Members of the RCMP march during the Calgary Stampede parade in Calgary in July 2012. Photo: Stuart Gradon/Calgary Herald Mounties are eagerly anticipating a decision this Friday from Canada’s top court over whether they can unionize.
Currently, RCMP members are not part of the labour relations regime established for other federal public sector workers. Instead, they elect staff relations representatives to advocate on their behalf on pay and workplace issues.
Critics say these in-house representatives are “part of the chain of command,” and that RCMP regulations preventing Mounties from forming an independent association to engage in collective bargaining is a violation of their Charter rights.
One York University labour expert has gone so far as to suggest that the current RCMP labour management model wouldn’t be out of place in China.
The RCMP is the only major police force in Canada without a union. In 2009, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the ban on forming a union was a violation of the Charter, but that decision was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2012.
In filings with the Supreme Court of Canada, the Mounted Police Association of Ontario and the B.C. Mounted Police Professional Association — informal Mountie associations that are not recognized by RCMP management — cited studies that have made “damning observations” of the RCMP’s work conditions, including heavy workloads, an ineffective promotion system and a failure to meet the needs of injured members.
Total compensation for Mounties continues to fall outside the average of the top three police forces, said Rob Creasser, a spokesman for the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada, the umbrella organization for the provincial police associations.
Creasser said the current system of representation is more akin to “collective begging” than collective bargaining because all staff relations representatives can do is make recommendations to management and the Treasury Board about pay. “It doesn’t allow them to be effective. They have no power,” he said.
A union would also have been more effective in acting on recommendations for improved weapons and armour following the shooting deaths of four Mounties in Mayerthorpe, Alta., Creasser said.
But in court filings, lawyers for the Attorney General of Canada said that staff relations representatives have provided members a “meaningful” process for resolving workplace issues since 1974 and that management is duty-bound to consider their representations in good faith.
Even though their relationship with management is collaborative and non-adversarial, staff relations representatives speak “frankly and critically” on areas needing improvement, they argued.
They cited the Ontario appeal court ruling, which found that the existing system passed constitutional scrutiny because it allowed members to form voluntary associations; provided for extensive collaboration between staff relations representatives and management; and allowed for the creation of a Legal Fund, a voluntary not-for-profit corporation that provides legal aid and protection to members and is funded by dues paid by members.
In an interview, Abe Townsend, a member of the national executive of the RCMP staff relations representative program, said his team has been able to bring about a number of positive changes, including improved accommodations for members who provide relief duty in the Arctic, greater transparency in the promotions process, and more options for training.
On the issue of salaries, Townsend provided a copy of a briefing note that staff relations representatives distributed to parliamentarians last month highlighting how compensation was lagging behind salaries in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and the Ontario Provincial Police. This sort of advocacy for members occurs routinely, he said.
However, David Doorey, a professor of work law at York University, has a decidedly different opinion of the RCMP’s labour relations model. Writing on his blog after the Ontario appeal court ruling, Doorey compared the current system to China’s model of “forced state unionization.”
“As long as the employer goes through the motion of meeting with the state-created, non-independent association, nodding along to the suggestions it makes, there will be no violation of (the Charter),” he said. “Can you see why our model of freedom of association is beginning to look like the Chinese model?”
dquan@postmedia.com
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