VANCOUVER (CP) - A United Nations labour body says the B.C. government should either amend or repeal six of its recent labour laws. The International Labour Organization found the B.C. Liberal government violated the UN convention on freedom of association when it changed the laws. The bills unilaterally changed the contracts covering more than 150,000 health, education and social-service workers.
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said the UN criticism won't lead him to make any changes to the laws, noting it was something he campaigned on and was elected to do.
"We've provided for the services the government provides to people, whether in health or education or anything else, in the most cost effective way."
He said the legislation in fact improves the rights of employees.
"We've restored their right to the secret ballet, we've restored workers rights to pensions, to open competition and open tendering.
"That seems to me to be pretty critical to workers' rights."
The Liberals, who routed the New Democrats in May 2001, justified the legislated contracts as necessary to help implement drastic budget reforms to reduce the mounting deficit.
Prof. Mark Thompson of the University of British Columbia's commerce faculty said Thursday that Canada's decision to side with the United Nations over Iraq puts pressure on Premier Gordon Campbell's government to review the bills.
"If you want international law in one area then you should be prepared to accept it in others," he said.
Under the principles of the International Labour Organization, the government is obliged to review the laws but there are no enforcement measures.
"If the government wants to thumb its nose at this, as governments have done in the past, it can," said Thompson. "It's the kind of moral standard against which they should be measured. That's what international law is."
Canada's reputation has been severely tarnished by the B.C. government's labour practices, said Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour.
"We're an embarrassment in the eyes of the world," Sinclair said in a news release.
"The government must immediately repeal or amend this legislation or else Canada will join the ranks of those countries guilty of appalling labour practices."
This is the second time the UN labour body has dealt with complaints about B.C. legislation, the federation noted.
The Social Credit government's wage-controls and a ban on collective bargaining for teachers came under scrutiny in the 1980s. The government eventually ended wage controls and granted teachers bargaining rights in 1987.
Thompson said it's highly unlikely the government will repeal the legislation but it could open the contracts for renegotiation.
"If they offered the parties the option of coming up with a different set of conditions that could be fairly said to be satisfying what the committee wanted," he said.
Thompson said the International Labour Organization is a tripartite body, with half the representatives eminent people appointed by governments and the rest divided equally between labour and business.
"Because they don't have any enforcement mechanism, the process has to command respect," said Thompson, who has worked for the UN group in the past.
© The Canadian Press, 2003
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