REBALANCING BC'S LABOUR CODE TO SUPPORT ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS (2025)

Issue

BC’s Labour Relations Code governs the relationship between employers, employees, and trade unions in BC. While the Code plays a crucial role in ensuring fairness and stability in workplaces, it must also support economic growth, competitiveness, and avoid undermining investment confidence. To remain effective, it should balance the rights and responsibilities of both employers and employees, without unduly favouring one side or imposing burdens that hinder business viability.

However, several regulatory changes in recent years have upset this balance and undercut BC’s competitiveness. Therefore, the provincial government should make several changes to the Code – and provide certainty against other proposed changes – to ensure BC remains competitive and our businesses and workplaces successful.

Background

The Labour Relations Code governs labour relations between provincially regulated employers, their workers and trade unions, and the rules for issues related to collective bargaining, such as how workers join unions, how employers and unions interact, and how labour disputes are resolved.

However, recent changes, including those made outside of the legislated review process, have created increased labour and compliance costs on business, an increased risk of labour disruptions, and decreased economic competitiveness.

Commitment to Working Within the Legislation Review Process

Subsection 3 of the Labour Relations Code requires the BC Minister of Labour to, every 5 years, appoint a committee of special advisors to review the Code and requires that committee to conduct consultations when undertaking its review.

Most recently, starting in January 2024, this legislated review of the BC Labour Relations Code was conducted by the Labour Relations Code Review Panel with it delivering its final report to the provincial government on August 31, 2024. Before this, a similar review was conducted in 2018, with recommendations received by the provincial government on August 31, 2018. This process is expected, regular, and operates with a set process that ensures fair participation by employers, employees, labour groups and others

However, despite this robust, regular process, the provincial government has acted outside of this process twice recently. First, in 2022 with the Labour Relations Code Amendment Act, 2022 and again in 2024 with the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2024. These acts made significant changes to labour regulations in BC, including eliminating the need for a vote to certify unionization in some instances, and broadening the ability for unionized employees to refuse to cross pickets and shut down business operations, respectively.

These changes were made with little to no input from employers, often in haste, and without clear rationale or impetus. The provincial government should refrain from these types of irregular, ad hoc changes.

Reinstate the Requirement for a Union Certification Vote

As noted above, in 2022 the government removed the requirement for unionization efforts to be certified by a vote of the workers in certain instances. This change was not only made outside of the normal process, but against the previous recommendation of the government’s own Labour Relations Code Review Panel.

Under the previous rules, a two-step process was required for a union to be certified and formally established including both “card check” – where at least 45% of workers in a proposed bargaining unit had to sign union membership cards – and then a ratification vote by secret ballot which required majority support for unionization.

The 2022 amendments created a single-step certification process whereby if 55% of workers sign union membership cards, no vote is needed.

The secret ballot is a democratic way of determining the will of people and has been a long-standing, trusted method. It allows workers to voice their true wishes free of coercion, fear, or pressure from anyone – employer or union. Replacing this vote with only a card-check system removes this democratic right. Under card-check, there is no way of knowing if a worker has chosen to sign -- or not sign -- a union membership card of their own volition, without outside pressure from coworkers, union representatives, their employer, or others. The requirement for a union certification vote in all circumstances should be reinstated.

Ensure Employer’s Right to Communicate During Union Organization Campaigns

Prior to changes made in 2019, Section 8 of the Code allowed for broad communication from employers to employees during union organization and certification efforts, acknowledging an employer’s ability to oppose those efforts in a respectful, fact-based manner. In 2019, the provincial government made changes to this section to restrict this ability.

Employers should retain the right to present factual information and articulate legitimately-held beliefs in a respectful manner. The specific removal of language around the freedom to communicate regarding unions and union activity is a significant encroachment upon the speech of employers, and unduly curtails employers’ opportunities and rights to engage in the process. In addition, limiting an employers' ability to communicate with their employees may prevent employees from making informed decisions based on a full understanding of the implications of unionization.

Providing More Time for Businesses to Respond to Unionization Efforts

As part of changes to the Code in 2019, the timeline for holding a certification vote was shortened from 10 days to 5 business days – a tighter timeline largely seen as beneficial to unionization methods. This should be re-examined.

In many cases, employers don’t even learn there is a union organizing effort at their business until the application has been filed. When this happens, if the employer wishes to remain union-free they will only have the 5 business days allowed between the filing and the certification vote to communicate its perspective to employees. In addition, employers seeking legal counsel to ensure they do communicate with employees in a manner consistent with the Code have very limited time to seek out that advice and may make inadvertent contraventions as a result.

The 5-day timeline hampers the ability of employers to participate, communicate or comply with Board rules or orders and should be returned to the previous timeline of 10 days.

Re-examining the Prerequisites for Remedial Certification of Unions

Broad powers are granted to the Labour Relations Board under Section 14 of the Code to automatically certify a union when unfair labour practices are found, even where no vote is held or even without meeting the requirement for signing union membership cards, a process known as “remedial certification.”

In 2019, the provincial government increased these powers further by repealing the part of the Code which required a union establish it would likely have obtained the support of the majority of employees but for the unfair labour practices of the employer. Now, the Employment Standards Board has broad discretion as to whether to allow remedial certification, as illustrated in its decision in the 2020 Salade Etcetera! Inc case.[1]

When combined with the aforementioned restrictions on employer speech and the 5-day timeline for certification votes, this creates a regulatory imbalance that disadvantages employers. The language in Section 14 of the code that allows remedial certification only where the union would have most likely have succeeded in the first place should be returned.

Repeal the Expansion of Secondary Picketing

In 2024, through the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, the provincial government changed the definition of a “strike,” which allows for an expansion of ‘secondary picketing’, or picketing at a location or workplace that may or may not have anything to do with a labour dispute. This change specifically allows provincially regulated unionized workers to legally refuse to cross the picket line of a striking union which is regulated federally or by another province. Previously, this act would have been deemed an illegal job action or strike.

For example, if federally-regulated unionized workers at an airport were to go on strike, provincially-regulated unionized workers employed by unrelated third-party businesses, such as shipping, security, or cleaning companies which work at the same job site -- could now legally refuse work, with little recourse for the impacted unrelated businesses.

This will broaden the negative economic impacts and disruptions of future strikes and will erode investment and economic confidence as businesses are at risk of being subject to picketing over disputes in which they are not directly involved.

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS

That the Provincial Government:

1. Commit to respecting the legislated Labour Relations Code review process, and refrain from making changes and reforms outside of that process, unless required by significant emergent circumstances.
2. Amend the Labour Relations Code to require again a representation vote - using a secret ballot - to certify a union, including in workplaces where 55% or more employees have joined the union.
3. Return specific language to Section 8 of the Labour Relations Code that clearly enshrines the employers' rights to communicate around unions and union activity without being deemed as violating the Code or conducting unfair labour practices.
4. Increase the timeline for holding a certification vote following an application from the current 5 business days to 10 business days.
5. Return language to Section 14 of the Code that allows remedial certification to be considered only where the union most likely succeeded in unionization in the first place.
6. Repeal the 2024 changes to the definition of “strike” in the Code that expanded the definition to include bargaining units regulated by federal laws or the laws of other provinces.