PrintUNA Unfair Labour Practice aims to resolve issues arising from unilateral introduction by AHS of new leave policy
Important concerns related to union representation and bargaining have arisen as a result of a unilateral decision by Alberta Health Services to introduce a new Living Donor Wage Replacement Policy affecting employees including United Nurses of Alberta members.
While United Nurses of Alberta supports the principle behind the AHS decision to grant up to 12 weeks of paid leave of absence to employees who volunteer to donate organs or tissue, the manner the program was introduced on January 18, 2019, creates issues that must be resolved.
UNA has filed an Unfair Labour Practice complaint asking the Alberta Labour Relations Board to apply three remedies to allow the policy to be implemented:
1) A finding the employer has committed an unfair labour practice and breached the Alberta Labour Relations Code by unilaterally introducing the policy.
2) A finding the employer’s position in the current wage-reopener bargaining that it has no mandate for any monetary expenditure is without merit.
3) An order that the employer must send representatives authorized to negotiate in good faith regarding the issue of the Living Donor Wage Replacement Policy.
UNA noted in its complaint that in the negotiations with AHS that led up to the current Provincial Collective Agreement, it made the employer aware its members’ priorities included a small wage increase and introduction of paid leaves of absence for situations arising from domestic violence.
In that round of collective bargaining, UNA proposed multiple changes to Article 22 of the agreement, Leaves of Absence. One of those changes was the union proposal for Domestic Violence Leave.
However, AHS negotiators repeatedly indicated to UNA and the Mediator they had no mandate to provide for increased costs, including paid leaves of absence. As a result of the employer’s insistence, UNA withdrew its proposal.
Ten months after the collective agreement was ratified, however, AHS unilaterally introduced the Living Donor Wage Replacement Policy without discussion with UNA.
The complaint argues the employer’s insistence it had no mandate for increased costs is contradicted by the introduction of the Living Donor Wage Replacement Policy.
Less than a month after the unilateral introduction of the paid leave policy for organ and tissue donors, AHS and UNA commenced meetings on a wage-reopener that was included in the collective agreement. AHS then reverted to its original position that it had no ability to increase costs over the current agreement.
UNA wrote to AHS on April 3 seeking to resolve the issue. UNA proposed that AHS agree it had inadvertently and without bad faith committed an unfair labour practice, and that it agree to meet and negotiate in good faith provisions based on its policy. UNA, in turn, would agree that the Living Donor Wage Replacement Policy may apply as written until the negotiations are complete. UNA never received a response and as a result filed the complaint with the Labour Relations Board.
