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Unions

  • Image: "Ping Pong Balls" by Peter Alfred Hess is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Alberta’s workplace legislation is starting to resemble a ping pong ball. After the NDP formed the Alberta government in 2013, it amended Alberta's workplace legislation, including Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code, to include  provisions consistent with those in other...

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  • Photo: "Canada Post Truck" by Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co - @thelastminute is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 http://Duncan.co/canada-post-truck
Last week, we looked at the much anticipated Vavilov decision, in which the Supreme Court of Canada rewrote the analytical framework to be applied in judicial reviews of administrative decisions. The Court applied this new framework in the second decision, Bell...

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  • Photo: "SA teachers to strike today" by publik16 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Some believe that class sizes in Okanagan schools are rigidly limited to a certain number of students: 20 in kindergarten, 22 in grades 1-3, 28 in intermediate split classes, 30 in certain other classes, and so on. This is not...

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  • Photo: "Learning to read" by montessori toolkit is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Last week, we began looking at the ongoing dispute between the B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) and the B.C. government.    In 2011 and 2014, two British Columbia Supreme Court decisions sided with the BCTF. Both decisions held that the government’s attempts...

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  • Photo: "IMG_1500" by critical_matt is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
British Columbia teachers are presently without a collective agreement. The issues go back decades. The most recent iteration dates back about 17 years.  Class size and class composition have been key issues. Class composition refers to the number of special needs...

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  • Photo: "104:365 - a little justice" by orangesparrow is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Do you assume that a union means greater protection for workers?  Sometimes this is certainly true.  In many cases, however, it is not.   When a union fails to file a grievance on behalf of a unionized worker, or fails to pursue...

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  • Photo: "1984 & Animal Farm" by paul breen is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Labour day is an occasion to consider the plight of unionized workers. George Orwell, in Animal Farm, wrote about hard working farm animals who were treated badly.  Having had enough, they overthrew the humans.  They took over the farm, and renamed it...

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