D. L. Brisbin

The Board issued a decision quantifying damages and providing guidance on compensation following a finding that the employer committed unfair labour practices, including an unlawful lock-out and failure to bargain in good faith.

The Board awarded damages for the loss of opportunity to negotiate a collective agreement, determined that locked-out employees have a duty to mitigate their losses after an initial period, and ruled that lock-out pay received from the international union is a collateral benefit that is not deductible from the employer's compensation liability.

The Board declined to award legal costs or compensation for union officials' time spent at hearings, but allowed recovery for reasonable negotiating expenses and costs of the union's boycott campaign.

The union and an employee filed complaints alleging that the employer committed numerous unfair labour practices during a union organizing drive and subsequent collective bargaining.

The employer altered terms and conditions of employment during the statutory freeze period, disciplined union supporters, engaged in surface bargaining, and unlawfully locked out employees.

The Board found that the employer violated the Labour Relations Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The Board ordered extensive remedial relief, including compensation for lost wages and benefits, rescission of unlawful discipline, and directed the settlement of a first collective agreement by arbitration.

The complainants, members of IBEW Local 105, alleged that the respondents violated the Labour Relations Act by performing industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI) sector construction work under a maintenance agreement rather than the provincial agreement.

The respondents moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing and failure to disclose a prima facie case.

The Ontario Labour Relations Board dismissed the complaint, finding that the complainants lacked standing because they were not employees in the bargaining unit, had not worked under the agreement, and had not been refused employment.

Consequently, their interests were too remote to establish a violation of the Act.

The applicant union referred a grievance to the Ontario Labour Relations Board under section 124 of the Labour Relations Act.

The respondent employer raised a preliminary objection that the applicant was not bound to a collective agreement with it.

The Board found that the employer was bound to a collective agreement with Local 1089, not the applicant Local 1059.

The Board held that the applicant had no jurisdiction to refer the grievance because it was not a party to the collective agreement.

The application was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The applicant union sought certification for a bargaining unit of carpenters employed by the respondent in the construction industry.

The central issue was whether several employees should be classified as carpenters or labourers, given that they performed multiple types of work.

The majority of the Board relied on the respondent's coding system to determine that only four employees spent the majority of their time performing carpentry work during the representative period.

Because the union only filed membership evidence for one of those four employees, it lacked the requisite 45% support, and the application was dismissed.

A dissenting Board member argued that the coding system was unreliable and would have found sufficient membership support to grant certification.

The complainant union filed a jurisdictional dispute under section 91 of the Labour Relations Act regarding the assignment of work involving the insertion and removal of blanks in standpipes on a coke oven.

The employer had assigned the work on a fifty-fifty basis between the complainant and the respondent union.

The complainant union disputed this assignment, claiming 100% of the work, and its members subsequently walked off the job and refused to perform any of the work, including their assigned 50%.

The Board dismissed the complaint on preliminary objections, holding that the complainant could not claim entitlement to work that its members had explicitly refused to perform.

The complainant union alleged that the respondent employer bargained in bad faith by repudiating a memorandum of agreement.

The parties had resolved all outstanding issues and signed a memorandum subject to ratification.

Before ratification, the respondent acquired a related company and subsequently refused to ratify the agreement unless the union agreed to amend the recognition clause to explicitly exclude the employees of the newly acquired company.

The Board held that the respondent's insistence on altering the recognition clause to avoid the potential application of the related employer provisions of the Labour Relations Act was inconsistent with the scheme of the Act and constituted a breach of the duty to bargain in good faith.

The applicant union sought certification for employees at one of the respondent's two plants in Metropolitan Toronto.

Initially, the union sought a single-plant unit while the employer argued for a multi-plant unit.

After a representation vote showed strong support for the union at the larger plant, the parties reversed their positions.

The Board applied the Usarco criteria to assess the community of interest between the two plants.

Finding no functional interdependence, separate hiring and supervision, and different products, the Board concluded there was no sound reason to sweep the smaller plant's employees into the bargaining unit.

A certificate was issued for the single plant.