Arbitrations & Disputes Specialist

Role Responsibilities

Are you a strategic thinker with a passion for labour relations and dispute resolution? Do you thrive in complex environments where your insights can drive meaningful change? Join the Public Service Commission (PSC) and become a key player in shaping a respectful, inclusive, and high-performing Alberta Public Service.

As an Arbitrations & Disputes Specialist, you’ll be more than a policy expert—you’ll be a trusted advisor, a skilled negotiator, and a collaborative leader helping departments navigate labour relations with confidence and clarity.

What You’ll Do

• Lead with impact: Provide expert labour relations advice to Human Resources and Employee Relations teams across government in dealing with complex interpretation issues relating to the collective bargaining agreement, essential services agreement, government directives and provincial legislation.
• Empower others: Proactively develop resource materials, training tools such as case law reviews and tool kits, for HR Business Partners and Employee Relations Consultants to ensure consistent application of Labour Relations across the organization.  Establish, lead and facilitate Human Resource wide learning events to share leading employee and labour relations trends and best practices across the Public Service Commission.
• Drive resolution: Manage grievance cases conveyed to the final step in the grievance process, complete risk analysis reviews and present risk assessments to senior decision makers, and maintain relationships leveraging influencing and negotiating skills with key senior stakeholders, including AUPE. This involves analyzing file assessments and proposed next steps that have been vetted through Client Service Delivery leadership to ensure risks are understood and to flag possible alternatives for resolution. The specialist is relied on to escalate issues where risk to the Government of Alberta is identified and requires further review and consideration.
• Collaborate strategically: Work closely with cross-functional teams, senior leaders, and union representatives to develop sustainable, one-employer solutions.
• Shape policy: Provide input into proposals or enhancements to related programs, policies and practices that are consistent with legislation, regulations and PSC and GoA direction.
• Lead projects: Assist in the preparation of all materials and briefings for Labour Arbitration, including case conferencing and negotiations with AUPE Counsel.

Please click on this link to view the job description for this position.

APS Competencies

Competencies are behaviors that are essential to reach our goals in serving Albertans. We encourage you to have an in depth understanding of the competencies that are required for this opportunity and to be prepared to demonstrate them during the recruitment process.

This link will assist you with understanding competencies:

https://www.alberta.ca/system/files/custom_downloaded_images/psc-alberta-public-service-competency-model.pdf.

• Systems Thinking – Ability to create innovative and sustainable solutions that meet the short-term and long-term needs of the GoA as an employer. The incumbent needs to consider the inter-relationships among the legislation, regulations, collective agreement and directives when providing advice and developing policy including unintended consequences of decisions.
• Creative Problem Solving – Ability to bring together the right people to solve complex problems and ask the right questions to gain deeper understanding of the issues. Assess and address risks associated with grievance case files to ensure successful completion.
• Build Collaborative Environments – Superior collaboration, facilitation, consultative, consensus building, and conflict management abilities, ensuring two-way communication to resolve complex issues, challenging circumstances and facilitating conflict resolution directly by initiating open dialogue and debate.
• Develop Networks – Possesses and proactively connect, and build trust with peers and Executives across the Public Service Commission, Government Ministries, Jurisdictional contacts, the Union, and other experts in their field.
• Develop Self and Others – As the technical expert in their field, it is critical that the incumbent shares information, knowledge, and experiences with the team and other stakeholders. The incumbent must take initiative to stay current with labour relations and employee relations trends and approaches.

Qualifications

Minimum Recruitment Standard

This is position requires a completed University degree in a related field plus five years related experience in labour relations, specifically related to managing grievance case files, and supporting arbitration cases.

Equivalent experience may be considered on the basis of:

• A related two-year diploma and seven years related experience.
• A related one-year certificate and eight years related experience.

As the ideal candidate:

• You are an expert in the labour and employment relations and have extensive knowledge of related Provincial labour legislation and regulations such as:Public Service Act, Public Service Employee Relations Act, Public Service Employment Regulation, Employment Standards Code, Employment Standards Regulation Protection of Privacy Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act along with the AUPE Collective Bargaining Agreement and GoA HR policies and directives.
• You are highly organized, an excellent communicator, resilient to change, and have well-developed project management and change management skills and experience.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, including strong information recall ability, to lead discussions and influence stakeholders with the goal of resolution of labour and employee relations issues.
• Strong verbal, written and presentation skills, coupled with the ability to synthesize large volumes of information to make meaningful connections across diverse inputs.

Minimum recruitment standards outline the minimum education and experience required for appointment to a job classification. 
Refer to https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-public-service-minimum-recruitment-standards

Notes

Location: Edmontom

Hours of work: 36.25 hours per week, Monday to Fridays- 8:15am – 4:30pm

To be considered for this competition, your application must include a well-written cover letter and resume.

Carefully review the Qualifications section to see the specific requirements for the cover letter and resume that are unique to this role.

Any costs associated with obtaining the required documents/checks as noted or interview travel expenses, will be the responsibility of the candidate. Out of-province applicants can obtain the required documents/checks from the province they currently reside in.

This competition may be used to fill current and future vacancies across the Government of Alberta, at the same or at the lower classification and salary.  

Links and information on what the GoA have to offer to prospective employees.

• Working for the Alberta Public Service - https://www.alberta.ca/advantages-working-for-alberta-public-service.aspx.
• Public Service Pension Plan (PSPP) - https://www.pspp.ca.
• Alberta Public Service Benefit Information - https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-public-service-benefits.
• Professional learning and development - https://www.alberta.ca/professional-development-support-directive.
• Research Alberta Public Service Careers tool – https://researchapscareers.alberta.ca.
• Positive workplace culture and work-life balance.
• Opportunity to participate in flexible work arrangements such as working from home up to two days per week and modified work schedule agreement.
• Leadership and mentorship programs.