The testimony of michelle gawronsky

Direct Examination – by shannon carson

As always we get to hear some of Gawronsky’s background, how long she has been part of the MGEU and how she rose up the ranks.

As the biggest group of public employees the government of Manitoba deals with, some 39,000, and by far the biggest union affected by the Public Services Sustainability Act, Michelle Gawronsky and the MGEU have been both intensely interested in, and negatively impacted by, its provisions.

Just after the election in April of 2016, Gawronsky had asked to meet with the Premier to launch MGEU’s relationship with the new government. For one reason or another, they did not end up meeting until November 1, 2016. During that meeting the Premier mentioned that they had “inherited a mess” and might want feedback from the MGEU. Gawronsky replied that she would be happy to meet with him at any time to discuss what the concerns are and how to solve the problems. Gawronsky specifically mentioned financial concerns, but the Premier did not respond.

At some point (I think it was in late 2017, but I am not sure). Rick Stevenson called Gawronsky to talk about the possibility of mandatory reduced work weeks (currently there is a system where MEGU employees can voluntarily agree to work fewer days).

“Is this about Bill 28 (the PSSA)?” Gawronsky asked. Stevenson didn’t answer and instead said something about work/life balance and salaries.

“Well, it isn’t time yet,” she said. “We have the GEMA (the general management agreement for MGEU members) coming up, and we still don’t know what is going to happen with Bill 28 and this passed but not proclaimed situation.”

I gather that that was the end of that discussion.

Shannon Carson then shifted to the MEGU submissions to the government’s committee on then Bill 28, which Gawronsky herself made. It reiterates the union’s general approach:

The MGEU is open to negotiation in a collaborative spirit and urges the government to reconsider Bill 28. Let’s move forward with free bargaining and get a fair deal at the table. The MGEU has always had a strong drive to cooperate to help solve problems. For example, the wage freezes it agreed to in 2010-2011 due to the 2008 financial crisis.

Gawronsky’s submissions ended with noting that Bill 28 is disrespectful to the unions and shows disdain for collective bargaining. Carson has her explain:

It’s disrespectful because we are willing to take 0% wage increases in collective bargaining when they are needed. They do not need to be imposed by Bill 28 in this heavy-handed way. (Yeah, good point.)

When Carson then quotes the Minister of Finance saying something about costs in the Legislature, Gawronsky comments that “the MGEU is aware of the problems, and willing to sit down with the government to find common solutions. That offer still stands and we have yet to be taken up on it.”

We then find out some additional details on the effects the Public Services Sustainability Act has had on a few collective agreements related to the MGEU. This is mostly to illustrate the frustration the MGEU is experiencing, as the full details are covered elsewhere.

Gawronsky tells us that, for example, in the GEMA (the big one for MGEU members), it is just as much in the union’s interest as it is in the government’s, to ensure that the quality and cost-effectiveness of public services be maintained. But, she points out, MGEU employees are a fundamental component of that quality. It is in all parties’ bests interests to achieve these goals of “sustainable” delivery of public services.

And moreover, MGEU employees are all experts in their fields where they work, and have lots of ideas. She gets suggestions from members all the time, such as from correctional and probation officers about improving the system, and ideas from the highways department about preventive measures instead of spending more money to fix our roads when they fall apart.

I miss what she said next because I leave to run to the washroom and there aren’t any that close to Courtroom #210 that I know of, so it takes me some time. But what I think happened while I was gone was that they reviewed a little of the Westlab situation and contrasted it with what happened with Doctors Manitoba. Whatever they discussed, this is a good time to fill you in on that bit.

DSM (Westman labs collective bargaining)

Westman Labs is a division of DSM (Diagnostic Services of Manitoba). Two other collective agreements between MGEU and DSM had already been settled on the basis of an aggregate wage increase of 7% over four years. It was assumed that the Westman Labs agreement would be renewed on the same terms as these other two, since all three were always the same because, of course, everyone involved is doing the same work.

However, the PSSA put a spanner into those works. No one was really sure whether it applied, should it apply, and it seems that even the government wasn’t sure what to do, because if the PSSA applied, Westman Labs would be unfairly behind other DSM employees in terms of wages increases.

In the end, it appears that there was some relief and that although the PSSA pattern was applied to the Westman Labs agreement, the Public Services Cabinet Committee (the cabinet committee doing all this PSSA stuff) approved a retroactive wage adjustment of 5.25%. This meant, however, that Westman Labs employees were still making less than their counterparts at other DSM units, simply by the accident of when their collective agreement expired. (Correction: Actually, the government did finally bring them up to par. It only took two years.)

In the Agreed Statement of Fact, the government acknowledges that the “unintended consequences” at Westman Lab include:

1. Unhappiness amongst the employees in the bargaining unit;
2. Recruitment and retention problems (loss of staff who would get paid significantly more to do the same job at another laboratory); and,
3. The general unfairness of a unit that had traditional pattern bargained (with wages being the same as in the other two related agreements) now having a different agreement.

