Work and Family Provisions in Canadian Collective Agreements - Introduction

Work and family balance has become an increasingly important issue in the field of human resource management, eliciting a large body of research and abundant media coverage in Canada, the United States and other industrialized countries. Analyses have tended to focus on the ill effects of work-family stress, and their impact on individuals and employers1.

Transformations in the world of work and in family structures, rapid technological change, increased demands in the workplace, and the shift in employment relationships toward more precarious, "non-standard" jobs have resulted, for many workers, in additional stress and difficulty in balancing their responsibilities at work and at home. This is evidenced, for example, by the 1999 Conference Board of Canada’s Survey of Canadian Workers on Work-Life Balance, which found that 46.2% of workers (52% of female workers) surveyed in 1999 felt a moderate to high amount of stress trying to balance their work and personal lives, up from 26.7% ten years earlier2. In turn, this stress can affect the health, well-being and productivity of employees.

To address problems related to work and family conflicts, a number of family-friendly policies and practices have been developed and implemented in various workplaces. Interestingly, these can serve the interests of both employers and employees. Benefits for employers can include an increased ability to attract and retain skilled employees; improved productivity, efficiency, and product quality; reduced staff turnover; lower levels of absenteeism and tardiness; improved employee health, morale, commitment and loyalty; increased return on training; and an enhanced corporate image, which may give a competitive edge.

Employees with family responsibilities can also benefit directly from workplace arrangements designed to help balance work and family commitments, through reduced stress and anxiety; improved job satisfaction; enhanced family and personal life; increased ability to remain employed; enhanced capacity to be competitive in career advancement; and a greater sense of security.

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Objectives of the Study

This study has been undertaken in the context of the federal government’s commitment to "make workplace policies...of federally regulated employers more family friendly."³ Its main purpose is to examine to what degree provisions related to the balancing of work and family responsibilities have been considered in the context of collective bargaining. It identifies and analyses family-friendly provisions contained in major Canadian collective agreements. This involves a critical evaluation of the wording, the scope and the practical application of various clauses.

This information is meant to help employers, unions, labour practitioners and researchers gain a better understanding of policies and practices conducive to the balancing of work and family responsibilities; identify some of the more innovative practices; assess the feasibility of implementing such arrangements in a variety of contexts; and discern some of the emerging bargaining priorities regarding this issue. This document should also inform a wider audience of the current issues and implications surrounding family-friendly policies and practices in Canada.

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What are Family-Friendly Provisions?

In the context of this study, family-friendly provisions are defined as contract clauses contained in collective agreements which offer employees work arrangements - whether in terms of hours of work, leave or other support mechanisms - that can assist them in balancing the demands of work and family responsibilities.

But how is the concept of family to be understood? According to the Vanier Insitute of the Family:

This definition points to the wide diversity of family units, and the broad range of relationships among family members. The "traditional" nuclear family model of the father as sole breadwinner and the mother as homemaker now applies to a minority of households only. In the past decades, there has been a transition in family structures, characterized by various demographic trends: an increase in the proportion of dual-earner couples and single-parent families, fuelled or reflected, as the case may be, by the growing workforce participation rate of women of all ages; a declining birth rate; and population ageing. More workers, particularly women, bear responsibility for providing care to other family members.

Family responsibilities are not restricted to raising children. They include caring for spouses/partners, elderly parents or relatives, and kin with disabilities, to mention but a few. Moreover, many workers, especially those belonging to the "sandwich generation," must combine both child and eldercare responsibilities, providing assistance to various family members with different needs.

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Why Analyse Collective Agreements?

There are many reasons to analyse contract clauses found in collective agreements. First of all, the collective bargaining process still remains one of the principal means of regulating industrial relations in Canada. This is clear when it is considered that almost one third of Canadian workers are unionized and that their conditions of work are by and large governed by collective agreements. Secondly, it should be remembered that, historically, employers in non-unionized firms have often based their human resource policies on contract clauses appearing in collective agreements. Likewise, federal and provincial legislation respecting employment standards and occupational safety and health have in many instances been inspired by practices stemming from the collective bargaining process. Thirdly, although provisions appearing in collective agreements are generally the result of a compromise, and must therefore be interpreted with caution, it is nevertheless possible to discern some union and employer priorities regarding the working conditions of employees in general, and the issue of work and family balance in particular. Finally, the comparison of collective agreements in various sectors and for different job categories also gives an indication of specific needs in a variety of contexts (i.e. different occupations, industries, etc.). In short, the analysis of collective agreements offers an important source of information.

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Methodology

This study is based on contract clauses found in major Canadian collective agreements, defined as collective agreements covering more than 200 employees in sectors under federal jurisdiction or more than 500 employees in sectors under provincial jurisdiction. Relevant provisions were identified and statistics compiled by means of the Workplace Information Directorate’s (WID) Collective Agreement Information Retrieval System (CAIRS) database as well as the Negotech, an electronic document dissemination system which includes contract summaries as well as full-text collective agreements. A large sample of the roughly 1,100 major agreements available at the WID library was also analyzed. In all, over four hundred major collective agreements were identified and studied, many of which are quoted in the following chapters and appear in the list of agreement references at the end of this study. Each agreement quoted is identified by a number between parentheses, which refers to its classification code in the Labour Program’s Collective Agreements Library.

