Functional Bargaining Units In Alberta's
Health Care Industry
Health Care Conference
September 24-25, 1996
[1997] Alta.L.R.B.R.
DP-003
The division of health care workforces
into standard, functional bargaining units
has been a feature of health care labour relations
in Alberta for over two decades. After industry
consultation and a series of cases, the Alberta
Labour Relations Board communicated to the
industry in its Information Bulletin No.
4 (1977) that as a matter of policy it
would normally certify only one of five standard
bargaining units in the hospital industry.
It also indicated that these units would be
described in "functional" terms --
based on what broad work functions employees
were actually called on to perform -- rather
than terms based on job classifications or
educational qualifications. In 1982, after
industry consultation, it also adopted a policy
of certifying three standard functional bargaining
units in community health: see Information
Bulletin 9-82. These policies have, with
the rarest of exceptions, been followed to
this day.
Much has changed since 1977. New health
disciplines have emerged. The pace of technology
has altered the composition of the workforce
and the way in which many employees do their
jobs. Spiralling health care costs and government
funding cutbacks have forced health care employers
to examine new ways of delivering services.
And now, with the regionalization of health
care, new governing bodies have been established
to assume both hospital and community health
functions, with a broad mandate to reorganize
health care delivery systems.
In its 1994 Transitional Bulletin T-2,
the Labour Relations Board said of its functional
bargaining unit policy:
The Board recognizes that health care
practice may undergo major change as a result
of regionalization. The Government has also
indicated an interest in reviewing exclusive
scope of practice issues in its health professions
legislation. The Board will follow these developments
closely. If it finds occupational groups are
changing significantly, it may re-evaluate
its health care bargaining unit policies. At
this point such re-evaluation would be premature
because industry practice can be expected to
evolve substantially over the next while as
parties adapt to regionalization. Industry
consultation will precede any major change
in the Board's bargaining unit policies.
This paper is intended as background material
for a discussion on whether developments in
health care point toward a re-evaluation of
the Board's functional bargaining unit policy.
It briefly outlines the policy and some of
the factors that have historically supported
the Board's division into five (or three) standard
units. It notes the practice of some other
jurisdictions in fashioning health care bargaining
units. Finally, it notes some developments
in the industry that arguably affect the functional
bargaining unit policy and raises for discussion
some questions that a thorough review of the
policy might have to address. As for the other
backgrounders, a bibliography directs readers
to some useful sources on the topic.
Origins of the Functional Unit Policy
The policy of certifying bargaining agents
for one of five standard, functionally-described
bargaining units in the hospital industry developed
between 1972 and 1977. Several processes contributed
toward this policy:
"Craft-style" organizing in the
hospital sector.
One notable aspect of Alberta's health
care labour relations history prior to 1972
was the predominance of craft-style, occupationally-based
organizing -- and the almost complete lack
of broad, industrial-style bargaining units.
The earliest incursions of organized labour
into the Alberta hospital system occurred among
the trades employees in the hospital physical
plant. Typically these were Operating Engineers
certifications for small units of steam engineers.
There were also a significant number of early
certifications, usually of the Canadian Union
of Public Employees, for portions of what is
now the general support services bargaining
unit. Unsurprisingly, during this initial stage
of organizing in the sector, unions sought
certification for the employee classifications
where they enjoyed at least some level of support,
and the (then) Board of Industrial Relations
generally granted certification without any
concern that other support classifications
would be excluded from the certificate. The
result was a patchwork of bargaining relationships,
set out in long bargaining unit descriptions
that used the occupational classifications
of the individual hospital.
At the other end of the hospital workforce
spectrum, craft-style organizing developed
out of occupationally-based professional associations.
By the nature of nursing and the common training,
licensure and code of conduct imposed by the
status of registered nurse, RNs possessed a
natural community of interest that resulted
in an appetite for collective bargaining as
an occupational group. When nurses organized,
they organized in associations and trade unions
limited to nurses. This pattern Alberta shared
with all other Canadian jurisdictions. Where
Alberta seems to have diverged, however, is
that nursing aides also at an early stage started
to self-organize in occupationally-based units.
