Urgent call to all members – Sign up to speak against Bill 148 at Law Amendments

Call 902-424-8941

Have your say about Bill 148, Public Service Sustainability Act, that legislates a four (4) year wage pattern including a two year wage freeze, among other things.

This is your chance to be heard so speak up now!

Law amendments is a special process in Nova Scotia that allows any resident to speak their mind on any legislation before the House of Assembly. It will be sitting beginning today at 5:30 p.m.

To sign up for Law Amendments you need to call the Legislative Council Office at  (902) 424-8941.  Tell them you want to speak on Bill 148.  They will give you a time to come to the Legislature and speak before a group of MLAs.  You are supposed to get 15 minutes to speak, but will more likely get 5 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions from the MLAs.

You can speak about any aspect of Bill 148 that you want.  Some ideas could include:

• Your working conditions in the Civil Service, schools, group homes, our hospitals, etc
• How wage restraint will impact you and your family
• The undemocratic nature of how this Bill has been introduced
• The disrespect the Liberals are showing public sector workers by passing this law
• The need to respect collective bargaining
• Anything else connected to this legislation

Key points:

• Bill 148 is unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court has ruled that collective bargaining is a right.  A similar case to this legislation is already working its way through the courts.
• Stephen McNeil and the Liberals have a history of attacking workers’ rights.  Since they were elected they passed laws making it harder to get a first contract, took away the right to strike from 30,000 health care workers, tried to legislate people into different unions, and now are trying to legislate contracts into place.
• This legislation is extremely undemocratic. The Liberals are so embarrassed of their own legislation that they opened Province House at midnight in a winter storm, so that the public couldn’t pay attention to what was happening.
• Public sector workers didn’t cause the economic problems in our province.  The problems started in 2008, when the banks crashed the economy.
• We have a revenue problem in Nova Scotia and wage freezes and selling off our profitable registries to private companies won’t help that.
• We need to retain talented and skilled public sector workers.  This is difficult to do when wages and working conditions are better in provinces like Ontario and Alberta. This legislation does nothing to recruit and retain public sector workers.
• This legislation is seriously impacting morale among public sector workers.

When getting ready to speak at Law Amendments, write down a few notes to guide your comments.

If you haven’t done this before, you might be a little nervous – don’t worry! The process is easy and the goal is really just to give your thoughts on the legislation.

This is your one chance to give the politicians an earful –  use it!

Thank you to the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour for their helpful notes.