A 78-page bill proposing several legislation changes has resulted in an uproar against the provincial government.
The omnibus bill announced on Tuesday contains an amendment to arbitration procedures, which working groups fear will take all the power and place it directly in employers hands, effectively neutralizing their bargaining ability.
“We would hope that there would be a halt put to this part of the legislation,” says Glenn Sullivan, president of the Atlantic Provinces Professional Fire Fighters Association.
“And that there would be meaningful input with all stakeholders prior to doing anything about it.”
Minister of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Francine Landry says the province is only interested in establishing a formal process that hasn’t previously existed.
“The first thing in arbitration is establish a process, and it means two things,” said Landry.
“The first one is to have meaningful mediation…and the other process is to have the final offer by both parties and those offers will be evaluated against a list of criteria.”
“It’s part of the budget initiative…and has been discussed as a budget item and it certainly was discussed with our stakeholders as well,” says Landry.
But interested parties say they haven’t been consulted over these changes and say that until that has happened, no changes should be approved.
“We’re extremely discouraged that they haven’t taken meaningful input from stakeholders on this,” said Sullivan.
“We’re still a little bit hopeful that they’ll do the right thing, put a halt to this part of the legislation and get that meaningful input from the stakeholders.”