The McNeil government is causing delays in the constitutional complaint by refusing to disclose the relevant cabinet documents for Bill 148 and arguing that the court does not have the power to compel them to disclose the documents. McFadgen asserts that „the right of union members to fairly negotiate their collective agreements is a constitutional right of all workers protected by the Canadian Charter of Freedoms. We will continue to push the Liberal government to become more transparent and restore our rights. Across the country, trade unions have fought and won numerous attempts to deprive them of their constitutionally protected rights. Ontario, where education workers fought and won when Bill 115 was declared unconstitutional; british Columbia, where the Supreme Court ruled in favour of teachers and their right to collective bargaining and health professionals challenged Bill 29; and last week`s verdict in Manitoba – unions successfully defended their constitutional rights. The government has never disclosed what its budgetary objectives were and what it wanted to achieve with the legislation, or why those objectives could not be achieved through collective bargaining. Unions continue to work in good faith and have made proposals to help the province return to balanced budgets over an eight-year period. Unions in Nova Scotia argue that Bill 148 is unconstitutional and has seriously affected the prospect of fair collective bargaining. A coalition of Nova Scotia unions – made up of CUPE, NSGEU, NSNU, SEIU, NSTU, CUPW and Unifor – launched a legal challenge in the fall of 2017. In 2017, the Nova Scotia government enacted Bill 148, which also called for the Sustainability of Public Services Act, the freezing and setting of caps for wage increases, setting the duration of collective agreements and ending long-standing service premiums. Below is a list of collective agreements for each of Dalhousie University`s five unions. If you are unsure of which union you belong to, please contact Human Resources at 494-3700 or hr@dal.ca.
. CUPE Nova Scotia members are encouraged by a ruling last week by Justice McKelvey of the Court of Queen`s Bench, who ruled that the Sustainability of Public Services Act was unconstitutional in that province.