The Alberta Certified Nursing Aides Association
(later AARNA and then the Canadian Health Care
Guild) sought to represent units restricted
to certified nursing aides as early as 1957,
a pattern that persisted into the 1970s. There
seems to have been no significant successes
by any industrial-type union in organizing
nursing aides during this time.
The final building block in this craft-style
bargaining structure was the establishment
of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta
in the early 1970s, with a mandate to organize
paramedical health workers. This significant
and growing block of employees had for the
most part been ignored by the other unions,
and HSAA was so clearly identified as the vehicle
for this group to acquire collective representation
that, again, no other union achieved significant
organizing success within the group.
This predominance of craft-style organizing
by unions who saw their mandate as that of
organizing specific occupational groups was
probably reinforced by the concept of the "proper
bargaining agent". Until 1980, Alberta's
Labour Act required that the Board certify
a union only if it were satisfied the union
was a "proper bargaining agent".
This meant that the union had to be constitutionally
capable of representing the employees in question.
Any union that had a restricted mandate to
organize only certain occupational groups found
it difficult to organize other employees without
making a fundamental change to its constitution.
Once started, then, the practice of organizing
by occupational groups tended to be locked
in by statute as well as by the natural inclinations
of the trade union and employees.
It should be noted that one other union,
the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees,
has a major presence in health care because
of its history of representing provincial government
hospital employees. It acquired most of its
bargaining rights under the Public Service
Employee Relations Act, although the Public
Service Employee Relations Board's early adoption
of the Labour Relations Board's five functional
units resulted in an almost identical bargaining
structure in the provincial hospitals. Alone
of the major health care unions, AUPE represents
employees in all of the Board's functional
groups.
Increasing Union Density in the Hospital Sector
In common with other Canadian jurisdictions,
union density in the hospital sector increased
dramatically in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Many more hospitals became at least partly
organized, and many more hospitals, especially
in the urban centres, employed workforces in
which every major occupational group had or
sought collective representation. The result
was increased skirmishing between unions, and
between employer and union, over bargaining
unit boundaries. Increasing union density in
individual hospitals also raised the prospect
that small pockets of unorganized employees
would be excluded from every bargaining unit
and marooned in "tag-end" groups
with no recourse to effective collective bargaining.
Proliferating Job Classifications
Advances in medical technology throughout
the 1960s and 1970s resulted in many new diagnostic
tests and modes of treatment, together with
entirely new classifications of employees to
administer them. This was especially so in
the paramedical occupations. At the same time,
occupational terminology in hospitals became
less uniform and a less reliable indicator
of what the employee actually did. One sees
in the few written health care decisions of
the Board during this time an increasing frustration
with job classification terminology as a reliable
basis for describing bargaining units.
Human Rights Legislation
Finally, the practice of differentiating
between employee groups by job classification
terminology came under attack from another
direction in the early 1970s. An "equal
pay" complaint under Alberta's Individual
Rights Protection Act resulted in the
important case of Gares v. Royal Alexandra
Hospital (1976) 76 C.L.L.C. 14,016 . In
that case the late Justice D.C. McDonald held
that it was unlawful discrimination to pay
members of the female-dominated nursing aide
classification less than members of the male-dominated
nursing orderly classification when they performed
essentially the same functions. The decision
pointed out in stark terms the importance of
basing collective bargaining on job function
rather than occupational terminology.
The first steps toward a comprehensive
solution to hospital bargaining units took
place in 1972. The Health Sciences Association
was in its infancy then, and in one of its
first certification applications the Board
had to examine the appropriateness of a bargaining
unit encompassing all the paramedical classifications.
In Health Sciences Association of Alberta
v. Misericordia Hospital (Alta. L.R.B.
No. 72-024, Nov. 28, 1972, D'Esterre, Chair),
the Board rejected the comprehensive paramedical
unit. It amended the unit to exclude the classifications
of dietician, medical social worker, hospital
pharmacist, occupational therapists, physiotherapists,
laboratory scientist and medical psychologist.