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Comments on the Scope of the Study

Some inherent limits with respect to the scope of this study should be kept in mind.

• Only contract clauses contained in major collective agreements have been examined: this excludes informal agreements and practices, employer policies that are not within the purview of collective bargaining, and contracts applying to small bargaining units only. This also means that no interviews or research in additional sources was done at this time in the context of this project.
• Since unionized workers tend to be concentrated in some economic sectors more than others, collective agreements from the public, transportation and manufacturing sectors tend to be over-represented compared with their relative size in terms of employment. To compensate for this, special efforts were made to study agreements in other sectors also.
• Although virtually all clauses in a collective agreement can have an impact on workers’ work-life balance, the study has been circumscribed to provisions clearly linked to the balancing of work and family responsibilities, as recognized in the existing literature. This means that contract clauses pertaining to wages, job security, and technological change, although certainly crucial to the economic welfare of families, had to be disregarded. So were some provisions, such as education and sabbatical leave, which may contribute to an employee’s work-life balance, but which are not necessarily family related.
• Numerous contract language examples are provided to illustrate standard as well as more innovative arrangements. However, these examples are not meant to provide an exhaustive list. Due to size constraints, not all clauses found in our research could be reprinted in this study. A selection was made to highlight different elements or to provide contrasts in contract language. Of course, further research and analysis might conceivably identify additional provisions of interest.
• The collective agreements that were analyzed were those currently available at the WID library. Although efforts were made to consult the most recent agreements, there may be instances where they have been superseded by recently negotiated contracts that had not been received in printed or electronic format when the research was conducted. However, only agreements in force on or after January 1998 were analyzed.
• Although quantitative data has been included - when available - this study is based primarily on qualitative research, with contract language from major collective agreements as the main source of information.

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Legislative Context

Provisions in collective agreements often mirror, or are at least influenced by existing legal requirements, as set by labour or employment standards legislation5. This is why the legislative context must be taken into account to properly consider and assess the significance of contract clauses.

A complication in the Canadian context is the fact that Labour is a shared federal-provincial responsibility. The federal government, through the Canada Labour Code, regulates a number of sectors, including telecommunications, interprovincial and international transportation (trucking, railways, airlines, longshoring), banking, uranium mining, and Crown corporations, not to mention its own employees6. Less than 1 in 10 Canadian workers are covered by the federal jurisdiction. In turn, the ten provincial and three territorial governments are responsible for labour legislation covering the balance of employees in their respective jurisdictions. This means that 14 distinct labour codes exist across Canada, each with its own particularities, reflecting regional economic and socio-political realities as well as the ideological leanings of current and former governments.

Where appropriate, a description and comparative analysis of pertinent legislative provisions is provided in the study’s subsections. This is meant to give the reader an overview of the context within which collective agreements have been negotiated, rather than a comprehensive and detailed legal analysis. Readers who wish to learn more about Canadian labour law should consult documents prepared by the Labour Program’s Labour Law Analysis unit, which are available on its website7.

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Organization of the Study

The study consists of five chapters, each dealing with a particular category of provisions:

Each chapter offers examples of contract language found in major Canadian collective agreements and contains detailed analyses. Also included are statistical charts, to illustrate some trends in collective bargaining for the decade spanning the years 1988 to 1998.

The study may be read in its entirety, but it can also be used as a reference document. Each chapter and subsection may be examined on its own. Efforts were made to ensure all pertinent information - statistical data, legislative context, and contract clauses - for each type of provision is provided as a self-contained package.

Readers who wish to learn more about Canadian collective agreement provisions in general can also consult other sources, such as Contract clauses: collective agreement language in Canada by Jeffrey Sack and Ethan Poskanzer and Lancaster's collective agreement reporter. Those unfamiliar with contract language terminology can also find useful information in Words and phrases: a dictionary of collective agreement language by Sack Goldblatt Mitchell8.

¹ For a literature review of the main studies, see Centre for International Statistics, Canadian Council on Social Development, Work, Family and Community: Key Issues and Directions for Future Research (April 1999). resume
² Judith L. McBride-King and Kimberley Bachman, Solutions for the Stressed-Out Worker (Conference Board of Canada, August 1999). resume
³ Government of Canada, Speech from the Throne, October 1999. resume
⁴ Vanier Institute of the Family, Canadian Family FAQs, http://www.vifamily.ca/faqs/faq.htm. resume
⁵ Although outside the scope of this study, labour relations legislation may also have a significant, albeit indirect, impact on collective agreement clauses, inasmuch as it affects the relative bargaining strength of the parties. resume
⁶ It should be noted that only Part II of the Canada Labour Code (Occupational Health and Safety) applies to federal public servants. resume
⁷ Canadian Labour Law Information can be found at the following website address:
http://labour-travail.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/doc/spp-psp/eng/index.cfm#clli_rltc. resume
⁸ Jeffrey Sack and Ethan Poskanzer, Contract clauses: collective agreement language in Canada, 3rd ed. (Toronto: Lancaster House, c1996); Lancaster's collective agreement reporter (Toronto: Lancaster House, 1995-) (ten issues/year); Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, Words and phrases: a dictionary of collective agreement language (Toronto: Lancaster House, 1993). resume