference was completely unfair and meant we could not freely bargain.”

The ruling by Ontario Superior Court Justice Firestone declares that the Conservative legislation, which also imposed an offer on the postal workers, “violates the rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression” under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sections 2d) and 2b), and that it is “unconstitutional and of no force and effect.”


“Let this be a warning to Deepak Chopra and his 22 vice presidents that the legislation trick won’t work this time,” said Palecek.

CUPW is currently in negotiations and Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra, who shut Canada Post’s doors nation-wide and locked out the postal workers in 2011, remains at the helm.
The Crown Corporation management has applied for conciliation and refuses to entertain any of the postal workers’ demands for improved services and an end to concessions.

“Canada Post is already trying to push things by starting the countdown to a lockout,” said Palecek.
“This time, they won’t be able to count on the government to make it easy for them.”


It is starting all over again too! CP refuses to talk or bargain, instead they are trying to do the same thing hoping the government will order the workers back once they lock them out......well good luck with that this time!!

[walkonby]

another news story confirming how wrong the government AND CP was back in 2011 AND they are going to attempt to repeat this again THIS summer with the new round of negotiations going on.

CANADA POST
Postal workers come out as winners in legal battle

Judge said it was unconstitutional for Canada Post employees to be forced back on the job during the 2011 strike, just as deadline for new strike looms

Vanessa Lu Star Touch
Legislation brought in by the Harper government in 2011 ordering postal workers back to work was unconstitutional because it deprived unionized employees of their right to strike, an Ontario judge has ruled.
“Based on the evidentiary record, there can be no question that, on the facts of this case, the Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act abrogated the right to strike of CUPW members,” wrote Justice Stephen Firestone in a 48-page decision released last week.
“The question is whether the Act disrupted the balance between the parties. There can be no doubt that it did,” he wrote.
The Ontario Superior Court decision comes just as Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are ramping up negotiations again, with a legal strike deadline or lockout looming in early July.
“This is a strong message to Canada Post management that they can’t expect to simply lock us out and wait for back-to-work legislation,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. “We haven’t seen a lot of movement yet, just concession demands.”
Jon Hamilton, spokesman for Canada Post, which had intervener status in the court case, declined to comment on the decision.
Talks are moving along since negotiators moved to an Ottawa hotel in mid-April with two conciliators assigned.
“The pace has picked up. Our objective is to reach a deal,” Hamilton said. “We believe a deal is achievable.”
Firestone noted that during 2011 bargaining, proposals were going back and forth, calling the process meaningful.
“There was clearly some prospect of a negotiated solution to their differences before any legislative intervention,” the court decision said.
The union filed the charter challenge shortly after the back-to-work law was introduced in July 2011. The legislation came after Canada Post shut down the post office, locking out the employees following weeks of rotating strikes.
“It took away the right to strike, which was exacerbated in this situation because the arbitration process they were offered was unfair and inadequate,” said constitutional lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo, who argued on behalf of the union.
The legislation set out the length of the contract, specific wage increases (lower than the company’s final offer), as well as conditions such as not affecting the company’s financial viability or pension plan.
“It gave the post office even more bargaining leverage at the expense of the postal workers,” Cavalluzzo said, noting the union began to pull back on its demands, preparing to take lower wage increases and make concessions.
Then-labour minister Lisa Raitt named an arbitrator, using final offer selection process, where the arbitrator chooses one position over another, instead of melding demands from the two sides.
That raises the stakes, given the winner-take-all scenario. Two arbitrators who were appointed were eventually rejected, one because he wasn’t bilingual and the other because he had acted for Canada Post in a long-standing pay equity case.
In the end, the two parties returned to the bargaining table and hammered out a settlement in October 2012, though the union insists it would not sign off on many of the items because of the back-to-work law.
The judge argued that back-to-work legislation can be appropriate in certain circumstances.
“If you are going to take away the right to strike, you have to substitute a fair, impartial arbitration mechanism, so that the employees are placed in an equal position to their employer at the arbitration table,” Cavalluzzo said.
For organized labour, the decision is seen as a substantial victory after the Conservative government repeatedly introduced back-to-work legislation or threatened to do so, sometimes even before a work stoppage began.
Examples include blocking pilots, flight attendants and machinists at Air Canada from striking even though they hadn’t walked off the job.
Cavalluzzo, who is involved in a separate charter challenge on behalf of the machinists at Air Canada, hopes the new Liberal government will rethink whether to fight that case.
Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, the country’s largest private sector union, praised the Firestone decision, saying it reaffirms that the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike are enshrined in the constitution.
“There is no question it will make governments think about whether to stick their noses in,” Dias said. “There is no question that the previous government believed their role was to side with employers.”
However, Raitt still defends her government’s intervention in the Canada Post dispute, noting how fragile the economy was then.
“We had to act because we did believe there was a pressing and substantial matter. Canadians needed to get their mail,” she said, adding she was pleased to see the decision doesn’t ban back-to-work legislation.
“Quite frankly, we were trying to help the corporation claw its way into some relevance in Canadians’ lives. Mail delivery has dropped off significantly,” she said.
George Smith, adjunct professor in the School of Industrial Relations at Queen’s University, disagrees with Raitt’s position, arguing that preemptive intervention was simply wrong, interfering with the collective bargaining process, which works.
“I’m not advocating that strikes should happen willy-nilly, but it is a right of unions and workers. Those rights are part of our democracy,” he said.
“In some cases, the government could and should intervene, but not preemptively,” said Smith, who has negotiated on behalf of corporations including Air Canada and CBC. “The falsehood that the Harper government was selling was that they were creating labour peace.”
When asked whether Ottawa would appeal the decision, a federal government spokeswoman said in an emailed statement: “We are aware of the decision and are carefully reviewing the judgment.”

[dspost]

Well said Sister!

[moneytalks]

Well excuse THE LITTLE PEOPLE for trying to survive under the Trudeau occupation regime obsessed with making food prices unaffordable, never missing an opportunity to embarass and bring shame on Canada.


While MATH makes Trudeau's eyes glaze over -- the numbers don't lie.
Either the Unions' COST OF LABOR will have to go down or their numbers will by definitiion, need to be cut.

It's one or the other.

Here's a question for ALL SmartCanuckers: Tell us what Trudeau's done lately to make you poor ?

[Granger]

Ontario Teacher's recently won their Supreme Court appeal for worker's right too. The courts sided that the Ontario government infringed on human right for fair collective bargaining.

Hard though when these things happen years in the past. I walked a rally in downtown TO against Bill 115. At the time the bill was intense...now that time has healed some of the wounds the government gets a slap on the wrist and that is all.