It referred in its reasons to the excluded
employees as a "paramedical professional"
group and the amended unit as a "paramedical
technical" unit. Although it noted that
the dividing line between the two groups was
that the professionals were generally required
to have a formal university training, the reason
for excluding them was not that they lacked
community of interest with the technicals,
but that the professionals were solidly against
collective representation. The Board was of
the view that but for their opposition to collective
bargaining, paramedical professionals might
well be appropriately included with the technicals
in a composite paramedical unit. The Board
added that a separate "paramedical professional"
unit might also be appropriate. Finally, it
signalled its intention to make the paramedical
technical unit one of general application:
The Board recognizes that the unit determined
as appropriate for collective bargaining will
not be absolute for all hospitals. It does,
however, establish initial guide lines to be
considered by trade unions when applying to
represent hospital employees. (...)
The Board is aware that other hospitals
may employ additional classifications of "technical
paramedical employees" that are not described
in the unit determined as appropriate respecting
this application. Furthermore, as medical technology
develops new paramedical classifications are
likely to be established. When this occurs,
the Board may find it necessary to determine
the placement of additional or new classifications.
In 1975 the Board took the next step by
signalling a departure from its previous practice
of certifying for narrower, qualification-based
units such as "certified nursing aides",
and towards the use of broader functional language.
In Alberta Certified Nursing Aide Association
v. Bethany Auxiliary Hospital (Alta. L.R.B.
75-032, July 26, 1975, D'Esterre, Chair) it
rejected a "certified nursing aides"
bargaining unit and indicated that it would
require other auxiliary care employees performing
direct patient care to be included with the
nursing aides:
The Board is also aware that within the
auxiliary direct patient care field in the
hospital industry there are many classifications
with their related occupational terminology.
Usage of the terminology varies considerably
from hospital to hospital. As a result, in
the opinion of the Board, the focus on
unit determination must centre on the function
of the unit as it relates to its functional
contribution to the hospital in question and
not on the ambiguous and uncertain occupational
terminology used. It is the opinion of
this Board that in the field of auxiliary direct
patient care, the unit would be comprised of
all employees of the employer providing a direct
auxiliary nursing patient care regardless of
the title of the classification used. (Emphasis
added)
The Board enforced the new auxiliary nursing
care unit through several decisions, dismissing
ACNAA applications for a unit restricted to
certified nursing aides, and dismissing CUPE
applications to be certified for expanded support
units that included the unrepresented fragments
of the new standard unit: e.g., CUPE, Loc.
189 v. Medicine Hat General Hospital (Alta.
L.R.B. 76-017, March 12, 1976, Williams, Acting
Chair).
The last element of a comprehensive standard
bargaining unit policy in the hospital industry
was to standardize units in hospitals' general
support services. In CUPE, Loc. 41 v. Misericordia
Hospital (Alta. L.R.B. 76-028, June 4,
1976, Laird, Acting Chair) the Board amended
CUPE's sought-for bargaining unit to one including
"All employees when employed in general
support services". This description was
interpreted to include steam engineers, effectively
decertifying the Operating Engineers for a
small trades unit it had held for some time.
The unit description quickly became the Board's
standard description and put an end to the
long practice of organizing craft units of
tradespersons in hospitals' physical plant.
Therefore, by 1976 the Board had identified
the five standard functional hospital bargaining
units that exist today: direct nursing care,
auxiliary nursing care, paramedical professional,
paramedical technical and general support services.
See, e.g. HSAA v. Mineral Springs Hospital
(Alta. L.R.B. 76-024, June 8, 1976, Laird,
Acting Chair). The new policy was publicized
in the Board's Information Bulletin No. 4 in
1977.
In succeeding years the Board gradually
brought existing bargaining units into line
with the "five functional units"
policy. Occasionally this happened through
a straight reconsideration of an employer's
certificates: e.g., Metro-Calgary and Rural
General Hospital District No. 93 v. ACNAA et
al (Alta.L.R.B. 76-031, June 10, 1976).
Sometimes it was accomplished by an application
to sweep in unrepresented employees into a
non-standard unit, which the Board refused
to grant unless all the unrepresented employees
in the standard unit were brought under the
certificate. Many units were standardized when
rural hospitals were reorganized into hospital
districts. The Board routinely recognized the
district as the employer and amended the certificates
to the standard unit descriptions. Finally,
the Board allowed partial raids where the application
would carve out a standard unit from an anomalous
bargaining structure: AARNA v. Smoky Lake
General and Auxiliary Hospital and Nursing
Home District No. 73 [1986] Alta. L.R.B.R.
472.
