[1983] OLRB Rep. June 980
0387-83-R Sault Ste. Marie Typographical Union, Local 746, Applicant, v. The Sault Star, A Division of Southam Inc., Respondent
BEFORE: R. A. Furness, Vice-Chairman, and Board Members S. Cooke and J. Wilson.
APPEARANCES: M. Cornish, R. Earles and Linda Richardson Groff for the applicant; J. C.Murray and Richard Brideaux for the respondent.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; June 21, 1983
The applicant is a trade union within the meaning of section l(l)(p) of the Labour Relations Act.
At the hearing the applicant informed the Board that it was seeking certification with respect to a bargaining unit as described by the respondent. This bargaining unit is described as:
All employees in the Circulation Department and the Mailing Room of the Respondent at Sault Ste. Marie, save and except, Assistant Circulation Manager, Mail Room Foreman, persons above the rank of Assistant Circulation Manager, and Mail Room Foreman, persons regularly employed for not more than twenty-four hours per week, students employed during the school vacation period and persons covered by subsisting collective agreements.
There are presently four bargaining units at the newspaper in Sault Ste. Marie. The Pressmen's Union for many years has represented employees in the printing department. The applicant has represented some twenty-three employees in the composing room for several years. Since 1980, the applicant has represented twenty five employees in the respondent's editorial unit and two collective agreements have been concluded. In 1980, the applicant was also certified to represent a bargaining unit containing three proofreaders.
At the present time there are two groups of employees of the respondent who are not represented in collective bargaining. One group is defined in the proposed bargaining unit set forth in paragraph two. This group consists of approximately twenty employees. The other group of employees number twenty-six, with six employees in the business office and twenty employees in the advertising and sales office. At the present time no trade union is seeking to represent the second group in collective bargaining. There is no interchange of employees between these two groups and the line of progression has not traditionally been from one group to the other. The business office, the advertising office and the circulation department each have their own manager. These managers report directly to the publisher. Both parties expressed satisfaction with the viability and workability of the proposed bargaining unit.
In The Spectator, A Division of Southam Inc., 119811 OLRB Rep. Aug. 1177, the Board was confronted with a disagreement as to the description of a unit of part-time drivers. At pages 1178 and 1179, the Board stated its approach to bargaining units in the newspaper industry as follows:
In the instant case the parties were unable to refer the Board to any precedent decisions in which the practice of permitting departmental bargaining units in the newspaper industry was fully explained. A review of the Board's prior decisions suggests that the practice has evolved more as a matter of deferring to the agreement of the parties in the industry, an obviously critical consideration, rather than by the application of normative collective bargaining principles in disputed cases. If in the past the Board has acceded to agreements establishing the non-craft departmental units in the newspaper industry, it has not done so without some guarded concern. In the St. Catharines Standard Limited, [19751 OLRB Rep. July 601, the Board granted certification for all employees in the classified advertising department of the employer newspaper. In so doing it commented, at page 603, as follows:
In accepting the agreement of the parties, we wish to state that although the Board does not normally grant departmental units, such units have been recognized as appropriate in the newspaper publishing industry: see, for example, Telegram Publishing Company Limited, 59 CLLC ¶18,126; Globe & Mail Limited, 63 CLLC ¶16,290, where Circulation Department units were held to be appropriate. Moreover, it is presumed that the parties themselves know how their collective bargaining relationship can best be structured. Therefore, unless the agreed unit is patently irrational or unworkable - for example, if the grouping has no functional or organizational coherence, or if it excludes persons without convincing justification - the Board will normally accede to the wishes of the parties.
The foregoing passage indicates the Board's concern for the excessive fragmentation of bargaining units while recognizing the countervailing value of giving the greatest weight to the .agreement of the parties in the structuring of bargaining units. Implicit in that statement, however, is an indication that where there is no agreement between the parties on the structure of a bargaining unit in the newspaper industry the Board will not hesitate to apply established general principles respecting community of interest in fashioning appropriate bargaining units. This is the first application in the newspaper industry which we are aware in which the parties have not been agreed on the designation of the bargaining unit. To that extent the Board is compelled to address the question of whether non-craft departmental units should be the presumed rule in the newspaper and printing industry or whether collective bargaining could be appropriately grounded on a more comprehensive basis.
The key to The Spectator, A Division of Southam Inc. is the disagreement of the parties over the appropriate bargaining unit. In the instant application the parties are in agreement with respect to a proposed departmental bargaining unit. Such agreements between employers and trade unions in the newspaper industry have historically been very much the rule rather than the exception. The Board has generally acceded to the wishes of employers and trade unions and has been content to determine appropriate bargaining units in accordance with their wishes. On the whole, this approach has worked tolerably well with comparatively few jurisdictional disputes in the newspaper industry in Ontario. While such jurisdictional disputes have been increasing recently, these disputes, for the most part, have their origins in new technology rather than in the descriptions of the bargaining units.
Since The Spectator, A Division of Southam Inc., the Board has sought to apply and balance the principles of that decision. See, for example, Peterborough Examiner, 119821 OLRB Rep. March 432; and Welland Evening Tribune, 119821 OLRB Rep. March 513 and 119821 OLRB Rep. April 648. In Kingston Whig Standard Co. Ltd. (Board File No. 0210-83-R, decision dated May 24, 1983), the Board, on the agreement of the parties, determined that bargaining units in the news and editorial department and the mailing room department were appropriate for collective bargaining and issued certificates to a local of the International Typographical Union.
In the instant application, it appears that the majority of the respondent's employees are represented in collective bargaining and that to issue a certificate for the proposed bargaining unit would not cause any of the concerns expressed by the Board in The Spectator; A Division of Southam Inc., supra. The alternative would be to appoint a Labour Relations Officer, with the attendant delay and expense to the parties, and with no indication that the appropriate bargaining unit would be any different from the presently proposed bargaining unit. The representations of the parties on the history of collective bargaining at the newspaper do not indicate that the present arrangement of bargaining rights is unworkable or that the addition of collective bargaining with respect to the proposed bargaining unit would change the existing situation.
In all of the circumstances of this application, the Board finds no reason to disregard the agreement of the parties. Having regard to the agreement of the parties, the Board further finds that all employees in the Circulation Department and the Mailing Room of the respondent at Sault Ste. Marie, save and except assistant circulation manager, mail room foreman, persons above the rank of assistant circulation manager and mail room foreman, persons regularly employed for not more than twenty-four hours per week, students employed during the school vacation period and persons covered by subsisting collective agreements, constitute a unit of employees of the respondent appropriate for collective bargaining.
The Board is satisfied on the basis of all the evidence before it that more than fifty-five per cent of the employees of the respondent in the bargaining unit, at the time the application was made, were members of the applicant on June 1, 1983, the terminal date fixed for this application and the date which the Board determines, under section 103(2)(j) of the Labour Relations Act, to be the time for the purpose of ascertaining membership under section 7(1) of the said Act.
A certificate will issue to the applicant.