Arbitration panel sides with MGEU in wage-freeze fight

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This article was published 18/05/2022 (1350 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An arbitration board has awarded a four-year collective agreement, with retroactive pay increases, plus interest, to a group of Manitoba civil servants who went to court to fight provincial wage-freeze legislation.

The contract will grant 12,000 Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union members pay increases of 1.4 per cent in March 2019, 0.5 per cent in 2020, 1.65 per cent in 2021, and two per cent effective March 26, 2022.

“We do not find MGEU responsible for any delay in bargaining which would preclude the awarding of interest on retroactive wages,” the arbitration panel said in its 114-page award, announced Wednesday.

The provincial government is now on the hook for the retroactive wage increases that add up to 5.55 per cent.

It is a number significantly higher than the 1.75 per cent the Progressive Conservative government was offering with its 2017 Public Sector Sustainability Act. It demanded wage freezes in the first two years of any new public-sector union contract, followed by increases of no more than 0.75 per cent and one per cent in years 3 and 4.

The wage-freeze bill was never proclaimed but set the tone when the MGEU began bargaining in 2019. Its collective master agreement had expired in March that year.

In the fall of 2019, then-finance minister Scott Fielding refused MGEU’s request to allow an arbitration board be appointed to settle the contract, after the union deemed bargaining had reached an impasse. The union took the government to court.

In April 2021, the Manitoba Court of Appeal said the government was “unreasonable” when it refused to allow the MGEU contract to go to binding arbitration. Justice Freda M. Steel, writing on behalf of the Court of Appeal, said the Civil Service Act “clearly indicates” the finance minister had “no discretion to refuse to appoint an arbitration board if he has received a request; he ‘shall’ appoint.”

That paved the way for the wage increases awarded by the arbitration panel that conducted its hearings in September. The panel was chaired by Michael Werier. The union’s nominee was Tony Marques; the province’s nominee was Rick Stevenson.

On Wednesday night, the MGEU notified members of the award.

“When we started this process, the government had passed wage-freeze legislation and was insisting that members accept two years of zero increases,” MGEU president Kyle Ross said in the message to members provided to the Free Press.

“We knew that the only path to a fair settlement was through the interest arbitration process. Going that route and fighting the wage freezes has paid off — civil service members will get wage increases in every year of this four-year contract.”

There is no ratification vote by membership when an arbitration award is issued. It is a settlement imposed on both the employer and union.

Ross blamed the government for making the union go to court to have an arbitrator appointed, saying a contract could have been achieved sooner at the bargaining table.

Manitoba Finance Minister Cameron Friesen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

The PC government is now repealing its wage-freeze legislation. The Public Services Sustainability Repeal Act, which was introduced in November, received second reading in April and is now at the committee stage.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca