Canadian Union of Public Employees v. City of Toronto Non-Profit Housing Corporation
File No.: 2436-80-R Date: August 12, 1981
Before: M. G. Picher, Vice-Chairman, and Board Members J. A. Ronson and B. Armstrong.
Appearances: Ray McAllister and H. O'Regan for the applicant; J. P. Sanderson Q.C., D. V. Forbes-Roberts and C. Masson for the respondent.
Decision of the Board
1The sole issue outstanding in this application for certification is the final composition of the bargaining unit. The application is in relation to cleaning and maintenance staff in the respondent's residential buildings.
2There are two kinds of persons employed in the maintenance staff. The first are in maintenance crews which work on a regular full-time basis. The second are resident superintendents whose cleaning and maintenance functions are performed on a less structured basis. The respondent takes the position that the resident superintendents should be excluded on the basis that they are part-time employees or on the alternative basis that they have a separate community of interest.
3As counsel for the respondent conceded at the hearing, the evidence does not support a finding that the resident superintendents are part-time employees in the sense that they regularly work not more than twenty-four hours per week. It appears from the evidence that while they may hold other regular full-time jobs they do regularly work in excess of twenty-four hours per week. The issue therefore becomes whether they nevertheless have a separate community of interest that would justify their exclusion from the bargaining unit.
4There is little material difference between the resident superintendents and the employees on the maintenance crews save that the superintendents perform their work with less direct supervision. The skills employed and types of work performed do not give rise to any meaningful distinction between the two groups.
5In our view it is difficult in principle to distinguish the instant case from the decision of the Board in Zolty Holdings Limited, Board File No. 0030-81-R, unreported, June 24, 1981. In that case the Board accepted the position of the employer and found appropriate a single bargaining unit encompassing cleaning staff, including both resident superintendents and full-time cleaners, as well as maintenance employees. We are not persuaded, on the evidence before us, that the full-time cleaning staff employed in crews by the respondent are any more disparate in interest from the resident superintendents than the maintenance crews considered in Zolty Holdings. We are satisfied that the respondent's cleaning and maintenance employees can bargain collectively in a single unit and that in the instant case the more comprehensive bargaining unit is the more rational and compelling delineation of employees for the purposes of a Board certificate.
6The Board therefore finds that all employees of the respondent in the City of Toronto, save and except property manager and persons above the rank of property manager, constitute a unit of employees appropriate for collective bargaining.
7A certificate will issue accordingly.