Steward Notes: Solid grounds

Working to protect your fellow members and coworkers is the top priority for a union steward. To help in this task, stewards are armed with a powerful weapon: their collective agreement.

A collective agreement provides the agreed upon “rules of engagement” for all parties—employers, employees, the union, and union stewards. It outlines the wages, benefits, and the terms and conditions of employment—and gives stewards the right to protect and defend their coworkers.

While collective agreements are negotiated between the union and the employer, many of the articles are impacted by legislation like the Alberta Human Rights Act (the Act).

The Alberta Human Rights Act serves as a baseline for a workers rights when dealing with discrimination and harassment, similar to how the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act serves as a starting point for the health and safety articles.

Legislation is written to protect all Albertans, but our collective agreements strive to achieve protections that often go beyond what the legislation provides.

Using your Collective Agreement to defend your rights is often faster than just relying on the Act. The cost is also handled by your union, and the Collective Agreement allows a member to access any enhanced rights they enjoy under the union contract.

You can file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission at the same time as a grievance, though the Commission will usually direct union members to only come to them once the grievance process has been exhausted.

Protected areas

The Act’s purpose is to protect Albertans by prohibiting discrimination. The Act’s protected areas cover a wide range of areas including tenancy, employment practices, and job applications. The Act also specifically prohibits discrimination against membership in trade unions.

Within these protected areas, the Act lists 15 protected grounds.

Protected grounds

Protected grounds are a person’s individual characteristics that the Act states cannot be discriminated against. These protected grounds should be reviewed when filing a discrimination or harassment grievance.

The protected grounds include: race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, gender identity, gender expression, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income, family status, and sexual orientation.

All aspects of the terms and conditions of employment must be free from discrimination against these protected grounds.

The Alberta Human Rights Act also addresses pay equality—a cause AUPE members have long championed through the Pay and Social Equity Standing Committee. The Act states that “when employees of any gender (female, male, transgender or two-spirited) perform the same or substantially similar work, they must be paid at the same rate.”

Sadly, pay equity is still a major problem in Canada, with only Ontario and Quebec directly addressing pay equity through legislation. Mostly, the remaining provinces (including Alberta) have made the issue a footnote in their human rights legislation.

That’s why we need to fight for better, both at the workplace as stewards and at the bargaining table as union members. Rights are only rights when they are enforced through organization.

In general, the Alberta Human Rights Act is a good resource for stewards to refer to when filing a discrimination or harassment grievance. It is a benchmark for the way we as workers should be treated by our employers, but your collective agreement provides the protections that the Act just doesn’t have.

That’s why we must always strive to make improvements to our collective agreements at the bargaining table—keeping our human rights language strong.