[1981] OLRB Rep. January 12
1265-80-R Canadian Union of Public Employees, Applicant, v. The Corporation of the Township of Schreiber, Respondent
BEFORE: R.O. MacDowell, Vice-Chairman, and Board Members E.J. Brady and H. Simon.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; January 15, 1981
This is an application for certification. When the matter came on for a hearing before the Board, the respondent indicated that there was only one part-time employee employed on the date of application; but that the respondent had a history of hiring other part-time employees at various times throughout the year. This fact was not disputed. By a decision dated November 14, 1980, the Board appointed a Board officer to inquire, inter alia, into the community of interest, if any, which the single part-time employee then employed by the respondent might have with the other employees in the bargaining unit.
Following the Board's initial decision, we have had the opportunity of reviewing the Board's long standing practice of granting a separate bargaining unit for part-time employees wherever there are part-time employees employed on the date of application or there is a history of pan-time employment. The rationale for this position has recently been thoroughly reviewed in Toronto Airport Hilton [1980] OLRB Rep. Sept. 1330; and reaffirmed in Board of Education for the Borough of Scarborough [1980] OLRB Rep Dec. 1713. We have also considered a number of other decisions of the Board respecting part-time employees including: Tip Top Tailors [1979] OLRB Rep. July 726, Essex Count p Humane Society [1969] OLRB Rep. June 391, Post Printing Company Limited [1966] OLRB Rep. March 930, and Dominion Steel Export Company Limited [1979] OLRB Rep. Oct. 953.
We have carefully considered the applicant's submissions, as well as the established Board practices with respect to part-time employees enunciated in the cases to which we have referred. In the present case, it is undisputed that the respondent has a history of hiring part-time employees; moreover, this is not a case in which this history is confined to employing only one part-time employee so that the result of excluding him now, would be to deprive him of all access to collective bargaining. Accordingly, the Board sees no reason in the instant case why it should depart from its usual practice of excluding part-time employees from the bargaining unit. We are satisfied that the ultimate bargaining unit description should contain the usual exclusion of persons regularly employed for not more than twenty-four hours per week. Consequently, it will be unnecessary for the labour relations officer to inquire into the community of interest of the part-time employee who was employed on the application date, and the scope of the officer's inquiry set out in the Board's decision of November 14, 1980, is hereby varied to that extent.