Collective bargaining in the public sector is governed either partly or entirely by special legislation that reflects the historical development of collective bargaining in the public sector and its special labour relations environment.
The public service, government agencies and Crown corporations are governed by the Public Service Employee Relations Act (PSERA). The PSERA applies to the Government of Alberta. It also applies to other employers, a majority of whose governing body is appointed or appointable by statute, by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council (the Cabinet) or by the responsible minister. A small number of such bodies are exempted from PSERA by a Schedule to the Act, and so fall under the Labour Relations Code. Until 1994, PSERA also governed the provincial teaching hospitals, mental health centres and cancer centres. They now also fall under the Labour Relations Code.
The major differences between the PSERA and the Code labour relations regimes are as follows. The PSERA limits the Board's discretion to determine appropriate bargaining units. It establishes a single bargaining unit for provincial government employees (Section 10). For other PSERA employers, an all-employee bargaining unit is preferred but the Board may prescribe smaller bargaining units if they are more appropriate (Sections 11, 16).
The Act directs that employees in certain positions be excluded from the bargaining unit. The list of exclusions includes payroll administrators, employees of the Personnel Administration Office, budget officers, systems analysts, disbursement control officers, and the personal staff of a minister, deputy minister or assistant deputy minister (Section 12).
The PSERA prohibits strikes or lockouts and instead establishes compulsory binding arbitration as the method of resolving collective bargaining disputes. It directs that certain management rights may be the subject of collective bargaining, but may not be arbitrated. These rights include organization of work, assignment of duties, appointments, promotions, transfers and pensions (Section 30(2)). It gives the Board the authority to decide disputes over whether individual bargaining proposals fall into these categories, and to appoint a compulsory arbitration board to settle the remaining terms in dispute.
Two areas the Board oversees under the Code fall outside its authority under the PSERA. The PSERA imposes no duty of fair representation on a bargaining agent. The trade union's duty of fair representation instead arises under the common law and must be enforced by a court action rather than by a complaint to the Board. Second, the Board has no authority over strikes, lockouts and picketing under the PSERA. Illegal work stoppages and picketing are instead regulated by the courts.
Police
Municipal police forces in Alberta are governed by the Police Officers Collective Bargaining Act. This Act adapts the Code's collective bargaining regime to the special features of police service. It creates two bargaining units for police officers, makes only single-municipality police associations eligible to act as bargaining agents, and excludes from collective bargaining such issues as the statutory responsibilities of a chief of police and discipline and discharge, which are instead dealt with by regulations under the Police Act. The Police Officers Collective Bargaining Act prohibits strikes and lockouts and substitutes compulsory binding arbitration. The Board has concurrent jurisdiction with the courts over strikes and lockouts.
Universities, public colleges and technical institutes fall under a mixture of general labour relations legislation and special legislation. In all of these institutions, non-academic staff are governed by the Public Service Employee Relations Act. Academic staff, however, are excluded from operation of both the Code and the PSERA. Instead, they are governed by the labour relations provisions of the Post–secondary Learning Act. This Act establishes a faculty association as the bargaining agent for academic staff and requires the institution to bargain with the faculty association toward a collective agreement. The Act neither prescribes a collective bargaining process nor sets out unfair labour practices. It requires the institution and bargaining agent to set out provisions governing the bargaining process in the faculty agreement itself, which may be enforced through arbitration.
