Negotiating without a floor : Unionized worker exclusion from BC employment standards

The evidence from our research supports a conclusion that the introduction of legislation that permits parties to a collective agreement to opt out of employment standards protections has resulted, in the case of several CLAC collective agreements analyzed, in the unjust denial of unionized workers the minimum rights and benefits the statute was designed to provide to all workers. [...] According to Employment Standards Review Commissioner Mark Thompson, the essence of the employers’ argument in support of retention of Section 2(2) was that the parties in collective bargaining should have the right to fashion their own solutions to the issues covered by the Employment Standards Act (i.e. [...] Commissioner Thompson clarified the intent of the “meet or exceed” conditional exemption of collective agreements with respect to the above four sections of the Act and the Regulation in the following statement: The intent of this system is that the parties may negotiate arrangements concerning the subjects in each part, some elements of which may fall below the statutory minimum, but in their tot [...] Employment standards should not interfere with the daily operations of unionized work sites.1 Beginning in November 2001, the new provincial government embarked upon a series of substantive changes to the Employment Standards Act, regulations under the Act, and the system of administration and enforcement of the Act.18 A sham consultation process was launched by the Minister of Skills Development [...] In addition, workers and their unions no longer have access to the wage recovery mechanisms of the Act, or the protections and powers of enforcement of the Employment Standards Branch with respect to such serious issues as the employment of children, the payment of minimum wages, jury duty and other statutory leaves, group terminations and termination notices.