The five functional units fashioned by
the Labour Relations Board were adopted as
appropriate units in the provincial hospitals
at an early stage by the Public Service Employee
Relations Board:
The result of the early adoption and strict
adherence to the five functional unit policy
is that there is a remarkable uniformity to
hospital bargaining units in Alberta. There
are only a handful of non-conforming certificates.
For example, about six Operating Engineers
certificates for stationary engineers survived
through to 1994.
Most observers would likely say that the
five functional unit policy has benefitted
both organizing and collective bargaining in
the hospital industry: organizing because unions
know exactly which employees to organize, and
collective bargaining because the uniformity
of bargaining units across the province has
allowed province-wide bargaining to flourish.
The bargaining units themselves have proved
remarkably stable, at least until the regionalization
process. In 1986 the Board undertook a limited
review of the five functional units: UNA,
Local 51 et al. v. Alberta Hospital Association
et al. [1986] Alta. L.R.B.R. 610. It was
prompted by an unusually high number of contested
determination applications, suggesting that
there might be problems with the standard wording
of the units. An invitation to raise any such
problems, however, produced only one response,
a request by the United Nurses of Alberta to
amend the standard nursing unit to cover qualified
nurses working at tasks other than direct patient
care that nevertheless qualified as "nursing"
for purposes of continued registration. The
Board rejected the request as subversive of
the functional nature of the standard units.
Practice in other Jurisdictions
Other jurisdictions have not experienced
a hospital labour relations history like Alberta's.
In particular, they have not experienced the
predominance of "craft-type" unions
(for want of a better term) like the Canadian
Health Care Guild for auxiliary nursing employees
and the Health Sciences Association for paramedical
employees. In many jurisdictions some of these
employees have been organized on a broader
basis by industrial-type unions like CUPE,
the Service Employees International Union,
or (in B.C.) the Health Employees Union. In
these jurisdictions, then, the "craft"
has not been the dominant consideration in
defining employees' community of interest and
other communities of interest have been defined.
To review just a few of these other jurisdictions:
Ontario:
Ontario has a long history of non-standard
units and many anomalous units . Such uniformity
as there is has been shaped by agreement between
hospitals and unions over the shape of the
bargaining unit and a relatively few leading
Board pronouncements on what constitutes an
appropriate bargaining unit, which generate
reliance by unions on those bargaining units.
Units in Ontario tend to fall into these descriptions:
nursing; paramedical (combined technical and
professional); service (including RNAs, nursing
assistants and the trades) and office and clerical.
See Stratford General Hospital [1976]
O.L.R.B. Rep. Sept. 459, where the Board determined
that a combined paramedical-professional and
paramedical-technical unit was the appropriate
unit; and Hospital for Sick Children
[1985] O.L.R.B. Rep. Feb. 266, where the Board
discussed in detail the scope of an appropriate
"service" unit in a large teaching
hospital.
British Columbia:
B.C. bargaining unit practice has been
heavily influenced by the B.C. Labour Relations
Board's historical preference for large, industrial-style
units and by the broad organizing practices
of the Health Employees Union (HEU). There
as here, the first certifications in the industry
were among stationary engineers and other skilled
tradespersons, usually represented by the Operating
Engineers, and among registered nurses. The
HEU developed the practice of certifying for
all other employees. In practice, however,
it underbargained these certificates to exclude
the paramedical professional classifications
where there was antipathy to collective bargaining.
In the early 1970s the Health Sciences Association
of B.C. (HSA) was formed to represent paramedical
professionals. In view of the history of underbargaining,
the B.C. Board adopted the practice of carving
out paramedical professional units from the
HEU all-employee certificates. It refused,
however, to extend the HSA bargaining units
to the paramedical technical classifications:
HEU, Loc. 180 v. HSA and Kelowna Hospital
Society [1977] 2 Can. L.R.B.R. 58. At
the same time, for "compelling historical
reasons" it allowed existing trades units
to survive (HEU, Loc. 180 v. Cariboo Memorial
Hospital [1974] 1 Can. L.R.B.R. 418),
though it refused to grant new certifications
for craft units. The pattern of bargaining
units in B.C. prior to the recent work of the
Health Sector Labour Relations Commission,
then, was: nurses; paramedical professionals;
and all other employees, typically including
nursing aides, paramedical technicals, office
and clericals, housekeeping and laundry, and
tradespersons.
