No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Staff Relations in the Civil Service: Who Represents the Government?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The words “collective bargaining” are gaining wide currency in the context of civil service staff relations in Canada. The term, however, seems to mean different things to different men, and is sometimes used to confound the real issues. Thus, if one wishes to resist any basic adjustments in existing procedures for staff representation the words may be given their strictest construction. This suggests collective bargaining as it is practised in private labour relations. It implies a process involving the certification of associations, the signing of periodic written agreements, the institution of conciliation boards and, in the last resort, strike action. On the other hand, if one recognizes the shortcomings in present experience, collective bargaining may imply nothing more than some adjustment of the machinery of staff relations in response to growing pressures for more meaningful negotiations. The point to be stressed is that constitutional democratic government cannot afford to be forced into rigid positions, hog-tied by precise definition and institutional inertia. It must seek accommodation with, and among, the many interests that exert their pressures within a given community and it must do so in a way that is consistent with the general climate of opinion and expectation.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1959 , pp. 11 - 22
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1959
Footnotes
*
This article is based on material which will eventually he incorporated in a study of staff relations in the federal and provincial civil services undertaken under the auspices of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. The author is also indebted to the Labour Department-Universities Research Committee for their assistance in the earlier stages of this work.
References
1 Treasury, H.M., Staff Relations in the Civil Service (London, 1955), 4.Google Scholar
2 Revised Statutes of Canada, 1952, c. 48, s. 11.Google Scholar
3 Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service (Ottawa, 1946), 17.Google Scholar
4 Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Civil Service Commission of Canada (Ottawa, 1935), 9 (my italics).Google Scholar
5 Stead, G. W., “The Treasury Board of Canada,” Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (Toronto, 1955), 79 ff.Google Scholar
6 Ibid., 88.
7 Cole, Taylor, The Canadian Bureaucracy (Durham, N.C., 1949), 31.Google Scholar
8 Dawson, R. MacGregor, The Government of Canada (Toronto, 1954), 308.Google Scholar
9 Reported in the Civil Service Review, XXX, 03, 1957, 10, 12, 14.Google Scholar
10 The text of the press release may be found in Professional Public Serivce, XXXVI, 10, 1957, 13.Google Scholar
11 The Priestley Agreement was reached in the National Whitley Council on the basis of recommendations made by the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1953–5 (the Priestley Commission).
12 Anonymous, “The Priestley Commission and Afterwards,” Public Administration, XXXVI, summer, 1958, 182 (my italics).Google Scholar
13 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 08 16, 1958, p. 3653.Google Scholar
14 Letter from the Minister of Finance to the Civil Service Association of Canada, dated Sept. 9, 1958.