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After the government's intervention in both the Canada Post and Air Canada flight attendants' labour disputes last year, experts say this new policy of stepping into the fray is setting the stage for a new style of labour negotiations where companies hold back and wait for government help. goal is to prevent all strikes by intimidat- ing workers into accepting bad agree- ments, on the grounds prolonged agree- ments will not improve the employees' position. Also, the employer can offer as little as it wants, knowing it will not have to face a strike. She says the Air Canada and Canada Post negotiations suggest the Harper gov- ernment has a secret policy of undermin- ing collective bargaining and weakening the labour movement. "The Conserva- tives did not mention collective bargain- ing or an intention to undermine unions when it campaigned in the last election and has not acknowledged that goal now," she says. "But it appears that is nonethe- less its agenda." Levitt believes Air Canada would have been better served training new flight attendants in what he says is an unskilled job — forcing a strike that wouldn't matter to the public, given that the airline would still be in the air and would still have people on the plane pouring coffee. The unionized flight attendants would then watch as the com- pany proceeded without them and be frightened back to work. That seems to be the plan of the City of Toronto, which by all accounts is bracing for an extended work stoppage with its two largest unions in January. Toronto is moving ahead with plans to train manag- ers to perform unionized employees' tasks as it tries to negotiate rollbacks on benefits and the end to the "job-for-life" clause in its previous contract. Levitt says the danger in having the Ministry of Labour continue to get involved in forcing arbitration is that it "will kill the collective bargaining process." In an opinion piece for Postmedia News in July, Levitt cited the example of the City of Windsor asking Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government in Ontario to stay out of its dispute with its union and not order them back to work. "[Asking for interven- tion] is an admission of failure, because ordering the workers back means an arbi- trator will decide their remuneration and the history of arbitrators' decisions has created the very wage boondoggle the public is decrying," Levitt wrote. When dealing with labour disputes that reach a stalemate, Levitt recom- mends firing the lawyers and advisers who brought negotiations to a standstill. Then, if the union strikes, tell the union the cost of the strike will be taken out of their future salaries and benefits when a settlement is reached. "With one not- for-profit client I negotiated for, we told the Teamsters every time our offer was rejected, the next would be less. On the third offer, they believed us and accepted the reduced offer. The next time they didn't strike," wrote Levitt. The postal workers began rotating strikes on June 14, and on June 15 Raitt informed them she would be tabling back-to-work legislation. She did so on June 20. The postal union filed a consti- tutional challenge in Ontario Superior Court on Oct. 11, arguing that the Con- servatives violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by imposing back-to-work legislation. Raitt sent Air Canada's flight atten- dants to the CIRB to arbitrate their dispute. The 6,800 flight attendants cancelled a strike scheduled for Oct. 13 after the CIRB told them to stay on the job while the contract offer was reviewed. On Nov. 7, the CIRB ruled in favour of Air Canada on a new four- year deal that expires March 31, 2015. www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JAN UARY 2012 29