These functional divisions in the acute
care sector were preserved by Commissioner
James Dorsey in the report of the Health Sector
Labour Relations Commission in 1995. His report,
and the Regulations passed to implement it,
effectively eliminated the anomalous trades-only
units preserved in Cariboo Memorial Hospital.
The report also eliminated the divisions between
acute care, long term care, community health
and mental health operations for nurses and
paramedical professionals, though not entirely
for support employees. The report and Regulations
establish five province-wide bargaining units
of residents; registered and graduate nurses;
paramedical professionals; health services
and support --facilities; and health services
and support -- community.
Saskatchewan:
The Saskatchewan experience has been largely
one of carving out smaller units from established
"all employees" units. Hospitals
in Saskatchewan were in many cases organized
"wall-to-wall" by either the SEIU
or CUPE at an early date. Nurses were the first
group of employees to seek a carve-out, and
were generally successful because of their
licensure, training, membership in professional
associations and sheer numbers. The Health
Sciences Association of Saskatchewan emerged
in the 1970s to represent the interests of
employees in the paramedical classifications.
Since then it has sought certifications for
paramedical units, usually against the opposition
of the incumbent industrial union, with varying
success. The Saskatchewan Board first recognized
carved-out units of paramedical professional
employees in the large urban hospitals: e.g.,
HSAS v. University Hospital (1973)
Sask. L.R.B. File No. 017-73. Paramedical professionals
were considered to possess a compelling community
of interest, and a significant number of these
bargaining units exist today. From 1981 the
Board occasionally carved out units of paramedical
technical employees in the larger hospitals.
These units, however, have been much less common,
and generally paramedical units have not been
carved out at all in the rural hospitals, where
the normal unit is still "all employees
except nurses".
Recent decisions of the Saskatchewan Board
demonstrate both a reluctance to fashion standard
bargaining units and a reluctance to diminish
the broad SEIU and CUPE units any further except
for compelling reasons. The Board has been
willing to make exceptions where the carved-out
unit is large and where there is a history
of non-representation or substandard representation
of the employees seeking a carve-out, but not
otherwise. See, e.g., HSAS v. Wascana Rehabilitation
Centre (1994) Sask. L.R.B. File No. 265-93.
Newfoundland:
Newfoundland's health bargaining structures
come closest to Alberta's in terms of standardization.
There, by Board practice there are four bargaining
units in the hospitals: nurses; allied health
professionals (roughly corresponding to our
paramedical professional unit); laboratory
and x-ray technicians (comprising some but
not all the classifications in our paramedical
technical unit); and support staff, which includes
nursing aides and assistants, the trades, food
service, laundry, and so on.
United States:
After a long history of case-by-case adjudication
of bargaining units in the acute care hospitals,
and much duplicative litigation, the National
Labor Relations Board prospectively standardized
its bargaining units by use of its rulemaking
power. After extensive public hearings and
submissions, in 1989 the NLRB adopted a Final
Rule recognizing eight appropriate bargaining
units. Excluding physicians and security guards,
the NLRB standard units are now:
- nurses;
- all professionals except nurses
and physicians (roughly our paramedical
professional unit);
- all technical employees (roughly
our paramedical technical unit);
- all skilled maintenance employees;
- all business office clerical employees;
and
- all other nonprofessional employees
(our support unit, less the trades and
office clericals).
The Final Rule maintains existing non-conforming
units, but mandates that applications to add
new employees must conform to the standard
units. It also recognizes an exception where
a standard bargaining unit would contain five
or fewer employees, in which case the Board
is to decide the appropriate units by adjudication.
See NLRB Final Rule on Collective Bargaining
Units in the Health Care Industry, Federal
Register Vol. 54, No. 76, April 21, 1989; NLRB
Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on
Collective-bargaining Units in the Health Care
Industry, Federal Register Vol. 53, No.
170, Sept. 1, 1988.
