This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
Canada: 
Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
The Supreme Court of Canada has mentioned in a ruling today that the RCMP should be allowed to have meaningful collective bargaining rights for the officers. While at the same time, highlighting that the government has the right to unilaterally restrict officers’ wage. A 6-1 majority decision, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice Louis LeBel, spoke against the provisions excluding RCMP officers from the Public Service Labour Relations Act that in fact imposed a management-controlled labour-relations regime on RCMP officers.
The representative of the MPAO, Laura Young, alleged that the management-controlled Staff Relations Representative Program was never intended to create a legitimate means for bargaining. Young stressed that it was in fact to thwart bargaining by instituting a false substitute. She mentioned that “it was created to forestall association. It was to block association really,” adding that “historical evolution is recognized in the decision, so it’s nice to see that openly acknowledged and to have a full and fair history of what we’ve been dealing with here.”
According to the court decision, the SRRP was never “an association in any meaningful sense, nor a form of exercise of the right to freedom of association,” adding that “it is simply an internal human relations scheme imposed on RCMP members by management. The element of employee choice is almost entirely missing and the structure has no independence from management.” Furthermore, the ruling prohibits government from enacting laws or imposing a labour-relations process “that substantially interferes with the right of employees to associate for the purpose of meaningfully pursuing collective workplace goals.”
Be the first to comment