The provincial government tabled a number of bills in the Legislature Monday.

Among them was the Public Services Sustainability Act, which has drawn fire from the Manitoba Federation of Labour.

"Today we heard the public service sustainability act and what it meant, and we're extremely disappointed to see the government introduce heavy-handed legislation that bypasses the bargaining table," says President Kevin Rebeck. "What it does is it imposes four years of wage freezes and caps for public sector workers well below the cost of living. This applies to thousand of public sector workers who've already shown their willingness to be part of the solution by agreeing over the bargaining table over the last number of years, of two years of frozen wages."

The legislation would apply to an estimated 120,000 employees, bargaining unit employees and non-represented employees of the government and its agencies, health organizations, financial reporting organizations, child and family service authorities and agencies, universities, colleges, independent offices, the legislative assembly, political staff and school divisions/districts. Workers wouldn't be eligible for a raise in the first two years, a .75% raise in year three, and a 1% raise in year four.

"The Premier is on the record saying that he respects and wants to protect public service workers," says Rebeck. "It's what he ran on and what they would do as a government, but everything he's done as Premier now has been about cuts. Not even being willing to sit down at the bargaining table seems completely unreasonable. We know the bargaining table can be a tough place to work things out, but it's a place we can problem solve for workers and employers together to come to solutions. So we're going to push this government to see if they'd be willing to sit at the bargaining table and work with us, rather than put down this heavy-handed legislation. We want to build solutions together, we're committed to doing that, but we need a willing partner."

"We need some time to review the bill," adds Rebeck. "It looks like this bill is similar to the one in Nova Scotia and it's been riddled with delays and legal challenges. No one wants to go down that road, it doesn't serve people well, we want good public services to be delivered, and we want those worked to be respected. If we can work that out with this government and deal with things at the bargaining table rather than them acting on this heavy-handed legislation, we're more than prepared to do that and we hope the government will see reason."

Rebeck reminds people the promise was protecting and improving public services and that doesn't happen by cutting them.

"Pallister's closed the Quick Care Clinic, he's cancelled the billion in health care funding, he's cut 900 jobs from Hydro, and now he doesn't want public sector workers to even keep up with the cost of living. That's not a way to improve public services. So hopefully, instead of enacting this bill we can meet at a bargaining table and solve things."