Early Quest for Collective Bargaining

Collective bargaining may be something we take for granted now, but there was a time when the possibility of ever having it in the government looked very bleak. One of the early activists was Maurice Punshon, Provincial President-Ontario. In the July 1955 Newsletter, he advised: "Collective bargaining would make labour relations for the government in power much easier by taking politics out of such decisions, thus resulting in more harmonious relations for all concerned."

This view was echoed at that year's National Defence Employees Association (NDEA) Convention when delegates approved a resolution calling for the amendment of the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigations Act (later replaced by the Canada Labour Code) to allow civil servants to have access to collective bargaining. The resolution passed easily when delegates heard guest speaker Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas tell them how easily his government was able to adapt to a collective bargaining regime with its own employees.

There were doubts, however, whether the resolution would actually pass the convention and, if it did, where it would go from there. As Ken Green explained: "The delegates have heard, so many times in the past, that it is not possible to pass such rights to Federal Government employees because the Ministers of the Government are responsible to the Crown and are therefore unable to enter such an agreement."

The following year, a Civil Service Federation (CSF) brief to government, requesting grievance-arbitration for Canadian public employees, compared Canada's National Joint Council to the British Whitley Council system. The latter allowed for third party arbitration of outstanding issues such as pay and allowances, weekly hours of work, and annual leave. The presentation was well received by Hon Walter Harris, Minister of Finance, but nothing more came of it.