Industry Developments
As stable as the five functional units
have proven to be, there have been developments
in the industry in the last decade that arguably
might warrant a re-examination of the five
functional units. They include:
Proliferation of health disciplines
and convergence of professional and technical
classifications. Prior to adoption
of the functional bargaining unit policy, the
only employee groups of any size with a claim
to professional or quasi-professional status
were nurses and certified nursing aides. This
status, and employees' membership in professional
organizations that licensed and regulated them,
formed the basis for the occupational bargaining
units that later became the standard direct
nursing and auxiliary nursing units. The paramedical
professional unit evolved as a grouping of
the several small occupational classifications
that required university training and associated
in occupational associations. These classifications
were separated from the paramedical technical
classifications, which by and large acquired
training on the job and did not have occupational
associations.
Starting in the 1970s and accelerating
into the 1980s, there has been a process of
"credentialization" of the technical
classifications. Technical training has moved
solidly into the community colleges and technical
institutes. Common training has enabled objective
standards to develop for certifying competence.
Occupational associations have emerged for
many of the technical classifications, and
under the umbrella of the Health Disciplines
Act some of these associations have taken
over the role of certifying competence and
enforcing occupational standards. There are
now regulations under the Health Disciplines
Act "professionalizing" x-ray
technicians, medical laboratory technologists,
medical radiation technologists, respiratory
technologists, emergency medical technicians,
psychiatric nurses, and midwives.
Increased organization of paramedical
professionals. It seems quite clear
from the early cases that the main reason the
Board did not allow combined paramedical technical
- paramedical professional units is that the
professional classifications did not want any
part of collective bargaining. This appears
to have been typical of the professional classifications
at the time. Although the professional classifications
have been slower to organize and to this day
many more pockets of professional employees
than technical employees remain unorganized,
the professionals' antipathy to collective
bargaining has largely vanished. It can no
longer be assumed either that including professionals
in a paramedical unit creates a barrier to
organizing, or that professionals would be
swept into such a combined unit against their
will.
Changing roles of nurses and auxiliary
nursing employees. Though nurses retain
a monopoly over those aspects of direct patient
care that are within their exclusive scope
of practice as set out in the Nursing Profession
Act, other aspects of their jobs have
been increasingly allocated to auxiliary nursing
employees. Often groups of nurses have been
replaced by LPNs supervised by a small number
of nurses. This has been a widespread response
to provincial funding cutbacks: hospitals adopt
a leaner "mix" of nurses and LPNs,
lay off nurses, and give more supervisory responsibilities
over the team to the nurses that remain.
Nurses and auxiliary nursing employees
have always shared a certain community of interest
through their joint responsibility for direct,
hands-on patient care. That community of interest
has been overshadowed in Alberta (and everywhere
else) by nurses' long history of bargaining
as an occupational group and their exclusive
scope of practice. If nurses' exclusive scope
of practice is significantly narrowed -- though
there has been no serious move in this direction
yet -- it is possible the argument could be
made that not enough functional differences
will remain between the groups to maintain
the separate bargaining units in view of their
daily co-operation and joint responsibility
for direct patient care.
Regionalization and reorganization
of health care. Regionalization is
just the administrative first step toward reorganization
of health care delivery. We can expect to see
an end to the more-or-less rigid division between
hospital and community health services, and
a transformation of the hospital from a totally
self-contained worksite to the hub of a network
of inpatient and outpatient services delivered
by a mixture of hospital, community health,
not-for-profit, and for-profit health workers.
Depending on the means that individual regions
adopt, we may see much closer co-operation
between hospital and community health employees
in the future. That in turn can be expected
to create demand for greater lateral mobility
between hospital and community health positions,
which would be frustrated by significantly
different bargaining unit structures. Transitional
Bulletin T-2 stated that where hospital and
community health units are integrated in a
regional structure, the Board would initially
favour converting the three community health
units into five, to match the standard hospital
units. This is an interim solution, and whether
it is the best long-term solution is not clear.
To date there has been no case before the Board
in which there has been sufficient integration
between hospital and community health employees
to warrant redistributing the latter: see,
e.g. HSAA et al. v. Chinook Regional Health
Authority et al. (As yet unreported Alta.
L.R.B. Decision, July 25, 1996).
Standard Functional Bargaining Units Questions
to Ponder
- Do the current functional units
(5 in hospitals - 3 in community health)
continue to work?
- How can one describe the business
as it currently operates in health care
and further, how can one describe the
functions of employees within that business?
