A Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench justice has ruled the Public Service Essential Services Act to be unconstitutional.
The decision by Justice Dennis Ball was released Monday in the case against two Saskatchewan labour laws. The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) launched the constitutional challenge against The Public Service Essential Services Act and the Trade Union Amendment Act, two pieces of legislation passed shortly after the Saskatchewan Party first came to power in 2007.
Related Workers Rights! – Nobody needs to own a Caterpillar plant.
Update: Poll spotting!
Time to bring this out of the hidden agenda … federally it looks like the public service is going to be a thorn so the CPC should make federal industries and public service right to work. If CPC took the lead, Sask Party and others might follow.
Morgan better get busy and rewrite the legislation or Saskatchewan will remain as the only province without an essential services act.
Good for Caterpillar. The misinformation, put out by the press and by Buzz Hargrove in a Sun News TV interview regarding the actual concessions Cat, was well documented here a few days ago and is indicative of the media’s biases.
“Spaceballs? Oh $hit, there goes the planet….”
Mike, good idea. This would go a long way toward breaking the stranglehold the public service unions have on our society.
This News Talk 650 poll needs some help from Saskatchewan residents. 😉
http://www.newstalk650.com/home#pollfield-42810-0
Gee. The Red Star‘s economics writers being full of crap. That’s unexpected. Still I’ll now expect David Olive to write something similar about solar and wind power in Ontario. That column/article is coming, I’m sure.
If the Toronto Starwipe CBC CTV Nat Newswatch hate it, it must be good. These union-olshevics won’t be happy until they have achieved the million dollar pick-up truck and the 10 million dollar D7 Cat. We the owners and operators of those machines out here, have no pension, we have no dental, we have no medical plans, we only have what we can create in 35 years of hard work to sustain us through the next 20 or whatever years. I just love watching the fake headlines and cued anger by the Martins and dopey Kinsellas in the Starwipe, my morning laugh at liberal mob stupidity.
Another cash cow bites the dust (in Canada)as the unionized Marxist, lazy, dimwitted, Neanderthal parasites at the CAW suck the last drops of blood from the host.
These people are just plain stupid.
Simply make union membership voluntary.
Two word solution: contract out (to the extent possible)
Won’t work for less, now you don’t have a job. This is good, right?
When F D Roosevelt was president and a strong labour supporter,he was asked to let a federal govt. employies union be formed,he replied”not on your life,govt.employies dont work for the govt.,they work for the people and the people have no alternative”.
Are unionized employees more interested in the ‘right to work’ or the ‘right to be lazy’?
This is why we’ve got a little thing called the not withstanding clause
With respect to the Public Essential Services Act, the judge found the Act unconstitutional because it did not provide a dispute resolution mechanism. Among others, the goverment lawyers are at fault here for not ensuring that this was in place. This was a case of clumsy writing of legislation. The judge agreed with the government position that the existing situation allows the public sector unions to determine what is essential and what is not.
The government needs to go back and do it right.
Then I guess that ALSO means the province now has the right to LOCK THEM OUT if they have the right to strike.
Go ahead! – lock them out, catch them off guard and unprepared for missing a month’s worth of pay cheques, which will QUICKLY force this into the appeals process.
As Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford recently demonstrated, the ONLY way to deal with public secotr unions is to play extreme hard ball, force their hand, and watch them squirm.
Oddly, Muncie workers lined up by the thousands to be hired by Progress Rail at the same rate of pay that London workers adamantly rejected.
Ontario needs ‘right to work’ legislation.
“By now, the nationalist version of last week’s closing of the Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive plant in London, Ont., has been firmly established in the public mind,”
And THAT is what all the “outrage” is about. Now most Canadians are firmly convinced the Harper Conservatives gave away 5 million to a robber baron company that stole Canada blind and ran off with the loot.
It’s a shame that ethics in journalism don’t include a reference to “truth” in journalism. If any of the MSM Reporters had any sense of shame,they’d sure as hell feel it now,reporting on this story has to be the worst case of yellow journalism in the past 20 years.
Maybe all the MSM Papers should change to that color of newsprint,just so customers will know what they’re about to read.
Gee, government appointee find in favor of government employees. How… surprising.
This is where that fabulous “Notwithstanding” clause could come in handy. If I don’t have the right to own property or defend myself, maybe some of these special socialist pets should discover they don’t have the right to down tools and not get replaced by a guy who wants to work.
And maybe the next time the cops/firemen/ambulance/posties/Dept. of Paperclips Shuffling Division workers go on strike we should just LET THEM. For as long as required.
interesting ruling…
as the post head alludes – this could be an opportunity to pass new legislation removing closed shop rules from the public sector.
If there were right to work legislation in Ontario and the CAW didn’t have a stranglehold on the supply of labour at the Caterpillar plant, I’m guessing there’d be no shortage of workers ready to accept $16.75 an hour. After all, they lined up in Indiana for those same wages. Union stupidity and greed once again trump reality.
Rizwan, the latter.
Yeah well here in Woodstock, Ontariario we had a Thomas Built school bus assembly plant open in the ’50’s.
It was a Canadian branch plant for the parent company in High Point NC, USA.
In the ’90’s Thomas was bought by Daimler during their buying spree. Freighliner chassis were Daimler and competitive to expensive FORD chassis…Navstar chassis were the big sellers…
Freigliner dealers screamed foul that Thomas dealers were de facto Freightliners, so Thomas withdrew the franchises and gave them to the Freighliner dealers, who had no interest in selling, servicing school buses.
