“Post-secondary collective bargaining,” Alberta style. Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk and a post-secondary employer negotiator rig the deck, foreground, while a faculty association negotiators ponder what’s just happened. Actual Alberta bargaining teams may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Lukaszuk, former advanced ed minister Steve Khan. As
Continue readingTag: labour relations
Alberta Diary: Count on it: Alberta’s doctors got more than the government’s press release indicates
Dr. Michael Giuffre jots down the Alberta Medical Association’s wish list before yesterday’s agreement with the provincial government. Actual AMA negotiators may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne, Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk. It will take a while to sort out what really happened in
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Despite neocon flameout distraction, Redford Tory bumbling dominates Alberta news
Neocon Icarus Tom Flanagan (appropriately covered, thank goodness) at right, falls to earth after flying too close to the sun. Preston Manning hovers nearby. The flameout of actual neoconservative avatars may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Health Minister Fred Horne, Education Minister Jeff Johnson, and retired judge John Z.
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Education minister’s bluff called by apoplectic schoolteachers! Now what?
The trading pit: Is this what Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson sees when he thinks of the Alberta Teachers Association? Actual Alberta schoolteachers may not be exactly as illustrated. Then again, these days … Below: Mr. Johnson and ATA President Carol Henderson. OK, Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson’s bizarre attempt
Continue readingAlberta Diary: One single Alberta government bargaining agency is likely to end badly for Redford PCs
Premier Alison Redford, in lab coat, centre, and her Progressive Conservative cabinet get ready to bring Consolidated Bargaining to life. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Albert Einstein, the well-known genius, and Charles Darwin, who gave us the idea for the Political Darwin Awards. Chances are
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Redford government floats risky scheme to impose contract on teachers
An Alberta Teachers Association member gets ready to give an important lesson to the Redford Government. Alberta teachers may not be smiling quite as broadly as illustrated if the government imposes a contract on them by legislation. Below: Education Minister Jeff Johnson. Trapped in a no-deficit, no-tax-increase cage of its
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Eureka! Labour relations in Alberta explained by, of all things, NHL hockey!
An Alberta Labour Relations Board official suddenly realizes how the world works, and immediately rules in favour of the employer. Application of the law in Alberta may be pretty much exactly as illustrated. All but forgotten amidst the rejoicing about the tentative end of the National Hockey League lockout reached
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Trivial pursuits: Still no NHL? The Asia Ice Hockey League awaits!
Your blogger drops the puck at centre ice of Maple Leaf Gardens. Really! Below: The lost and lamented Seibu Prince Rabbits’ rabbit, before the team rabbitted in 2009. Below: The lamentable China Dragon’s logo. Really, people, who needs the NHL? If later today or on the morrow the news from
Continue readingAlberta Diary: NHL and NHLPA in labour relations face off: no penalties for Alberta employers caught offside
Members of the NHLPA wait around for their Sui Generis Alberta employers to obey the law. Alberta hockey players may not appear exactly as illustrated – for one thing, they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the stove. Since the regular season of the National Hockey League was supposed to start
Continue readingAlberta Diary: MP Russ Hiebert’s anti-union campaign: is Bill C-377 another Tory ‘own-goal’?
Unidentified Conservative Party Member of Parliament contemplates B.C. Tory MP Russ Hiebert’s “own goal.” Strangely, actual Harper Government MPs may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Hiebert. What are Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s boon companions in the courts, fern-encrusted law offices, plush executive suites of provincial medical associations and
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The only sector where you can’t have a union is the only one with no health and safety rules? Explain, please…
Alabama farm workers in 1935 – not so different from Alabamberta farmworkers in 2012. Below: Premier Alison Redford. LETHBRIDGE, Alberta Literally everybody – and that includes Alberta Premier Alison Redford – knows that permitting an industry to “voluntarily” self-regulate the health and safety of its own workers amounts to a
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Strikebreaker issues bizarre condemnation of Tory candidate for management role in strike
A strikebreaker drives across an early morning picket line during the Calgary Herald strike in early 2000. Below: Catharine Ford, Joan Crockatt. It takes more than a little brass for retired Calgary Herald editor and columnist Catherine Ford to condemn Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt as someone who all but caused
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The Annals of Alberta Labour Relations: Redford Government goes boldly where no Tory’s gone before
Some of the AUPE members who work at the Revera Riverbend facility in Edmonton, which ended yesterday when the Alberta government imposed a first-contract binding arbitration process and ordered an end to the strike. (AUPE Photo.) Below: Former AUPE President Dan MacLennan hams it up with former premier Ralph Klein.
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: A latent political bomb #nlpoli
A few employers have noticed changes to the province’s Labour Relations Act that slipped quietly through the House at the end of the last session. A story in the Telegram on Wednesday focuses on the construction business but some others are quietly pissed off and trying to figure out what
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