Hmmm. Well, those are certainly negative consequences, but I’m not really sure how the government can say they weren’t intended. They knew this would happen, and they did it anyway.

There’s a significant contrast between how Westman Labs, and everyone else was treated under the PSSA and what happened with Doctors Manitoba.

Doctors Manitoba is an association that represents physicians, medical students, and residents. (They are not part of MGEU or any other public sector union. They stand on their own.) When the master agreement between the Province and Doctors Manitoba was renewed in July of 2019, the fees payable for various services did in fact follow the PSSA pattern of 0%,0%,0.75%,1% increases over four years.

However, in other areas, such as maternity leave, medical education, northern retention, etc., certain funds received an “Additional Investment” which in the aggregate amounted to another $4.5 million every year. These kinds of increases are also prohibited under the Public Services Sustainability Act, and in every other instance where the PSSA was being applied, such additional benefits were never even on the table.

What’s more, although the government tried to justify these Additional Investments as “sustainability savings” permitted under the PSSA, those sections don’t apply to Doctors Manitoba because doctors are paid via fees, and are not employees. And worse, although they point to some areas where these savings might be realized, no one ever did any costing or calculations to prove that these so-called sustainability savings actually saved anything, much less $4.5 million a year.

I take that to the unions, the result is that Doctors Manitoba got a special deal from the Province that they weren’t entitled to and without even trying. That’s certainly seems to be the case, based on this information.

And that is how Michelle Gawronsky’s direct examination ends. As it is the end of the day, we have to wait until tomorrow for her cross-examination.

CROSS-EXAMINATION – BY HEATHER LEONOFF

When we reconvene the next morning, yay, hooray, we are in a new courtroom, Courtroom #128. It looks a lot like this one – with the old-style wood panelling. But the Bench (where the judge sits), the counsel tables, as well as the gallery are all somewhat smaller, since this is a picture of the Manitoba Court of Appeal courtroom, where the serious business happens.

Courtroom #128 definitely cozier, but it is still very cold. Anyway, I take the roughly equivalent seat where you would sit in “reporter’s row” and settle in.

As is common in cross-examination, Heather flips from point to point. She is trying to add facts that she is going to fit in to various places of her argument. So, this first bit covers a bunch of points that seem to be unconnected, because they are merely pin-pointing possibly helpful facts.

Leonoff: You spend 12 months a year lobbying on behalf of the MGEU?

Point: “Lobbying” has some negative connotations.

Leonoff: Safety for your members is important, and the Province is introducing legislation to help?

Point: The government is concerned about MGEU employees too.

Leonoff: The MGEU never made any proposals to the Fiscal Working Group, did they?

Point:    You weren’t helping the FWG were you? (Ok, but the testimony is that the government didn’t give the FWG enough information for there to be any opportunity for them to be helpful, so not much of a point.)

Leonoff: MGEU has been part of the restructuring of the Health Units, right?

Point:     I think the government keeps mentioning the Health Restructuring because they want to show that hey – look at the other things we are doing too to save money; it’s not just on wages.

Leonoff: And GEMA has all these salary grids too, right?

Point:    The salary step argument, which I still don’t understand at this juncture, but I’ll give you a preview – if you still have salary steps, then people’s wages still go up. I’ll tell you what I think of that when Mr. Note-Taker, Michael Conner, explains it with the very last witness – Dr. Beaulieu.

Leonoff then moves into a now familiar refrain – let’s go through all the “important” issues that everyone could still bargain over even though the PSSA took everything related to wages or any other monetary benefit off the table.

These “important” issues include things like long-term disability, the policy on sexual harassments, working from home, and sheriff’s overtime. And as Leonoff goes through them, one-by-one, she keeps repeating things like;

• Well, these are important issues to your members, aren’t they?
• You could always add solutions that would make the situation better, couldn’t you?
• There were opportunities for you to discuss language in legislation and policies that would help with these issues, weren’t there?
• There was nothing to stop you from having a full and frank discussion on these matters, was there?

I’m probably making faces here as I write because I keep thinking – well, sure they could talk about these things, but with wages and all monetary wages off the table, the overall discussion is certainly different, and much more limited and unappealing than if the monetary issues had still been there.

In any event, Heather moves on to the DSM and Westlab issues. She seems to be trying to establish that Brian Ellis, the new Deputy Minister for the Labour Relations Division (he took over after Rick Stevenson retired), didn’t actually say that the Public Services Sustainability Act applied, and admitted that there was a problem with the Westman Labs issue, but said that there was “no right way to respond to this problem.”

Yeah, I don’t get what the government is trying to say here. We passed the PSSA but didn’t proclaim it so it doesn’t apply, but when it is applied, it’s not our fault, or we didn’t mean it, or something. I don’t think we’ll find out until we get to final arguments.

Leonoff ends by putting four blurbs from the MGEU news section on their website. I haven’t seen them, but I suspect they are attempts by the MGEU to put a positive spin on whatever PSSA situation they happen to end up in.

That’s it for Gawronsky. A nice short day. We will be hearing from more union people tomorrow, six of them they say.