Thomas market share collapsed and Woodstock was closed and all production returned to NC.
TimberJack, forestry equipment, was based in Woodstock….was aquired by Valmet (Sweden)….costs resulted in Valmet selling TimberJack to Deere & Co….who sought 1-2 machines….who operated the plant for a respectful time…then closed and moved production to IOWA….
In both cases, the unionized workforce had the best jobs in town….
tain’t right…t’aint wrong…just is….
In case anybody missed the news … the state of Indiana (to which CAT just relocated work from that London diesel locomotive plant) literally JUST passed “right to work” legislation, within the past 30 days.
So they didn’t JUST “move to the U.S.” … they moved to America’s newest “RIGHT TO WORK” state.
We should be so lucky that Ontario’s McGuinty (or any other politician) would ever have the testicular fortitude to bring in such sensible legislation here.
The judge ruled the legislation unconstitutional only because of the way it was written. He gives the Government a year to correct it.
It’s really a loss for the unions. This time next year they won’t be better off and they’ll have one less avenue (the courts), in which to press their objectives.
As for the Toronto Star and the Caterpillar story, I say thank God for SDA and to a lesser extent, the National Post. It seems that Mr. Coyne’s sanity has returned somewhat with his return to it’s pages.
Yeah and section 2 ostensibly provides for freedom to associate or not to associate, but I don’t see anyone going after the unions that make membership effectively mandatory in Canada.
Unionized jobs continue to move from the private sector to the public sector for one reason. There is no free flow of capital in the public sector and unions love monopolies, particularly where they can (politically) buy-off or intimidate the party opposite them in negotiations.
Does anyone remember when Canada had a 69 cent dollar that made manufacturing profitable in Ontario for export.
We benefitted from that but were warned that technological investment was needed to stay ahead on productivity.
Many businesses neglected to have a survival plan based on a dollar at par.
Now we have a 99 cent dollar, the companies and the unions have to adjust to that.
Now with the drop in the cost of housing in the U.S., maybe people on $16.75/hour can qualify for some of the distressed housing prices?
Housing prices will drop here too if that’s the level of wages that will be offered.
What does the Charter of Rights have to do with the ‘right to work’ or with the ‘right to strike”? And why should it have a labour dispute resolution mechanism? The Charter isn’t about labour relations.
And, Section 2 of the Charter cannot, in my view, be interpreted as ‘the freedom to work’ or even, ‘the freedom to strike’. Therefore, I’m at a loss to understand this judge’s ruling which relied on the Charter to nullify essential services.
There are many Canadian cities that have essential services, including fire, police, hospital services. In Toronto, the TTC, its public transportation system, has been declared an essential service.
The previous mayor, Miller, a hardleft politician, tried to prevent the TTC becoming essential. He even informed us that the UN Charter of Rights declared that ‘human rights include the right-to-strike’. Nope; he lied.
For what any document of the UN is worth, Article 23 states that ‘Everyone has the right to work”..and it does say that ‘everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions’. BUT, nothing about the ‘right-to-not-work’.
As for Caterpillar, Andrew Coyne has rebutted all the mythic falsehoods of the left about this situation. It’s in the National Post of today – an excellent, detailed, fact-filled article.
An excellent summary of why indiana going RTW is a watershed:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/07/indiana-leads-the-right-to-work-charge
Well, the solution to the Public Service is simple if they refuse all other solutions:
Fire them all! And hire new people.
There is no larger labour pool in this country than a gazillion unemployed University grads who are qualified to replace bureaucrats in the Public Service and would be happy to work at a 50% salary cut and less Union bullying.
Believe me, there is nothing more frustrating than going to the Welfare office and realizing that the Social worker who has been assigned to you is less qualified than you are, less experienced, and is receiving 80K a year!
Meanwhile in Muncie…….
http://www.munciefreepress.com/node/25225
Rizwan, the latter.
Tell us all about it, welfare bum.
@ET 3:09 PM
ET asked: What does the Charter of Rights have to do with the ‘right to work’ or with the ‘right to strike”?
The Supreme Court said so:
Collective bargaining rights protected under charter, top court says
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/story.html?id=8a7e6d53-0651-4c8f-bf99-bd61cdc67796&k=14636
“If the union had agreed to cuts, Caterpillar would have wanted further reductions and other industries may look for similar cuts, Carrie said.”
This approach seems to have worked out well. Only a socialist can think 0% is better then 50%.
Zeppo – thanks for the link. But bargaining does not also include the ‘right-to-strike’.
All it means is that your association can dialogue; it does not mean that IF your dialogue fails to convince the other side, THEN you can go on strike.
Essential services exist all over Canada. My point is that I can’t see the legal grounds for declaring that Section 2d of the Charter means that your association can dialogue AND go on strike.
That strike would nullify Section 1 of the Charter, its ‘reasonable grounds’ and it is unreasonable for a work group to deny citizens vital services: police, fire, health services, transportation services.
AND unreasonable to deny such services to the people who pay for them when there are no alternatives to these services as the govt provides them within a monopoly.
ET, the judge did not say that there was a right to strike. The judge said that the legislation must have a dispute resolution mechanism.
@cgh who wrote: The judge said that the legislation must have a dispute resolution mechanism.
A dispute resolution mechanism (aka an arbitrator) will determine how much of taxpayers’ money gets handed over to the unions. The amount is usually much greater than any increase in gov’t revenues and its ability to pay.