Just what is an essential service, anyway? BCGEU strike highlights history of made-in-B.C. answer to debate

When union members threw up picket lines outside B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch sites earlier this month, British Columbians may have wondered why the flow of alcohol and cannabis was considered essential during the pandemic — but not in the context of a looming strike.

The answer lies in the very concept of "essential services" and a made-in-B.C. solution to a question at the core of public sector labour relations: How can frontline workers fight for their rights without endangering the people they serve?

It was a puzzle the first chair of the province's Labour Relations Board (LRB) tackled 50 years ago when he developed a new way to deal with disputes involving police officers and hospital workers.

Paul Weiler came up with the so-called "controlled strike," where both sides of the bargaining table agree — prior to any action — on reduced levels of service that might inconvenience the public but won't threaten health and safety.

But just what's essential — and what level of service that involves — has been debated ever since.

"It stands as legal testimonial to the moral principle that there are more important values than the right to strike, than even collective bargaining itself," Weiler wrote in his seminal book Reconcilable Differences.

"Innocent individuals in the community must not be allowed to be injured, even killed, because a union and an employer could not reach a settlement at the bargaining table."

The 33,000 members of the B.C. General Employees' Union (BCGEU), the province's largest public-sector union, are currently seeking a deal that would protect them against inflation and the rising cost of living. They have also cited workload and staffing as issues.

The LRB handed down an interim order designating essential services the day before the union issued its 72-hour strike notice; three days later, employees at four liquor and cannabis distribution centres walked off the job.

By law, neither of those things could have happened without the interim order, which the union and the government have been hammering out in front of the board since last February.

It's a living document, one the board can amend as the conflict continues. The order itself is just four pages long, but an appendix with a detailed list of positions and service levels runs to 1,500 pages. It has not yet been publicly released.

Veteran labour lawyer Leo McGrady, who was called to the bar in 1969, recalls wildcat strikes that preceded the introduction of essential services legislation under an NDP government in the 1970s; before then it was illegal for health-care staff to walk off the job.

"Even though these groups were prohibited by law from striking, they still did. And you can imagine the nightmare that presented to the government and to the public," he says.

The Labour Relations Code defines essential services as "facilities, productions and services ... necessary or essential to prevent immediate and serious danger to the health, safety or welfare of the residents of British Columbia."