[REGINA, SK] -- Saskatchewan’s 10,000 Registered Nurses have good reason to celebrate today’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling that the province’s Public Sector Essential Services Act (PSESA) is unconstitutional.
“No workers were affected more by this legislation than Saskatchewan’s registered nurses, so no union was more committed to this legal battle than SUN,” explains Tracy Zambory, President of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. “When we launched our legal challenge to this legislation in September 2008, we committed ourselves to seeing it through to the end. Not only was it the right decision for our members, the Supreme Court told us today that we made the right decision for all working people in Canada .”
The Supreme Court ruled that sections of the PSESA which removed the right to strike from registered nurses and other “essential” workers violate the freedom of association protected by The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Government of Saskatchewan has been given one year to replace the law with one which does not violate the rights of working people .
Because the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) and several other unions had launched separate legal challenges against the legislation in 2008, Saskatchewan’s Chief Justice R.D. Laing ordered in 2010 that the matters be heard together, with the SFL claim becoming “lead” case. SUN’s legal team participated in the three-week trial in November 2011, which found that the legislation was unconstitutional, as well as in the three-day appeal hearing at the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in November 2012, which overturned the trial judge’s decision.
Aside from the SFL’s lead legal team, SUN was the only Saskatchewan union permitted to argue its case when it was heard by the Supreme Court in May 2014.
“A lot was at stake for our members, so SUN took a determined, unique and focussed approach from the very beginning. The fact that the Supreme Court wanted to hear it from us in person shows that our approach caught their attention,” Zambory says. “Today’s decision clearly confirms that we had the desired impact.”
SUN had argued that the freedom to strike has existed for hundreds of years, pre-dating labour legislation, and the Supreme Court’s decision acknowledged that point, noting that early labour laws “gave workers collective bargaining protection as a trade-off for limitations imposed on the freedom to strike”. “The right to strike is not merely derivative of collective bargaining,” the Court wrote, “it is an indispensable component of that right.”
“In this decision, the Supreme Court has provided helpful guidance to the government on how to draft essential services legislation which does not violate the basic rights of Canadians, and has given the government a year to put appropriate laws in place,” Zambory observed. “As always, Saskatchewan registered nurses are committed to working with the government over the coming months to draft and implement essential services legislation which is both effective and legal . ”
Click here to view the decision.
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To speak to a SUN representative, contact:
Erin Thomsen, Communications Officer cell: 306-536-3467
