Labour Relations & Negotiation Specialist

Role Responsibilities

Are you a strategic thinker with a passion for labour relations and negotiations? 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 a Labour Relations & Negotiations 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 complex labour relations with confidence and clarity. 

What You'll Do
•    Lead with impact: Provide expert labour relations advice to Human Resources teams across government in dealing with complex interpretation issues relating to the collective agreement, essential services agreement, government directives and provincial legislation. 
•    Empower others: Proactively develop resource materials, training tools such as collective agreement interpretation bulletins 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: Develops and maintains relationships leveraging their influence and negotiation skills with key senior stakeholders, including AUPE.
      o    The Specialist is relied upon 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.
      o    As a technical expert in labour relations, it is critical that the Specialist stay current with labour relations and employee relations trends and shares their information, knowledge and experiences with the team and other stakeholders.
•    Shape policy: Provide input into proposals or enhancements to related programs, policies and practices that are consistent with legislation, regulations and Public Service Commission and Government of Alberta direction. 
•    Lead projects: The Specialist leads the development of project plans and is accountable for the delivery of project objectives. The Director, Labour Relations & Negotiations provides guidance where needed and ensures consistency between projects.  
      o    During a Collective Bargaining cycle, assists with the preparation of all materials and briefings for Collective Agreement negotiations with AUPE, including implementation items following ratification.
      o    Leads the preparation of all materials and briefings for Essential Services Agreement negotiations as well as contingency planning materials.
•    Identifies policy and program issues through stakeholder engagement, trend analysis, and jurisdictional best practice research.

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

APS Competencies

Competencies are behaviours 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 connects and builds 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 of 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 of related experience.
•    A related one-year certificate and eight years of 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 has 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.
•    Leadership and mentorship programs.