Prior to re-structuring of hospitals into regional and then District Health Boards in the 1990s, the Victoria General Hospital (VG) fell within the mandate of the Civil Service Collective Bargaining Act and therefore, there was no right to strike at the VG. [...] Because of the structure of the provincial healthcare system and the unique and specialized services that are provided through the institutions that make up the Capital District Health Authority, a strike in that district is certain to have far-reaching impact province-wide. [...] The second way in which "essential services" gets used is to describe the legislation that five provinces and the federal government have put in place to limit the right to strike by requiring the continuing provision of a level of service that is deemed essential. [...] These options are summarized below: 1. Conciliation The conciliation process starts with the appointment of a Conciliation Officer by the Minister and culminates in an Officer's report to the Minister if the parties are deemed by the Conciliator to have reached an impasse in their bargaining. [...] Neither the Minister nor the Board has the statutory authority to make the decision of the Board binding.

Have the speed, informality, and low cost of the grievance and arbitration system deteriorated? Has the system become too adversarial? Has it lost its problem-solving character? This book examines the nature and degree of change in workplace dispute resolution in the context of ongoing changes in work and in labor relations.The volume begins with an editors' introduction that provides context and offers a political perspective on the current state of dispute resolution in the workplace. The chapters that follow contain critiques of the existing legal framework surrounding mandatory arbitration in the nonunion sector and a review of the empirical literature on nonunion dispute resolution. Employment Dispute Resolution and Worker Rights in the Changing Workplace includes sections on grievance mediation, the status of the grievance procedure in workplaces with extensive worker and/or union participation in decision making, and high-performance workplaces. The study concludes with trends in dispute resolution in the public sector and with the alternative dispute resolution system commonly practiced in the unionized construction industry.