Unionization can be a tedious process—especially so in Nova Scotia.
Often times, it requires signing membership cards more than once and constant delays in the certification and arbitration process. That’s if you can get enough people on board in the first place—some employers have tools to convince workers into shying away from unionization, sometimes at the threat of their livelihood.
These issues, among others, are outlined in a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) analyzing the barriers to unionization in Nova Scotia. Based on interviews with 14 union stakeholders (organizers, labour-side employment lawyers, unionized staff, academics, etc.), it offers several policy recommendations to Nova Scotia labour legislation.
Perhaps the most important change needed on the provincial level has to do with unionization timelines.
“It’s a long and cumbersome process,” says Acadia University professor and report co-author Rachel Brickner. “From the very beginning when organizers have to get workers to sign those union cards indicating their support for a union, all the way to the end when you’re bargaining your first collective agreement.”
For an application for union certification to proceed, 40 percent of employees must sign union membership cards and become the bargaining unit if initial unionization efforts are successful.
The first issue is that cards must be signed within three months before the application for certification. As the report suggests, three months is a short time frame to bond with workers and make them aware of organizing. This requires in depth conversations education around what unionization entails and often includes myth-busting.
More difficult are larger workplaces with various shifts. Even harder are workplaces with high employee turnover. These organizing conversations may not happen at the workplace at all, as non-worker organizers (union staff who often help in unionization efforts) are prohibited from operating on-site with the employer’s consent.
“Anytime there’s a delay, people who want to unionize because they want better working conditions, they want a better salary, they need better benefits, they might search for other jobs,” says Brickner.
This is especially true for precariously employed workers—those with little-to-no job security and low wages—who may not be around long enough for the application for certification to be submitted, let alone cast a vote for unionization.
Delays
When union cards are received and an application is submitted to the Nova Scotia Labour Board, the employer is notified. After a five day period to submit a list of employees and 10 days to contest the application or request a hearing, a certification vote is supposed to take place, normally after five working days of the employer receiving notice.
However, this is where the process can drag on even further. Since the resolution process on hearings and other requests of the Labour Board are not given a set amount of time, the process between application and voting, and then voting and having those votes counted, can be quite long.
Out of the three employers analyzed for this study, the longest to see their worker’s union certified was 254 working days. The Nova Scotia Labour Board attempts to have cases resolved in roughly 130 working days. According to the report, this is due both in part to disputes from employers and a lack of resources at the labour board.
All throughout this process, employers can sway workers into forgoing unionization, either through company-wide emails, informal conversations, shift reductions, additional managers on shift to prevent union-related conversations and, at worst, finding reasons to dismiss organizers and supporters. Unfair labour practice complaints can cause even further delays to certification.
“Worst case scenario, you fear retribution,” says Brickner, referencing a specific interview conducted for the study. “You feel that you could lose your job. You could lose your livelihood if your employer wants to and that fear might be unfounded or it might be more reasonable.”
This could be especially true for people who rely on their jobs to uphold their immigration status, such as those on temporary work visas with a path to permanent residency.
“That came up in pretty much every interview,” says Brickner. “Whoever we were talking to had something to say about workers who are not Canadian citizens, who are either on the path to permanent residency or who are working on a temporary foreign work visa, that there can be a lot more fear of retaliation… those workers are particularly vulnerable.”
Even when a union becomes certified, the first collective agreement is another hurdle. If an initial agreement isn’t reached with the help of a provincially-appointed conciliator, there are two options that can be taken: strike action by the union or the imposition of a settlement by an independent arbitrator (first contract arbitration) by either party, or by the labour board under four circumstances, including “the uncompromising nature of any bargaining position adopted by the other party without reasonable justification” and “the failure of the other party to make reasonable or expeditious efforts to conclude a collective agreement,” as outlined in the province’s Trade Union Act.
Firstly, it is difficult for a new union to meet the high bar set to prove any of the four conditions for a first contract arbitration (partly because, according to one lawyer interviewed, most bargaining positions can be somehow justified).
Secondly, any interruptions during the course of first collective agreement negotiations can take months for any sort of resolution. According to one of the report’s interviewees, a worker-organizer, this can demotivate workers who may leave for other jobs.
Solutions
The solutions outlined in the report are numerous, some legislative and others to do with the Nova Scotia Labour Board. To list a few:
- A single-step certification process which would allow unions to be certified when 50% plus one of employees sign union membership cards, forgoing the voting requirement.
- Extending the time needed to sign membership cards to six months instead of three.
- Making first contract arbitration automatic by changing Article 40 of the Trade Union Act.
- Stricter timelines for labour board decisions while increasing resources at the labour board.
- The province should provide more education on labour rights and how unionization works.
One of the policy solutions in the report is to introduce labour rights and union history into the province’s school curriculum. Brickner says this would help more people understand what unions have managed to accomplish in the past and the reinforce the importance of labour rights.
“Many of the rights people have as workers came out of union struggles,” she explains. “People don’t really understand the role that unions have played in those struggles. Parental leave, weekends, the eight-hour work day. All those things came out of union struggles.”
Instead, Brickner says unions have faced “denigration in discourse”.
“Unions are often painted as the bad guys who are trying to obstruct the way things are, trying to disrupt people’s lives. If there’s a strike, there is a lot of focus on the disruption of the strike and not necessarily about why did it get to the point of a strike in the first place and what people are asking for.
“There’s a lot of forgotten history bout everything that unions have brought and there’s a lot of negative information about unions,” she says.
There is much more to this report than what’s summarized in this article. There’s a section on the declaration of successor employers and what happens to unionized contractors when the company who hires them decides to pick a cheaper alternative. There are stats comparing Nova Scotia to the rest of Canada in terms of unionization rates. Age and gender disparities among unionized workers. The gender pay gap and unionization. You can see the full report here for all the details.
