THE CANADIAN PRESS -- OTTAWA - The Conservative government is spoiling for a fight with Canada's labour movement, says the head of one of the largest public sector unions in the country.Two sets of labour disputes triggering immediate back-to-work legislation within the space of a week are ringing alarm bells in union shops across the country, said John Gordon, the national president of the Public Sector Alliance of Canada.
"The style this government has taken, the tone it is setting, is going to have repercussions," he said.
"We will not stand back idly and watch the government do this. If they are pushing for a major battle on the labour front they are going in the right direction."
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is currently trying to referee the dispute between Canada Post and its locked-out employees via back-to-work legislation that would force each side to submit its final offer to an arbitrator who would pick the better choice.
The government has said it hopes the threat of legislation compels the two sides to reach their own agreement; Air Canada and its striking workers announced an agreement only hours after the Tories introduced back-to-work legislation to end that dispute last week. The airline workers had been on strike for a day when the bill was brought forward.
Wages, however, are a major difference between the two bills.
The Air Canada legislation made no mention of how much employees should get paid. The Canada Post bill sets out wage increases which the Canadian Union of Postal Workers says are less than what Canada Post put forward in its final offer.
The last time postal workers were legislated back to their routes in 1997, the bill also provided lower wages than what management had on the table.
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Source: Huffington
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