- What are the difficulties/challenges/circumstances
arising which test the usefulness of these
units?
- What benefits arise for employees/unions/employers
in maintaining these units?
- What external factors exist or will
exist which would make these units unworkable?
- How is collective bargaining enhanced/challenged
by the use of standard functional units?
- Is there any case to be made for
combining the nurses unit with the auxiliary
nursing care unit into one, on the basis
that the groups share a community of interest
as direct patient care providers? Whatever
might be said in favour, though, bargaining
history is strongly against this option;
both groups have a long and effective
history as occupational bargaining units.
Is the history decisive?
- Why did Alberta not follow the practice
in other Canadian provinces of treating
employees in auxiliary nursing care as
part of the general support unit? Is it
an historical anomaly without any current
basis in policy other than the weight
of history? Or was Alberta the first and
(apparently) only jurisdiction to recognize
a unique auxiliary nursing care community
of interest? And does it matter any more?
Is the history of separate auxiliary nursing
care representation so well-established
that any change is just not a sensible
option?
- Is there a policy basis for merging
paramedical professional and paramedical
technical units into one, considering
that typically the same union, HSAA, represents
both groups and so bargaining history
would not be a factor? Would merging the
units have any real effect? Do seniority
"districts" exist among paramedicals
not because of bargaining unit boundaries,
but because of the training and qualifications
that each classification must have?
- Should the Board ever again contemplate
carving out trades units from the general
support unit? Is there any serious continuing
tension between trades employees and office
and clerical employees in the general
support unit that might be solved by creating
separate units? The U.S. National Labor
Relations Board rule on bargaining units
supports this option. Or on the other
hand, would this be an unwise reversal
of course for this Board, which has strongly
opposed the carving out of craft units
from broader industrial bargaining structures,
especially in health care?
- What improvements in labour relations
would arise from changes to the units?
- What process should the Board use
to solicit input on changes to these units,
if necessary?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Information Bulletin No. 4 (1977)
2. Information Bulletin 9-82
3. Transitional Bulletin T-2
4. Gares v. Royal Alexandra Hospital
(1976) 76 C.L.L.C. 14,016 (Alta. S.C.T.D.)
5. Health Sciences Association of
Alberta v. Misericordia Hospital (Alta.
L.R.B. No. 72-024, Nov. 28, 1972)
6. Alberta Certified Nursing Aide
Association v. Bethany Auxiliary Hospital (Alta.
L.R.B. 75-032, July 26, 1975)
7. CUPE, Loc. 189 v. Medicine Hat
General Hospital (Alta. L.R.B. 76-017,
March 12, 1976)
8. HSAA v. Mineral Springs Hospital
(Alta. L.R.B. 76-024, June 8, 1976)
9. Metro-Calgary and Rural General
Hospital District No. 93 v. ACNAA et al (Alta.L.R.B.
76-031, June 10, 1976)
10. AARNA v. Smoky Lake General and
Auxiliary Hospital and Nursing Home District
No. 73 [1986] Alta. L.R.B.R. 472
11. UNA, Local 51 et al. v. Alberta
Hospital Association et al. [1986] Alta.
L.R.B.R. 610
12. Stratford General Hospital [1976]
O.L.R.B. Rep. Sept. 459
13. Hospital for Sick Children
[1985] O.L.R.B. Rep. Feb. 266
14. HEU, Loc. 180 v. HSA and Kelowna
Hospital Society [1977] 2 Can. L.R.B.R.
58.
15. HEU, Loc. 180 v. Cariboo Memorial
Hospital [1974] 1 Can. L.R.B.R. 418
16. HSAS v. University Hospital (1973)
Sask. L.R.B. File No. 017-73
17. CUPE, Loc. 41 v. Misericordia
Hospital (Alta. L.R.B. 76-028, June 4,
1976, Laird, Acting Chair
18. HSAS v. Wascana Rehabilitation
Centre (1994) Sask. L.R.B. File No. 265-93
19. Final Rule on Collective Bargaining
Units in the Health Care Industry, Federal
Register Vol. 54, No. 76, April 21, 1989
20. NLRB Second Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking on Collective-bargaining Units in
the Health Care Industry, Federal Register
Vol. 53, No. 170, Sept. 1, 1988.
