The Labour Relations Board (LRB) plays an important role in the lives of working people. It protects their right to join a union and determines the bargaining power of the unions they join. The Chair of the LRB is expected to have a positive influence on labour relations.
The BC labour movement is deeply disappointed that Premier Christy Clark has reappointed Brent Mullin as Chair of the Labour Relations Board.
After promising a new style of leadership, Clark’s reappointment of Mullin shows her government has no desire to improve labour relations in our province. The Christy Clark Liberals are carrying on Gordon Campbell’s tradition of backroom decisions that ignore the legitimate concerns of working people.
Traditionally, LRB Chairs have had the confidence of both unions and employers. Mullin was appointed Chair in 2002 despite the opposition of organized labour. It was already apparent in 2002 whose side Brent Mullin is on. Mullins has now served longer than any other LRB Chair and has established a pattern of leadership and bias that should have disqualified him from this important job.
The labour movement’s lack of confidence in Mullin’s impartiality and leadership is well-founded, well-known and widespread. Here’s why:
1. Favouring Employers
The Labour Relations Board has wide discretion in making labour relations policy. Under Mullin’s leadership, the LRB has systematically reduced the bargaining power of workers or excluded them from unionization.
Mullin argued that the LRB and the government were not producing high-paying, private sector jobs, that capital investment was down, and that the Labour Relations Code and its administration were part of the problem. Mullin called for Labour Code amendments to make competitiveness and productivity key factors. Many of the views he expressed were adopted in changes to the Code that clearly favoured employers not workers.
After ten years under Mullin’s leadership, labour relations have gotten worse not better. Contracting out has expanded. Well-paid, private sector jobs continue to be replaced by low-wage part-time jobs. The wage gap has grown and poverty has increased. The rate of capital investment has declined. Productivity has not improved. The only thing that has changed is, it is now easier for employers to fight unions.
2. Political Partisanship
Mullin has a history of political partisanship that puts employer interests ahead of the interests of workers. While working as an employer side lawyer Mullin attacked the NDP government’s economic policies and the LRB, using the same arguments as Gordon Campbell’s Liberals.
3. Undermining Debate.
Under Mullin’s leadership, the LRB has become an isolated institution. Community members of the Board representing labour and business have been eliminated. Dialogue and debate of the Board’s policies no longer exists. BC is now the only jurisdiction in North America that does not have labour and employer members on its Labour Relations Board.
4. Political Interference.
Mullin’s tenure has been marked by political interference in Board appointments. Mullin has refused to defend the independence of the Board. His recommendations for Vice-cCair appointments have been over-ruled by the Liberals. Adjudicators who have made decisions unfavourable to business have been removed.
5. Increased Delays
The timeliness of LRB decisions important to union organizing efforts has declined under Mullin’s tenure. The median time for the adjudication of certification decisions tripled, from 14 days in 2002 to 42 days in 2009. The rights and interests of workers and their unions have been prejudiced by long delays in cases, and employers have been allowed to use these delays to fight unions. Under Mullin the culture of the LRB has moved away from promoting good labour relations by engaging labour relations practitioners, to an adversarial process of litigation dominated by lawyers.
6. Demoralized LRB Staff.
It is no secret in the labour relations community that staff at the LRB have been demoralized by Mullin’s leadership and several key staff have left the organization because of it.
7. Unusual Conduct.
Mullin has demonstrated unusual conduct as Chair. He has criticized members of his own tribunal to external audiences. He sat as a single person reconsideration panel on a controversial WalMart/UFCW case. He overturned a Vice-Chair’s second finding in favour of the UFCW after a previous three-person reconsideration panel, Chaired by Mullin, had allowed WalMart’s first application for reconsideration.
After promising a new kind of leadership, Premier Clark has quickly demonstrated that she will continue to govern in the same way the Gordon Campbell Liberals did for the last ten years.
The only way to get a government that puts the interests of worker’s first, is for the labour movement to work together to ensure that Christy Clark and the Liberals are defeated in the next provincial election. Only then will our province be able to set a new, positive and cooperative direction in labour relations.
September 29th, 2011 by 
support 
No Comments »