Bill 124: Billions at stake as Ontario takes public sector workers to Court of Appeal | 24CA News
Billions of {dollars} are at stake as a three-day listening to at Ontario’s highest courtroom will get underway Tuesday over the province’s controversial wage-limiting legislation for public sector staff.
Last November, a decide with the Superior Court of Justice struck down Bill 124, Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, ruling it unconstitutional.
The province appealed.
There are some 780,000 broader public sector staff in Ontario, together with academics, nurses and most staff of the province. Bill 124 grew to become legislation in 2019, limiting their wages to a one per cent elevate per yr over a three-year interval.
The province’s fiscal watchdog says the province owes public sector staff about $8.4 billion over 5 years if the legislation stays overturned. Ontario has already paid about $1 billion to staff who’ve just lately gone to arbitration to reopen their contracts in wake of the ruling.
In its factum filed with the Court of Appeal, the province mentioned Justice Markus Koehnen made “fundamental legal errors.”
The province says the legislation doesn’t intervene with the collective rights to free and truthful bargaining.
More than 10 teams preventing Bill 124 say that it does.
The province argues Koehnen erred by incorrectly making use of the part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that enables for the liberty of affiliation. That legislation governs the rights of teams, reminiscent of unions.
“He concluded that Bill 124 substantially interfered with the associational rights of employees based on the incorrect conclusion that the inability to achieve particular substantive outcomes is by itself a substantial interference with collective bargaining,” provincial attorneys wrote.
“Accordingly, he failed to consider whether there was substantial interference with employees’ ability to associate to pursue workplace goals effectively, or to their ability to participate in meaningful, good faith consultation and negotiation.”
The province says the decide misinterpreted the invoice as interfering with staff’ proper to strike and factors to strike actions taken after the legislation got here into impact.
The province argues that Bill 124 solely limits negotiations on the annual one per cent elevate cap and that different financial and non-monetary negotiations are nonetheless permitted.
The province argued it was in tough monetary form on the time it enacted the legislation and it was wanted to assist cut back the deficit.
More than 10 teams representing a whole bunch of hundreds of public sector staff are a part of the attraction course of.
The decide who struck down Bill 124 delivered a “carefully reasoned decision,” the teams argued of their factums filed with courtroom.
“The court found that the Crown failed to prove with evidence that Bill 124 was reasonable, proportionate, and justified in its violation of Charter rights,” wrote the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association.
The invoice “completely skewed the bargaining process” in favour of the federal government, the teams say.
“Bill 124 severely undermined the union’s bargaining power both by legislating the preferred outcome of the Crown and employer with respect to the fundamental term of employment (compensation) and by rendering strikes over compensation illegal,” the Catholic academics wrote.
“Compensation was effectively removed from the table and could not be used to trade off against other working conditions in order to make gains in other areas.”
The teams additionally argue Ontario was not in a monetary disaster on the time and, due to this fact, the laws was pointless.
The province is searching for dismissal of the decide’s unique resolution whereas the general public sector staff need the attraction to be dismissed.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
